Joining our meeting this March twenty-fifth. We'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. There we go. Alright. Uh we're we're going to go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance and then after the Pledge of Allegiance, we sit down and have a brief moment of silence. Uh so, if you can stand with us and gentlemen, remove your hats. Uh Director Evanson, would you like to kick us off for the pledge? A pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under god, in
with liberty and justice for all Alright, thank you very much. Uh we, Amy, we can go ahead and do roll call. Mister Chavez. Here. Missus Evanson. Here. Missus Heitz. Here. Mister Jones. Here. Miss Lima. Here. Alright, do I have a motion to approve the agenda for this evening? Motion to approve the agenda. Second. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Uh do I have a motion to approve the
meeting minutes from February 4th, 2025 and February 18th 2025. Motion to approve the meeting minutes from the fourth and the eighteenth. Second. Mister Chavez. Proved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright, we'll move into our recognitions. So, just a reminder, when you come up to the front, miss Callie would like to take a picture of you. Uh so, please stay at the front. First off, we have our Girls State
Wrestling team and so director Jones is going to take care of that recognition for us. Good evening. When the girls wrestling team and coaches please join me at the front of the room. The D51 Phoenix girls wrestling team achieved a historic milestone last month competing in the two thousand twenty-five class five A Colorado State Wrestling Championship and bringing home the state title. Under the strong leadership of head coach Chad Dare, the D51 Phoenix girls wrestling team hit the mats with depth, determination, and impressive talent. They clinched the state title despite not having an individual champion. A true
testament of the team's overall strength and consistency. Eight wrestlers placed in the top five of the weight class. Including standout performances by Shali Tucson Clarice McCoy who finished who both finished a state runner ups at 155 and 170, and Violet Gray, who secured third place at a and30 pounds. This marks the first ever state wrestling title for the program. A well-earned award for their hard work, perseverance, and grit. These students athletes have shown over the past few seasons. Their success reflects not only
growth of girls wrestling in Colorado but also a high bar for the team to set in the future. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill would like to congratulate our D51 Phoenix Girls athletes and coaches on these tremendous achievements. We look forward to watching your continued and success of the seasons to come. Also, coach Chad Dare was the Chasha two-time coach of the year, recognized. Clarice McCoy. Shile Tucson. Not here. Violet gray Clara didn't. Ryah Burke.
Madalina Diaz. Kylie Keel Vanessa Milton Cheyenne Page Harley Prater. Marissa Martinez Quesada. Quesada? Yeah. Okay and Kendall Lee Stewart. Congratulations. They're going to send you something and then real super fast. The coaches were Chad Dare, Dan Burke, Jolin Harris, Lupe Quazada, and Mario Bostina. Would mister Tatum Williams come up front with me? In February, Tatum Williams, a senior at Food of Monument High School, closed out his high school
wrestling career by bringing home the 5 fiveA state championship title in the boys wrestling and earning his 100th high school career win. Give it up for him. Come on. Hundred and 150th win. Whoo In competing in the 2025 Colorado State Wrestling Championship, Tatum demonstrated outstanding skills, focus, mental toughness, and determination. Earning the top spot in his weight class and ending a championship drought for both district 51 and Freedom Monument. His victory highlighted the years of
hard work and long hours. He poured into the sport in the strength of Fruit of Monument Wrestling Program. Supported by dedicated coaches, teammates, and a proud Wildcat community. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill are proud to celebrate Tatum's success and congratulate him on his achievement. We look forward to seeing what's next for this talented Wildcat both on and off the mat. Congratulations. I just like that he politely corrected you and he could've like taken you down and into a hold. So, good job. He could've taken him down,
right? You wouldn't but you could've. Would Abigail Martinez please join me at the front of the room? Abby, a senior at Grand River Academy, and a dedicated member of D 51's Hosa team, has received the Barbara James service award, a national recognition honoring students who volunteer their time to support health related causes and serve their communities. This award created in memory of Barbara James, a former Hosa leader who wholeheartedly believed in the
power of service, highlight students, who go above and beyond to help others in their communities, especially in healthcare settings. Abby has gone above and beyond in her commitment to our community, volunteering, volunteering more than 100 hours at St. Mary's Hospital. Her time and dedication have made a meaningful impact on the local health care community showing what it truly means to care for others. Her compassion, leadership, and service embody the values of Hosa and the spirit of the Barbara James service award. The
Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill are proud to recognize Abby's achievement and celebrate her hard work, heart, and the that earned her this reward Award. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. We're on. She was trying to mess me up. She turned it off on me. Sorry. Will Olivia Campbell and coach Jeff Johnson please join me at the front of the room? Olivia, a senior at Fruda Monument High School, was named the 2025 Southwest League Girls Basketball Player of the Year after an outstanding season. As a five nine point and shooting guard, Olivia has
been a key player for the Wildcats throughout her high school career. She hit a major milestone this season by scoring her thousandth career point during a win over Denver North where she put up nineteen points over 95 varsity games. She averaged nearly 13 points, four rebounds, two assists, and three steals per game. Her leadership hu inconsistent play have made a significant impact on the team's success and reflect the core beliefs we celebrate here in D fifty-one. Since taking over as head coach in June of twenty twenty-two,
Jeff Johnson has made a big impact on the Freedom Monument High School girls basketball team. In the twenty-four 25 season, he led the Wildcats to a strong seventeen to seven overall record and an undefeated 10 to zero run in league play. Earning them the top spot in the standings. Coach Johnson is known for his steady leadership. Sharp game strategy and focus on player development. He builds his team around fundamentals, teamwork, and a strong work ethic, fostering a culture where athletes, no, sorry, grow both on and off the court. Under
his guidance, the Wildcats have proven they are not just skilled shooters with solid technique. They're tough, competitive, and able to rise to any challenge which they showed throughout this season. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill congratulate Olivia and coach Johnson on their incredible season and being named the 2025 Southwest League player and coach of the year. We look forward to watching you and your continued success. Alright. Well, thank you everyone for those things. Um so, unless you're just dying to stay for the rest of the board meeting, we can get, I'll
give you guys a couple of minutes to make your way out. Um the large group, please stay in the lobby so Callie can get a group picture of you please. So, thank you all for coming and congratulations. So, Stanley doesn't have a car, how is he supposed to sub? I mean And you're just like, come on. This is getting. Why they always give me pretty stink? No. I think it's on purpose Oh yeah. Yeah. Like he just rolls with it. He's like good with it. Alright, sound, sounds good. Alright, we are going to move in to
our board reports. Uh so, board, gosh, it's been three weeks because we had spring break. So, we obviously bumped this meeting. So, any good things since we last met? Have a good calendar. Good spring break. Did everybody have a good break last week? Had a good break and a couple of us we went to couple of schools junction in Central for their with their council kids and it was a good time and learned good Bible things and other than that, spring break was good, quick but good. Yeah. Yeah, we've been one of the board
goals was to meet with the student groups. So, those have been good meetings. Yeah. Yeah, we had an opportunity to meet with Palisade and then I had one with Grand River Academy online. These kids are fun. It's good. Good stuff. Need to send out a Email to everybody just to give an update on all that. Uh huh. Just for good things. I went to Brookliff Middle School. I went to Simbra event that they had there. Those young individuals spoke about what how it is to be in their DF program. And how wonderful it is to
have to be able to have bilingual education in in their school. Uh they actually asked if there was a way that some of the students were asking can we ever present to the Board of Education of what we do. And and the gratitude that we have and the benefits of going to the Dia program for middle school. Well that's neat. Yeah. But it was it was really enjoyable to listen to them. They presented well. They had data. They had everything in PowerPoint. It was really nice to say. I think they have
presented before. It's probably time for them to do that again. Yeah. No. It's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. So, Director Jones and I met with Central High School. I'll make sure at our work session next week that I'll put some notes together. Yeah. Any committee or activity updates? We haven't had much going on since then. Okay did our strategic plan meetings. Oh yeah. A week and a half ago. So that was the first one I've had an opportunity to to sit in on and there was some good work like just I really appreciate the community
members that have that are taking the time to be a part of that. Um they took a lot of time to go out to a lot of our schools and you know, have conversations with administration and teachers and even students and just get some ideas on things that would be, you know, beneficial as a whole and then they brought that information back and presented it to the committee as a whole and then there was just a lot of like movement around and a lot of opportunity for conversation and thought provoking points that were brought up in the
last meeting. So, there was a lot of good work. I think it was a good one for me to attend a really, really appreciate the work that the committee is doing. I did the first three and I would agree, Barb, the number of people that showed up for that was really impressive and really a a wide swath of people and personalities and backgrounds that that all came together to make sure that our strategic plan Moving forward is is on target for our community. And we got to read it. Taylor Elementary. Oh. How about that? That's right. Yes. Yeah. Got to read.
I read the I read The Sour Grape book. That was a good book. Book with no pictures. I got to speed read Doctor Seuss at Fruit Villa Elementary and the kids loved it. Oh. It was great. I was told I read too fast and too slow by the same class. So, I don't know which. They were like, read it as fast as you can. It was great. It was a good book. Those are fun. Those are I appreciate our principals thinking of us when there's different events that we get to go and have fun like
that. So, that was a that was a good time. Yeah. Alright. Uh yeah, thanks for reminding. We've done a lot. I guess I forgot. So, alright. Is Amy on line for our legislative update? Alright. So, Amy A2od is our lobbyist for D fifty-one. So, there has been a lot going on at the Capitol and so while they have been in session, we have been trying to get on a regular update with her for legislative updates. So, she is going to update us on some state bills Um
so, Amy, if you're ready, go go right ahead. Sure. Good afternoon, evening. Amy A2od, contract lobbyist with the district. I'll, I think tonight, I'll start with an overview of the session and then we'll talk about the budget and then we can talk about any bills that I had sent through. So, overview of the legislature. It's we are six weeks in, so we're over halfway, or I'm sorry, we only have 6 weeks left. So,
we are over halfway, May 7th is the last day, and just as a reminder, in Colorado, we're in session for 120 days. And there is a hard stop, May seventh. So, bills either pass or are defeated, come May seventh. It it's it's been an interesting session because of the state budget and that the budget is is very tight. We went into the year Uh the state
budget went into this budget planning cycle over billion dollars in the hole in the red. So the joint budget committee has had to find places to cut. Um I don't think any department has gotten away without any cuts. I know that Department of Education has been cut, Medicaid will be cut, a higher ed will be, public safety, corrections, everyone has been cut. However, we do have a commitment
from a joint budget committee members. They're the ones that put the budget together to hold education flat or even increase it by $150 million dollars. So, while I'm sitting here right now, Representative Taggart is texting me because they're in the middle of those negotiations right now. We've been working on it for weeks but it's coming down to the wire. I bring up the budget because there are a lot of
bills. 500 just over 500 bills and many many of them take money. And so those bills are sitting in appropriations committee because until the budget passes then then the legislature knows how much money it has for new programs or any bills that are in the queue. So, let's let's transition that then into K -twelve. Like I said, we have a commitment from Joint Budget Committee members to
hold flat. There has also been discussion of increasing by $150 million. And if you remember last year, the board took a position to support the new school finance formula. There is a lot of discussion. It's culminating today on whether or not that new formula goes into place or not. And I've been working with Mel and with Doctor Hill. We've been going
back and forth, back and forth on the different scenarios for the school district. It still does look like D 51 will come out better if the new school finance formula is implemented. They've made some changes to it from what was passed last year. But D51 comes out better than if we had if we stay on the the current formula. So and I have to say Representative Taggart has he really cares what the
district thinks. And he and I have been in communication all session. And like I said it's I he's texting right now. So that's that's great. He really cares about the district. Um the budget in every year that I've been at the legislature which is 15 years has always been introduced the last week of March which would have been Monday. And the joint budget Committee said at the earliest Amy, we lost audio on you. Yeah, just. How about that? There you
go. There you go. Okay, I must have touched something. Sorry. Um I don't know where I was. The introduction of the budget being. Alright. Next week of March. So usually it's the last week of March and because there are so many cuts and so many big decisions to be made, it's not going to be introduced until next week and this impacts your budgets because it it takes two full weeks for the state budget to pass. So, it'll be at the earliest the 14th or 15th of
April before the state budget passes and once the budget passes, then, the School Finance Act can pass. The school finance act this year might run in tandem with the budget and may not come out after the budget like it usually does. I think, I think they're ready to introduce it before the end of this week. So, hopefully, we even know by by the 15th of April, what what school finance is going to
look like and be finished with that? Um So, just, just as you're looking towards your budgets, and I know, Mel and Doctor Hill, are right on top of all of this. It has been a low session for education bills and actually, it's been a low session for Bill's period. Usually, we have 700 to 750 pieces of legislation that are introduced and this year, we are just over 500 and they're not going to
introduce 250 more bills and and it's because of the budget situation. So, the report that I sent you yesterday has a number of those education bills on it. I think it has seven. These are bills that are still in play. Um and Andrea you and I went through many of these last week. Just as so we could talk through but I wanted to talk through with the board these bills
because you may be hearing about them. And they do have local control implications. Um so I don't know. Do you want me to just start going through? Yeah, Amy. I think it would be great for you to just go through these like you did with me and then. Great. Just just like you did, just explain through those. I've, as I, the last week, just been trying to kind of give as I ran into board members, just kind of give em a little bit of an update on this as I've
also sit on the legislative resolutions committee with Casby but you did such a good job going into this. So, if you can just go through that, then, the board members can ask you questions just as I did. So. Sure. Okay. Well, great. If we start with the first one, it's House Bill 11 thirty-five, communication devices in schools. This really is dealing with cellphones in schools. It is a bipartisan bill and it is well
supported actually by school districts because it is it's not it's not telling us what we have to do. It's it's allowing us to set our own policy. So, I guess it is telling you that you have to have a cellphone policy but that it it's not so restrictive as as the bills that we've seen the last two years that just straight up prohibit cellphones in schools. So, this was worked on with with districts
throughout the interim and appears to be a pretty good bill. Second one, 11seventy8. This one is is really interesting because there are two. This is banned student seclusion. There are two of these bills. Um on student seclusion. This first one on 1178 bans, prohibits any type of student seclusion. And so that that has been, that has been a problem for districts in Casby and
Case because the way inclusion is defined when schools have sensory rooms when a student needs to take a break in a sensory room. A sensory room would be would be banned. So, it the bill needs the bill as written just isn't it is just not good for districts. It just it tells you that you can't do this and what you what you're already doing by following state law, you can't
