##VIDEO ID:ygRwgbzlBd0## [Music] [Music] he [Music] he yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] yeah he [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah he [Music] [Music] [Music] it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] yeah he [Music] [Music] call please Miss Sada Miss Applegate here miss Kenworthy here Miss Parker here miss Reed here Dr V please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance flag United States na andice is there a motion to approve today's meeting agenda sorry I move to approve the agenda as provided in board dock is there a second second any discussion it's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda for today's meeting of January 8 2025 is presented roll call please miss Sada Miss Applegate yes Miss Kenworthy yes Miss Parker yes Miss Reed yes Dr V the agenda is approved at our December 19th meeting we studied the following topics an update from the equity accountability committee and an update on the district's Capital Improvement program the public can watch the recording to learn more about these programs you can also visit our board page on the Jeff Public Schools website there you'll find a host of information and links to both board dos and our live stream platforms before we move to our study session agenda I want to acknowledge that a majority of the board attended a board retreat yesterday that was led by our colleague director Reed and I'm going to ask director Reed to provide a brief summary of that Retreat now so I'll pass it to you director re thank you president Parker um yesterday we had a board retreat it was um attended by the public and some of the media it was an opportunity for the very first time since um December 19th for us to even begin to process as a board the crisis that we faced with the um search warrant that was served on our chief of schools and his subsequent death and so it was an opportunity for us to talk to each other and for the community to hear our thoughts and our feelings around these events and then um at the end we had some action items that we determined that we would be working on in the near future one of them is working on producing more timely communication that was something that we felt had not gone well and that we want to be able to fix in the future we felt the need to establish more clear protocols for crises in general for the board to follow we have asked for a study session on student safety that specifically addresses um sexual child sexual uh predatory behavior essentially and um you know what are our policies for screening our employees and what are we teaching our children about how to keep themselves safe what are we doing to train our employees to recognize behavior when adults are crossing boundaries we've asked for um the district to call in experts to help advise us on this so that ultimately we can review our policies and consider any possible changes that we might make to ensure that our children are safer thank you for that director Reed uh now we will proceed to our study session agenda our first topic for study this evening is a presentation on updates to the district medical benefits request for proposals or RFP yearly Jeff Co provides benefits as to part of its Total Rewards program to approximately 12,000 employees the district works with its Association Partners representing employee groups annually to come to a recommendation for plan design changes this year the benefits advisory committee recommended Jeff go undertake a request for proposal process or an RFP to identify Innovation options for employee health insurance the district typically solicits new proposals for medical insurance every five years with the last RFP taking place in 2019 before I hand it off to miss pazio superintendent Doran is there anything you'd like to add uh thank you president Parker Miss prio thank you for being here um I'm going to just go ahead and get straight to it and let you take it from here good evening president Parker and board of directors and superintendent dorland my name is Amanda perazzi I'm the Chief Human Resources officer here in Jeffco and I'm very pleased to be joined by Adam Barnett our executive director of Total Rewards and Christina deeta who is our manager of benefits um this evening they're going to walk you through a presentation to provide for you an overview of our request for proposal and um where our benefits advisory committee currently is around decision making and um pushing forward a proposal for next steps um and so without um anything additional I will go ahead and turn it over to Adam thank you Amanda um and we appreciate the opportunity to present to the board and superintendent Doran today as one of the first presenters of the year so thank you very much um as we've discussed before we are um at a point where we're ready to make a recommendation to you u in regards to moving forward with health insurance providers for 71 2025 um just as an executive summary uh the benefits advisory committee made up of Representatives across the district from all three of our unions or all three of our associations uh recommended that we do a medical RFP this year um our goal is to explore innovative solutions in Cost Containment and improve our health uh this usually happens every five years the last time we did it was in 2019 so we're up for a um another RFP um this RFP is really triggered by uh some of our current challenges with health insurance one being escalated escalating costs we are seeing double digigit medical and prescription Trends uh inflation is hitting our health insurance just like it's hitting a lot of our other expenses and it's driving up our insurance premiums it's increasing our pressure on both our employees and their cost for health insurance as well as our District budget our employees have expressed some dis satisfaction with our current plans uh mainly um just the movement that's going on within the health insurance industry and Etna has dropped some of our um uh some of our health networks that uh a lot of our employees had doctors with so uh that really um highlighted the uh action to do this RFP we also are committed to Improvement um and we are looking to provide the best benefits at the possible price and we want to enhance our employee satisfaction So within this RFP we had seven volunteers uh employee volunteers that represented jcaa jcea and jespa uh their role was to review all of the uh proposals that came in and um really spent their valuable time um assessing those and coming up with the recommendation that were're presenting today the benefits advisory Council um is was supportive of this and and they did a survey back in May that helped inform our current levels of satisfaction and our opportunities of improvement as identified by our employees uh we kept our the BAC informed throughout the RFP process and um the BAC also provided feedback to our evaluators throughout the process as well Lockton is our benefits consultant here at Jeffco and they helped guide us uh through the process uh helped us with some of the terminology and understanding of what was coming through through the proposals and um they helped us analyze and provide cost projections they will also assist with any sort of implementation we're going to do with over the next six months um we also work closely with procurement human resources and the Strategic initiatives teams to facilitate a valid and thorough RFP process U and provide updates to those that needed it we come to you today uh with uh to the study session uh with the recommendation so uh just as a summary we received five proposals from Kaiser Etna siga Anthem and UHC they were all qualified proposals and were reviewed by our evaluators our recommendation is to renew our Kaiser plans and replace Etna with United Healthcare slur um this is a little summary of the two uh the two providers uh Kaiser we estimate roughly $57 million of spend in Year One um our total cost for health insurance will go up on the Kaiser Side by 6.11% that is the employee plus the employer portion um so um so yeah that's the full cost of health insurance will go up by 6.11 uh effective 71 this is a fully insured plan so we also have a self-funded uh option for our employees that's the United side but Kaiser is a fully insured uh plan that we won't see any disruption our current um Kaiser members can see their same doctors there's no change in the network and we also plan on no CH uh plan changes we currently offer a, 1500 deductible dhmo a $2500 a $2500 um High deductible Health Plan and um a $4,000 High deductible health plan this is a year-to-year contract so will be bringing the contracts to you uh each year in March um the United Health Healthcare urest proposal is to replace Etna we're estimating the spend on that to be roughly 25 to 27 million each year um this is lower than our Etna offer and it is our lowest uh price that came in from all of the uh proposals um it is a s it is a self-funded plan and we're estimating roughly 6 to 11% increases to U premium rates so just like Kaiser received a 6% increase we expect at least a 6% increase to our cost on the uh United side um we also plan to introduce the shest plan and I'll have Christina go over more detail of that plan on the next slide um one of the benefits of this uh United proposal is that we have a larger Network currently with Etna we have a narrow Network and with um and with UHC we're going to expand that Network to their um to their larger UHC choice plus broad Network so that will open up more doctors and more access um we see little disruption as less than 1% of the doctors in the in the Ed and network will be in the UHC Network it will be offered alongside Kaiser on a year-to-year contract and we'll be bringing to you the contract in May and sorry in March with that I'm going to pass it over to Christina to help explain shist Mr Barnett can I ask you a question that I think will be helpful context um I want to make a statement but then after I'm done I'm hoping maybe you can just uh for our board and our listening public and our audience explain the difference between a fully insured and a self-funded model I think that would be helpful um and before he does that I do want to just note I know one of the things we are struggling with right now is our employees reaction to the cost increases of insurance and you'll notice in the bullet points here that we still are expecting 6.11% increase um in premiums for Kaiser and you know somewhere an estimated between 6 and 11% increase in premium rates on the United healthc Care proposal um what that's what the RFP is doing is basically keeping us from being at Double Digit increase rates on Kaiser um and upwards of 12 to 15% I would say as typical in terms of when I speak with other superintendent colleagues and other leaders of larger organizations around town um people are seeing much higher increase rates than than what we're seeing here the RFP I think is allowing us to minimize our increases but it is not allowing us or anyone for that matter as we all know is health insurance consumers um to reduce our rates it's just not happening at all in the in the medical insurance Arena right now um so I just wanted to highlight that so it's transparent and you all um know that that's an important component of this um and will be as we all move forward with your the board's budget planning for for next uh fiscal year can you go back to and just explain fully insured versus um self-funded thanks you know Kaiser we're going into a fully insured relationship with Kaiser and we and [Music] Kaiser except for small a small number of employers uh offers the fully insured for the majority of their client base fully insured means that we're paying a uh fee per employee or per member that's flat and that's how much we can expect for that member throughout the year could you know it's around uh i' say $600 $700 for that employee only HMO cost we pay that it's um flat there's no real surprises the only fluctuation and cost is our enrollment in that Kaiser plan if that enrollment in Kaiser goes up then our cost for Kaiser goes up for the year self funded a little more more complicated uh we're paying UHC a admin fee that's pretty low it's around $40 to $50 uh per employee uh on top of that uh we are paying for the claims so uh UHC is going to send to us a list of all claims for example birth of a baby uh you know all those claims we are paying directly to um the med to The Physician or whoever's doing that that um procedure so we're taking on more risk in a self-funded plan there's also more fluctuation really what we're attempting to do is reduce costs uh of those um claims as they come in on that self-funded side um with a self-funded plan we also have some risk mitigation through a stoploss plan uh that any uh claim that comes in over 250,000 uh we'll only have to pay 250,000 and then the stop loss Will C above that so there is some mitigation with of risk but in general we're um making um we're making a play that uh we believe that we can have a healthy uh employee base and that we can maintain that healthy population and with that will come less cost with our claims so um hopefully that helps um as a followup to that um does that mean that we are the ones who are deciding whether to deny or accept a claim we have a contract set up with UHC or we will have that contract we have that currently in place with Etna that outlines what should be denied and what should be approved so um so we will ensure that the contract is followed with UHC as it comes up okay but but the bottom line is when we're um self-funded we are the final Arbiters of whether a claim is accepted or not we will if there is anything that's out of line with how it's set up in the contract um we'll make sure that we're following the contract um we would have some ability to approve a claim that may be denied uh if necessary um but our role within the benefits department is ensure that we're following um you know following the contracts in which we set up with these providers hi good evening my name is Christina despa and I'm the employee benefits manager for the district it's very nice uh to be with you all this evening um and I'm going to go over the details of the uh the award that we're recommending um uh with United Healthcare um when we went as an evaluator when we went into the uh the RFP process and we reviewed the proposals we referenced the employee survey that we issued back in May to make sure that the employee voice was included in the evaluation process out of those surveys we received a lot of feedback that employees wanted better costs number one and they also wanted um they also wanted better better uh Behavioral Health uh benefits as well um and they wanted Choice most importantly they wanted to be a they liked the ability to choose between Kaiser and Etna today um you know there's folks that uh that like Kaiser today and there's folks that that would like an an alternative as well so we wanted to make sure that as we reviewed the proposals that we honored the employee voice and what the what we what weed out of the surveys so the proposal that was differentiated from the rest was United Healthcare and specifically their product called shist uh out of the proposals the other proposals that we received we didn't receive a lot of um a lot of innovative Cost Containment Solutions and the other proposals shur stood out from the other proposals and in the fact that it is a type of plan design that helps employe choose providers that are more efficient with their care and more and higher performing providers as well so uh we want to um we believe that the shest product will um curb our cost curb our medical Trend um increases year-over-year um what this plan is is that it's um it offers zero deductibles um so employees do not have to meet any deductible before they receive care um and they also just pay a flat co-pay um and the co-pay is transparent and upfront and it's all inclusive meaning that the employee pays that flat fee up front and every service they receive at that visit is covered under that co-pay there's no surprise bills after their visit and they can choose which provider they want to see up front in an app based on cost or availability or travel time or things like that so employees have a choice on what provider they want to see and it's in included in uhc's broad Network as well so we feel that employees will have access to many more providers than they do today on the Etna plan and this was again one of the things that we heard loud and clear from the employees surveys is that employees were current currently uh frustrated with the narrow Network that we have today with Etna so um the the shures proposal addresses uh both access issues that employees are facing by broadening the the provider Network and Prov proving a a cheaper solution for employees when they go visit care visit um doctors and receive care um also United Healthcare also stood out because uh they are one of the Primary Health Care carriers for many of the K through2 districts in Colorado um it's a it's a popular health insurance carrier among k through2 um and then they also had the most robust mental health supports as well um live andwork well.com is a website that can be previewed um before a member enrols um it is uh one of the most um one of the most comprehensive mental health support systems that we found you can um employees are able to connect with their their Mental Health Providers find a mental health provider um as well as have access to self-study um some self-work uh resources as well to help support their Mental Health um so there's a lot of great resources on livein work.com um and so for these reasons we felt that the shest proposal stood out as the strongest that we received thank you Christina so with our timeline uh we've discussed this a bit in our uh key initiatives meeting today we have our study session on the 16th uh the Board of Education will vote to approve or reject the RFP award um coming up will we'll start our Communications with staff in January and begin planning out implementation February through March um you know we'll work on work with it to finalize um you know you know our Integrations with them um and provide full rates and communicate those out uh we we don't know the district contribution yet that will be determined during the negotiation process which I believe starts in early February with Amanda here um and April open enrollment starts or sorry uh open enrollment Communications start in April May open enrollment starts in July 1st is when the plan year begins so just wanted to give you that uh timeline moving forward so uh that's the end of our presentations do you have any questions for us board members questions um thank you we've talked about this I think every single year during this presentation um at at the company that I run we pay a percent of the employees um benefit so I just want to clarify unless something is negotiated differently the cost increase that superintendent dorlan mentioned is completely 100% absorbed by the employee correct well at this point yes until you know our negotiation process um completes one thing that I'd say that we're doing this year is we have put out a 10 question survey some of those questions pertaining to PTO sick time and uh personal time but we also asked some hard questions of our employees asking them if they had a dollar would they put it towards compensation would they put it towards benefits do they want more money to go towards dependence or does it make sense to do our current model which is really a flat dollar we also asked the question a percentage model you know would you like to see more of a percentage model or would you like our current you know contribution style so we will uh definitely have those results uh soon I think uh January 17th is when we'll be able to receive those results and those will help to inform negotiations as a voice of our employee so we'll have more data going into negotiations on that and the other thing we've talked extensively about is the percent that we cover of dependence and how the district has not been able to keep up with other Industries and competitors of uh who who might employ our staff can you remind me because I don't remember what percent we pay of our dependence coverage for employees I I have you know in the uh presentation we do have a slide I don't know the competitive um information in there as well um we are tracking and benchmarking against other districts is make sure that we're competitive