continue to do. And if we Let me see. Okay, so that's Band Student Seclusion The next one is 11 ninety-2, Financial Literacy graduation requirements. So, this is another interesting one when it comes to local control. It is saying that for graduation as a graduation requirement of graduation that a
student must pass course in financial literacy as a graduation requirement. So, the bill requires successful completion of a course in financial literacy. The other portion of the bill is it requires submission of of free a Fafsa application for state financial aid as a condition of high school graduation. Unless a student falls under one of the exceptions. So, it's mandated that as a graduation requirement, you
have to have a course in financial literacy which you may already have but then, it also requires that students fill out a Fafsa. There's been a lot of pushback on this bill from the State Board of Education to School Districts that it really is encroaching on on local control and most districts have a financial most high schools have a financial literacy course that they offer to their high school students. And just stop me if you have questions
as we're going along. I don't have any questions Amy but I be curious to know what the federal government who processes Fafsa's thinks about that requirement and what kind of workload increase they would incur. Um that's a really good question. So, there are number of states that have this requirement for graduation and they do see higher rates of students going into college
university their first year because in the states that have this as a requirement for graduation. So, the argument is this is showing students that they can they can qualify for money and that and that going to college is an option for them. So, it doesn't, I, I don't think, nobody has talked about what the workload would be for the Feds. Well, I I I more important than those that went for any initial length of
time, a semester, maybe a year. I would be more interested to see an outcome that shows completion and graduation. And it's very hard to track those students once say, you know, it it's it's an issue we have whether whether a student goes into a trade or goes to college we can't track them once they leave, once they leave the district. Well, and the the so case opposed this one, the association that represents superintendents
administrators and I think couple of their arguments too were one, because they have to look at large and small districts, and not every small district in the state can find someone that can teach a financial li course independently. So, now you're requiring districts to have to go find somebody to teach that. What if they can't. Um as Amy mentioned, we do teach financial literacy through our standards already. So, there are already our opportunities that exist in school districts for Saint Lee. We already have these things in place. Um and then with the financial aid piece, you know, if if folks are choosing a
different path, they shouldn't be required to fill out but also then they're sharing, you know, personal information with it. Maybe they don't want to be forced to share. So, there were a lot of reasons why case opposed this one as well. Well, in Cas opposed it as well for those very same reasons. Um the next one I think you'll feel as a relief even though the title is is I think a little bit deceiving. So this is House Bill 1210. Data reporting requirements for kindergarten through 12th grade schools. So what this does it does not
require you to do any more data reporting. It tells the CDE and sets up sets up the city to look at all of the reporting that districts do. And to look that reporting and see what is duplicative and what what isn't relevant anymore that is needing that is still being reported. So, it it looks at data that local education providers are required to report to
comply with state and federal laws. So, it it will look at how much time, local education providers spend reporting to the department whether they're more efficient ways to report the data an evaluation of the reporting protocols for local education providers. So, you know, we know reporting is so burdensome on a district. It, there is information that is definitely needed. There is data that is needed that needs to be needs to be pushed up to CDE but it it's
time to just look at everything and and how is it working? Um the RCDE had a budget request that has been approved to upgrade their data reporting system and their school finance system, their their software, and so, even amongst all the cuts in education, CDE, that, that decision was made on March 20th that they are going to get the money to continue to roll out that system,
which, which should help, at least after, after we get this report, we'll help with the data reporting. House Bill 1278. This is the Education Accountability System Bill. So, if you remember, I have talked for months really 2 years. It's been two years that the Education Accountability Task Force was meeting and they met for 2 years, they produced a report in November. There were 30
recommendations that came out of that task force and this bill has all 30 recommendations in it. Um there are about a dozen amendments that will be coming. I think it's backing committee, I think. I mean, look, I think it's backing committee this week and so, through those amendments, they have been listening to districts that it wasn't the the way the recommendation was written in the bill was not actually what the intent
of the task force. So, there's been some reworking on that. This bill has a fairly heavy fiscal note and I'm just, I just want to pull up that physical note. Yeah, the fiscal note is 5. 7 million dollars for 25, twenty-six, and it increases to over 6 million. So, there isn't the money to implement the entire bill. They wanted to make sure that it was written all of the recommendations were written
correctly and with consensus So, that when they come back with another bill, there there's at least consensus with how this was written. There are there are recommendations in the bill that are going to pass that do not take any money to implement and so it's going to be way paired back with no fiscal note but just getting it on paper where everybody agrees it is the springboard for when there is
money and it's time to implement some of these other these other recommendations. D51 has been a part has has seen reiteration of of the recommendations. I've gotten feedback from staff on all of the recommendations. So, the district's been aware of of how this how the bill has been drafted throughout the process. Okay, 1300, this is what we wouldn't typically think of as an education
bill. It's workers' compensation benefits, proof of entitlement. This is a bill that will impact, it will absolutely impact the district and your workman's comp. So, there are two big provisions in the bill. The bill provides injured workers control over the selection of their primary treating physician and workers' comp cases. So, right now it's it's for physicians. Um they can choose any physician that they
want that has a level one or level two accreditation. And I mean, there, the second portion of it, is it changes the burden of proof, of an injury. So, instead of the employee needing to prove that they have an injury, the employer has to prove they don't have an injury. So, this is a big shift in how workman's
comp how the policies would work and how the and and that proof of burden. It's it is a really big deal. It is a very expensive bill. It's even expensive for the state. There is discussion that the state would be exempt from the bill and not live by these by these parameters. Um and looking at who's opposing school districts are opposing. I don't
believe case has had has quite had the opportunity, hasn't had the opportunity yet to take a position. So, it's I'm putting it on the radar because it it is one that will impact your budget. Um I just want to check and see if Case has taken a position yet. Uh I didn't look this morning. I don't think that they have. I think you're right. Okay. Yeah and Casby, we have our legislative resolutions committee meeting this Friday. So, my guess is we'll go over it then. But. Okay.
They'll likely oppose it. There's no way. I think they'd support that. Yeah and local governments are are opposed. Um I mean, I'm I'm just going through the list and I'm trying to see who who is actually supporting it. I'm not sure what AFSCME is Um but they are in support and they are the first one listed in support so likely helped. Um helped write the
bill. And the last one on the list is Senate Bill one fifty-three. This is an interesting one because it does require more data reporting where if you think the other one that we talked about which was 1210, which is to go study and see what you know what what are we reporting? This one actually does require you to do more and different reporting. There was a bill Last year, that was
only targeting charter schools and charter school institute schools and this year, Senator Coker bronze it to everyone. Districts would and the way the bill is written, it goes all the way down to the school level, requires a school district or school to report all information for itself and for each each of its traditional public schools and this is all the financial information including what is spent on marketing, what is spent on student recruitment, lobbying,
contractors, education management provider, expenditures, and all sources of revenue. So, the his intent originally last year was to find out how much private money charter schools are getting and that didn't pass. and so this year, he's bronded out to all school districts. So, any revenue to that you're getting in. Um that, you know, through PTA and other private donations would have to be reported. And that brings us to the end of the
list. Anybody have any questions Okay? Amy on the let's see the on 1210. Should we would your recommendation be to just monitor that one? Or or be in support of that one? I think support. Okay. Sends a great message. Okay. That there is a data reporting problem. And thank you for looking at it. And then for twelve 78 you I know
you said that obviously has a large fiscal note And that you've like you said it's more of a springboard Um do we need to take a position on that one or what is your thought on that? Uh Or just watch that one. I think I think we can just watch that one because it's going to get paired back so much. Okay. And then, the last one on one fifty-three, it seems a little, I mean, gosh, we'd have to ask all of our schools to monitor all their PTA money. I don't know. I mean, it seems
like Mel does a good job on breaking down all the moneys that we get. Does it just seem a little invasive? Like, we have a lot of our just local people that just tend to give very generously to each individual school for a lot of various reasons. I don't, I don't understand the the backing behind this. And so, if you, if you think of the intent, the intent last year was to find out where charter schools their money from because there is a perception
whether it's real or not that charter schools make a lot of money through private donations and sponsorships and that's not reported at all. So, that was the impetus for the bill but because it was only targeting charter schools, Um it didn't pass. So, he came back and said, okay, well, we should do this for all schools but really his his intent is to find out what's going on in charter schools. But we get, we get up in it. Yeah. But
what does it matter what a private citizen wants to donate to any school? I mean, we need to be transparent with taxpayer dollars what any individual wants to do with their own dollars doesn't matter. I just I find that a little too invasive in my opinion. Mm hmm. Whether you want to donate to a charter school, a private school, Montessori school, whatever. I just find this is going to be really difficult. Now, we're going to add one more thing onto our individual school level of having to monitor all the PTA
individual and even maybe like kind donations like if they donate equipment or somebody at the school level is going to have to monitor all of that now. And and it's actually it's not just that. It also is how much time is being spent on say student recruitment. And that that one it it's really vague because What does each school do to recruit kindergartners? You know, what what
and and how much time does that take to do that to say it's time for kindergarten enrollment? That is recruitment. Yeah, I think I think case opposed this one too and I think it was around just it's putting an extra burden on school district for something that doesn't seem to, we're not really sure what exactly what they're trying to do. So, I I just find this to be out of the purview of taxpayer dollars of if this is what I mean Yeah, I I don't need to get into
it. I just, I think, I think it's petty in my opinion board, did you guys have any other questions on just what Amy's opinion of is what you, you know, kind of we're, this is her expertise. I mean, she's she's kind of digs into these and what she thinks would be best for, you know, our area. Oh, Amy, did you have something more to say? I was just going to say, I think as a as a fourth bill to look at taking a position on, 1, 300 the workers' comp bill. Yeah. I
think that that that is one to definitely, definitely put, with an opposed position. Well, yeah, I personally, what I think is, the seclusion, I would oppose, because I would like to send a statement that, well, these, these in my personal opinion, violate local control, because they don't, they don't know what our teachers and what we need to do over here. I've, I mean, after I chat, chatted with you, Amy, I chatted with some of our Department heads on what these would mean in our
district and so yeah I just there's some others here that I when we get to that point in the business section we can have some discussion because I have some thoughts on a positions that the board could take. but yeah so you said thirteen hundred. Yeah. I was definitely wanting to take a position of opposition on the on that as well. And I I think case the reason why they're opposing the seclusion bill was last year. House 12 48
was put in place which they got input from that consortium of Special Education Directors and they came up with parameters and training and all sorts of things around seclusion already. So, they just felt like this is just, it's overreached now to say that you can't it can't be done ever. Um they've already got things in place from last year's bill. So, they strongly opposed that one. Yeah and then we talked about the financial literacy earlier. I think just again like Doctor Hill said small districts don't necessarily
have the means to do that and not every family wants to fill out a Fafsa. I just I think that's getting the state doesn't I wish they would come and talk to school districts and boards more because we already take care of a lot of these things at the local level. And then if we wanted to take a position on 1135 of support obviously Doctor Hill was very involved in in that, you know, just having a policy of, you know, devices in schools, but, but Board, we can get
into that into the business section, but if you have anything you want to ask Amy right now, she's online, otherwise, we'll, we can decide as a board if we want to take positions, because she will file these positions at the state. And it will send a message to the state on our behalf. And all else. So, lobby on your behalf with these positions. Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for your time. Amy. We'll we'll get we'll get this information back over to you
after our business portion. Yeah. Uh thanks for your time tonight. Sounds great. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Amy. Alright. Well, the next step, we have our D51 happenings and celebrations. Hi, Board. I'm Sierra Colson, marketing and communication specialist for Dfifty-one. Here to share with you the District 51 Happenings and Celebrations. Congratulations to Yvette Caldwell, our March Golden Apple winner from Chatfield Elementary. As a dedicated pair professional,
Yvette goes above and beyond to create a safe, engaging, and joyful environment for students. Her creative lessons and festive spirit inspire curiosity and excitement in the classroom. Yvette's commitment extends beyond the school day, volunteering her time to make learning truly special. Thank you Yvette for the incredible impact you make everyday. In March, D51 celebrated several outstanding members of our school community whose dedication makes a lasting impact. We recognize our incredible maintenance staff on national
school maintenance, worker appreciation day, thanking them for their tireless work behind the scenes to keep our schools clean, safe, and welcoming. During National School Breakfast Week, we celebrated our nutrition services teams for ensuring students start each day with a nutritious meal that fuels their learning. We also took time to honor the vital work of our school's social workers who provide support, resources, and advocacy to help students and families thrive. Whether it's maintaining our buildings, nourishing young minds,
or offering compassionate care, each of these individuals help create a strong foundation for students success. We are so grateful for commitment to our D 51 community Nearly 60 high school students from across D 51 participated in this year's healthcare career day at Community Hospital. Through interactive stations and realistic patient scenarios, they explored careers in emergency response, surgery, radiology, and more. Gaining real insight into the healthcare field. The event supports D51's commitment to
preparing students for life beyond graduation. A big thank you to Community Hospital for hosting this event each year. Continuing to help grow our students through being an engaged and supportive community partner and helping inspire the next generation of healthcare professionals. But Cliff Middle School students are getting a fun introduction to golf this month. Thanks to a partnership with the City of Grand Junction Golf Division. PGA professionals are leading golf-themed PE classes each week in
March. Helping students learn the basics while highlighting values like honesty, sportsmanship, and perseverance. The program also ties in with D51's more social, less media initiative by getting students moving and encouraging them to try something new. Big thanks to of Grand Junction and PGA intern professional Braden Kelly for making non-traditional sports more accessible to our students. Read Across America Day turned into a week-long celebration across D51
filled with creative activities that made reading fun and engaging. From guest readers at Taylor Elementary including Board of Education members and local first responders to readathons at Loma and Family Events at New Emerson. Schools embrace the joy of reading in unique ways. Thunder Mountain also welcomed Tony the Rapper who shared how building reads how reading builds success. And Nesley's student connected with future teachers through shared stories. Thank you to our teachers, librarians, board members, and