just like compensation we want to make sure that we're not you know we'd like to lead but in a lot of cases we're not leading but we want to make sure we're also not lagging when it comes to our benefit costs uh right now when you do that analysis you know we are relatively in the middle of other school districts or competitive District when it comes to those costs for um for family coverage as well as employee coverage um I think you know this we want to hear more from our employees and that's really what the survey is about and hopefully we'll learn more as of right now 640 is what employees get all employees get 640 whether they take employee plus family or employee only it's been that way for a long time so um We are continuing to explore if we need to change that contribution strategy sorry and I I truly have forgotten do you mean there's um nothing no coverage for dependence there are there is coverage for dependence you could elect employee plus child employee plus spouse or employee plus family but we're we're giving $640 whether you elect employee only your employee plus family so um sorry I'm so unclear how much do we cover for dependence so dependence uh you get 640 towards the total cost for dependent coverage as well so there is no additional funding that providing towards dependence okay I I didn't realize that I guess thank you I'll just add that um how it h it works in many different districts employees get sort of a dollar amount contribution per month and then they use that dollar amount contribution toward whatever plan is they need or want and I do think that's the feedback we've heard from our from our employees with families saying I can use this $640 to cover my insurance but then I have nothing left to cover the insurance of my family so that's a concern that we've been hearing it's OB an obvious concern and that's some of the I believe there are questions in the survey now related to that um concern and questions around do we want to add more for family coverage so that some of those dependent costs are somewhat covered that do you want to add yeah previously um before we increased our um employee um our employer contribution to $640 last year we had one option that was Employee only that was 100% covered we now with the increase to $640 per per month per employee have four different plans four different plans not three three different plans that are employee only so employee only coverage now has expanded to having three different options instead of previously having only one high deductible Health Plan and I believe it was only the Kaiser plan it was 100% covered before we increased that um employer contribution last year so we have um made some gained some ground in our um employee only coverage in the ability to um have additional choices also there is um a small portion very small portion of the $640 employer contribution remaining if the employer were to choose the least the cost the plan that is the least expensive per month so they have an additional approximately $100 that they could potentially put toward um either they can choose to put it toward an HSA plan or they can choose to put it toward their um Family coverage or their spousal coverage as well that low cost plan is the high deductible plan that their children would also be on a high deductible plan that is correct um thank you for this I know I was looking at the appendix slide that was very helpful it answered some of my questions um do we know so I know we had the survey last May that helped to inform some of this do we know what what level of participation we had in that survey um we had over 20% of our employees filling it out I think it was close to 21% filling out it's pretty good was that right um last sorry as of the last update I believe it was around 20% however the survey closes on Friday so it may the original surve oh I'm sorry the original survey in May was about seven and a half% response rate um the current survey I believe has surpassed that and it closes on Friday okay and that was you answer my next question which is going to be how is this one looking because I think this is really important um in the survey now are we asking why people may because if 73% of our employees are doing employee only are we asking why that is okay there are a lot of options out there and we've asked our employees to be consumers uh for years um Tri care Medicare Medicaid as well as a lot of our employees are on their spouses plan U so those are um some of the reasons why people do not take our benefits or put their dependence on their spouse's plan okay I think that's all really helpful information um will the board see the results of the survey going on now we'll be happy to I'd love to see that I'd be fascinated to see it and then um last question um I know we had a really good Committee of folks across kind of the spectrum participate in this was this kind of a unanimous decision to go with these plans uh yes it was there was much discussion um we had a rigorous scorecard which we applied uh scores to each of the proposals and uh it was it was United Healthcare shff stood out significantly from the other proposals thank [Music] you thank you for being here um I think director Applegate and um Dr varda excuse me have asked a lot of the questions that are on my list I think my I want clar ification um on two things one is the shest plan that's going to be offered really I just really want to make sure I understand is that is that an employee only option is there a dep is that a dependent it's yeah it covers families so it's not an employee only option it it will it's you could think of it as a different type of plan design similar to what we have today like we have hdhp and we have a dhmo shus is just another option it's another way of structuring the employees costs and simplifying the employees cost as well but yes to answer your question it covers all all family levels thank you um and my other question relates to what Dr director Parker asked earlier um around our approval of care for some of those plans um I'm going to ask this publicly um would we be in a position of having to have a discussion about approving gender affirming care for people that work in the district uh so we usually bring that up when it becomes a state mandate or you know it becomes an option to add to our plans um I believe we had some conversation before I was here two or three years ago um and I believe Kaiser is currently covering um U elements of that whether it's full or not we can look deeper and we'll provide you some information about what's covered currently in our Kaiser plan self-funded there's a little bit more room for how we want to set that up and um we we can work with you on that as well so um so we'll just provide you more information in the Friday right I appreciate that thank you that's those are my questions um just a couple more um the uh I am very familiar with the employee coverage versus the um Family coverage since I have two daughters who are teachers um is this pretty standard do you think around districts that there's very good coverage if you're just asking for yourself you don't have to pay the premium um is that something that other districts offer some districts have moved to a subsidy for uh dependant uh for this for the reason of what Dr V brought up was um that Family Insurance is much more expensive than employee only and um you know here it can be up to $1,300 per month uh and so um a lot of districts have implemented a some sort of subsidy towards um their dependence which is something that we would look at as well and so maybe during negotiations or something that's a topic yeah a lot the survey is going to help inform that whether or not our employees are asking for it um and we look at funding you know really it's a tradeoff of you know the questions would you like employee only to go up from 640 to 650 or would you like the dependent coverage uh would you like money to go towards dependent so with 73% of our staff currently on employee only um you know we'll see how that question pans out but um we we'd like to hear more from our employees on what they'd like to do because there is a trend and there is interest in um providing more money towards families and we'll be reviewing that again this year okay thanks and also um in your um appendix information it talks about the total staff of 14537 and eligible for benefits is 10,478 is that mainly due to the um what percentage of time they're working with their full-time or not that's correct yes so the the 10,000 is going to be the full-time the full-time employees uh which is at least uh 30 hours per week. 75 FTE except for the instance of jcea which is 6 or above so yes just what 6 6 or above correct okay um and also um you said that we kind of are on a cycle every five years to go out for an RFP and yet the contracts are just for one year is that correct what would happen if at the end of a year there was some decision made to not renew a contract and we haven't got it I mean do we go back to offers from the RFP the last time we went out or what would we do yeah I mean uh if for example we're hearing around this time that rates on July 1 are going to go up by 30 40% we would likely do a quick RFP uh and gather information to see if we need to make a change a quick change um and so we would there is that option there's also the option that we would move with only one of the two medical providers that we have right now um so next year if one of them's going way up and we're like look we're not interested in continuing them because their price we can shift everyone to the other um provider and we can also do a quick necessary I will say it's my understanding that to switch from Kaiser to or to or from is pretty significance because they have their own very self-contained yeah I mean I'd say roughly 75% of our staff is on Kaiser um and so if Kaiser's rates went up significantly to a point where we may have to drop them uh we would really have to you know evaluate the impact and disruption that it would have on our employees okay thank you one more question sorry the timeline gave me a different thought um we will be negotiating the amount that the employer will contribute um but we are also going to open enrollment in May what if we haven't negotiations are going to go amazing I know but if they if they're not done when we open enrollment how do we manage that that happened last year um and um the majority of the our employees had already elected their benefits and um what that did was it changed the contribution that they had already agreed to um we gave them a very short window uh to be able to go in and turn around and make any adjustments they wanted to make after we um finished that negotiation with my good friends behind me at 2:30 in the morning um and uh it it worked it was really challenging I would say that for our benefits in our it and payroll um it was um extremely challenging to to um adjust from uh 75 to6 employees that was probably the biggest challenge and it was a quick turn around however they um worked their taals off to get it done um and make sure that our employees got what they need and so um so we did make it happen that is not ideal that is not our intention um and that is not our hope moving forward um we are going to start a benefits negotiations process earlier this year um and we are going to begin that in uh February and our intent during that is not necessarily to be able to negotiate the cost of the employer contribution and the employee cost it is to um negotiate the structure of the benefits so whether we want to move to a tiered model where to to Dr V Point potentially um uh having a tiered model where we increase contribution if you have um self plus spouse plus dependence a family plan or just self plus spouse versus employee so we'll have a conversation around that structure um beginning in February wonderful thank you okay thank you guys very much appreciate that um for the next agenda item I'm pleased to welcome the Jefferson County Education Association or jcea um I will say that at we have scheduled about an hour for this uh presentation and after that we will be taking about a five minute um a break but before I hand this off to Miss Williams jca president to introduce her board superintendent dorlan is there anything you'd like to add thank you president Parker welcome everyone thank you for being here tonight we look I know the board looks forward to hearing from you and um I don't know Miss Mees am I handing this to you or Miss Williams am I handing this over to you I'm handing it over to Miss Williams here here we go 3 two [Music] one to plug into my computer for the presentation um it is on I is it on board Ducks is this not it yeah that's it but um then I can't click unless you want to do all the clicking yeah true oh I think we have a does this clicker work for it that okay all right well I had my own just because I was prepared this time um all right well thanks okay um all right well thanks for having us we always look forward to this every year um and uh our board has worked very hard to prepare for you this evening so we met um until late last night and to gather information in the last month so and over throughout the year um so for those of you in the audience are watching uh these QR codes or the bitly you can access the um presentation as well if you don't want to um get on board dos so uh these are the members of our executive committee and our board of directors um so those are our action team chairs and um each action team and what they're um responsible for so um that is how our board is made up and um as each member uh goes tonight they can introduce themselves uh tonight's topics um are the state of Jeffco report from jca um and the findings from our most recent survey um bargaining we're going to be discussing bargaining and we will talk about benefits and when with the date that we're officially uh negotiating those as well our NE ethnic minority Outreach action team update um we're going to also talk about our Colorado givs day uh that jca Excellence Fund in our Su and burger scholarships and also our Dave Sanders scholarship we'll talk about our political action wins from last year and um just some of our goals for this year from our uh political action team chair and we'll be also talk about professional practices and new educator supports that we are offering um for our new Educators and then when we wrap up we will talk about we will leave it open for questions and disc discussions with the board so all right so um we'll start with our original state of Jeff Co report from jca um and they key findings so I'm this time I'm G to turn things over to Michelle me um oh yeah I guess I should where do I just right there okay all right I'm gonna go ahead and Advance a slide um Hello thank you so much directors of the school board and superintendent dorland uh for having us here this evening to share some of our um work with jca with you and you know to keep um you guys informed and also to be open to questions that you may have about our presentation I'd also like to extend a big thank you uh to Amanda pazio and um um and to our entire team for uh it's been really great to collaborate with them over the last couple of years during bargaining and I think we've done some really good work together and we've made a lot of gains um in our contract and um we're proud of that work so um I I thank them and their team as well um and so to begin with um with some of our survey data um as we know mental health is is a an issue of concern not just with our students but also with our staff and and from some of our feedback um there was a concern about our employee assistance program 89% shared with us if they really wanted to retain that it is a benefit to Educators and a number of our people can attest to how helpful it's been um when when doing the tough work that we're doing um a lot of us take it home with us and it's important to have this to help us process that and they're very concerned about it being eroded further um this is something where our employees have access to um uh counselors that are aware of what's going on within the district and and it's also free of charge for them and a number of our employees um simply would not have the financial wherewithal to pay for this care outside of this program and so it's something that's of of great benefit and I would I would also add that um it's a benefit to the District because it helps our Educators um to deal with burnout and also with turnover and a law staff is that's indicates lost dollars from trainings that we're having to then recruit and retrain and so if we can help our teachers um and give them this support um they've indicated that that is um a priority and so I just wanted to share that finding with you guys as well um another issue and and again this the survey data we got back it's kind of a mixture of like glows and grow and so a lot of it was this is going well and here's where we need more work and so one of these areas is um with um uh student discipline and safety within the schools and the the the glow here is that um our Educators told us that they were much more than in the past aware of and using the district discipline Matrix in the past they were like I don't know what that is and now they're like oh yeah we know what that is when we're using it um but there is concerns still um around student and staff safety there's still some incidents that are happening and and and they want more training and and more support in this area um and one of those areas was the p and I manual which is prevention and intervention manual and a lot of them said that they had not yet it's supposed to be um something each School works on to develop for their particular um population and a lot of them had not done that work 50% they did said they didn't even know what it was and so it's one of those things where we just need to do more work it's within the contract they're supposed to be getting trainings at least twice a year and um it sounds like either that's not being um intentionally done or that our our staff aren't aware of it but I think that knowing what that is it would help them to feel better about okay I know I've got resources when things like that occur um so that's an area for growth um I also want to highlight and thank um Patrick Simpson and his work on our um and also all of the um representatives from activities and um sponsors and coaches that worked on their new um schedule this is a a huge deal um uh really helped us to become more competitive with other districts it was long overdue and the work that they did on that was was really helpful a lot of um coaches and and activity sponsors have told me anecdotally that that's really been helpful particularly in our Arts um the theater um have come to me and said this is amazing I'm actually able to have capacity to put on the performance I want to put on and so this is huge and we're very proud of that um however there's still a few areas it's supposed to be a three-year rollout and so we would be heading into year two and I'm excited to see where we're going to go next the areas that have come up so far are CTE teachers and that we need to do some work because they do a ton of hours outside of the school day and it's a really important real life um career experience and so we're hoping to get um continue our work on that so I'm excited to looking I'm looking forward to that work um all right move on to the next page so um the next issue which I'm going to kind of talk about in two different slides is is workload um as always this can this continues to come up in every survey the job is really hard and it just gets harder every year it feels every year something is things more and more things are added to the plate and I'm like we got to take something off at some point or else I can't do all of this Justice um so we need to acknowledge that when we have so many different priorities um none of them can truly be a priority I can't focus 100% of attention on 37 different things um and so our respondents told us 21% said hey workloads going really well for me okay so then what that means is 79% are like yeah I'm I'm struggling um a majority said they're working time outside of the school day but it's up to 10 hours plus um over the course of a week which which is a lot you know they're they're approaching burnout and a 45% sightler workload and case load class size as a significant problem um every year we're seeing new initiatives and workload added to the plates