volunteers for inspiring a love of reading and supporting early literacy across the district. The Mesa County Safety Fair brought together public safety teams from across the valley to connect with D51 students and share important safety tips. Hosted at Mesa Mall, the event included hands-on demos that made learning real-life skills both fun and engaging. D51 crisis coordinator Jason Talley was also there talking with students about Safe To Tell. An anonymous tool they can use to report safety concerns,
threats, or bullying. We're thankful our students get to take part in this event each year and appreciate Mesa Mall and the Mesa County Safety Fair for creating such a valuable learning Experience. Grand Junction High School recently celebrated 50 years of girls basketball by welcoming back nearly 70 former players for a weekend full of memories and Tiger Pride. The celebration honored five decades of dedication, recognizing former head coaches Ken Carauthers, Max Kralisek, Carol Wilder, Sam
Prevenza, and current coach Mary Duanne. Alumni toured the new school caught up caught up during a angry and were recognized at a special varsity game with coaches honored at halftime. Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate this incredible legacy of teamwork and excellence. That's all we have for March happenings and celebrations. Be sure to keep up with all the latest D 51 happenings by following us on social media at D51 schools. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Alright, Doctor
Hill, we have your superintendent report. Alright, so we have two presentations this evening. I'll have the first team come up to talk about early release. Um the board of members, we we've been having this discussion actually for years. Um we discussed it two or 3 years ago and gather a lot of feedback and then we tabled it for a little bit but it's it's still been something we've been working on. So, we want to give an opportunity to refresh memories on the topic while we're even discussing it what the benefits
would be and also to hear from folks in the schools to see how it actually impact them. So, we're not asking for any decisions or anything tonight or or we're not making decisions but we just wanted to make sure that y'all and the public got an update on where we are with our the release. I'll turn it over to Jen and the team. Good evening. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to visit with you guys. I have a large number of friends here. I'm going to, let's just do introductions right now. I'm going to start left. Ari, you
want to start and then name and title My name is Oh, we're going to need. I'm sorry. We're going to need. And I gave the microphone. Need the microphone. My mom in place. Well, I have one. Yes. I'm Ari Goldberg and I'm the secondary director of Site Leadership. I'm Dan Bollinger. I'm principal at Palisade. Nikki Johnston, secondary director of curriculum and professional learning. Danny Medvid, Principal
Orchard Mason Middle School. Randy Foster, principal, Grand Mesa Middle School. Um in the spring of twenty twenty-three, clear and comprehensive early release plans were developed to support secondary schools. However, these plans were put on hold due to pressing challenges including declining enrollment, school closure, and the need to establish a sustainable response through committees such as EDEC. As we continue to address budget and enrollment concerns, the need for consistent and structured professional learning at the
secondary level remains a priority. Early release provides essential time for curriculum implementation, resource, learning application, and ongoing professional learning. With weekly early release and aligned learning communities, educators, engage, and structured development through multi year PL plans and design like with consultants like Strive. By investing in teacher growth, we strengthen instructional practices and ultimately enhance
student outcomes. Here's some data. I just want to share. I've got a couple slides of data that I want to share with you all tonight. This is elementary data. As you can see, our Kthree at or above grade level is been increasingly. We celebrate our data a lot here with you and with the district as a whole. The improvement over time can be attributed to intentional, consistent, and coherent professional learning designs that have in recent years
also been linked to the implementation of evidence-based resources and with the results-oriented and CDE approved partners such as Strive. You can see here a steady increase in students who establish a strong literacy foundation in the early years is only going to continue positive outcomes for our students. After this time. Steady Steady gains can be seen
across the upper elementary gains, grades as well. With this, I know this is a busy slide. What's really important is that you need to focus on the grade levels on the bottom, the percent at or above on the proficiency on the left. The gray is state and the green is the district. Focus on the those the the gray and the green. Well, we see improvements in middle school, the pattern has not consistent nor is the dedicated time for staff to learn evidence-based
practices alongside colleagues and to plan for supporting students. I'm going to Pastor Randy. He already has it. To share about the impact and difference of having and not having this consistent time and coherent model at all school levels. Wanna give a little bit of background to why you're the one to talk about it. So thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you this evening. Um I ask you in the fall when you ask me I needed to help my school
move along. My response was more time Um that need for time hasn't lessened in the six months since I last spoke with you. Um and in fact given more time to think about it I'd like to share that one of the messages when I was at Lincoln Orchard Mesa that I shared with my staff and that we strove for was this idea that students don't come to school for six one year journeys. They come for one six year journey at the elementary level. And so the need for coherent instruction kindergarten through
fifth grade was was ever present the idea that what you learn in kindergarten builds to what you learn in first grade all the way through fifth grade. Um was crucial for us and and and helped us to see the successes that we saw while I was the principal at that building. Um the other component of that is when we have students who are struggling the ability to have a conversation with teachers at all grade levels. Uh a fourth grade student who's struggling but has been a part of the school for several years. A
conversation with all of those teachers who had successes and failures with that student built a better picture for for who that student was as a learner. Um at the middle school level, those needs are not any different. The idea that we need one coherent three-year journey through middle school is no different than that need for one six-year journey at the elementary but at the middle school, we don't simply don't have the time for our teachers to sit down and plan that pathway for instruction for our
learners. Um and when we talk about students who are struggling, students struggle at middle school just like they did at the elementary level and so the ability for our teachers to sit down sixth, seventh, and 8th grade and have a conversation to help a student feel more successful. Um is imperative. At present, that time simply doesn't exist in our day but but with the with the opportunity for early release, we can begin to have those conversations on a monthly basis and
as miss Marsh was referring to professional learning at the elementary happened on a monthly basis and so we learned small bites and then we went back and practice in the classrooms. Um district level professional learning. It was the same opportunity. We took a small portion. The teachers got to practice it and then they got to use it for a month and come back and revisit that. Middle school is the same way. Um Strive is a is a fantastic resource for us. The ability to have a a consistent instructional model. Um
is fantastic but because we only have in-service opportunities every quarter, the teachers learn it. They go back and practice it, but the ability to reflect on that professional learning isn't as ready or or present as if we had a chance to do it monthly. Um, on an early release day. So, strongly support the idea of early release and I hope if you have any questions about that at the end, you'll feel free to ask those. Early release provides an opportunity to focus on student
academic and behavioral success while allowing educators dedicated time for collaboration, skill building, and deeper implementation with process like MTSS. For high school students, early release can foster robust learning experiences and stronger business and community connection opportunities. Prioritizing this time ensures that support systems become an integral part of school culture which benefits students. We envision each school developing a
plan that focuses on three key areas. Student behavioral support, student academics, and staff collaboration. This approach ensures that each building's plan is tailored to its unique needs while aligning with our broader, strategic goals. By prioritizing these areas during early release, we aim to create supportive academically, enriching, and collaborative environment for both staff and students. Early release aligns directly with
our strategic plan. Supporting both prepared and supported students as well as prepared and supported staff. This design will continue into our upcoming strategic plan. While the next strategic plan is still in draft form, it will emphasize intentionally and continuity. Focusing on key areas for growth while reef right reinforcing existing strengths and belonging, coherence, and consistency. Now, I would like for Danny to share a little bit about the
work that we've that was done in the past. We're looking forward in the future. Can you do it yourself? I think I've got. Yeah so it's exciting to be back here. It's been almost two years ago since we shelved this conversation because there were urgent needs. But if you recall when we pulled together all whatever it is sixteen, 17, middle, and high school leaders. Two years ago we started with this idea of each and every student. Realizing the graduate profile. And we asked our building
leaders to answer this question. How might a system wide early release advance our strategic plan priorities and students realization of graduate profiles in unique ways based on each school's context. So it's not a one size fit all. But it is also balance of what's the district trying to move? Do we have time? How does that look different at each school? And so, continuing to build on that, what we know about quality professional learning is that it's focused on ultimately helping our students get where they gotta go. Like, that's the end product. Did this help kids? Um
but that you gotta support our staff to get there and so, it's sustained with regular and a frequent cadence waiting every quarter like mister Foster talked about is to and frequent, you're not going to make changes. Think about sports. It's relevant to our educator practices and our school goals. It involves feedback and those precision moves and then it it needs to be characterized by collaboration, ongoing collaboration. Um when we think about what this is going to entail, these three big ideas is that we, it shouldn't be random acts and
that was something that oversight matters. It can't just be folks leaving. Um there needs to be a shared vision and there are outcomes aligned to our strap plan that we're going to look at models of what do this well. We're not just going to be willy nilly with time and that we're going to consider logistical elements because this is it is a it is a change that needs to be planned for. This is probably pretty relevant to y'all when you think, well, what would this time be if any community member would ask? This is an ask on time. These are those must haves.
Each school must have an explicit focus on MTSS which is really who are those kids that aren't getting it. You should be able to talk to any building leader or any any it and say how are you supporting through those tiered supports Which kids aren't getting it? What are we going to do different? If there is learning community time, it's guided and it's outcome based. It's not just hearsome planning time. It's not in place of existing planning times. That there's a monthly ongoing cadence that actually lowers the stress load of things. It's like, you know, we got a consistent rhythm here
and then, what you see new and this is, I think, what makes this better now than two years ago is that there's this idea of a district Friday that been the secret sauce for elementary for years but this idea that we would be at our secondary schools we'd be acting on district developed PL from Strive. Um Strive has given us great learning. We meet NIC teams. What we don't have is the time to apply that learning with staff. So we're not able to move that as quick as perhaps we could if we met more frequently. You might wonder about how does this
play out across the state? So we did a study as we first started looking at this of districts across Colorado and you'll see that well, Josh who supported us from relay said early release would be a huge game changer for you all in D fifty-one and if you look at systems, many districts across Colorado have early release. There's variability in the frequency and format. Often, it does link to the district priorities. Sometimes, it's school directed. Um many smaller districts utilize even our charter schools here in town, utilize a four-day week and then,
when you look at some of the highest performing networks of schools across the state almost always a a keystone of them having a weekly early release. It's how they bring the team together to say how are we doing? What are we going to do next? And so just as we get ready to pass this off, what would this look like? We asked building leaders to talk about what would this look like at your school to move your the school goals? What flexibilities do you need? And then we want to keep thinking about what is that look like to integrate the strive work. So here's a prototype. Um imagine each week
really being mapped out. So it's predictable, unpredictability lowers stress with kids, with adults. Um so you'd really have two components usually and this would look different in each school. This is just a model. Week one of each month would be something like district Friday. Here's the strive learning we've had. Maybe it's that the the behavior and student support department. There's some learning from them. Um this idea of staff wellness is a part of our strategic plan. There can be space for school business. Right now we have a staff meeting once a month for 30 minutes from 330 to four when you try to take
time to connect, celebrate, and talk about learning or updates. It's just too much to put into there, right? That frequency is not there and then, looking at the curricular work, the blue is, how are you moving? That's the work of those professional learning communities. How do we know kids are learning? What are we going to do about it when they're not? You see, MTSS Kid Talks, that's an idea of who are that 10 to 15percent of learners that are really struggling in sixth, seventh, 8th grade, ninth, tenth, 11th, 12th and then, this would actually link to those building and services. So,
this isn't competing with but really complementing. It's getting those bite-sized goals and so, this was a model that Fruita developed two years ago. Uh Principal Johnson's in the audience right now. His team developed this collaboratively as a committee. So, it just shows you each school, these would probably look different and I think Dan is going to take some time to tell us what Palisade thought about this. Hi, thanks for having me up here as well. Um yeah, this is something that we had developed with our leadership
team as well and like I said, it's it's nothing is set in stone and I think the idea creates a lot of some flexibility for us but I think this is really what what came to my mind. First quarter, we did the professional development. We modeled what a data cycle looks like. We watched videos and we modeled what that looks like. Um you give the assessments, you grade norm, you grade the assessments, you create the data, you look over the data to see what you notice, and then how do you adjust after that, how do you reteach, how do you, and that's just
one day to cycle, and doing that, we we modeled that, I think teachers were excited about that, and then after a couple weeks in the amount of time and effort they put into that, it kind of goes away and kind of like as Randy had, and I wouldn't say goes away, but it doesn't stay on top of their mind, because teaching kids and kind of as Randy, Randy said, the reflection isn't as prevalent if you're not doing it each week. Second quarter, we modeled what rigor looks like through critical thinking and giving students a lot of verses,
giving students a lot of work. I mean, a lot of teachers will say, you know, I I have them do seventy problems a night. That's rigorous. It's not rigorous. That's a lot of work, right? And so, the first level, we had them evaluating facts. Second level, exploring structures. The third level context and the fourth level was evaluating concepts and transferring that knowledge and we had the the teachers all go through this looking at a at a a historical picture They went back. They were excited about it. They they
did it for a little while and then they were like but we've still got to teach and the reflection wasn't there. The third quarter we we talked about structures and routines and we we modeled some of the practices that they that they show and again, teachers were excited about it and then, they there wasn't time to reflect on it. At the fourth quarter, we did the same kind of thing and we talked about what is a bell ringer look like. What is proximity in your classroom look like and teachers go back and they're changing their proximity and they don't have time during their PLCs as
they're looking at their assessments as they're looking at their common assessments as they're looking at their unit plans to talk about how did proximity adjust or or change their practice. There's just not time to reflect as if we were doing weekly I think it would give us a lot more time And kind of the analogy I use is and and I know Will coaches football but imagine if you came in on Saturday and you had an eight hour practice but then you don't practice until the game on Friday. The game on Friday you play and you're like what?
You didn't get what we practiced last Saturday for eight hours and you think what's more effective? An eight hour practice on Saturday or for two hour practices throughout the week. And so that's kind of the way I look at is we have once a quarter, we've got professional development but we don't look through it as well as we could if we were able to do this for chunks of time every Friday. So, the second side, they they asked, you know, how did this look when my my accountability committee, I went
through each one of the expectations of our staff with learning communities and instructional leadership team, an operational leadership team, and all of our staff are on different teams with no time to do it. So, we're asking staff to come in at 7 o'clock. We're asking staff to stay late asking staff to eat their lunch during these meetings. We're asking staff to do a lot of things. And I think to a I I think at Palisade a fairly successful level or level of success. But I think about how much
better we could be doing if we designated some some real time for this stuff. And so when I explained this to my accountability committee to my parents and I'll have somewhere sometime ten, sometimes 15 parents, not a ton but They looked and said, this is a no-brainer. So, for those few parents, it was a no-brainer that we would have an early release Friday and they were very supportive of it and so, yeah. Okay. Thank you, Dan. Mm
hmm. So, building off that input and what a number of our principals were asked to and did last year speak with their school accountability committee. Surveys have been conducted to gather input and measure support for early release including feedback from families. We did that in twenty twenty-three. Building administrators in December of 20 twenty-four and teachers and staff in February of twenty twenty-five. This ongoing input helps shape a plan
meets the needs of our students, educators, and our community. In 2023, we surveyed parents and the community to engage support for a secondary early release. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Nearly 77% expressing favorability to the idea. This strong endorsement highlights the community's recognition of the value of dedicated time for professional learning and student support. In December of
20twenty-four, a survey was conducted with our building administrators to assess support for the secondary early release. An overwhelming 91% responded favorably, reinforcing the need for a dedicated time to enhance professional learning, collaboration, and student success. Hey, Jen. On that, can you, are these the numbers of respondents that you had? Yes. So, it which I wanted to add a little bit right now like. Turn around, I can't get it all in one place. Yeah. I can see it. So, do you
want me to go back? Are you looking on yours? No, I'm just curious. Um so, it looks like six, 7, eight, nine, maybe 1100? Yes, we had a large number of people respond. Yes. Out of what was the total number? No, this is parent and community. How many did we send out total? I I can't tell you that. Or how how many not because I don't. So are there that I'm just curious. So it's a good question. So
we don't have that hard number but you have 20000ish kids and we only sent it out to secondary. So you're talking half of that. So it's a a pretty good representation of this the families who have kids in secondary schools. In the district. Okay. So yeah. We had over a we were actually we're pretty darn impressed. A thousand people responded. Parents and community members. So that's parents and community members. So out of somewhere around 10, 000 we ended up. Ish. Ten. Correct. Okay.
We're going to ballpark those numbers. Um this one is for building administrators. We did this at a level meeting and I do want to highlight well we're a number of us are here up at the podium this evening. We have a number of principals that are attending this evening to show their support for early release. And they overwhelmingly said, obviously, it was favorable, favorable, and then to what extent do you expect weekly, early release to be beneficial? You can see that it was well over 90%.
We got a couple. This is a little more busy than the rest. But this district wide survey collected input from secondary middle school and high school teachers across multiple campuses regarding the potential shift to an early release on Fridays. Five hundred and seventy-two respondents essentially with a super majority. Support implementing early release across middle school and high school levels. Particularly for its potential to improve teacher collaboration allow time for
backwards planning, and MTSS meetings. Increase student outcomes through better prepared instruction. There was an additional survey sent out only to middle school teachers indicating that the proposed early release change would reduce individual planning time just on Fridays. Um in exchange for a focus professional learning time on Friday. Um and to include structured media, meetings, discussions and again more MTSS collaborations. 71% of the
210 responding teachers across all middle school support and early release. Highlighting the benefits such as structure time, content team time, and relief from before and after school meetings. So, this is the boards part in support of early release. I would like to propose a modification to the D 51 school calendar for next year. From middle school that I believe would benefit both students and educators. Specifically, I would
like to request that the board consider exchanging two existing middle school in-service days for two additional instructional days for students. By replacing two in service days with full instructional days, students would gain additional time for that in-depth learning, structured classroom activities, and better preparation assessments. While I recognize the importance of professional development for educators, I believe that maintaining a balance between teacher in service and direct
student instruction is essential for maximizing student achievement. So, those days, you see in that with those yellow arrows, those green days right now in the calendar that we've adopted, you've adopted and approved. Um those days are elementary planning which would remain middle school in service in high schools are in session. My proposal is that middle school and high school would be in session on those days. Now, I'm going to pass it on to Nikki.
As Jennifer mentioned earlier, we envision each school developing a plan that focuses on three key areas. Student behavior support, student academics, and staff collaboration. This approach ensures that each building's plan is tailored to its unique needs while aligning to our broader strategic goals. By prioritizing these areas, we aim to create a supportive, academically enriching, and collaborative environment for both
students and staff. Additionally, each building team will develop its own plan ensuring opportunities for teacher input in the process. Our timeline for early release viability is structured to ensure thorough planning, stakeholder engagement, and seamless implementation for early release. From 2023 to February 202five, we focused on developing models and engaging key stakeholders. In March
and April, we will finalize essential logistics, confirm the calendar, and secure necessary support. Beginning in May and beyond, site leadership teams will take the lead in developing professional learning plans and logistical frameworks ensuring a smooth and effective transition. Our next steps for early release focus on collaborative work groups that will refine key areas of implementation to ensure alignment
with our strategic plan priorities. These efforts will include developing, operational logistics, designing learning experience for students and staff, and ensure compliance with policies and scheduling requirements. Middle and high school teams will explore models that best support their unique needs while leadership will provide guidance across all levels. Through this structured approach, we will create a
sustainable early release model that enhances student learning, staff collaboration, and overall operational efficiency. The next steps of early release focus on finalizing decisions, organizing work groups, and ensuring school specific planning. Senior leadership will need to make a final decision based on a board calendar vote. We're hoping all this will happen by April first. Following this, early release work groups will organize for action, addressing key areas such as policy, curriculum, professional learning, and logistics.
Principals will develop those school specific schedules to ensure all required elements are incorporated into their plan and in quarter four, principals will share these plans with their school about accountability committees to provide rationale and gather parent input ensuring well-informed and community supported implementation. So, when will teachers and and staff be ready to roll with this? Like, plans are made. We know what we're doing. Today, we start, correct? Our
principles, while they're here, they've been working on this with an anticipation that this was going to happen. There were some other additional background pieces that we needed to work on. We needed Clint and I and Ari, we worked with STA to ensure that transportation because we all know buses run our schedules, right? And so, ensuring that all schedules could be with our buses, could be met with transportation and they can. So, our we asked our, like I
said, that survey with our principals back in December. Our principals have not forgotten and Doctor Hill can attest that this idea of early release. Um and they have just been waiting for that right time. They're really the ones that resurrected release and they've been planning it and they'll be ready to go once we make that decision or once that decision has been made. They'll be ready to go. They'll be ready to go. I'm sure they'll answer. So, the the request is this fall. It's. Correct. That's what we're hearing. Correct. Okay. Correct.
Right. So, they'll continue to plan and and get their ducks in a row. So, get their ducks in a row. Through the rest of this year. Correct. And be ready to go when we start this new schedule in the fall things will be in place to start this actually happening. There won't be just more planning for another extended period of time. Absolutely. Okay, I don't know how to answer it. Absolutely not to half of that question. Well, don't be ready. Until Jim. You understand what what
I'm getting. I think the board is just looking for clarity on what we're needing, I think, to just make a decision on, I think the, so, to Jen's point, she's being very nice. Um, I've I've been one of the barriers in this but So, the schools are, they're, they could do this tomorrow, probably if they had to. So, and some, many of our secondary schools are already doing they're all doing this when I said I was the barrier, it's great. Um, so yeah. I did too. Yeah. Um, I, some of them are
already doing a modified version of a, of a different release anyways. And remember, our, our elementary schools have been doing this for a very long time. So, it's not new for our district. It would be new for secondary as a uniformed plan. Like I said, we already schools that have already been doing late starts things of that nature. So, it would have some uniformity which would help with transportation, would help with families that maybe have kids in multiple grade levels. Um so, really what the board, the board's responsibility in this is not to make a decision on whether or not to to
implement early release. It's really, we would need to change the the ask is around changing the calendar and the reason why the calendar idea was brought up was because one of the pieces of feedback we got was what we we don't want to lose instructional time with kids. Um and so Jen and her team went back, worked with the principals, and talked about how could we gain back some of that instructional time and that's where those in-service days came back. So, that was based on some feedback we got and that's even, I should say, that's even with seventy plus percent of families saying we already support
this the way it was presented to begin with but some of the feedback we got was we don't want to lose instructional time and so they they gain some of that back through that and I, you know, I would just say kind of a pitch for this too is that anytime you talk about losing something and that that there may be fear there but you know, sometimes there's addition through subtraction and so if you're, if you're just constantly pushing but you're not giving folks time to actually plan around what they're pushing for, then, are you really getting high quality or the highest quality product in the end
and so, I think that this would obviously we're hearing directly from folks at the schools that they would benefit from this and I think we would see the impact on students in the end but that was some of the delays was me and then STA making sure we can get the transportation in place and then trying to get back some of that instructional time for for students and that's where the board would come in. It would be a modification to the calendar for next year. That is on Fridays, right, Jen? Right. Okay. Same as. Right. I said you guys answered and asked all my questions. I know with a lot of schools that have
four-day weeks, they tend to start earlier in the year. So, with that, that wouldn't be a change to our calendar? No. And you're going to vote on those calendars, a number of those calendars this afternoon. They're elementary calendars. They're not secondary schedules and it's not, it's an early release. It's not a four-day week. It's on a less. Four-day week. Week. Yeah. Day or week. Mm hmm. All of our school, they will just have
shorter periods every Friday. So, they'll still have their full schedule. They'll meet with all of their teachers but they will just meet less than their scheduled time during the week. Okay. I I think I had heard somewhere where maybe it was the comparative districts that some of them had 40 weeks. So, I think I, sorry, I was mixing the two together. So, okay. Yeah, the the other thing I just want to reiterate that was already said but this is time for
teachers and admin and staff to have its planning professional learning but it's also really having conversations around students that maybe struggling and how do we provide more support. So, I don't want people to hear this and think, well, it's just everyone's just going to have a two-hour kind of hangout on Fridays like there's actually structure to this. Um and the issue we ran in two years ago with this is as we've been going through declining enrollment and it's been harder and harder to staff secondary schools in a way where it allows them to have some of that common planning
time during the day or time for their, you know, whether it be grade levels or content areas to meet together, that's become more of a more of a challenge and I think it will continue to be a challenge for us. This provides, you know, some relief there to be able to say you have this dedicated two hours to be able to have some of this planning on on a Friday. So, just to be clear, it's it's the teachers will be doing that work on those Fridays. Um and we're trying to keep it within their hours, right? Because otherwise, then you're staying after for hours and it's and it's outside your contract time and so, it's putting extra demand on on
folks if we don't do something like that. So, this gives them those two hours on Fridays to be able to have that structured time for their but at the end of the day, the goal is better outcomes for kids whether that be academically or or student well being is having that time to actually have those discussions and we've seen success as Jen mentioned at the elementary level. Um this is a request around secondary being able to do that as well. I think maybe it would be helpful because as I was going through this, I haven't been able to be in all the meetings when y'all been having these conversations Overwhelmingly, there was support in the surveys but
why would why would a teacher say I don't want this? I don't know if there's a reason why somebody might say I don't I don't think this is a good thing. Um the few teachers that we spoke to that were unsure hadn't seen the the layout of it and they thought it was just going to be two hours of free time. And so when they saw that every school already has a structure like this that's dedicated to specific tasks. It's not just 2
hours. A lot of them said well if I would have known that I wouldn't have voted that way we did follow up with some of the teachers who said no and most of them wanted us a very good structure for those Fridays. Yeah, I think that was last time when this came around, I think that was some of the feedback I got was they felt like they were losing instructional time. However, I think when some of you then spoke to
them about what they would get in exchange for that, I think that made more sense to them so that because I also heard that the newer teachers wanted to be able to have time to collaborate with more seasoned teachers because our newer teachers were feeling like they were not getting time to have sort of that mentorship with the seasoned teachers of like, hey, how do you do this and how do you do that when I think we were walking through some of the middle schools at the time and so, they were either having to come in
early or stay late and that can be really hard especially when you have two different schedule that may not accommodate times to do that. So, yeah, that was, I, I recall that being some of the feedback we got last time when we were talking about this. Okay. Well, and and to feedback on that, yeah, that feedback from family saying, if I have a younger kid on Fridays, they go home and there's nobody there. It's not for every family but if you have an older sibling now, they have somebody that's also out on Fridays as well. I
think there's there's other benefits as well. I mean, around athletics and and other things too that don't apply to every single kid but there are other benefits as well around this. So, added to to the question really for the board it's more around and we're not taking any votes tonight but thinking about giving back those in-service days next year as instructional days and that would just be a modification to the calendar. And I haven't modified that calendar yet so I can do that and we can put it on the agenda next. Tuesday. Next week. Already.