and our non- contct days that we bargained last year have been a net benefit those have been really helpful like almost like a I can stop and I can breathe and I can have time to have conversations and work with my colleagues so that has been very helpful so we thank um the the district for working with us on that um however we still need to be looking at um how much are we asking people to do and can they really do all of that with Fidelity and up to the level that we want and you know we need to be thinking about timing and and implementation of that of the new initiatives um 37% we're saying that they're exceeding the case Lo guidelines a lot of it's due to Staffing shortages so again being competitive with um in other districts and with other professions and um 86% so they weren't being compensated for this additional workload so we still have work to do there um and kind of piggybacking off of that we do have concerns about um jca and The Bu stands for bargaining unit positions that are being filled by contract employees and so anecdotally we've heard that some it's happening maybe a little bit less than what it had in the past couple of years but it's still happening to a degree that we're not being competitive and we want those position spilled by people that are team Jeffco that are part of the community that are that are invested in our schools and are going to stay and develop those relationships and so that is a concern um the last bullet point I'm going to turn over to Whitney and she's also going to be doing the next slide and then I'll come back after that so Whitney okay all right um so this next slide is really around uh or this next bullet is a concerns around District budgeting being spent on Consultants P purchasing packages resources and um for administr or for our current um barting unit um and one of them is around tntp so Jeffco has spent over 500k on an organization called tntp and as we know nothing can replace the knowledge and the pedagogy that an educator learns throughout their college career and tntp takes that away from Educators it really narrow Nars our teaching practices and it Narrows our curriculum um it's an organiz it's an organization that comes into our schools and it reforms the schools that are aren't doing well um and so uh a big concern lately has been around the tntp um strategies being placed into our classrooms with no why behind it um and one of those frustrations frustrations I've heard a lot is um through our look forth uh schools that are implementing T tntp um if if they're have if they're being evaluated sometimes those strategies are put being put onto their evaluations as well right now um so that's one big concern that we've heard around spending money on these uh Consulting companies and then not having a why behind why are we implementing these strategies within our classroom thank you Whitney and sort of to to continue that idea if we look oh I guess that's me I got to advance it there we go um with these new initiatives uh I think that a couple of concerns came up around that and part of it is that they're overwhelmed by the introduction how quickly they're being rolled out and how quickly they feel it's becoming a part of their evaluation and it's causing a a pretty high level of stress with some of our Educators um and and with that 92% of our respondents said that with the introduction of new initiatives really felt that they wanted their teacher voice involved they wanted to be involved in implementing um these new initiatives and 97% said hey there needs to be a limit to the number in a given time frame so if we're going to do a new initiative this year we need to hold on to something till the following year till we get this under our belt and and doing it um with Fidelity before we move on to another thing and also decide is this work or not do we need to go do we need to figure something else out um so and I think that you know as to what what was saying a concern is is why are we paying so much to these outside consultants and and companies and are we not is there a way to better utilize our in-house talent because we got a a lot of really talented people and when our staff that if you said hey can somebody do this particular job or roll out this initiative there are people within that were already paying within our district that could maybe take that on and so um we want to better utilize those people to harness that talent and Personnel to maybe better time and tailor um any new initiatives to our Educators um and recognizing that sometimes more really is less and the more that we try to do we're not making Headway in any of the things and so to really drill down on one thing and and give our our employees enough time and training and resources to accomplish whatever that goal is which in our next bullet point our members did say they did feel that they had the training and the resources for whatever their current position was they felt good about that we've made a lot of Headway within our contract um but also felt that they lacked the training time and resources for anything new coming out it feels very rushed and and there was a lot of concern um and as always this is not a surprise every year compensation is a top concern for our employees it's it's we're in a a tough State and a tough profession um but uh 58% have reported and actually I want to go back and say that over the last couple of years I'm really proud of the work that we've done with the district to make improvements and we have made gains and those gains were much needed because of the many years that we spent Frozen and with stagnant pay and we were falling behind and so we have come a long way and I'm proud of that work but where we've come to is kind of keeping us at the middle of the pack we're we're we're not always at the end but we're never near the top and so we still have work to do 58% of our respondents reported that with all these new raises the good news was is they could pay their bills they could meet whatever their bills were that didn't mean they had anything extra at the end of the month if there were unexpected expenses uh that's I guess going to go on the credit card or or ask you know a family member for help um and that's concerning for us 40% are telling us they're still living paycheck to paycheck and and um a lot of respondents in the comments were saying if I didn't have a spouse with a job outside of Education I would not be able to do this job and there's a lot of our employees in that position and that doesn't feel like we're able to attract a wide uh variety of employees then to our school district and so that's an area where we're growing and I'm proud of the work we've done but we're not done yet we can't just stop here we still have work to do and so I'm looking forward to uh working um on the bargaining season this year on that so with that um I will turn it over to Richard and I'm Richard uh I'm Richard Sanchez um and yeah bargaining season is here um so our first bargaining date is January 30th and we're going to be talking about our um discussing uh special education we have two dates in February uh the 6th and the 20th where we're going to be discussing uh benefits uh two dates in March the 6th and the 27th uh three dates in April with the 3 the 17th and the 24th and then uh three dates in May I was super bummed that May the 4th is not going to be one of those dates because that's an Infamous day uh but May 1st 8th and 14th are those dates as well uh in May where we're going to be bargaining um so we will uh we will we will be delivering our letter of intent to bargain per Article 4 to Amanda pazio Dr Kim laon Esparza Jennifer kimson uh and Jennifer kimson jcea is finalizing which articles to bring to the table um jcea has not yet heard what articles uh the district is bringing forward um some mutuals though at this time are leaves special education benefits coaches and sponsors stiens and compensation and of course we would invite you guys to come to any of our bargaining sessions should you make it we always appreciate that right good evening I'm Stephen Kelly uh the ethnic minority Outreach and action team chair excuse me as in my classroom I'd like to uh first ground Us in the why of the work being done by emote the AC the office of Community Partnership Community engagement and key initiatives and this board uh the slides that I'm sharing um this first one shows achievement data uh discrepancies between uh laer African-American students and Hispanic students and their white peers and obviously there are other subgroups that I could have included some which perform better uh some worse but I think you get the point this is a slide that shows uh 8th grade Cass English language arts data for 23 24 again we see the discrepancy in performance uh and finally this is a graduation rates uh data which again shows the end result of those discrepancies these slides don't share any new information but highlight the need for our continued work I know this is not new information uh but emot believes that if we are to live up to our responsibility of providing for the common good and we understand that these results are not because of inadequacies of communities or individual students but structural ine inefficiencies and inequities read a quote over the break that said something to the effect that when we know something is wrong then we have a responsibility to do better and so I would implore each of us to hold one another accountable for doing better emote is aware that before the break Tera and Rene nicus made a presentation to the board about the status of the progress of article 22 in the EAC we would like to Echo much of what was conveyed during that presentation emote feels as though we're building momentum and making some inroads toward meeting some of the agreements in article 22 but we also believe that change will only happen when we begin to make organizational changes uh I ask you to take a look at this slide um that was shared with one of the EAC work groups and I want you to notice the title and the date and then this on this slide uh the priorities um of that group these are laudible goals but over a decade later we're still seeking to address many of the same priorities so emote knows that good intentions are not enough we know that well we know what they say about the road um paved with good intentions our ask is that as the recommendations begin to come out of the EAC work groups uh some that may require pecuniary response that this board continue to support our jeco community through the of the agreements in Artic 22 and I'm turning things over to Elizabeth ker hi my name is Elizabeth canner I'm the treasurer of jcea um I'm also a math teacher at High School school people haven't been saying that but it's what I it's what I do um jca believes strongly in building our community from within one of the ways we do this is by maintaining and awarding scholarships for recent Jeffco graduates and current teachers during this past Colorado gives day we raised $5,299 from just over a hundred donors for the Excellence fund every year we award five new student recipients continuing scholarships and then we give two teachers a for their continuing education um this slide sort of highlights those points and again the scholarships are continuing so they receive it for all four years of their education and the Sue an Burger um scholarship actually increases in their senior year as well all right I didn't introduce myself to begin with but I'm Whitney Newman I'm an educator I teach third grade at Al Creek Elementary and I lead the political action team for jca uh and so last year was a big year for Legislation during our 2024 legislative session Educators worked relentlessly to the successful conclusion of a year-long campaign to eliminate the BS Factor uh the educator safety task course was formed to study school safety issues jca members engaged with elected officials took action at the capital and here in Jeffco to remove language for school Finance rewrite that could have harmed funding for Jeffco School District JC Educators engage nationally working with Nea and the state EAS across the country to finally repel repeal the government pension offset and the windfall elimination provision rules that hurt many of our Educators and their families so not not only did public education have wins uh during legislative session but we had many wins at The Ballot Box in 2024 this fall Educators phone banged and knocked on doors in our community and across the state to defeat Amendment 80 by more than 50% we passed proposition KK which could raise roughly 39 million a year for programs supporting victims of crime veterans and students JC members contacted voters volunteered and built a coalition of community members to elect Pro public education legislators across Jeff so one of our goals of the political action team for jca is that we're committed to raising voices of Educators by starting an educator liaison team for legislators and school board members in Jefferson County we're looking forward to building relationships and working together to make change hi um my name is Katie kahill I'm the professional practices action team chair and I teach social studies at suid middle school as you may know we have in our negotiated agreements and professional growth funds that are available to Educators to attend professional conferences um last school year in total um this joint Jeff Co and jca professional practices funds committee um awarded over $40,000 and as of this past November we have given $25,000 to 56 applicants so far this school year we have more money to give away um and that was our highest amount of applicants ever we are looking forward to continuing to grow this program and offer these opportunities to Educators all right uh good evening members of the board and superintendent dorland it's wonderful to see you all as always I'm Colin Ferraro I'm a high school English teacher at wheat rdge and uh the chair of the early career educator action team for jcea the major thing I'd like to point your attention to in regards to my role as the early career educator action team chair um is a new program that we as jcea are piloting this year known as jcea mentors one of the major things I've heard over and over and over again from new Educators to this district is that they would uh desire a more robust program to get them ingratiated in the community of Co Educators essentially right um we know that the induction process does that well but we also know it should come as no surprise that doing that is an intensely complex process right teachers work pretty insularly dayto day it's difficult to find FaceTime with your colleagues and spread new ideas and just Garner a sense of comy with your coworker so what this program is is essentially a onetoone mentor program where we pair a mentor jcea member with a new educator to the district so they can and um just burn the ropes get ingratiated in the community come to community invents and things of that nature so it really works in three prongs the first one is inviting them into the community the second one is supplying them with PD and professional development that they feel is necessary for them we tailor it to based off the feedback that we hear from those new Educators and the third one is just inspiring them to advocate for themselves because their voice is important and uh I'd like to report that um so far it's a pilot year so there's always Kinks to be worked out but I found it to be quite successful this year and I've been receiving some really positive feedback from our mentors and obviously our mentees as well so uh one quick aside before I wrap up is I just want to extend a personal thank to director Applegate because last year uh her question about what we do as jca in order to in gratiate new members into our community was the question that sparked the idea for this program so uh thank you very much for that I'm excited to see how it grows in the future that's all for me thank you guys [Music] all right um so we have reached um the question and discussion part of our agenda um but before we move to that I would also like to invite you all to join us for grub Club again this year um grub Club is where we collect items at schools and donate them to the action center as well as um monetary donations um so the dates we kicked off grub club uh um on December 10th so each school is collecting um certain items um that are assigned to them and um on March 7th and March 8th we have um um all those schools will be bringing uh those items to our office where we count them add them up and um so March 7th we'll be at our office from 3:00 to 6 and March 8th um from 10 to 12 so if you would like to join us and help us count items and and deliver them to the action center uh we would love to have you so thank you can I just ask one thing about it you call it grub clubs uhuh but it's what kind of items um so it's uh there's food items typically not canned food items things that you can open without a can opener um because it's we're collecting items for our emancipated and homeless youth um so uh it's things that they can warm up in a microwave but they don't need a a can opener to use um or to eat so yeah yeah and each articulation area is collecting different items so we can also send you the flyers so that you are aware of what your um areas are collecting and can help and assist in that and uh superintendent dorlan and Miss director Reed came last year and I don't know if anybody else came but uh they helped us yeah it was fun yeah all right so questions and discussions at this time okay um first I want to thank you all for coming I I just always very much appreciate what jcea does and and um we would not have the great teachers that we have without the work of that organization so thank you ever so much for everything that you do um I'm going to go ahead and put in the plug for if you can get in to help out with all the stuff for grub Club it is a lot of fun I've done it for a lot of years now and it just it feels good um so it is worth doing um okay so in terms of questions um on slide six where you talked about the workload um I am curious do we know if that was different depending upon what level they taught like did we find that elementary school teachers were feel were still feeling we had um I'm looking at this um that 45% said that workload and case loads were significant problem was that different between Elementary and say high school or was that across the board yeah uh we didn't disaggregate it in terms of level so I couldn't really say but um my sense is it's kind of across the board but it's might be different what that workload looks like whether it be planning whether it be grading um and then also of course with our um special Educators and's that that workload is different as well and so and so it sort of we didn't disaggregate it okay we do have the ability to do that because we did ask them what level they teach so we can get back to you on that yeah I would be interested um we have done that in the past but yeah and it's it's feedback that I I tend to get when you know in terms of I think perception anyway um that uh it's feedback I get when I get get school visits uh kind of who feels like they're not getting the like the planning time that they need although it looks like another big chunk of it really is the Staffing issue like if we had the adequate Staffing the planning time would be closer to adequate right yeah and I think a lot of it is also connected to a lot of the new initiatives that have been red out okay and is that mostly in the schools that are um working with tntp or is that all of our schools feeling like they have so many new initiatives that it's overwhelming I mean I can only speak like I would welcome anybody else to jump in but it it seems like across the board we're all being asked to um to work on these initiatives and particularly um around of course now with the naming your lap what's it called intentional monitoring the naming all of that it seems that that's kind of across the board we've all gotten PD on it but and this is again anecdotal in my sense of things is it kind of depends on the building that you're in and that there are administrators that are implementing it with their staff in a way that is realistic and hey we can't ask you to do the whole you know we're going to try this out try some lessons make it make sense for you and in other buildings and I don't think it's um the administrator's fault per but I think maybe they need more training or they don't understand exactly what their role is and so there are there are buildings that are telling us like oh my gosh I have to do it every day for every lesson it's in my evaluation and I'm and they're you know um kind of melting down so it sort of seems like it's building by building even though it's across the district that those are the sounds like something we can monitor and and take a look at um because I know that one of the things that we've talked about is um is not adding a lot of new things to plates um given the new curriculum that asked people to implement so if we can you know obviously if we're implementing things that are ultimately going to like sometimes you know it's growing pains right and you're doing this thing that is difficult now but it's going to make your job easier later but right but sometimes you're just getting a lot of new stuff and that's and and some confusion about how to implement it because there's do I have to make an Exemplar for every single thing that I do and it's taking me forever to do all these exemplars and you know so there's a lot of that where it's you know and and again it's different for a teacher in the beginning of their career as opposed to the middle as opposed to the end like you know I'm I'm in year 25 and my exemplars I know exactly what I'm looking for and you know a beginning teacher some of this stuff is helpful to be like okay I do need to do this task to understand how it goes but um and understand how long it will take and what I'm looking for but um and that's kind of a thing that's come up in the past is that um we we're asked to differentiate for our students but some of this we're not always differentiating for educators and a veteran teacher and a midyear midcareer teacher and a beginning teacher might need different things and also different timelines um for these different initiatives and I just wanted to add uh real quick I with our bargaining survey I always like to read the comments and there was an overwhelming um like lots of comments left from Title One Educators that consistently were saying like I feel like I'm swimming I'm I'm drowning um and I think one thing is is that they can't even make the lap if they can't you know they can't even teach the classroom um that they are that they're in so the title one education can I can I piggy back on that really quick so I'm forgive me not an education background um help me understand the initiatives a little better because one of my questions is is what are the new initiatives and you rattled off some things and I don't know what any of them are okay so some of the new initiatives we've been seeing um across the district at all levels is naming the lab having our exemplars um that have brought been brought to our staff meetings and saying that we need to implement these things without a why or understanding the purpose behind them essentially um so those are the two initiatives that recently have been coming down to the elementary level um this past year and last year and and prev like in the previous year it was about lesson internalization and how do I put this a lot of this they're good Concepts and there's good stuff in there but the way it was addressed in each building I think looked very different for example we had a PD where we got this this document it was so overwhelming that you had to do this internalization for I mean it would take 40 minutes plus to fill this out and people are like do I have to do this for every single lesson do I have to have this and depending on the building you're in there was kind of different messages given about what the expectation was and I'm telling you there's no way as a teacher that I would be able to fill out that document for every lesson I've got four preps it's just not going to happen but there's I things that you can pull out of there you're like okay that's a I I do want to consider that and think about it you know so I think it's about the expectation about how it's being implemented you know and and how does that get reflected then on an evaluation and how much stress how much time is this putting on our Educators and and again I think it's very I mean we're getting a lot of comments saying they're overwhelming but it's kind of building by building as opposed to level by level you know and so and the piggyback these are classroom strategies they're not strategies that are within our curriculum that we already have and and that's what comes up a lot around the comments as well is the our Educators they they get into education and into the subject they teach or the level they teach because they're passionate about it and they've got fun ideas and and lessons that they want to teach that address the curriculum but it might be different than what their neighbor who's passionate about it and is going to address it a different way and and what comes up is I I like all this stuff but I want to be able like a grocery store I'm going to go down the rad and pick and choose of the good stuff that I want to use to create this lesson that meets um the the curriculum for that unit right as opposed to oh you have to do it this way in this order and fill out this document every single day and that's where teachers kind of get overwhelmed and wait why am I doing this again like what what's this this isn't making me a better teacher it's taking time away from what I'm doing to fill out some document or make sure I you know have my clipboard I also just want to put out there that um one of the things that I have personally seen and that people have come to me about when it comes to these initiatives um also lands within the pool of um I completely am starting to lose my um when we don't have the ex the experience as like a someone who has been in the classroom for 20 years those kind of things but someone who's been in their kind of that middle ground we are getting these bits and pieces that are also never kind of carrying through and so it feels like one year it's oh this is the the new special thing that we want you to focus on and then it's like okay so you kind of start to get it and you're like kind of starting to get the pieces into the classroom and then suddenly it's like okay but now we want you to look at this piece and there's pieces that contradict each other but there's pieces that kind of play along and so especially for our new teachers they're sitting there going okay so one year it's this one year it's this how do I put these together and they're already sitting there going I don't even have enough time to plan or to grade or to be ready for my students to come in the next day let alone try and figure out one year to the next kind of is how it's felt the last couple years um Mary can I ask one question one of the things that I know we've worked on really closely together is um shared leadership structures at the school level and so the good news is some of what you're sharing tonight I also hear when I go into buildings and we're saying to principles both both as in large group as well as um in one one-on-one in small group when we work with them you have to work with your staff and begin where their Readiness is for certain things um and really the practices or initiatives uh that you all are talking about are best practice in terms of pedagogy in terms of how you implement teaching in a classroom with the resources that have been provided right and people are at different places in terms of their ability to do that we know that and we want our principles to be working with their staff uh to do this in a pace in a way that is supportive so I guess one of the questions that I'm curious about it related to the this teaching and learning kind of focus as well as the p&i and discipline comments that you were talking about earlier how is it going with the alt structures and the Olt structures um in some of the um discipline I can't remember the name of the discipline groups that we also put in place pbst the pbss because my best hope I mean I sometimes it's hard to sit here and think oh I want to tell all of our principles to be flexible and talk to their teachers and do it in a way and I know they're trying um and so my best hope is that we've put these leadership structures in place so that decisions about how to support our new teachers who are struggling and what to take off their plate and how to leverage our veteran teachers who could help them and what should we do for PD this week versus next month that those decisions are actually being made with teachers and principles in these leadership structures that we've agreed to how's that going I would say that there are buildings that are models for um shared leadership um but we still have buildings that have a lot of work where the agendas are very controlled um and there really isn't shared leadership or there are people that are scared to give that control up to a group um what did you say yeah or people are shared to are scared to speak up and share what they need um because they they fear what will happen to them afterwards and you have the um mic but you know it's a a range of and we discuss this a lot in our cwg meetings um so we do let um we do let leadership know you know specific buildings that are seeing more challenge um I think and I have a great administrator Shannon be is wonderful um but I think some of it too is with the new leadership ship structure and some of the changes we're making we're all still waiting through what especially when it is a new initiative that comes from the district what do those teams have the freedom to do and what is like you have to do this and so um that can just be challenging to work through I think that Shannon does take a very realistic approach and she does definitely listen to staff and care about where we are and like on implementing things but also just the workload the burnout those kinds of things so even in that really great situation I see there sometimes being just confusion over like where does the Freedom Live whenever they're given a turnkey presentation what Freedom do they have to then say how fast they're going to go in that implementation um also with there was something else I was thinking about a minute ago before you asked that question well you think about that I just want to jump in I do feel like some of our trainings with principles and ARS has helped um because sometimes people come back with different perceptions on what was presented and so it's very helpful to send the slides um and to remind them of what was presented on both sides right you know um and just to be like it should be collaborative decision making and that's best practice in buildings so I I think that that's been helpful um in that too but uh that's if people are also paying attention I remember the other thing I think sometimes too with the research best based practices there's a lot of there's a lot of different ways that um really great teaching can look that are supported by research and so sometimes as Whitney said earlier we're not getting the why and sometimes we're doing really great things that are research based but they're not quite the same things and sometimes it's based on our strengths my strength in the classroom 100% is relationships and um I form deep relationships with my students and I get them to do things because they trust me right um other people it's it's other things and so when you're given an initiative that place your strengths it's really easy for you to see how it works and how it fits and it's easy to implement but when it's something that maybe is very different and you're not understanding why you're doing it it just makes it that much harder I'm uh David hold he him his I teach social studies at Arvada um I wanted add to that and kind of address superintendent doran's comments right pedagogy is a philosophy right is a set of philosophy and practices based on hopefully the science of learning and I agree many of these things fit within there and kind of to what Ang was alluding to getting to those and implementing those practices can be different um I think a lot of what is making people feel overwhelmed um you know we mentioned the intentional monitoring circulating classroom looking for specific things that's normal that's what we should do um some of the practices are being handed down as very prescribed as at this point in the lesson you are circulating to these specific students with this map and this route and expecting to help them on this particular thing right so it's just becoming very prescribed which for somebody who is very detail oriented and that's them that might might be the way they do it right other people might be more adaptive and do different practices and so they just don't feel flexible for our individual teaching strategies our content the subject um and so yes most of these things have you know great backing and research as far as you know their benefits to students um it's the implementation that's being very rigid and kind of not just the joy of teaching but also not allowing um us to play to our strengths right the same thing exemplars right are another big push we should all know what we expect student work to look like for any task that we're asking to do but for me that might not be writing it out exactly as I expect a student to that might be me going through and picking out the pain points that I think a student might go get derailed and then adjusting lesson to lesson for somebody else it might be drafting the paragraph three times so that they see different ways it could be written and these strategies aren't really accommodating that they're just um at least the way they're being given to us is that this is the way to implement these practices as opposed to these practices need to be part of our curriculum part of our teaching um and here's some ways that we can do that they're very prescribed and very narrow um before I get back to director Reed I just wanted to um pick up something that Whitney had said to me when we met the other day too about the why things are happening do you think that the why is missing from the school level um administrator not um telling you enough or do you think it's the district not telling the administrator or where do you think the Y is missing I don't want to speak for everyone but when you have turn TW turn key presentations that are given to your administrators and your instructional staff and they turn around and give it to you the why is not always there it's the things that we have to do or the things that we need to change um so I haven't we haven't seen the research behind do you ask your administrator I mean have you been to get an answer when you ask our our alt team has we've asked where where's the research coming around the naming the lab um or some of the um news or the journal articles that we read occasionally we have asked for the why is um it's not clear topic when you were presenting when EU talked about um tntp and I don't know a lot about it I've tried to start reading we got a presentation at one point um you mentioned it was meant to reform schools can you I I think it's really valuable to hear different people describe what it is can you describe to me what tntp is and how how it works or someone I don't mean to put you on the spot anybody wants to add in there's a there's a history of organizations like this in Colorado when I came to col it was uncommon schools that I was trained in uh in New Jersey and it was all based around Charter and private schools and so these organizations go into underperforming schools and essentially they say we can raise your test scores we can change the behavior of the school we can improve teaching practices um by implementing our strategies and so when I was doing uncommon schools it was very rigid kids were in deceit they had to raise their hand there wasn't calling out you had strict um management skills within your class and strategies and so that's very similar to what tntp is so following up on that um I get that you know that we would rather use our own people um I I do think you know whenever we look at a school that's struggling um that one of the important pieces is giving that school the resources that they need to make whatever changes they need to make um that I've always felt like that's really the main use and the only practical use I can ever see for Cass um is as an indicator of schools that need greater supports and greater resources um aside from people that are District employees is are there other programs that that you that our teachers would prefer is there a way that we can get sort of feedback on other programs that our teachers have been made aware of by their colleagues from other districts or that kind of thing that they might be interested in so that we could explore those possibilities I would say I think we need to look at do teachers need to be told how to teach in their classroom um do we need resources it's to teach teachers how to teach in their classroom I personally don't think so we went to college for this however I think the re the money could be better spent on science resources social studies resources those are things that we don't have in our classroom um so we want if we want to prepare for Cass uh we we need those resources I don't have anything to teach science we uh make up our own stuff or we buy our own supplies so like I would say um you know for for my average day of teaching um College prepared me well for that I don't know that colleges prepare students well for trauma informed practices for you for teaching kids that are in schools that are in trouble um you know I think there's other things going on there so it just seems like whatever that may be to help adjust strategies um as needed for those particular kids that seems like a a good investment as well oh yeah yeah we do have some great people who know trauma informed practices and who could train us we don't always get the training and that's another example of what she was saying is we have these amazing people in our district like let them do their let them do their thing because they can and with our schools that are underperforming which I don't even like that word we know what they really are is often underresourced um and their communities are underresourced and we need to ask those communities what it is they need quite often they are working with students who have severe trauma who may not have enough food and you know this with many of the students you taught who were struggling with very things because that was your specialty so um we need to be asking the schools what do you need because that's where we are going to find out and they may not know the name of a program but they know what they need they know where they're they're feeling like they're not enough okay um and then the final thing is I I do want to congratulate you guys on the work um legislatively because we've made huge strides and we continue to make huge strides and we continue to um to I think hold our own um to the best of our ability we just had two studies uh on adequacy of resources to Colorado schools and from that have learned that depending on which study you look at we're between about three and a half and five and four and a half billion dollars short what we need to be paying in order to truly adequately fund schools and and educate our students um I we are making that part of our legislative agenda um the metro area superintendents have been working on legislating or on uh working with legislators on that as well um I know I don't need to tell you I'm absolutely certain that you are working on that within uh jcea and CA but um just to to reinforce for you that we need all the help we can get um we will be there asking for these things as well and hopefully we can start to increase our funding to our schools because you know compensation is a huge issue and and we're going to see that in in uh negotiations and and part of it is just the constraints of resources we definitely have to look at how we're spending resources and how we can distribute those and all of those things I'm not saying that those are not important pieces but honestly we need more to make those to do that distribution so hopefully that remains um a big piece of your agenda as well yes it will as a member of the state leadership team also I'm on the ca executive committee and I am one of the Nea directors so like GPO I've been lobbying on for four years so excited at passed um but yes definitely I mean we joke at CA that we are now at 1998 funding levels for public education in Colorado