Next. Next week. I was talking to a parent. Um today after school and they said my kids a three sport athlete and we require all sophomores to do an internship. Um for career and I said, well, what if they had that early release Friday and they had that two hours to do that internship and they were like, oh my gosh, that'd be amazing. So, that's not why we're doing it but it's a a possible consequence or kind of like what Doctor Hill was talking about about babysitting. We're not doing it because of that but it's it's
it's a pro to it. Well, the other thing that we wanted to make sure and and Jen and and Clint and and all their teams have been working really hard on this to try to cross all the Ts and. the Isis around. concurrent enrollment, career center, things like that. So, just making sure that we don't pull back on opportunities for kids because you don't have something on our fighting anymore. I know they've worked through all all that. Yes, well. Um Career Center was one of our concerns because we have three mods every day and so, what would that mod schedule and structure look like for our career center and Todd is here. Um
all of our principals were invited to speak at public comment. I don't know how many of them will other than you can see them talking with their body language behind me, correct? Uh and I know Todd and his team came together to identify what would that schedule look like and STA was able to accommodate their schedule. Sherry has been working with CMU Tech to ensure that our students aren't losing opportunities and then of course we have our concurrent students who are taking classes. Um and Ari actually took some time to dig
in to our students who are taking concurrent classes at the college. Not early I mean early scholars not students are taking college courses at the high school and many of those they don't, if they take so many classes, they're not taking any classes at the high school, so they're not, their day isn't being jeopardized at the college or at their high school. So, we really did, you know, the the dotting the eyes and the crossing the T's truly tried to make sure that we were trying to
ensure all students, no student would be left behind or left out because of early release on Friday. They are. They have an abbreviated schedule already and so, yes, but they're able to accommodate. And the the last thing I'll say no quit talking is it where this is it may feel somewhat reactionary if nobody somebody hasn't been paying attention this whole time but really this is an over two year conversation we've been having and really even before that this was a request from schools prior to that but also this is
something we would want to monitor. Um so if we put this in place next year we want to kind of monitor it. See if it's actually effective. See if we need to make any adjustments along the way. Um so that would be something that we would do as well as a district. Maybe you'll hear more. No pressure, principals. Alright, thank you very much. Alright and then the the last presentation is we've got Dan Burke coming up to give a quick overview of Board book which we've switched to for where we store and share
documents and information for our board meetings. One second here. Oh, do you need them lower? Brighter? We can turn them down. Hello, Bord and thank you for having me come up and explain a little bit about Board Buck. I'm going to make this brief. It is a very simple product. It is really about media consumption for the public and really trying to trying to make sure our strategy plan and transparency and things like that out to the community. Make it more easier to
stomach and and find that information. So, we're going to get into it. Um I've kind of told you a little bit about about the presentation board book Um it's going to be our main platform for board meetings. Essentially, it is a cloud-based program that houses our meeting agenda, PDF forms that we, that we use in the meetings and anything else like reports or something like that that the board would see. Um the public will have access to it. Um kind of kind of went
over. I'm just giving you a kind of a good book or kind of look here but the big things about this is going to be our meeting management. Um being able to create the agenda with you guys not having to be in the and be able to just, you know, approve 'em, find different things, break something else that needs to be talked about. Document access and transparency, like I said, it should be a lot better for the board to be able to access the documents but really and truly, it's going to be nice to be able to give those or make 'em available to the public in a PDF form, a very easy way to
find it and and and consume the the information. Um we're going to go into here and like I said, the public access website, we've published it on a couple place is here. Um we have it under our menu under our Board of Education. We have it there under Board Book and we also have it if you go into the Board of Education website. It'll be right there on the left called Board book. This will take you. Now, now, so I am someone, I make sure that I'm clear on this. This is
not the site that you guys will go in to log in to, right? This is for public. So, public will come into this. And be able to find our meeting, March 25th and you can click on agenda here. But let me show you the part that's really kind of neat. And that's, you can subscribe to this site. So, when you when you subscribe, you can put any Email in. You don't have to sign up. It doesn't create your account. All it
does is create a mailing list that gives you access anytime, anything changes on the site or anything new gets added. So, I just want to show that real fast for you because like I said, that's going to be a huge engagement for our community. As you look at the agenda, you can kind of follow it. Um you can look over here. There's a couple things that you can either show or not. I like to have all those selected. Kind of a neat thing as you download all of this by one button and it'll download the whole
pamphlet for you and you'll have it. If you follow along in the board meeting, you can come in here and click on the recognition or I'm sorry, the recognitions, read the documents, follow along. The neat thing about these and this is in a gigantic document but it has a search feature, right? So, if you really wanted to get back in here and say, hey, my daughter was recognized today. Um can I find it, right? There it is, Ripper highlights it down here and so, it makes it a little bit easier
to find and and process information Um let's see Let me go back and so like I said the agenda, like I said, it's all here and I just want to show you just a couple of the other kind of just just the the files and like I said, it makes it very easy to view them. Um I've I've looked at this on a phone. Um it has a built-in PDF viewer. So, very very mobile friendly and so like I said, having the ability to go in there and
search documents. Um we will be able to link videos on the same place where the agenda is. So, it's the and we hope to be able to archive our videos to be able to search for certain things. Now, that is something that so that you can do but we are we're we're working on that and so, I'm sorry. Let me get that slideshow finish here. So, the public. So, our did our live demonstration. So, our big things, right? Appliance and governance is the transparency Um historical records and centralized
documentation. That's where they stay, that's where they live. Going further in the program, I mean, I think we have some, you know, we we have a chance to, to enhance it, we've gotta take a look at new things coming out with it. I think questioning you guys and making sure that we're talking with the public and see what things are working good for them and what is not and make sure that we can strengthen that and then, exploring additional features every week, every month that they may come out, it may be viable for us to use that but
then, again, it may, like I said, we want to keep it as simple as we can for our public. So, just a recap. Meeting management, being able to make meetings and agree with them, document access and transparency. We have improved efficiency and the big one for me was the notification of subscription features for our community. I'd like to open the door for any questions. Like I said, it's very simple but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. I just have one question. I'm not sure
that you answered it fully. Can we do a link? just for the video? Yeah, absolutely. Meeting s. Um yes, in fact, we've got one. I'm working with them right now to be able to because we host from Facebook. Mm hmm. Um it's got a link to that and then it's gotta do a handshake through. So, we're trying to get that handshake to work. Got it. But I I feel very very confident that we'll have that fixed result. Right. Oh, that looks good. I had not seen the public facing side yet. I do know on our side, it has been much more
manageable for me to find the agendas. Um I know just the search feature alone has been helpful because I'll I'll I'll think about a meeting from some time ago and think like, oh gosh, what was that thing we were talking about and then the search feature and I'm sure our community as well. They're like, what meeting did we talk about such and such and then, or like you said, a and they can go in and find it and so I'm I'm really excited that this will be much more user-friendly for our
community and future boards to be able to use both on the back end and also on the front end for our community. And as and if it gets better and stuff like that, we have it, we do have the the ability to do some training videos and stuff like that. So if there's something that gets more complicated, we'll definitely create some stuff out to our public to make sure that they understand how to use it. Yeah. This is great. I like that it's all in one place. Yeah. Yeah, if you remember how it was before it was individual links on our website and to President
Heights point, it was, you, like, I, we couldn't even find, when did we talk about that five years ago? Um, what meeting was that? So, that will be beneficial and and Bert mentioned this, but the, the main goal here was tying it back to the strategic plan on how we, how do we provide better communication and transparency for our community, and this is one way to be able to do that. So, and then because this is a organization that works with a lot of school districts in the state, I know they work with Casby and and other organizations as well. It's tailored to and catered to
school districts. So, that's another benefit of as well. So, thanks to Burke and his team for and Amy and everybody's been working on getting board book up and running. So, we really appreciate it. Amy is the true all-star. Yeah. Well, thank you and I think it makes it a little easier for Amy to honestly help take minutes and roll call and stuff as well. So, it just creates better efficiency and it's just a much user-friendly for, like I said, future, our board, future boards, and for the community. So, this is, it's just fantastic. So, thanks Dan
for presenting and. Absolutely. Thanks, Amy for learning the whole program and anything future that will. So, thanks for presenting on it, Dan. So. Absolutely, guys. Thank you. Right. Does the board need a break or I guess we'll see how many. I don't know. Amy, how many public comments do we have? One. Okay. Let's do it. We can. Your 30-minute break. Go for it, Will. Alrighty. So, for our one and only audience
comment, miss Deborah Settler. Nobody's on deck, nobody's on the hole. You still only get 3 minutes. Good evening board members. And Doctor Hill. My name is Deborah Stettler. I'm a 12 year resident of Grand Junction. A big supporter of public schools. And a member of the League of Women Voters of Mesa County's Education Advocacy Team. Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you and for the dedication, diligence, and professionalism
that you bring to D fifty-one. The League of Women Voters believes that an equitable quality public education is critical to developing informed, engaged citizens. Students must learn to think critically about important current events and classroom discussion is essential to this learning. Teaching must reflect the perspectives and experiences of all people including marginalized groups. I'm speaking to you tonight on behalf of the league to follow up on
the student comments made at the February 18th meeting. At that meeting, some students expressed concerns that some teachers did not feel free to teach or discuss some topics. One student referred to quote recent conversations surrounding avoiding a research papers regarding sexuality, gender, or race, unquote, and to teachers quote, expressing concerns revolving around executive orders, immigration, and social issues, unquote. Students
also expressed concerns about such actions as philosicas being drawn on whiteboards and students telling other students that they were glad they might be deported. We that these comments do not represent a formal survey of students or teachers Nonetheless, we are concerned about the possibility of the learning environment being compromised by student behavior or teacher hesitancy to teach certain topics. We are very much in favor of D51's vision to engage, equip, and
empower each and every student, each and every day. To that end, we hope that there will be an attempt to learn whether students at other schools have similar concerns. And that teachers surveyed anonymously about the extent to which they may feel obliged to censor the teaching of comprehensive fact-based history or discussion of current events. We hope that any decisions made or actions taken will be shared with the community. Again, thank you
for the opportunity with you. And for everything you do for our community and for our learners. Thank you. Right here. Thanks, Todd. Yeah. Thanks, buddy. Yeah. I'm just going to. There you go. Here to support. I support you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Alright, Board. Thank you. Thanks for all the work you do. Um it's an enormous amount and I know I speak for the community when I say that we appreciate all the hard work you give to our our faculty, our staff, our students, and our overall
community. Um just in regard to the the possibility of of an of a unified early release. Um I want to share that and I'm, by the way, I'm Jory Sorensen. I'm Grand Junction principal. Um I want to share that we currently have a 40-minute early release and it's Mondays and this this Monday, so yesterday, we spent that time talking about our upcoming testing. So, our comprehensive
testing around Psat, SAT, and 11th grade C mass and we we talked to our teachers about what their role is during that, about all the logistics around it, about some different online training and onboarding as well as all logistics and the moving of kids. So, this is just one example Um and in that 40 minutes, we, it's really just directional information. And the what we expect of them and that and there's four different roles my faculty has during that depending on what it is
their job is. So, we're expecting them to take that information and then go out and and operationalize it in a way that puts our students in the best possible situation to prove their knowledge, to prove their content understanding, and to perform their best for their future. Um If we had more time, we would have given our teachers time to go through that together in their group, in their group of four, whichever of the four groups they were in and say,
okay, what is this look like? How will I make sure I'm preparing my room, preparing my students and it's really a big thing for us. It's you know, our aim, one of our big goals is around SAT improvement. Um it's around sea mass improvement really doing our best with everything we do. And in at Grand Junction High School with ninety-eight teachers in order for us to move consistently and with coherence from grade to grade. Um yeah, just as mister Foster was discussing, it's very important
that our teachers have time to collaborate. The other context of Junction High School, what you know about is we built this school for maximum utility. And I'm proud to see you're doing that. We're using it. We're using just about room, just about every period. Um what that what that means is we, our master schedule doesn't allow like ninth grade comp teachers to meet together during their day. We provide that during that early release time. So, Unified
Early Release Time would help that for for really guided planning. So, I think I'm out of time. You can get to know 3 minutes. Two, one, yeah. Alright. Alright, I'll follow whatever protocol. Okay, I'll switch. No. Hi, guys. Todd McClaskey, principal at Kerr Center. Um you know, I have always been kind of opposed to any kind of early release. Um I feel it's a huge responsibility and letting kids go. I've always, I've always
struggled with that. So, at Ferda, we experimented with a lot of ways. You know, collaborating, getting teachers together, providing professional development, moving our goals forward, our vision is really difficult. So, we tried a lot of ideas to be, we try to be really innovative at Fruda to hold our kids but free up some staff and it was, yeah, it was difficult. So, I'll say that. At the Kerr Center, you know, I
was nervous about this because I didn't want to go from three mods down to two. It it eliminate about a hundred and seventy kids from CTE programming and that's an obstacle we've been able to avert, you know, going from 110 minutes. We'll go to 70 minutes on Fridays. Still, you know, over hour. I think that's adequate. The the benefit to the Career Center is the uniformity of the early release. We really struggle with all the high schools being on they have
early releases now. Three of the four do. So, it poses a strong, it's a struggle for us to accommodate all the different schedules and the uniformity of early release Friday. Will be a big benefit to the Career Center in terms of consistency and and having students all the students there at the same time. You know, right now, we have some students from various schools that are gone on different days due to their schedules of the the current schedules of the existing high schools. So, that will be a big win, I
believe, for the Career Center. Another positive, as I've wrapped my brain around an early release, another positive for our staff is we do a lot of work with industry partners. Our construction program works with local electricians, plumbers, this would embed some time on Fridays for us to work with industry partners whether it's with a vet science or the health science or the construction program or a culinary program. It will allow our teachers to also with their advisory
boards. Uh typically they they try to jam those in during a a lunch. Um now we can embed those into some Fridays where our rewards and those are our industry partners can come in on those Fridays and work with our teachers to make sure our kids are getting the skills they need in that. In the tree. So, those are some benefits that I see. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, guys. It's marked today is the day that two of our principals broke protocol and took over Public Common. Thank you.
Alright. Alright. Come on, dude. Well, Alright. So, normally, we don't always have a response to public comment but miss Stetler, we do actually have some updates since the student comment from the nineteenth. So, we did get some information back from the school. So, they had not received any reports of swastikas being drawn on whiteboards. Um it was looked into.