so um we definitely would love to partner as well so reach out I want to thank you all for sharing your expertise about initiatives in classroom instruction and management um and I know that that's stressful and so I'm going to bring the conversation back around to one of your asks being about uh mental health supports for folks who are in classrooms um and where did I I wrote my question back here um before you came to speak to us we had presentation about the RFP and I know many of you are in here hearing that um and that there are going to be additional resources through liveandworkwell.com mental health supports available through health plans but I want to um underscore and maybe give you a just another chance to lift up um why it is inhouse EAP support is particularly helpful given that we're making an attempt to expand mental health supports through our health care plan um and just um follow up on that because I know it's an ask that I heard before and when I first got on the board and so it it's here again and so I want to just ask the question about I think one of our biggest concerns with the cuts to EAP is that it is an employee benefit and one of the reasons that it was cut is so that we could um increase HR Partners or or create an HR partner um program when we ask the what HR partners are and you know their job description um and um we were told that they it was for more support for administrators so we took away a benefit from our employees to give support to our administrators I'm not saying that our administrators don't need support but we took a we took a benefit away from our employees and we need to find a way to make that right another one of our big concerns is the Outsourcing right and here we are we have an in-house program that benefits our employees that is a benefit and does serve our employees they have lots of Da data that I meet with them quarterly on that they share and we have in-house people that are doing this and now we're looking for outside resources to um to meet our mental health needs now I know that not everybody wants to use EAP and that's certainly okay but there is a lot of people that do benefit from it um and many of us have have utilized that so I will turn it over to Richard at this time but um I think that's one of our biggest concerns is that it was a benefit that was taken away from our employees and that we really would like to have back um I'm going to make myself really vulnerable here in in this room um I'm an alcoholic um and I had struggled with my addiction for for many years um and I have been sober now for like two years I had sought therapy from Kaiser and from saind um and both just it it was a constant struggle it wasn't until I went to EAP and saw counseling with EAP that I felt like I was actually seen and I Was Heard and I still meet with EAP monthly and with within EAP too I got counseling for me and my wife too as well which helped tremendously and if it wasn't for EAP the two things I absolutely love in my life are being an educator and my wife I would I would not have either one of those and I'm I'm very certain of that too so it is tremendous and it has helped me out tremendously I want to thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that with us um I I want to lift up that I also I was at therapy today before I came here um and I recognized how valuable it is and when you find the right provider um and the person who does see you and can connect with the issues that you're facing um that support is life changing um and life maintaining and so I wanted just say how important I think it is that we hear what our staff is asking for when it comes to having support for mental health and I think more excess from multiple places is better because everybody has a different a different need and a different fit um so thank you for sharing that I appreciate just to add a historical piece to the last time EAP was cut was right before Coline and once the Coline once Coline happened we fully instated it so I would also like to say that EAP is one of the benefits that we have is actually a family benefit at no cost because your spouse can use it and also your children if they're 15 or older um and they've just as a locally sourced I mean I could get some of the help that I needed from Kaiser but you have to make an appointment you have to like meet their constraints and they were immediately available to me two years ago my my mother-in-law died and we were like what are we going to do with my father-in law because he has Parkinson's and there was and I immediately called the EAP and they called me back within an hour and it was after 5:00 p.m. and she was like what can I do and I was like this is what I need and she immediately gave me a list of places to call with people who would answer my phone call almost immediately so they were there for me in a crisis and it really was about me but it was also about my family and our whole Community because our EPA EIP professionals are local they can immediately tell you this is what you need they also have the knowledge to connect us directly to our health providers so like when we can't get in for mental health um they can get us in quicker um and so that is another resource that they provide to us um if you know if we meet our six to eight sessions I hope our EAP staff get a chance to listen to this so that they hear how valued they are and um how much impact that they've had um thank you you want to follow um BR when you just said um something about Cuts I I got I got a little confused um can you say that again and then I'll ask my question um you said it was was something their hours have been cut um also um you say about Coline and the historical yeah the last time that we cut EAP like like we we had a fully functioning fully staff EAP and then U the district decided to cut it and cut back on it and I don't know we could ask I mean I think John steo was in the audience but um we could ask what that was but uh once Coline happened I mean it was like they made the cuts and then Coline happened and they fully made it fully employed and fully funded again and then then we and then it's been cut recently yeah I think in the last three years as soon as we implemented HR Partners I think it was when Jo Jen Jones um started that's what I recalled but when you said it was the last time we cut it was Coline I I got a little confused that we hadn't cut it since then but we have cut the program in the last few years yeah yeah and then what are what kind of level are we at right now um I would have to look at my notes exactly um I could probably pull it up in my give I can give some general like the recent I don't know what fully funded meant in 1999 or 1998 or after I don't and we could pull that history to see what and I don't know if fully funded means fully funded to a point where everybody needed it got it you know I mean there's something around like the program funding versus the need and I don't know if those two things ever equated wondering what we're at yeah their hours now we have like three and I think before this we had four so we we transitioned either one or two FTE I don't know the exact number well in addition their hours have been cut from 40 to 30 um also their program manager or office manager has been cut how about we get you guys some information because because we can pull up what we did share with the board when we went to implement HR Partners In addition to sort of restructuring the number of FTE we also restructured a bit of um their role with um Crisis Support uh versus employee support and and tried to focus the team specifically on supporting employees um and so there's some context there that I think is important for the board to know so we can pull up what we've shared when this all happened and I'm happy to share this um during the superintendent jcea monthly meeting as well Brooke um and and I'll make sure that the board gets the same information yeah we can look at the history and then we can look at what happened a couple of years ago look at where we are now how how the expectations changed how have the hours changed and we also I know have been pulling data on what's the weit list is there a weit list um and if so what is that looking like what other options are we providing for people who might be on that weight list if there is one um I don't see Amanda here so oh I don't know if you have anything to add Amanda but because I just don't know the numbers off the top of my head right now I know you've been working on this though I certainly can um add it it might take a little while I mean there it's quite a bit of different information I would need to pull from different resources um Brook is absolutely correct we did cut hours and so um we have a couple of counselors who are 20 hours a week so they're halftime um we have one uh manager who is 30 hours a week um and then um we have a halftime um uh staff person who works the front desk and does the intakes and she is halftime there and halftime in our um supports our U sources of strength students and so she's actually a full-time employee working half at EAP and half with our uh Central counseling team um and so I can give you um I can pull more numbers I can pull presentation data um in our most recent report data that does show what superintendent D was just talking about with regard to um current utilization and how our employees are accessing EAP right now and so I'll be able to share that um in the Friday report of course um when when you just said all those so we don't have anyone fulltime sorry I'm running through all of them in my head um I think there's one full-time 130 hour and 220 hour um that support the um the EAP and the counseling um services that are offered um and to superintendent doran's Point um they do uh participate as part of our crisis response team most um importantly for our adult support because our Central Student Success team supports our student um uh mental health support during the crisis response um they also Ed to do a lot of preventative uh presentations to um try to get ahead of the response that may be necessary um they have started engaging in um in that a little bit more often when asked to do so um but they have to be really uh thoughtful about the balance of time because certainly they want to dedicate the majority of their time to counseling for our employees who are uh seeking that when we get an update on this I would love to have the EAP staff present to us and tell us about what they do and their experiences I think that would be really helpful for us um did you say that HR Partners do counseling no oh okay I just want to say thank you thank you guys for being here and for sharing your stories and Richard thank you for being vulnerable with us it really does matter so thank you guys I have I have um one last thing I want to just mention emote brought up achievement gaps and some and graduation rate gaps um and I think our district calls on some contractors to help us address how we're going to face some of the the gaps I'm curious from um the emote team are there things strategies resources practices that emote wants to see prioritized in the addressing of our achievement gaps and our graduation rates we've not done that work as part of emote as of yet but we can certainly uh begin to steer ourselves in that direction you know knowing now that you you're um asking for that information that that that's certainly something uh that we can do and would be more than happy to do yeah I think it would be helpful perspective um given what you presented you know and that the district has a history of having good intentions but maybe not following through and I think we need to have some deeper conversations around the how um between emote and the and District staff um and the board and community members probably also um so thank is doing a lot of work on that they are yeah um so I but I want to make sure that emote is feeling part of that conversation um and also wanted to check in with you about the Ombudsman um experience that is the EM busman's been working with emote is that accurate yeah yes Theon buds is sort of the goet between emote and the EAC he helps guide some of the work that the EAC does um he meets with us regularly to um get our input on on the agendas for EAC and and sort of help guide the work of EAC okay yes all right good I just he um I remember we talked about it when we talked about EAC so I wanted to check in you know with other folks who were working with him to see how that's going um and I think I think that's oh early the Early Mentor perk can I ask you a question about the mentors um How many pairs of mentors did you have this year in a pilot year so we're operating with a pretty small crew this time around because it's a pilot program we essentially have 10 Mentor teachers 10 paired up with 10 uh new Educators to the district that we Source from induction this year as the uh program grows and we kind of figure out some of the Kinks and some of the things that we want to continue to build on I'm hopeful see it grow um quite well over the next couple years but I wanted to keep it small this year just so I could keep it all within my locus of control all right and are they are they the pairs within the same school building is that the idea ideally yes um not always possible just due to the amount of mentors who um decided they would like to participate in the program so if it's not school then it is I basically pulled every respondent and I made I did like matchmaking you know so if it's not that then it's similar um content area right element education or similar articulation area depending on what the mentors and mentees decided they wanted most so I try my best to uh just PA them up nicely depending on their wants needs that is thoughtful of you thank you um I think my other question is that is um we you and I we can I would love to talk to you another time but just like qualifications and how you're how you're getting folks to say yes to being mentors um how you're recruiting that was the word I was losing um and then um I'm curious too about the turnaround um when can somebody who received mentorship then turn around and and come back into the program in a mentor position is it immediately or is it a set amount of time down the road that's a great question um I don't have a specific amount of years or anything off the top um you know it's weird I'm in this position now or I'm going to my fifth year and I'm technically an early career educator but I don't really feel like it anymore you know so it's a great question I'll definitely Ponder but I don't have a specific number in mind at the moment um the common adage that I hear in teaching circles is like you really spread your wings around your third year so that's what I would be naturally inclined to answer with but um I'd like some more time to think about it to give you a more direct and uh specific answer yeah I appreciate that I just um this is really intriguing to me just thinking back to maybe I need to couch it the trauma of my first two or three years of teaching um and the the kinds of support that were extended to me and and what was actually helpful we very different um and so I have a I have a personal interest in how we're supporting new teachers especially because of what director Reed mentioned about how our educators are trained in education programs um doesn't always translate to being ready for being in a classroom and being able to manage initiatives and the various things that are coming onto your plate in that first year um and so I I want to make sure that folks who are saying yes to this profession are able to stay in it um and I'm deeply interested in how we're supporting new Educators so thank you for the work that you're doing I really appreciate it thank you um I just have two questions uh the first one has to do with the fact that I think um certainly for me uh attracting and retaining the good Educators and staff is a high priority so when I hear you talking about the um the uh management time the um workload and so forth do you have a feeling how we compare Jeff Co compares to other districts around us do you hear from other um uh teachers teach staff if if they're doing better not feeling as overwhelmed well cea also does um like a state of Colorado report um and I don't know when they're going to be releasing that or um putting it out okay nice so an knows um so they'll be putting that out next week so we can certainly let you know how we compare Statewide um as far as workload um as far as the retaining piece I really do believe that um the fact that we've made changes to our compensation has been able to um has retained some of our teachers um specifically from retiring early um I've heard that from many of them like I was planning on retiring but you know like this has kind of kept me going um I don't know you know some people should probably retire but um you know but some people are you know we need them and they continue to inspire people and and um do great things so uh you know I think it's also a really good thing um especially because we know that there are teacher shortages um and we're not attracting people to teaching the way that we used to um so we need to continue to to do that and have programs that continue to make our um profession attractive but also funding it and so I would really hope that the state um continues to fund education and not cut it in its budget as planned I'm also probably potentially going to say slightly more than I should but um I went through a really really rough patch a a while back and um I actually got contacted through Recruitment and so I sat there and I was like well yeah let's let's hear about this because honestly sometimes I feel like we as teachers feel like were tied down right and so I was like sure tell me about this because I'm going through a rough patch so whatever you're going to tell me is going to tell me where I want to go with life and um as I was talking with the recruiter I was like so I'd like to look at you know maybe some places that are closer to home and things and I was like obviously I love Jeff Co so like you know it's it's never out of the cards and she goes well first off you know as as um a recruiter we wouldn't place you in the same district ever however she has also she told me that the feedback that she had received from people that she had recruited was that Jeff Co isn't really the place to come to um that the workload makes it very hard and so that really stuck out to me as like if she's hearing and working with these other districts that are saying it's more manageable elsewhere that does stick out to me as really interesting because she's a completely outside Source who isn't even in the weeds of it going okay let's hear about this so that's just um just for the record Ashley's a special educator so that's why she's being recruited like that sorry thank you for sharing that which leads me to my second question too because sped was one of the main um areas that you were um speaking about negotiating even I think it was the first topic one of the first maybe second but um I'm wondering outside of just resources and enough people what other things are you thinking about in the area of special education honestly a special education teacher myself I would say one of the biggest things really comes down to manageable workload um so we get these differing perspectives every year as our area um directors for special ed change over so for instance in previous years I had one who was like oh we feel like most students should be on an IEP and so we want you to be looking at these instances giving you know the support to these additional students that maybe in the past hadn't qualified shouldn't qualify those kind of pieces and then we also then on the opposite end get the ones who are very compliance-based and are like okay we're really looking at specifically the I so depending upon the year it's almost like you have to shift some of where your focus goes and the timing that goes with it so for example I working in it don't understand how we are allocated FTE personally what I can tell you is that we had um a director that told us you really should only be doing goals and um minutes of what you are specifically working on the goals not the amount of time that you're working with the kids so then when we look at that like our school tends to have lower amount of time written into the IEP we over serve however if we are being allocated FTE based off of our minutes we are receiving less FD than probably what needs to be done to staff US um Additionally you know it's about those goals sometimes we're getting goals that are completely unmeasurable and we have to sit there and go okay let's fix this let's do these things so not only are we walking into um situations that it's like it's not um streamlined what the expectations are so you then have to compensate not only the time that you're supposed to to be working with the kids writing the IEPs um working like with a co- teer but then you also have to be really digging into okay like how are these working I've spent so much time with parents um in meetings and on phone calls in addition to our annual meetings just to make sure that these kids are where they need to be and that the parents even understand what's going on so I keep coming back to time um I'm lucky enough that with the additional being at the 300 minutes plus the 30 minutes that has helped but honestly in in my specific position I am supposed to case manage I co- te with multiple people I'm still expected to come to our meetings I'm still expected to co plan I'm still expected to plan my own class that's on top of the co- planning so time time time time and um compensation is always nice but the time can make or break you I would also add from speaking to certain special ed teachers around the district um I think it's really important to ask them what they need because many of them spend a lot of time just fighting for the resources that they need within their building or different articulation areas um also depending on who their special ed um partner is um you know it diff from who they are sometimes and what they can get um so in addition to time it's resources and um when they're short people they're often covering for that position and and then there's false promises of when that position will be filled or um or they're basically begging for the compensation the extra compensation that they deserve so and many times we have to file grievances um Ashley is that thank you for still being in our district I appreciate it thank you for sharing with us okay um thank you very much I really appreciate this um we love to keep in touch and I think you've learned you know everybody on the board has a connection to schools either from being a teacher having kids in school whatever so we we love to hear from you okay we are going to take a five minute break right now thank you [Music] [Music] one of the key responsibilities of the board of education is policymaking we create and adopt policies that shape how our schools operate everything from curriculum decisions to policies that ensure every student feels a sense of belonging our policies help ensure consistency fairness and Excellence across all district schools we work hard to ensure they reflect our community's values and serve students best interests while following state and federal laws [Music] [Music] as members of your Jefco School board we help set the vision for our District's future we work closely with superintendent dorland and her staff to ensure that our goals align with our community values and the needs of our students whether it's improving academic achievement or enhancing school safety we are committed to jeco's Mission of providing a world-class education that prepares all Jeffco students for bright and successful Futures as local and Global Citizens [Music] [Music] school boards are advocates for students teachers and schools whether at the local state or even the national level we work to ensure our District's needs are heard this includes pushing for adequate funding better resources and policies that benefit our students and our community advocacy is a critical part of making certain our schools have what they need to succeed in providing the educational experience students deserve today you can view our board legislative agenda by visiting jeffcopublicschools.org gboard [Music] [Music] as a school board our focus goes beyond just today it's about the future we are committed to the long-term planning that ensures the district's continued success a thriving District where all students can achieve their biggest dreams from updating facilities to integrating new technology we consider how today's decisions will impact students in the years to come our focus is on sustainability innovation and growth for the future of Education in our [Music] community one of the most important roles we have as a school board is hiring and evaluating the superintendent who serves as a district CEO and is responsible for the day-to-day operations of our schools we provide the support and guidance they need to effectively lead and evaluate their performance to ensure progress towards our educational goals [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah yeah [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] he [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for our next agenda item for study this evening the board will receive information about the status of the current fiscal year budget and proposed budget revision the 2024-25 budget was proposed on May 5 2024 updated on June 5 2024 and approved on June 13 202 4 District staff presented an amended Budget on September 4 2024 that restated budget reflected the consolidation of various accounting funds which the board approved on September 12 2024 on November 11 staff provided an update on the unaudited student enrollment figures and gave a preliminary estimate of how the emerging enrollment data would impact Revenue the board anticipates voting on a revised budget and appropriation as part of the consent agenda on January 16 2025 before I turn this over to miss Copeland is there anything you'd like to add superintendent Doran yes thank you president Parker I do want to just uh Begin by um uh recognizing that Mr Salmons is not with us this evening our our budget director um he's not feeling well so um we are fortunate to have our CFO Miss Copeland here to do the presentation and I I kind of want to just highlight uh for a second the Jos between the needs of our Educators that were just at the heart of the previous conversation with jcea um everything from the mental health needs of our employees the resource needs the Staffing and case load needs um all of those things are real um and they exist not only in Jeffco public schools they exist in any District that I have ever worked in and districts across this nation um and so I you know we talk often about how two things can be true at the same time um and that and the presentation that Miss Copeland is about to share with us um sort of Paints the picture of the other side of the coin right which is um understanding our needs grappling with how we work hard to identify resources to support those needs and and at the same time do all of that within our means and you know you all have um been doing this work with me for a while now um and I think we have done a very good job to align to our values of taking care of our employees providing the resources our schools need to provide to make to meet the needs of our students and our families and at the same time being able to try to manage responsibly to a budget that matches our Revenue um and our expenditure patterns and Trends and so miss Copeland has the um uh maybe um honor of I think presenting the other side of the coin and it is very difficult to talk about um resources and what is a declining enrollment um Revenue picture right after having a really rich conversation with talented and Veteran Educators um who explained I think in um vulnerable as well as just honest ways uh what the needs of our staff are uh and our schools and so I just want to highlight that uh for the board and for the listening public and um in support of Miss Copeland as she begins to paint the picture of the other side of the coin and just um the realities that we're all going to work through together over the course of this uh fiscal year and planning for next fiscal year so thank you very much for that opportunity and Miss Copeland you can take it from here great um Drew are you here I don't see him okay oh he is okay I'm sorry Drew um oh perfect there we go thanks so much all right um board members good to see you good evening we're going to start with the budget calendar which actually uh board member Parker summarized perfectly um so I do want to highlight at a certain point in this presentation you'll be comparing amended budget to revise budget to actuals for historical purposes I think it'll give you some good insight into some of the improvements we've made in our budgeting processes um in terms of getting our estimates more finely tuned so I just wanted to highlight those pieces of the wheel so when we presented in November um these numbers did look a little different and so we wanted to make sure to repesent I don't know if that's the right word um to re thank you appreciate it revisit um and to more specifically be very clear about what was budgeted in terms of enrollment and what our actual audited oober count is so we had budgeted membership of 75,000 students across district and charter schools and therefore we budgeted a decline of 1,148 students the actual decline was less than that um which creates a positive variance to budget but that doesn't mean that enrollment went up right like it's a little bit of a it was less less down down less yeah um so the actual decline was 544 students I do want um the public to continue to understand and the board to continue to understand that every year for the past five years the actual enrollment has declined we also presented preliminary data on atrisk student counts that data did shift and so I want to um highlight um a couple things one um the budget to actual variance is negative meaning we budgeted 21,980 students um which we thought was you know a fair estimate and it was actually a slight increase but we our actual um is 20 am I 20589 students um so that's a decline of 1,400 I think when we first started talking to you about these numbers we actually thought the decline was more the real decline is more um but we got one more year of carry over um that substantively improved these numbers um so that it's not as big of a hit to revenue as we were originally thinking it would be in October and the and the numbers changed uh the third week of December in terms of going back and forth with CDE so um that but important to know when we make assumptions for next year because we had this information about the number of carryover students um we're probably going to assume that those students drop off so so um just a quick summary of both kind of Revenue and expense that I'll be talking through I'm going to show you an increase to revenue of under 1% compared to the budget um an increase to expense also under 1% compared to budget and then a use of fund balance that's almost identical um to to what we had contemplated very close so this summarizes um uh a little bit more detail and we've added a couple decimal points um on just that variance so it adds up a little better visually because you know we have some rounding in here when we start talking about $727 million but again total program went up slightly and that's um some offsetting movement of the at risk and um the positive variance so still a decline of the total enrollment um state categoricals did go up um and that was a little bit more than forecast sometimes that's like a lagging um thing where we find out from the state okay here's how they're going to adjust things so just go with it um upk is up a little bit um and then specific ownership tax is down a little bit local overrides are flat and miscellaneous fees is up and we've broken out a little more detail so you can understand what that's about so the one thing I would highlight is of the total revenue increase approximately 4 million of it interest income so additional interest income that we weren't forecasting to have we based our forecast based on what um the folks basically at Cafe which is one of the um public depository institutions what they said they thought we could expect um interest rates have stayed higher which means that we're earning more than we thought we were going to but I do think again um little note of caution I'm not sure that that revenue is going to stick around forever so um the increase to expense is going to stick around um it is more recurring in nature and um but it it's it's relatively small and you see that um it's salary a little bit in the general fund um and a chunk is transfers and I'm not going to talk in too much detail on this slide because I present the detail of the separate funds in the following slides but at the end of all that you're still like what's going on with transfers let's revisit oh thanks Brian uh this next slide also has more detail on transfers but I still am going to talk about the funds in the fund slides because that's the best way for you to see um the big picture but the transfer increases are to primarily to child care and food service this presents the same figures you just saw you just saw them by like salary accounts benefits accounts this presents it by program and it's important to recognize that within each program you have salary accounts you have materials you have lots of things that are allocated um sometimes imperfectly it turns out so um the program allocation sometimes is moving just because we're TR up the way that people are classifying expenses this is a new slide um this is that historical look at how close are we how close are our actuals to our budget um and this goes back two years fi23 FY 24 and then of course that last set of columns is current year magenta is what was the adopted or amended budget so that would have been the budget that we set as of May or June is uh when we amend it's usually like a minor adjustment similar to the accounting change revised is when we're trying to get closer to how things are trending and then actual is the yellow bar so that would have been what actually happened this is a revenue Slide the next one's expense um what you'll see is actual Revenue was within 1.2% of adopted and amended budget each year um in relative terms that's an immaterial difference um so revenue is basically coming in very close to what we're forecasting um and you can see that here's expense um here green is the adopted amended second green is revised and then blue is actual um and so again actual general fund expense has been within 1.9% of adopted amended budget for each of the last two years so again on a percentage variance basis our actuals are coming in close to our budget um last year our actuals came in higher than our revised budget the prior year they came in a little lower than our revised Budget on balance I I do think what you're seeing is an indication that our budget should be a good estimate of what's actually going to happen so that I do want to go fund by fund and talk about some changes to your appropriation and just as a reminder your appropriation is the total limit of authorized spending which often includes a little bit of Reserve assigned Reserve um to allow for fluctuations but because we're trying to make the budget as close as possible to an estimate of actual spending it means our budget figure you know we might exceed um incidentally that was a little bit of a tough concept for our Auditors um and so when they present to you next week they may or may not mention this um we got there uh I want to assure you that Colorado State Statute allows and even CDE documentation suggests that this is a good way to do things that your appropriation is larger than your budget your appropriation can include assigning certain reserves toward sort of a contingency purpose or allowing for fluctuations in timing Etc so um I think Auditors are now with me on that um in the employe benefits fund I do want to note this is the one area where for two years in a row now um our actuals have exceeded appropriation which is technically not okay um so you will be signing an insurances form next week president Parker that says we exceeded our appropriation on this fund yet again I'm sorry you have to um it is the honest truth and I and um I I want I say that in part because as your fiscal leader um I need you to understand why um I will be adjusting some of the figures you just saw in terms of estimated costs and that's all they were they weren't prices at least for any self-insured plan um I did double check for fy4 which is the year we just finished the initial estimated claims cost was 22.2 Million the actual claims were 25 million that's a 15% variance that's far in excess of any of the variants and any of the other categories of stuff that we estimate um we were using an estimate supplied largely by our broker um the insurer when you're self-insured is really just an administrator they're not an insur um so either Etna our administrator or United Healthcare is our administrator they make their money regardless don't really care what we pay in claims um again I will need to budget at a level that's appropriate because twice now we've significantly exceeded um our cost estimate um and I can't keep s CDE oh we'll get it right next time so um I just want to flag that for you all and we are for the third time in a row adjusting up at the revised budget estimated costs is there anything in particular that you could point to that caused this to happen so wide a gap um I mean my honest answer um is I think uh again when we pay a claim we're simply paying doctors who are serving our employees and it's reflective of what health care are employees seeking out and obtaining um there quite a few drugs that came out on the market recently that are very expensive and we pay the cost of the drug um th some of those drugs are very helpful for folks with diabetes and other conditions it's very expensive and they're relatively new I also just think costs have gone up a lot provider costs and I think it's really important that we talk about we are paying the cost of healthare not Insurance because we're actually you know we're we're just paying for the healthare itself um plus an admin fee and so um it's kind of this like both and story um our employees are using more healthare and we're paying more per use both yeah so again the cost estimates that we will need to budget for need to be um steeped in Greater reality AKA a little bit of CFO gloom and doom sorry um food nutrition services so you know what what you see on this slide is that even with a revised budget those are those two blue columns that revenues taller than the um original amended budget and expenses taller than the amended budget so both are going up however and and the revenue is only going up because we're transferring in more well there's a little bit of a grant in there but it's relatively small um there's still a gap between the two the Gap H um yeah so it's 36.5 to 42.9 and that's because we've increased the transfer we talk about a transfer into food nutrition services what that means is the general fund is paying for food service in addition to whatever federal and state sources it means that we're operating in a way where our federal and state reimbursements are not covering our costs um we're taking a step towards that kind of general fund sub but I think it's important to to both acknowled that this is a step towards it it doesn't solve the whole thing and there's a continued conversation that I know my colleague um Mr Gatlin and I um you know wholeheartedly want to have transparently around what is it we can do um potentially differently better who knows what um because in the end every dollar is scarce and so um when it comes out of the general fund it's coming out of largely a that is mostly instruction so um Child Care uh we have talked a little bit about how in the fund consolidation all of our pre activity so serving three and four year olds has moved into the general fund all that's left is our school aged enrichment um School aged enrichment has has a couple things going on one is we didn't have great line of sight into that as a separate entity when they were combined um and I do actually think they may have been spending a little bit more on actuals than we fully understood um and so some of this is just corrective in terms of seeing Trends the last thing is um that second second bullet under expense which I think is a little bit obtuse I wrote it I can say that um sufficient appropriation pending and accounting clarification so so right now there's about 1.2 million in an expense that's really an asset write down I don't actually think we've