Um there was a swastika that was found in a bathroom that was drawn in soap on a mirror but when situation like that arise. Um the school does their best to look at cameras to determine who may have drawn the image. Oftentimes, they do come up empty handed and they cannot pinpoint who committed the vandalism but the schools definitely do look into it and make sure that if they can pinpoint who it is that they take care of those things. Um they have not reprimanded any teachers for any of the reasons stated by the students
two weeks ago. Um there was a parent phone call with questions about how some of the topics including immigration and segregation were being handled in an American government class Um the principal met with the teacher to learn the teacher's side of it and then followed up with the parent and both parties were pleased with where things landed. And no disciplinary action or reprimand was taken. So so these the principles has worked very hard over the last few years to
address belonging in the school. And particularly with different subgroups. Um and it remain central focus especially at Fruit and Monument High School since that's where the students that had made public comment and they want to ensure that every student feels like they belong there. Um so, the principal did meet with the concerned students and at that point and obviously wanted to make sure that they felt heard and so, I will also state that we do have a controversials materials policy so
that anytime a teacher feels that they want to bring up any kind of controversial topic. Um we do have a policy that they can follow Um if they want to bring up something like that. And so it really just is revolves around making sure that parents are notified. And so if a parent either feels comfortable leaving their student in the classroom or not. Um and so we we definitely want to make sure obviously aligns with curriculum and it's not necessarily something out in left field because it needs to align with what we're doing in course work. So So, anyways,
it kind of came a shock as to the board because we definitely have policy that allows our teachers to definitely teach to certain things and those those concerns were brought up to the principal and he obviously went and addressed those. So, I hope that answers at least most of your concerns and if not, some things are still being looked into. So. Quickly. Yes. I I may not be able to respond back to you. So. Oh, no, no, no, no, I, we did not take it that, that anybody was asking for a teacher to be reprimanded, what we were, and we would, what, and that
students were not asking for a teacher, what we wanted to make clear, was that, the board also didn't want a teacher to feel like they were being reprimanded, and that they felt like if they could or could not teach on a certain subject, and I did not take your comments is that you're asking for anybody to be reprimanded. My, I took your comments that you want to make sure that a teacher is obviously looking at what they could or could not do and I want to let you know that we have policy as far as what teachers
can do. So, no, I did not take your comments that you're looking for someone to be reprimanded. So, thank you for the clarity. So, normally, we don't always have a quick follow-up like that but I wanted to let you know that our superintendent was was very expeditious in being able to get back to the board on those things in working in tandem with the principal. So, but we're thankful for the students to be able to come and voice those concerns but we do take those things very seriously and we do
want to make sure our teachers also aware of the policies in which they can operate in to do those types of things. So, alright, I do think our board leaders, board members, do you need a quick five-minute? Okay, because we just. We have executive session. Well, we have consent agenda and then we do have the business items to vote on. So, just let's make a quick five minutes because then we have, we do have executive session after this. Okay, quick five-minute biological break. Well, I was going to say and resume because we just have our consent agenda and business items
Alright. So, the consent agenda contains personal actions and the acceptance of gifts and items that are routine and can be approved by a single motion. Items on the consent agenda will not be discussed individually by the board unless an item is removed for individual consideration. Um I will say the total for the amount of gifts is thirty-one thousand eight hundred and forty-six dollars and 96 cents. So, we're thankful to our community for the amount of gifts. So, is anyone requesting for any items to be removed for individual consideration? Okay seeing none. Um
do I have a motion to approve the items on the consent agenda? Motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. So, next up, we have our business items. So, our first one up is J 1 which is our fee schedule adoption. Do I have a motion to move forward with RV schedule adoption for this year? Motion to move on the fee schedule adoption? Any, oh,
sorry. Second, okay. Director Jones, second in, any discussion? I think we we had went over fees of little well a few meetings ago. So, I don't think anything else had been updated since then. Alright, seeing no discussion, we can go ahead and call the vote. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. Uh next business item, Jtwo, we have the school calendar adoptions for Dual Immersion
Academy, Independence Academy Charter School, Juniper Ridge, Charter School, Mesa Valley Community, Charter School, and New Emerson. Do you have a motion to approve those following school calendars? Motion to approve the school calendars. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none. We can call them a vote. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes.
Alright and then next up Jthree. Um so we have the positions on the state house bills. Um so she had seven that she presented and obviously gave her recommendation. So probably look at these individually. Or unless you I I can't make the motion. So if somebody else would like to make a motion. I'd make the motion to take them all at once,
all seven. Okay, that's. Those are her recommendation. Okay. So how how would you like so how would that read? Motion to approve the recommended positions on the bills that were presented by Amy Atwood. Okay, so. What would, how would you, I would clarify that? I would almost do em individually because. Do individual? Yeah, because if we have. Cuz we're not in support of all of them. I I I don't think there's ones that there's ones that I have issues
with. So. Well, I think what I think what Director Lima is saying is is approving the recommended positions that Amy said but what I would put in the motion is if you want to clarify is what I what I would recommend is I would say on say for instance, 113five, a position of support, 11seventy8, a position of opposition. Just so that every board member understands what position we're taking. If if we're going to do
all of them at the same time, does that make sense? Yes. Unless you want to do 'em individually. Wait, do you want to? Sorry. Clarify the, clarify the motion. You think we can do it at one in one move? Okay. Okay. So, please let Why don't let's clarify just read the last four letters of the bill and and the position. Cuz I know on twelve seventy-8, she said there was no position. No position. Would be a monitor, would it? Or yeah, yeah,
monitor. That's right. Okay Do you have on director Jones? Yeah. So, on bill 113five, support and it might just motion in each one or just. Well, just state, state, state it. Okay. Just state it. Bill 11seventy8, oppose it. Bill 1192. So, I'm sorry, I oppose it. Bill 1210 support. Bill 11 or 12, excuse me, 12 78 would be a monitor. Bill 1300 post and Bill
one one thirty-three, one fifty-three. One fifty-three. Yes, those were her recommendations. Yes. Okay. So, the motion on the floor is to adopt all seven positions and as the positions were read by Director Jones, the motion was made by Director Lima. Do we have a second? Second. Okay and any discussion? She did a great job explaining knees and I'm in agreement with those positions. Let's take about eleven
seventy-eight. I mean, you know, I worked in the schools and I saw how this could be detrimental to everyone involved, you know. Absolutely. I mean, we have kids that have special needs and requirements and assistance and if we're taking a hard stance that we are not going to give them an area where they can calm down and cool down, you know, out of the viewpoint of other students, you know, that puts them just in in a really bad situation. I mean, the the
kids themselves and then, if there's a situation where they're, you know, being destructive or something of that nature, it puts other students at harm. So, I just, I absolutely adamantly oppose eleven seventy-eight. Yeah, that was the ban on student seclusion. Yes. Yeah. I agree. That one is that one is very difficult for I think districts. Yeah. Any other discussion? Yeah, I think going from the top down. Discussion. The communication devices in schools, I mean, I think Doctor Hill and and our board has
I think, you know, created a great process for implementing communication devices in schools, you know, with our policy. So, I think having a policy in place is good. I do agree that they don't need to tell us what the policy needs to look like but having a policy in place is good. So, I don't think that violates too much local control but having a policy in place is good. I agree with Director Evanson what you said about student seclusion. Literacy. We talked
about that earlier. Um I just I don't think you don't need to fill out a Fafsa if you're not going to go to college and not everybody will do that and I don't think some parents want to share that information if they don't need to. And then yeah the data reporting I think we need to support that. Um kind of help get that cleaned up. And then the worker compensation that one seems very ownerous on top of employers and obviously school districts
included on that one. Um and then the school financial reporting requirements that just seemed petty for them to ask about private monies being donated to schools. So. Right? Anything else? Okay, we can go ahead and take the vote for those positions. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. Okay. Um any other board discussion?
Okay. I don't think so. Uh we have future meetings. Um so we have one next week because it's the first of April on our first Tuesday. So we have our work session coming up. Um we have a board coffee Saturday, April 5th. That'll be at Pear Park Elementary in the cafeteria. Um and then we have our next board business meeting on April 15th. So that's it. Anything else? Uh Doctor Doctor Hill and I, myself are, is it April 27th? Oh, and we're
going to get beat in basketball? Yeah, we're playing basketball against the Harlem Gotrotters at Oh. Orchard Mesa Middle School. If you want to come see us get dunked on, come hang out at Orchard Mesa. Okay. Well, Alrighty. So, we are not going to adjourn yet because the board does have an executive session after this. So, So, pursuit into section twenty-four dash six dash 4024 B, Colorado Revised Statute for the purpose of receiving legal advice on specific legal questions and
pursuit into twenty-four dash six dash four oh two four E, Colorado Revised Statues for the purpose of determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations, developing strategy for negotiations, and or instructing negotiators regarding negotiations with Mesa Valley Education Association. So, the following Um hold on. Iowa State who will be in the following sessions. For our first session myself, Andrea Heitz, director Lima, director Jones, Director Evanson, Director Chavez,
Doctor Hill, Miss Tammy Arrett, Miss Jennifer Marsh, Miss Nikki Jost, Miss Melanie Trujillo, Mister Andy Means, and Miss Clint or Miss excuse me, Mister Clint Garcia will be in our first executive session. And then the second one will be myself, Andrea Heitz, miss Angela Lima, mister Will Jones, Doctor Brian Hill, Miss Tammy Arrett, mister Chavez, Miss Barb Evanson, Missus Marsh, Missus Jost, and Mister
Melanie Trujillo will be in our second session. So, do I have a motion to move in to executive session? Motion to win. Second. Okay. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yep. Alright and then we will come out and finish our meeting and adjourn. So, Part: 2
Joining our meeting this March twenty-fifth. We'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. There we go. Alright. Uh we're we're going to go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance and then after the Pledge of Allegiance, we sit down and have a brief moment of silence. Uh so, if you can stand with us and gentlemen, remove your hats. Uh Director Evanson, would you like to kick us off for the pledge? A pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under god, in
with liberty and justice for all Alright, thank you very much. Uh we, Amy, we can go ahead and do roll call. Mister Chavez. Here. Missus Evanson. Here. Missus Heitz. Here. Mister Jones. Here. Miss Lima. Here. Alright, do I have a motion to approve the agenda for this evening? Motion to approve the agenda. Second. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Uh do I have a motion to approve the
meeting minutes from February 4th, 2025 and February 18th 2025. Motion to approve the meeting minutes from the fourth and the eighteenth. Second. Mister Chavez. Proved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright, we'll move into our recognitions. So, just a reminder, when you come up to the front, miss Callie would like to take a picture of you. Uh so, please stay at the front. First off, we have our Girls State
Wrestling team and so director Jones is going to take care of that recognition for us. Good evening. When the girls wrestling team and coaches please join me at the front of the room. The D51 Phoenix girls wrestling team achieved a historic milestone last month competing in the two thousand twenty-five class five A Colorado State Wrestling Championship and bringing home the state title. Under the strong leadership of head coach Chad Dare, the D51 Phoenix girls wrestling team hit the mats with depth, determination, and impressive talent. They clinched the state title despite not having an individual champion. A true
testament of the team's overall strength and consistency. Eight wrestlers placed in the top five of the weight class. Including standout performances by Shali Tucson Clarice McCoy who finished who both finished a state runner ups at 155 and 170, and Violet Gray, who secured third place at a and30 pounds. This marks the first ever state wrestling title for the program. A well-earned award for their hard work, perseverance, and grit. These students athletes have shown over the past few seasons. Their success reflects not only
growth of girls wrestling in Colorado but also a high bar for the team to set in the future. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill would like to congratulate our D51 Phoenix Girls athletes and coaches on these tremendous achievements. We look forward to watching your continued and success of the seasons to come. Also, coach Chad Dare was the Chasha two-time coach of the year, recognized. Clarice McCoy. Shile Tucson. Not here. Violet gray Clara didn't. Ryah Burke.