classified that the right way and it's the residual assets relating to prek that when you move into the general fund we don't depreciate we just pay for everything even if it's a five-year thing we just pay for it right now we realize the expense we're done we don't depreciate it's not like you don't stretch it out over time you do in other types of funds including in this fund that's proper accounting I didn't make this stuff up personally it's too complicated I would have never made it up um and I think that write down actually shouldn't exist but I need some support and clarifying that so that may go away which is really awkward to say you know keeps it fun um Central Services is a really small fund but we are having to revise up the Appropriations I think if I'm not Sten the 261,000 is relating to copy or purchases um Property Management um this slide was accurate as of last week when we posted it um as you all know I've been trying to finalize our AER and audit and all the different things um in that process and again you'll hear a little bit more from the auditor next week we clarifi um a multi-year lease that we entered into June 1st of last year and because we entered into it as of June 1st we capitalize the whole thing and establish a lease receivable for the whole thing all at once and yet we'd only been in the lease for one month it's really difficult um it needs to go in this fund it wasn't originally in this fund so we need to go ahead and add that in addition to what you're seeing here this number is going to go up further and it's simply because both the revenue and the expense relating to the lease um I believe it's to the um the Austin Center um school for exceptional children I might I call it the ases school um again matching revenue and expense some of that expense is going be coming out the general fund um we need to have it in the right place thank you appreciate our Auditors um and we need to classify it the correct way so we'll get that right these numbers will look slightly different in your resolution but I'll be sure to articulate that that's it I went pretty Qui um I want to thank you for the presentation but also I'm wondering um one of the concerns I had or or questions is we get presentations like this which is very helpful but then when we go to vote on it it is the resolution and sometimes I have difficulty matching it back to the presentation um is there any way going forward forward can you get a preliminary resolution that you attach in the future to the presentation we get is it possible or not it's just that I want to make sure I do my due diligence and I know that what I saw is what I'm voting on um happy to try to forecast that the other thing would be to repost the same deck alongside of the resolution um and call out anywhere where the resolution is slightly different so I've already forecasted for you that the resolution will be slly different in the property that would be helpful yeah I will call it out in the bo item that this changed from the presentation um and I'm happy to repost the presentation okay that's great would it be possible just to have the Pres these presentations on the same day that we're going to vote on them on the consent agenda because I also think these presentations would be really helpful um for our community I mean superintendent gave an intro that would be helpful for a brigher community to hear and as we go into negotiations like everything is about budget and yet we know at study sessions like most people pay more attention to the board meeting so could we have more of these at our actual board meetings when people are listening and especially if there's something attached to it that we're voting on consent agenda let me jump in on that okay there is a statute component but yes okay typic just in general not related necessarily to financial pieces um the board has indicated an interest in studying something with time between the study component and the approval of it on a consent agenda item for us to for staff to answer questions um clarify something that might not be clear that kind of thing so um but but I do think uh there could be times where I mean the risk in doing that is that it's delayed and we miss a statutory so if we were to present this next week and the board had a big question about it that then they didn't feel comfortable approving it there's a statutory timeline in which the board has to approve the midyear budget revision and we would then have to probably scramble and schedule another meeting for the approval by the end of the month because I think it's January 31st is that the statutory piece you were going to mention or is there something else BR can I just yeah of course there um then perhaps because I'm thinking about how to be transparent to the community then perhaps we could have it presented again um at a board meeting when it was more publicly available I wonder I wonder what our board things about that um yeah I way to go sorry about that um but but I do agree that most people don't watch our study sessions and the public is intensely interested in budget so if we could just do like you know a quick and and with that presentation I don't even know that we would need and we didn't spend much time on it anyway you know the budget calendar and um you know we don't need that the public doesn't need it but just you like the the most Salient pieces I think would not be idea even if you just highlighted some of the changes that you know are coming and I could do the bit at the beginning to frame it a little um I also think um that if we were to do this in general always and have a review of um the presentations we have at study groups then it does make our board meeting longer and so if we do have a review or at least the changes you know highlighting the changes um would be helpful um yeah so a combination to make sure that we cover it in a form where more people see it but also um follow our procedures follow the law get the stuff done in time um and again for me it was more a question of I vote on a resolution and I need to how know how to put it together or see it in the presentation um I am always open um and and I I do actually think um highlights from this could be helpful um I have seen other um board staff uh do what I would call like a standup version and it actually makes a difference to have the staff person be standing at the same Podium that someone just gave public comment or right in front of whatever on the order um to do a stand up presentation sometimes as short as five minutes um two three slides um to say as a reminder Bor this is what we discussed in your study session these are the key changes um and and I do think that can be really helpful so I'm open to that I think the the one the one area where statute gets super prescriptive is around the budget um and we have to present it at least 30 days before you vote on it um so that it is in the public domain so that people can read it assimilate it provide you some feedback um so that that part is law um but we can how many you know we can certainly summarize it again you know before we before we vote and we often do present one more time in June when you vote so I just wanted to highlight that one piece great thank you Miss Copeland okay um for our next to last agenda item this evening the board will receive a presentation regarding the operation and capital maintenance agreement for the Arvada Aquatic Center joining us tonight is Kristen Edgar from Kaplan and erest to discuss Jeffco school's interest in the Arvada Aquatic Center and explain the main components of the operation and Capital Management agreement to the board's vote on the contract next week before I turn this over to Mr Gatlin and Miss Edgar is there anything you'd like to add superintendent Doran thank you president Parker um this has been a long project and I am happy to share that one of the um uh most joyous messages that I received this weekend was from Patrick Simpson our District athletic director who shared photos of Jeff Co swimmers um in the new aquest Center and it was just very nice to see the um New Aquatic Center being used by our student athletes um and we do continue to collaborate with the city of Arvada on how best to um manage maintenance and support the ongoing use of the pool in addition to just making sure that we have priority use so with that I want to thank um Miss Edgar for her efforts since the beginning on this project in helping the district and and um representing us in our interests as we collaborate with the city of Arvada and Apex um and I will be handing this over to Mr Gatlin thank you for being part of our presentation this evening as well thank you superintendent Doran president Parker fellow board members and before we jump into the objectives of the presentation to piggyback on what superintendent Doran mentioned I did want to show some pictures from the event that happened this last Saturday on January 4th this was the first large swim and dive meet uh that we've had in this facility uh it was a girls uh girls swim dive League relay meet it included uh the following Jeff Co schools golden High School Green Mountain Devin Evergreen Wheat Ridge Dakota Ridge Stanley Lake Conifer Bear Creek Ron Valley Coline field Lakewood and Arvada West it also included Valor because they're in our league but Jeff schools uh but as far as far as the number of participants in schools uh that were there uh this is a great picture that shows the built-in seating and I know you all you've all been to the site you've seen it so you know it but to see it being used like this uh is exciting and um uh it's been a long time coming but it's nice to see it uh serving that purpose uh a few more pictures of just the swimmers in action uh in the lanes and lastly uh just some of the the technology and the you know the Jeffco Public Schools branding and the scoreboard and all that that uh that is part of that facility okay so the objectives for uh the presentation this evening is um or are we wanted to review the history and the structure of the related arv Aquatic Center uh Myers pool agreements I mentioned in the in the cover memo this is Project has been called a lot of things the official name now is as you all know is the arvat Aquatic Center but some of the agreements do reference some of the past names I think it's pretty pretty easy to piece together but just wanted to call that out understanding uh Jeff Co school's interest in the Arvada Aquatic Center and then discussed the main components of the operation and capital maintenance IGA which will be voted on at the next board meeting in uh in consent so brief history of of this in December on December 9th 2021 uh the board approved a resolution in IGA supporting and authorizing the pool project and the associated lease financing that went along with that so for the terms of this presentation and the associated documents um we're referring to that initial IGA is the 2021 IGA because this gets a little complicated we're talking about about the initial IGA now we're talking about another IGA the initial IGA mentions that this IGA is coming this IG embeds the initi the 2021 so it's a little bit confusing so I want to make sure that we call that out so it was clear um in the documents and in the presentation so in that original 2021 IGA it outlined the terms of the agreement and it stated that the following items would be developed at a later time a prior use agreement which has been uh completed and this operation and capital maintenance IGA uh that Miss edar will be going through uh this evening so with that I'm going to turn it over to her and thanks again for uh joining me up here this evening and all of your work for a while on this project and I'll hand you over the keys thank you so much thank you for having me here this evening everybody um okay so in a I think some additional context to this project has actually been in the works has its Origins from 2019 um when Arvada APO which is a uh special district and the and the district partner together to do a feasibility study at the site about what to do with the pool long term that feasibility study identified that a new structure was the best path forward and the three entities decided to partner at that time which is how we come to the set of agreements that we're talking about today um at the beginning the it was sort of the parties discussed that the city of Arvada is actually the party of these three that owns the property the improvements that comprised Myers pool and now that comprises the Arvada Aquatic Center they own that property in what's known as fee simple if you were to look up in the property records They are listed as the property owner and it is still that way under the city Charter Park property cannot be sold or conveyed without a majority vote of registered electors so that is why there were as I understand initial conversations about should we have three parties own this in Fe simple and that was not going to be viable because of this limitation in the city Charter um so this property in effect cannot ever be sold by the city of Arvada without going to the electors and I think as we all know and Arvada would probably encounter this too it Park property is very treasured by coloradans and so they are not usually going to agree to sell it so that path was never explored and that's why there is not a real property ownership in either the school district or Apex um in addition and another complicating factor that actually protects the use of this property in perpetuity is that the city's ownership in the property is subject to a what we call reversionary interest in favor of Jefferson County and essentially reversionary interest we see them frequently in school properties and other public properties what it says is look city we're going to give you this prop property and you can use it for a park and if you ever stop using it as a park then it automatically comes back to the county so in essence as well that is a Perpetual limitation on the use of this property as a pool um and so that's why there was also that's another reason why there wasn't an ownership transfer um and here I think it actually works to protect the long-term use of of of um the project it will continue to be an aquatic and protects the parties involved as their interests may appear and then the last bullet here what all of this leads to because again the school district is part of this project and as part of their commitment agreed to finance 50% of the construction of the new facility with the city of Arvada and obviously we wanted to make sure that our contribution was reflected as some kind of equity ownership interest for the life of the pool where we would get the benefit of that contribution so as a result of these limitations we weren't able to acquire ownership in that project through traditional means instead what we have and this is built in both to the financing documents and then is ultimately reflected in the priority use agreement that the board approved in 2023 is that we essentially have an equity interest in the property by virtue of your priority use to the pool for Jeff coasa sanction Sports for the life of that project and that is priority use meaning you get to use it first above all other users to schedule your events so that's what the priority use agreement is let me stop there because I know that's um a lot to cover in four bullet points are there any questions about that yeah um well and thank you for going through that i' i' I've heard you say it now a few times and I find it very very helpful and understanding what happened um on just on bullet point three when it says revisionary interest in favor of Jefferson County does that mean Jefferson County Schools or the actual County no great question thank you for clarifying it is actually Jefferson County so Board of County Commissioners Jefferson County and that's pretty common we've worked with other properties in the Jeffco space and routinely among planning in public jurisdictions here Jefferson County actually has quite a lot of open space um and parks and so it's frequent that when they partner with the city on this there's usually a rary interest in their favor in order to protect that Perpetual use for for recreation for your public but thank you for clarifying it is not the school district it is actually the county okay okay so going back and again I know I'm kind of repeating but I'm a very visual person I'm also very linear so I like to think of things that way um as Mr Gatlin said um we have a 2021 IGA um which sets forth at a very high level the commitment of the parties to this that's the school district Arvada and Apex to this project that IGA contemplated that after the construction of the project or leate in the construction of the project the parties would enter into two additional agreements one of those we've already talked about that was the priority use ensuring that that Equity interest of the district is enshrined in an IGA for the use of the pool and then the next one was an operation and capital maintenance agreement and that is what is going is we're presenting here today and going over and what the board will consider at its meeting um later this month I want to cover that a lot of this agreement was actually laid out in detail in the 2021 IGA um there's only a little bit of detail filled in and it's with more benefit of being further along in the project and having a better understanding of what programs fees Staffing is going to look like now that we're fully built out so this operation Capital maintenance agreement that is before you does align to the 2021 IGA um essentially what it provides it lays out a couple of things it talks about maintenance in terms of scale who's going to do the daily maintenance who's going to do the annual maintenance and what type of scale of Maintenance who's going to be responsible for that so Apex as the special district that does Recreation programs in this jurisdiction they're going to operate this pool they're going to St they're going to develop the programs they're going to set the fees and that means too that they're responsible for maintaining this facility on a daily basis that means having the right equipment having qualified people who are there all of that will be them um there will be an annual look by all all the parties have Representatives that are going to meet annually to talk about this facility and evaluate whether it's safe what the needs are what do we need to update so on an annual basis for expenditures that are non- capital meaning they're less than $25,000 um Apex is going to be responsible for that as well as part of their budget um also the parties are going to Arvada is going to do an annual kind of assessment as to what equipment may need to be updated and they're going to do a fiveyear every fiveyear structural assessment and the parties will sit down together and through their representatives we'll look at that and we'll try and determine who's going to be taking care of what what expenditures are non- capital meaning less than 25,000 and are those of Apex and what expenditures are capital which means $25,000 or more um for the for the capital expenditures which are $25,000 or more the parties are going to cover those and initially Arvada because they are the one with the true traditional real estate ownership interest here they are putting together a capital reserve Fund in the amount of $1.5 million that will be funded no later than December 31st 2026 the reason we're waiting until that date is because there is currently the parties are under a 2year construction warranty for the facility So for anybody who has built something through contractors you know that for an initial period of time if there's a defect you go back to the contractor and the contractor's going to cover that as are your different kinds of insurances but after that time Arvada is putting together a reserve fund to the tune of $1.5 million and that will be the initial Source if there are going to be Capital maintenance repairs Replacements things of that nature um after that is exhausted and if that is exhausted then the parties will contribute equally to any Capital repairs like I said other than those Capital repairs everything else will be done by Apex and Apex then if you look at this agreement too there's a lot of Provisions regarding their operation of the project and the main thing there is that they're going to operate it they're going to make sure it's adequately staffed with appropriate licensed qualified individuals