Madalina Diaz. Kylie Keel Vanessa Milton Cheyenne Page Harley Prater. Marissa Martinez Quesada. Quesada? Yeah. Okay and Kendall Lee Stewart. Congratulations. They're going to send you something and then real super fast. The coaches were Chad Dare, Dan Burke, Jolin Harris, Lupe Quazada, and Mario Bostina. Would mister Tatum Williams come up front with me? In February, Tatum Williams, a senior at Food of Monument High School, closed out his high school
wrestling career by bringing home the 5 fiveA state championship title in the boys wrestling and earning his 100th high school career win. Give it up for him. Come on. Hundred and 150th win. Whoo In competing in the 2025 Colorado State Wrestling Championship, Tatum demonstrated outstanding skills, focus, mental toughness, and determination. Earning the top spot in his weight class and ending a championship drought for both district 51 and Freedom Monument. His victory highlighted the years of
hard work and long hours. He poured into the sport in the strength of Fruit of Monument Wrestling Program. Supported by dedicated coaches, teammates, and a proud Wildcat community. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill are proud to celebrate Tatum's success and congratulate him on his achievement. We look forward to seeing what's next for this talented Wildcat both on and off the mat. Congratulations. I just like that he politely corrected you and he could've like taken you down and into a hold. So, good job. He could've taken him down,
right? You wouldn't but you could've. Would Abigail Martinez please join me at the front of the room? Abby, a senior at Grand River Academy, and a dedicated member of D 51's Hosa team, has received the Barbara James service award, a national recognition honoring students who volunteer their time to support health related causes and serve their communities. This award created in memory of Barbara James, a former Hosa leader who wholeheartedly believed in the
power of service, highlight students, who go above and beyond to help others in their communities, especially in healthcare settings. Abby has gone above and beyond in her commitment to our community, volunteering, volunteering more than 100 hours at St. Mary's Hospital. Her time and dedication have made a meaningful impact on the local health care community showing what it truly means to care for others. Her compassion, leadership, and service embody the values of Hosa and the spirit of the Barbara James service award. The
Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill are proud to recognize Abby's achievement and celebrate her hard work, heart, and the that earned her this reward Award. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. We're on. She was trying to mess me up. She turned it off on me. Sorry. Will Olivia Campbell and coach Jeff Johnson please join me at the front of the room? Olivia, a senior at Fruda Monument High School, was named the 2025 Southwest League Girls Basketball Player of the Year after an outstanding season. As a five nine point and shooting guard, Olivia has
been a key player for the Wildcats throughout her high school career. She hit a major milestone this season by scoring her thousandth career point during a win over Denver North where she put up nineteen points over 95 varsity games. She averaged nearly 13 points, four rebounds, two assists, and three steals per game. Her leadership hu inconsistent play have made a significant impact on the team's success and reflect the core beliefs we celebrate here in D fifty-one. Since taking over as head coach in June of twenty twenty-two,
Jeff Johnson has made a big impact on the Freedom Monument High School girls basketball team. In the twenty-four 25 season, he led the Wildcats to a strong seventeen to seven overall record and an undefeated 10 to zero run in league play. Earning them the top spot in the standings. Coach Johnson is known for his steady leadership. Sharp game strategy and focus on player development. He builds his team around fundamentals, teamwork, and a strong work ethic, fostering a culture where athletes, no, sorry, grow both on and off the court. Under
his guidance, the Wildcats have proven they are not just skilled shooters with solid technique. They're tough, competitive, and able to rise to any challenge which they showed throughout this season. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill congratulate Olivia and coach Johnson on their incredible season and being named the 2025 Southwest League player and coach of the year. We look forward to watching you and your continued success. Alright. Well, thank you everyone for those things. Um so, unless you're just dying to stay for the rest of the board meeting, we can get, I'll
give you guys a couple of minutes to make your way out. Um the large group, please stay in the lobby so Callie can get a group picture of you please. So, thank you all for coming and congratulations. So, Stanley doesn't have a car, how is he supposed to sub? I mean And you're just like, come on. This is getting. Why they always give me pretty stink? No. I think it's on purpose Oh yeah. Yeah. Like he just rolls with it. He's like good with it. Alright, sound, sounds good. Alright, we are going to move in to
our board reports. Uh so, board, gosh, it's been three weeks because we had spring break. So, we obviously bumped this meeting. So, any good things since we last met? Have a good calendar. Good spring break. Did everybody have a good break last week? Had a good break and a couple of us we went to couple of schools junction in Central for their with their council kids and it was a good time and learned good Bible things and other than that, spring break was good, quick but good. Yeah. Yeah, we've been one of the board
goals was to meet with the student groups. So, those have been good meetings. Yeah. Yeah, we had an opportunity to meet with Palisade and then I had one with Grand River Academy online. These kids are fun. It's good. Good stuff. Need to send out a Email to everybody just to give an update on all that. Uh huh. Just for good things. I went to Brookliff Middle School. I went to Simbra event that they had there. Those young individuals spoke about what how it is to be in their DF program. And how wonderful it is to
have to be able to have bilingual education in in their school. Uh they actually asked if there was a way that some of the students were asking can we ever present to the Board of Education of what we do. And and the gratitude that we have and the benefits of going to the Dia program for middle school. Well that's neat. Yeah. But it was it was really enjoyable to listen to them. They presented well. They had data. They had everything in PowerPoint. It was really nice to say. I think they have
presented before. It's probably time for them to do that again. Yeah. No. It's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. So, Director Jones and I met with Central High School. I'll make sure at our work session next week that I'll put some notes together. Yeah. Any committee or activity updates? We haven't had much going on since then. Okay did our strategic plan meetings. Oh yeah. A week and a half ago. So that was the first one I've had an opportunity to to sit in on and there was some good work like just I really appreciate the community
members that have that are taking the time to be a part of that. Um they took a lot of time to go out to a lot of our schools and you know, have conversations with administration and teachers and even students and just get some ideas on things that would be, you know, beneficial as a whole and then they brought that information back and presented it to the committee as a whole and then there was just a lot of like movement around and a lot of opportunity for conversation and thought provoking points that were brought up in the
last meeting. So, there was a lot of good work. I think it was a good one for me to attend a really, really appreciate the work that the committee is doing. I did the first three and I would agree, Barb, the number of people that showed up for that was really impressive and really a a wide swath of people and personalities and backgrounds that that all came together to make sure that our strategic plan Moving forward is is on target for our community. And we got to read it. Taylor Elementary. Oh. How about that? That's right. Yes. Yeah. Got to read.
I read the I read The Sour Grape book. That was a good book. Book with no pictures. I got to speed read Doctor Seuss at Fruit Villa Elementary and the kids loved it. Oh. It was great. I was told I read too fast and too slow by the same class. So, I don't know which. They were like, read it as fast as you can. It was great. It was a good book. Those are fun. Those are I appreciate our principals thinking of us when there's different events that we get to go and have fun like
that. So, that was a that was a good time. Yeah. Alright. Uh yeah, thanks for reminding. We've done a lot. I guess I forgot. So, alright. Is Amy on line for our legislative update? Alright. So, Amy A2od is our lobbyist for D fifty-one. So, there has been a lot going on at the Capitol and so while they have been in session, we have been trying to get on a regular update with her for legislative updates. So, she is going to update us on some state bills Um
so, Amy, if you're ready, go go right ahead. Sure. Good afternoon, evening. Amy A2od, contract lobbyist with the district. I'll, I think tonight, I'll start with an overview of the session and then we'll talk about the budget and then we can talk about any bills that I had sent through. So, overview of the legislature. It's we are six weeks in, so we're over halfway, or I'm sorry, we only have 6 weeks left. So,
we are over halfway, May 7th is the last day, and just as a reminder, in Colorado, we're in session for 120 days. And there is a hard stop, May seventh. So, bills either pass or are defeated, come May seventh. It it's it's been an interesting session because of the state budget and that the budget is is very tight. We went into the year Uh the state
budget went into this budget planning cycle over billion dollars in the hole in the red. So the joint budget committee has had to find places to cut. Um I don't think any department has gotten away without any cuts. I know that Department of Education has been cut, Medicaid will be cut, a higher ed will be, public safety, corrections, everyone has been cut. However, we do have a commitment
from a joint budget committee members. They're the ones that put the budget together to hold education flat or even increase it by $150 million dollars. So, while I'm sitting here right now, Representative Taggart is texting me because they're in the middle of those negotiations right now. We've been working on it for weeks but it's coming down to the wire. I bring up the budget because there are a lot of
bills. 500 just over 500 bills and many many of them take money. And so those bills are sitting in appropriations committee because until the budget passes then then the legislature knows how much money it has for new programs or any bills that are in the queue. So, let's let's transition that then into K -twelve. Like I said, we have a commitment from Joint Budget Committee members to
hold flat. There has also been discussion of increasing by $150 million. And if you remember last year, the board took a position to support the new school finance formula. There is a lot of discussion. It's culminating today on whether or not that new formula goes into place or not. And I've been working with Mel and with Doctor Hill. We've been going
back and forth, back and forth on the different scenarios for the school district. It still does look like D 51 will come out better if the new school finance formula is implemented. They've made some changes to it from what was passed last year. But D51 comes out better than if we had if we stay on the the current formula. So and I have to say Representative Taggart has he really cares what the
district thinks. And he and I have been in communication all session. And like I said it's I he's texting right now. So that's that's great. He really cares about the district. Um the budget in every year that I've been at the legislature which is 15 years has always been introduced the last week of March which would have been Monday. And the joint budget Committee said at the earliest Amy, we lost audio on you. Yeah, just. How about that? There you
go. There you go. Okay, I must have touched something. Sorry. Um I don't know where I was. The introduction of the budget being. Alright. Next week of March. So usually it's the last week of March and because there are so many cuts and so many big decisions to be made, it's not going to be introduced until next week and this impacts your budgets because it it takes two full weeks for the state budget to pass. So, it'll be at the earliest the 14th or 15th of
April before the state budget passes and once the budget passes, then, the School Finance Act can pass. The school finance act this year might run in tandem with the budget and may not come out after the budget like it usually does. I think, I think they're ready to introduce it before the end of this week. So, hopefully, we even know by by the 15th of April, what what school finance is going to
look like and be finished with that? Um So, just, just as you're looking towards your budgets, and I know, Mel and Doctor Hill, are right on top of all of this. It has been a low session for education bills and actually, it's been a low session for Bill's period. Usually, we have 700 to 750 pieces of legislation that are introduced and this year, we are just over 500 and they're not going to
introduce 250 more bills and and it's because of the budget situation. So, the report that I sent you yesterday has a number of those education bills on it. I think it has seven. These are bills that are still in play. Um and Andrea you and I went through many of these last week. Just as so we could talk through but I wanted to talk through with the board these bills
because you may be hearing about them. And they do have local control implications. Um so I don't know. Do you want me to just start going through? Yeah, Amy. I think it would be great for you to just go through these like you did with me and then. Great. Just just like you did, just explain through those. I've, as I, the last week, just been trying to kind of give as I ran into board members, just kind of give em a little bit of an update on this as I've
also sit on the legislative resolutions committee with Casby but you did such a good job going into this. So, if you can just go through that, then, the board members can ask you questions just as I did. So. Sure. Okay. Well, great. If we start with the first one, it's House Bill 11 thirty-five, communication devices in schools. This really is dealing with cellphones in schools. It is a bipartisan bill and it is well
supported actually by school districts because it is it's not it's not telling us what we have to do. It's it's allowing us to set our own policy. So, I guess it is telling you that you have to have a cellphone policy but that it it's not so restrictive as as the bills that we've seen the last two years that just straight up prohibit cellphones in schools. So, this was worked on with with districts
throughout the interim and appears to be a pretty good bill. Second one, 11seventy8. This one is is really interesting because there are two. This is banned student seclusion. There are two of these bills. Um on student seclusion. This first one on 1178 bans, prohibits any type of student seclusion. And so that that has been, that has been a problem for districts in Casby and
Case because the way inclusion is defined when schools have sensory rooms when a student needs to take a break in a sensory room. A sensory room would be would be banned. So, it the bill needs the bill as written just isn't it is just not good for districts. It just it tells you that you can't do this and what you what you're already doing by following state law, you can't
continue to do. And if we Let me see. Okay, so that's Band Student Seclusion The next one is 11 ninety-2, Financial Literacy graduation requirements. So, this is another interesting one when it comes to local control. It is saying that for graduation as a graduation requirement of graduation that a
student must pass course in financial literacy as a graduation requirement. So, the bill requires successful completion of a course in financial literacy. The other portion of the bill is it requires submission of of free a Fafsa application for state financial aid as a condition of high school graduation. Unless a student falls under one of the exceptions. So, it's mandated that as a graduation requirement, you
have to have a course in financial literacy which you may already have but then, it also requires that students fill out a Fafsa. There's been a lot of pushback on this bill from the State Board of Education to School Districts that it really is encroaching on on local control and most districts have a financial most high schools have a financial literacy course that they offer to their high school students. And just stop me if you have questions
as we're going along. I don't have any questions Amy but I be curious to know what the federal government who processes Fafsa's thinks about that requirement and what kind of workload increase they would incur. Um that's a really good question. So, there are number of states that have this requirement for graduation and they do see higher rates of students going into college
university their first year because in the states that have this as a requirement for graduation. So, the argument is this is showing students that they can they can qualify for money and that and that going to college is an option for them. So, it doesn't, I, I don't think, nobody has talked about what the workload would be for the Feds. Well, I I I more important than those that went for any initial length of
time, a semester, maybe a year. I would be more interested to see an outcome that shows completion and graduation. And it's very hard to track those students once say, you know, it it's it's an issue we have whether whether a student goes into a trade or goes to college we can't track them once they leave, once they leave the district. Well, and the the so case opposed this one, the association that represents superintendents
administrators and I think couple of their arguments too were one, because they have to look at large and small districts, and not every small district in the state can find someone that can teach a financial li course independently. So, now you're requiring districts to have to go find somebody to teach that. What if they can't. Um as Amy mentioned, we do teach financial literacy through our standards already. So, there are already our opportunities that exist in school districts for Saint Lee. We already have these things in place. Um and then with the financial aid piece, you know, if if folks are choosing a
different path, they shouldn't be required to fill out but also then they're sharing, you know, personal information with it. Maybe they don't want to be forced to share. So, there were a lot of reasons why case opposed this one as well. Well, in Cas opposed it as well for those very same reasons. Um the next one I think you'll feel as a relief even though the title is is I think a little bit deceiving. So this is House Bill 1210. Data reporting requirements for kindergarten through 12th grade schools. So what this does it does not
require you to do any more data reporting. It tells the CDE and sets up sets up the city to look at all of the reporting that districts do. And to look that reporting and see what is duplicative and what what isn't relevant anymore that is needing that is still being reported. So, it it looks at data that local education providers are required to report to
comply with state and federal laws. So, it it will look at how much time, local education providers spend reporting to the department whether they're more efficient ways to report the data an evaluation of the reporting protocols for local education providers. So, you know, we know reporting is so burdensome on a district. It, there is information that is definitely needed. There is data that is needed that needs to be needs to be pushed up to CDE but it it's
time to just look at everything and and how is it working? Um the RCDE had a budget request that has been approved to upgrade their data reporting system and their school finance system, their their software, and so, even amongst all the cuts in education, CDE, that, that decision was made on March 20th that they are going to get the money to continue to roll out that system,
which, which should help, at least after, after we get this report, we'll help with the data reporting. House Bill 1278. This is the Education Accountability System Bill. So, if you remember, I have talked for months really 2 years. It's been two years that the Education Accountability Task Force was meeting and they met for 2 years, they produced a report in November. There were 30
recommendations that came out of that task force and this bill has all 30 recommendations in it. Um there are about a dozen amendments that will be coming. I think it's backing committee, I think. I mean, look, I think it's backing committee this week and so, through those amendments, they have been listening to districts that it wasn't the the way the recommendation was written in the bill was not actually what the intent
of the task force. So, there's been some reworking on that. This bill has a fairly heavy fiscal note and I'm just, I just want to pull up that physical note. Yeah, the fiscal note is 5. 7 million dollars for 25, twenty-six, and it increases to over 6 million. So, there isn't the money to implement the entire bill. They wanted to make sure that it was written all of the recommendations were written
correctly and with consensus So, that when they come back with another bill, there there's at least consensus with how this was written. There are there are recommendations in the bill that are going to pass that do not take any money to implement and so it's going to be way paired back with no fiscal note but just getting it on paper where everybody agrees it is the springboard for when there is
money and it's time to implement some of these other these other recommendations. D51 has been a part has has seen reiteration of of the recommendations. I've gotten feedback from staff on all of the recommendations. So, the district's been aware of of how this how the bill has been drafted throughout the process. Okay, 1300, this is what we wouldn't typically think of as an education
bill. It's workers' compensation benefits, proof of entitlement. This is a bill that will impact, it will absolutely impact the district and your workman's comp. So, there are two big provisions in the bill. The bill provides injured workers control over the selection of their primary treating physician and workers' comp cases. So, right now it's it's for physicians. Um they can choose any physician that they
want that has a level one or level two accreditation. And I mean, there, the second portion of it, is it changes the burden of proof, of an injury. So, instead of the employee needing to prove that they have an injury, the employer has to prove they don't have an injury. So, this is a big shift in how workman's
comp how the policies would work and how the and and that proof of burden. It's it is a really big deal. It is a very expensive bill. It's even expensive for the state. There is discussion that the state would be exempt from the bill and not live by these by these parameters. Um and looking at who's opposing school districts are opposing. I don't
believe case has had has quite had the opportunity, hasn't had the opportunity yet to take a position. So, it's I'm putting it on the radar because it it is one that will impact your budget. Um I just want to check and see if Case has taken a position yet. Uh I didn't look this morning. I don't think that they have. I think you're right. Okay. Yeah and Casby, we have our legislative resolutions committee meeting this Friday. So, my guess is we'll go over it then. But. Okay.