they'll be setting program fees and they'll be responsible for all of that um those are the highlights of the agreement again it aligns in some ways when you look at it aligns very much and may seem redundant of what's in the 20121 IGA that's actually a good thing it means that a lot of the predictions in the feasibility reports are consistent with what we're seeing now um and there's a lot of boilerplate in there that's just standard for igas um with that uh I will stop and see if there are any questions about that thank you for this it's always good to go through this and we appreciate it because this is something that has been ongoing and can be a little complicated um a few quick questions in our annual meetings I assume Mr Gatlin are you our representative I I I probably won't be our representative but it'll be somebody in our facilities uh construction team okay perfect um do our do our con do our facilities and construction teams have a good sense for the cost in the life cycle of a pool such that we can think five years out I don't think it's going to be in two years but five years out 10 years out 15 years out are we starting to think about how to build some of those maybe significant expenditures into our longer term Capital planning yeah that's something that we're we're going to take a closer look at especially you know we have about a two-year period where we know we ar going to be incurring costs in addition to a Time beyond that where this initial $1.5 million so we have a little bit of time to figure that out but that is the thinking that we're working on a plan to ensure and and really working that plan in parallel with these review processes and cycles that Miss Edgar mentioned where we're doing assessments where we're trying to identify issues that may come up and then making sure that we can plan accordingly through through budgetary lines I think that's that's really wise um I think in those initial couple years as we're working with Apex who I assume well who I know runs many pools um I think leaning into their expertise as to kind of what those life ccle time frame if we know we're going to have to replace I'm not a pool expert the floor the concrete the walls the you know what those life cycles look like and what those costs are and that way we can be prepared yeah um to be honest this part of it is the only thing that gives me pause um even if we could somehow address this and I I honestly do not know what the effort is to make changes to this at anyway and who has to be involved but I think even if we just explained that we're aware that that amount um will expire you know be used we think at some point and anything that the district is thinking about how to put it into our Capital plan but I can just imagine the board 15 years from now going why didn't the board who signed this contract or approve this contract think about this um and so it does give me a lot of pause on this version sure and if helpful I didn't highlight this there is um again the the parties work in cooperation and even though Apex is running it they they form this sort of like group and everyone has an equal vote and say in the ongoing operation and maintenance of this facility um and again part of the the agreement contemplates that there will be a third party presumably a pool expert right takes the lead in hiring someone but I'm assuming they'll get someone qualified who will do this annual assessment so it won't be just some random person will be someone who has expertise and is saying okay here are the things that we see needing to be replaced immediately and then we'll have this fiveyear structural thing which will hopefully my assumption is and we can I think help as part of this group of people making decisions we can certainly articulate that we're looking for some guidance on how to plan this out but we we will have these independent assessments explaining what needs to be repl and then the the capital uh expenditures repairs and Replacements and emergency expenditures repairs and Replacements go to a vote of the three parties and so it is somewhat a democratic process and there's within that then um checks and balances I think to encourage good conversation among the three about how they're going to spend their limited resources with regard to this facility um it's also really hard we are all three governmental entities so we are all subject to Taber and the limitations on being able to budget out multiple fiscal year expenditures so um sometimes these igas reflect that in not being able to plan that out but that's certainly helpful to hear and I think the many things are done as we get fewer and fewer resources to share among public entities it is very common to have public entities cooperate this isn't a guarantee but at least in my experience there's usually a good spirit of cooperation and good faith in that endeavor thus far I think there has been that just in my involvement with the representatives for Apex and ourv my hope is that would continue everyone has um it's to everyone's benefit to work together to ensure that this partnership is a success and that this facility it meets the needs of all the parties constituents so hopefully through that it's a good relationship and there can be those conversations that you talk about is there any way to capture what you just said in a way that we can um put into the document or an addendum to it or anything again I'm like 15 years from now like how will they know what you just said well I do think it's embodied it's embodied in the J itself which is which is specific but it's also flexible um and then in any kind of agreement upon parties there is um an implied duty of good faith and fair dealing and so that's going to be there for future Generations because of the way it's set up which is to have the three parties be meeting pretty routinely to talk about the facility from an operations and maintenance standpoint I think there is going to be that continuity through the organization we can certainly talk with them though um you know among the group of three who are initially the representatives to talk it's possible I think for them to sit down and say how can we put together something that will ensure continuity among our successors around these conversations and you know that's something we could explore whether Apex and Arvada would want to do that I would think they would want to is that is that something that the board would like for Kristen to do on its behalf yeah if it's feasible um I mean if it doesn't uh put in Jeopardy any of the timing schedule that we're on okay that sounds good I can raise that with the council and we can take that forward Council for the parties and we can take that forward to see if there's interest thank you I have um a question to about Apex you said is the one responsible for setting fees and program costs and so forth so they could raise fees um do they get the the benefits the profits from any fees that come into the Aquatic Center they do so they set their program fees to cover their costs much like any kind of govern other governmental entity there's limitations like other governmental on their ability to capture and make significant Revenue um so yes they get the program fees the program fees are going to turn around and are going to fund their costs from operating the project but they get to keep all of those but there's something um in statute or in the the IG we're signing that would prevent them from being a bad actor and just making a lot of money on the center yes so the program fees are tied to the feasibility report so they are limited to a certain extent to what's in the feasibility report they've already I think had to make some adjustments just because costs have gone up and things like that but they are tied to what's in the feasibility report beyond that I am not an expert when it comes to Special Districts like Apex um so again I'm just going on my sort of general knowledge about limitations on government spending generally but they can't because of Taber and other laws they can't raise fees significantly such that they're earning a huge profit and not being held accountable for that that's good because um going along with Dr V you know 15 years from now if it turns out we three Partners in here and one of them is sitting pretty because they got a bunch of Revenue during the 15 years and the other two have to put in the costs for some maintenance that is significant understood I just want to say I'm super glad that Brad rert is on the AR City counc former board member here okay thank you very much you apprciate it thank you all right and that um brings us now to the last item on our agenda the board will hear a preview of the January 16th action items including items that will be included on the consent agenda the superintendent will also provide a board the board a preview of upcoming board agenda items I'll now hand it over to superintendent dorland thank you president Parker let's start with the uh preview of action and consent agenda items for next week um and please note that content some of the content may change and the budgets are estimates and may appear differently per brena's presentation tonight uh when the one the January 16th agenda is posted um there will be an approval of a donation in the amount of approximately 53,000 by the paraly elementary for uh for paraly elementary by the Parmley PTA it is for an outdoor classroom kind of shade structure that they plan to use and um put in place um near their playground there will be an approval of the resolution for the adoption appropriation of the revised budget for tonight's presentation that the board studied with um Miss Copeland and a second resolution that would um update the authorization to use a portion of beginning fund balances for the revised budget um per brena's presentation there's not a huge difference in the amount of appropriated um fund balance that the board will approve but we do need to make sure that it's updated and accurate given that you're revising the budget mid year um the approval of Med medical benefits contract will also be on the agenda you studied that this evening um and the approval of the IGA that um uh yeah we just talked about uh with Miss Edgar and um Mr Gatlin uh for the operating and capital maintenance agreement uh for the Arvada Aquatic Center you will have again as you always do typically supplemental funds notification and you can see what the January awards are for and the amounts Associated on the right hand side of that table um there are two capital projects one is the uh High School bleacher replacement at Chatfield and Green Mountain High School and the other is the Ralston Valley high school parking lot repaving I have almost taken out one or two of my tires in that parking lot and I know Mr Gatlin probably has as well given that he's not only our chief operating officer who tours around to our schools but it's also a parent uh who travels to I know games and events at that school often they their uh their parking lot needs it so uh those are the two on uh capital projects on the consent agenda next week um are there questions before I move on to reviewing uh upcoming agenda items great uh upcoming agenda items um so you will have at next week's regular meeting some awesome time with our Jeff Co student leadership board they'll be here for an hour very they're very excited to talk with you um they and and you might want to think about what questions you want to ask them as we go into next week um we have a legislative update with Mr bich and you will hear from our Auditors as Miss Copeland mentioned earlier tonight and review the Acer um and you will be hearing from um Mr Poo around our Naran um project initiative and um also a presentation so that the board can be aware of the up most upto-date Colorado statute related to Naran um the next day you will have a special studies the board has scheduled a special study session where you will be looking at monitoring reports 3.2 and 3.4 as well as um monitoring report 1.1 in February um we have you will have the board has scheduled a study session with again a legislative update the Jeffco negotiations team our district team will be presenting to you and talking with the board about our 2 collective bargaining process and the district's interests in in the process with our associations we will be talking about the boundary study followup related to the Jefferson articulation area uh we will look be looking at oh miss Reed we'll be looking at secondary Ela curriculum and um the Erp contract part one um that will be a part of your study session and at the regular meeting you will have some consent agenda items in addition to um the board um having 20 minutes for public comment dedicated to uh negotiations and our association Partners um we will be looking on studying High School reimagined having a deck dialogue and the Erp contract um and then you can see March and April um I want to highlight a couple of things in March we'll be talking more with the board about the Strategic Capital master plan I know that's been of Interest we'll have an update on our SAE School aged en Richmond programs which has been a specific request of the board um and again the public comment dedicated to negotiations will continue in March and your board committee tdpac will be coming to talk with you um and then in April um you can see some of the things here another opportunity to engage with the Jeff Co student leadership board as a highlight there and another request of the board and I think many in our community are excited about the environmental sustainability presentation in April and then finally um another board uh committee engagement with CAC in April and uh monitoring report 1.4 so um and and of course the dedicated um public comment for negotiations again so those are some highlights and updates uh for the board related to next week's consent agenda items as well as upcoming agenda it any comments yeah um just really quick I I think we're all starting to get letters asking the board to make some sort of statement about um protecting our immigrant students and their families and so I think that that is something that we should be talking about formalizing um I just passed off a question today and I haven't had a chance to read the answer I did get something about um protocols for students um if uh they are encountering ice um you know how the schools will handle that could those be sent to All board members please thank you um and then just to to keep it on our agenda I know our community is waiting to hear from us about our current policies for student safety especially with regard to um what our policies are in hiring and screening um and in uh how we're educating our children to to protect themselves so those were things that really came to the surface yesterday I want to make sure that we keep those I think we may find ourselves I don't know when but in a position where we do need to add time for debate and discussion regarding um future activities around that so I will say too we are going to have a um a retreat in February so in that retweet we can also talk about what we want additional the scheding if anything so we could look at that any other comments tonight we talked about the EAP program um can we does is the board interested in having a presentation on that program in particular and having the staff come and present to you know speak with us can we put that on a future agenda um and also three and forgot the second one um oh the two schools that I I don't see that anywhere and I I know I ask a lot like what's the next step with that but there's nothing on here and I know it's I think it's of the board's interest to work on uh next steps with that soon the two schools we need to figure out about building yeah so Lisa has an update about that it looks like so yeah um so we are we for the second School the Greenwood uh um Green Mountain we're still pursuing a uh demographic study that we will do um in the City of Lakewood as we did with um the city of arbata we'll be conducting that this spring so we'll have something um further on that um in June and then we can we're trying to determine right now what action um is needed by the board related to um the recommendation that was made by CAC I think in the December meeting so we'll be back to you on that um we're we're just trying to figure out what the ne what the next right step is how long do you think it will be before we know what the right next step is I think we're hoping to know that this month um or early next month at least on the um our Vada okay okay and then I'm curious what the board thinks about the expectation that the community I'm sure has at our next next week to discuss the events of the last few weeks um specifically and I would assume that would come as an update from the superintendent on what's happened and series of events that allows the public to understand this I I can't imagine personally a meeting where this is not brought up and I wonder what you all think about that I will say I do expect the public comment will have a lot to do with that um so if there are additional um pieces of information any updates any advice um I am um working with um well working on I guess I should say having some kind of an executive session next week too if we had that before um the public meeting that we could have questions answered for ourselves at least we get our legal questions answered that would be maybe helpful before public comment comes um but then I don't know superintendent if you have any other ideas sure I mean I um I'm happy to provide an update in in the public meeting um I'm not sure given what I'm going what's going to happen between now and then with law enforcement how much more I'll be able to share other than what has already been shared in writing with our community and our staff um but I'm happy to schedule that I can even make that part of my superintendent comments and we have in the past um president Parker if you recall moved um board and superintendent comments to the front of the meeting right after public comment uh so I mean we can we can do that I I'm not sure it's not going to be it may not be extremely satisfying for people who come to public comment given that um neither myself nor any board member may be able to address every single concern that is presented in public comment so I wouldn't want to set the public or the board up for expectation that I'll be able to to answer all of the concerns in my comments but I would be happy to um do that and just offer to the board a consideration of moving that up in the agenda I I think something that you could add I personally don't expect you'll have a whole lot extra to add um but I do think even if you said the same thing and said there's no new updates we're keeping you updated and even talk about um supports that we've deployed to schools and um I think that that could be maybe something you could add in addition to I mean I don't I'm going to look to you guys to know if there's anything to say there or not but um I do think the idea of us being able to almost do what we did in the retreat and speak to it and how we're doing and what we're thinking about um we may not we likely will not be able to answer the questions people have but I do think people are expecting us to talk about it and I would support moving it up and I would be willing to say in my comment like I know we're not going to be able to answer all of your questions but we are hearing you we understand what you're saying I think even that in itself has value thank you for working on the executive session because this conversation like what we can say and how we can say it and what we can expect like to me there is and we've been told directly that there's legal implications for what we say and this is where I remain confused um by the the implication that what we say could have a legal implication or the suggestion um so this is one reason why I would like to have some guidance from the legal lens on what it is that is worrisome in that area because we have not been given any guidance on that and so that's why I think that would be helpful to even do before um a very public meeting if possible okay any other comments questions for the good of the whatever they call it of the order thank you I knew you'd know Al righty then um that brings us to the end of today's agenda and we will stand adjourned our next scheduled meeting of the board is a regular meeting scheduled at 5:00 pm on January 16th at the Ed Center [Music] [Music]