They'll likely oppose it. There's no way. I think they'd support that. Yeah and local governments are are opposed. Um I mean, I'm I'm just going through the list and I'm trying to see who who is actually supporting it. I'm not sure what AFSCME is Um but they are in support and they are the first one listed in support so likely helped. Um helped write the
bill. And the last one on the list is Senate Bill one fifty-three. This is an interesting one because it does require more data reporting where if you think the other one that we talked about which was 1210, which is to go study and see what you know what what are we reporting? This one actually does require you to do more and different reporting. There was a bill Last year, that was
only targeting charter schools and charter school institute schools and this year, Senator Coker bronze it to everyone. Districts would and the way the bill is written, it goes all the way down to the school level, requires a school district or school to report all information for itself and for each each of its traditional public schools and this is all the financial information including what is spent on marketing, what is spent on student recruitment, lobbying,
contractors, education management provider, expenditures, and all sources of revenue. So, the his intent originally last year was to find out how much private money charter schools are getting and that didn't pass. and so this year, he's bronded out to all school districts. So, any revenue to that you're getting in. Um that, you know, through PTA and other private donations would have to be reported. And that brings us to the end of the
list. Anybody have any questions Okay? Amy on the let's see the on 1210. Should we would your recommendation be to just monitor that one? Or or be in support of that one? I think support. Okay. Sends a great message. Okay. That there is a data reporting problem. And thank you for looking at it. And then for twelve 78 you I know
you said that obviously has a large fiscal note And that you've like you said it's more of a springboard Um do we need to take a position on that one or what is your thought on that? Uh Or just watch that one. I think I think we can just watch that one because it's going to get paired back so much. Okay. And then, the last one on one fifty-three, it seems a little, I mean, gosh, we'd have to ask all of our schools to monitor all their PTA money. I don't know. I mean, it seems
like Mel does a good job on breaking down all the moneys that we get. Does it just seem a little invasive? Like, we have a lot of our just local people that just tend to give very generously to each individual school for a lot of various reasons. I don't, I don't understand the the backing behind this. And so, if you, if you think of the intent, the intent last year was to find out where charter schools their money from because there is a perception
whether it's real or not that charter schools make a lot of money through private donations and sponsorships and that's not reported at all. So, that was the impetus for the bill but because it was only targeting charter schools, Um it didn't pass. So, he came back and said, okay, well, we should do this for all schools but really his his intent is to find out what's going on in charter schools. But we get, we get up in it. Yeah. But
what does it matter what a private citizen wants to donate to any school? I mean, we need to be transparent with taxpayer dollars what any individual wants to do with their own dollars doesn't matter. I just I find that a little too invasive in my opinion. Mm hmm. Whether you want to donate to a charter school, a private school, Montessori school, whatever. I just find this is going to be really difficult. Now, we're going to add one more thing onto our individual school level of having to monitor all the PTA
individual and even maybe like kind donations like if they donate equipment or somebody at the school level is going to have to monitor all of that now. And and it's actually it's not just that. It also is how much time is being spent on say student recruitment. And that that one it it's really vague because What does each school do to recruit kindergartners? You know, what what
and and how much time does that take to do that to say it's time for kindergarten enrollment? That is recruitment. Yeah, I think I think case opposed this one too and I think it was around just it's putting an extra burden on school district for something that doesn't seem to, we're not really sure what exactly what they're trying to do. So, I I just find this to be out of the purview of taxpayer dollars of if this is what I mean Yeah, I I don't need to get into
it. I just, I think, I think it's petty in my opinion board, did you guys have any other questions on just what Amy's opinion of is what you, you know, kind of we're, this is her expertise. I mean, she's she's kind of digs into these and what she thinks would be best for, you know, our area. Oh, Amy, did you have something more to say? I was just going to say, I think as a as a fourth bill to look at taking a position on, 1, 300 the workers' comp bill. Yeah. I
think that that that is one to definitely, definitely put, with an opposed position. Well, yeah, I personally, what I think is, the seclusion, I would oppose, because I would like to send a statement that, well, these, these in my personal opinion, violate local control, because they don't, they don't know what our teachers and what we need to do over here. I've, I mean, after I chat, chatted with you, Amy, I chatted with some of our Department heads on what these would mean in our
district and so yeah I just there's some others here that I when we get to that point in the business section we can have some discussion because I have some thoughts on a positions that the board could take. but yeah so you said thirteen hundred. Yeah. I was definitely wanting to take a position of opposition on the on that as well. And I I think case the reason why they're opposing the seclusion bill was last year. House 12 48
was put in place which they got input from that consortium of Special Education Directors and they came up with parameters and training and all sorts of things around seclusion already. So, they just felt like this is just, it's overreached now to say that you can't it can't be done ever. Um they've already got things in place from last year's bill. So, they strongly opposed that one. Yeah and then we talked about the financial literacy earlier. I think just again like Doctor Hill said small districts don't necessarily
have the means to do that and not every family wants to fill out a Fafsa. I just I think that's getting the state doesn't I wish they would come and talk to school districts and boards more because we already take care of a lot of these things at the local level. And then if we wanted to take a position on 1135 of support obviously Doctor Hill was very involved in in that, you know, just having a policy of, you know, devices in schools, but, but Board, we can get
into that into the business section, but if you have anything you want to ask Amy right now, she's online, otherwise, we'll, we can decide as a board if we want to take positions, because she will file these positions at the state. And it will send a message to the state on our behalf. And all else. So, lobby on your behalf with these positions. Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for your time. Amy. We'll we'll get we'll get this information back over to you
after our business portion. Yeah. Uh thanks for your time tonight. Sounds great. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Amy. Alright. Well, the next step, we have our D51 happenings and celebrations. Hi, Board. I'm Sierra Colson, marketing and communication specialist for Dfifty-one. Here to share with you the District 51 Happenings and Celebrations. Congratulations to Yvette Caldwell, our March Golden Apple winner from Chatfield Elementary. As a dedicated pair professional,
Yvette goes above and beyond to create a safe, engaging, and joyful environment for students. Her creative lessons and festive spirit inspire curiosity and excitement in the classroom. Yvette's commitment extends beyond the school day, volunteering her time to make learning truly special. Thank you Yvette for the incredible impact you make everyday. In March, D51 celebrated several outstanding members of our school community whose dedication makes a lasting impact. We recognize our incredible maintenance staff on national
school maintenance, worker appreciation day, thanking them for their tireless work behind the scenes to keep our schools clean, safe, and welcoming. During National School Breakfast Week, we celebrated our nutrition services teams for ensuring students start each day with a nutritious meal that fuels their learning. We also took time to honor the vital work of our school's social workers who provide support, resources, and advocacy to help students and families thrive. Whether it's maintaining our buildings, nourishing young minds,
or offering compassionate care, each of these individuals help create a strong foundation for students success. We are so grateful for commitment to our D 51 community Nearly 60 high school students from across D 51 participated in this year's healthcare career day at Community Hospital. Through interactive stations and realistic patient scenarios, they explored careers in emergency response, surgery, radiology, and more. Gaining real insight into the healthcare field. The event supports D51's commitment to
preparing students for life beyond graduation. A big thank you to Community Hospital for hosting this event each year. Continuing to help grow our students through being an engaged and supportive community partner and helping inspire the next generation of healthcare professionals. But Cliff Middle School students are getting a fun introduction to golf this month. Thanks to a partnership with the City of Grand Junction Golf Division. PGA professionals are leading golf-themed PE classes each week in
March. Helping students learn the basics while highlighting values like honesty, sportsmanship, and perseverance. The program also ties in with D51's more social, less media initiative by getting students moving and encouraging them to try something new. Big thanks to of Grand Junction and PGA intern professional Braden Kelly for making non-traditional sports more accessible to our students. Read Across America Day turned into a week-long celebration across D51
filled with creative activities that made reading fun and engaging. From guest readers at Taylor Elementary including Board of Education members and local first responders to readathons at Loma and Family Events at New Emerson. Schools embrace the joy of reading in unique ways. Thunder Mountain also welcomed Tony the Rapper who shared how building reads how reading builds success. And Nesley's student connected with future teachers through shared stories. Thank you to our teachers, librarians, board members, and
volunteers for inspiring a love of reading and supporting early literacy across the district. The Mesa County Safety Fair brought together public safety teams from across the valley to connect with D51 students and share important safety tips. Hosted at Mesa Mall, the event included hands-on demos that made learning real-life skills both fun and engaging. D51 crisis coordinator Jason Talley was also there talking with students about Safe To Tell. An anonymous tool they can use to report safety concerns,
threats, or bullying. We're thankful our students get to take part in this event each year and appreciate Mesa Mall and the Mesa County Safety Fair for creating such a valuable learning Experience. Grand Junction High School recently celebrated 50 years of girls basketball by welcoming back nearly 70 former players for a weekend full of memories and Tiger Pride. The celebration honored five decades of dedication, recognizing former head coaches Ken Carauthers, Max Kralisek, Carol Wilder, Sam
Prevenza, and current coach Mary Duanne. Alumni toured the new school caught up caught up during a angry and were recognized at a special varsity game with coaches honored at halftime. Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate this incredible legacy of teamwork and excellence. That's all we have for March happenings and celebrations. Be sure to keep up with all the latest D 51 happenings by following us on social media at D51 schools. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Alright, Doctor
Hill, we have your superintendent report. Alright, so we have two presentations this evening. I'll have the first team come up to talk about early release. Um the board of members, we we've been having this discussion actually for years. Um we discussed it two or 3 years ago and gather a lot of feedback and then we tabled it for a little bit but it's it's still been something we've been working on. So, we want to give an opportunity to refresh memories on the topic while we're even discussing it what the benefits
would be and also to hear from folks in the schools to see how it actually impact them. So, we're not asking for any decisions or anything tonight or or we're not making decisions but we just wanted to make sure that y'all and the public got an update on where we are with our the release. I'll turn it over to Jen and the team. Good evening. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to visit with you guys. I have a large number of friends here. I'm going to, let's just do introductions right now. I'm going to start left. Ari, you
want to start and then name and title My name is Oh, we're going to need. I'm sorry. We're going to need. And I gave the microphone. Need the microphone. My mom in place. Well, I have one. Yes. I'm Ari Goldberg and I'm the secondary director of Site Leadership. I'm Dan Bollinger. I'm principal at Palisade. Nikki Johnston, secondary director of curriculum and professional learning. Danny Medvid, Principal
Orchard Mason Middle School. Randy Foster, principal, Grand Mesa Middle School. Um in the spring of twenty twenty-three, clear and comprehensive early release plans were developed to support secondary schools. However, these plans were put on hold due to pressing challenges including declining enrollment, school closure, and the need to establish a sustainable response through committees such as EDEC. As we continue to address budget and enrollment concerns, the need for consistent and structured professional learning at the
secondary level remains a priority. Early release provides essential time for curriculum implementation, resource, learning application, and ongoing professional learning. With weekly early release and aligned learning communities, educators, engage, and structured development through multi year PL plans and design like with consultants like Strive. By investing in teacher growth, we strengthen instructional practices and ultimately enhance
student outcomes. Here's some data. I just want to share. I've got a couple slides of data that I want to share with you all tonight. This is elementary data. As you can see, our Kthree at or above grade level is been increasingly. We celebrate our data a lot here with you and with the district as a whole. The improvement over time can be attributed to intentional, consistent, and coherent professional learning designs that have in recent years
also been linked to the implementation of evidence-based resources and with the results-oriented and CDE approved partners such as Strive. You can see here a steady increase in students who establish a strong literacy foundation in the early years is only going to continue positive outcomes for our students. After this time. Steady Steady gains can be seen
across the upper elementary gains, grades as well. With this, I know this is a busy slide. What's really important is that you need to focus on the grade levels on the bottom, the percent at or above on the proficiency on the left. The gray is state and the green is the district. Focus on the those the the gray and the green. Well, we see improvements in middle school, the pattern has not consistent nor is the dedicated time for staff to learn evidence-based
practices alongside colleagues and to plan for supporting students. I'm going to Pastor Randy. He already has it. To share about the impact and difference of having and not having this consistent time and coherent model at all school levels. Wanna give a little bit of background to why you're the one to talk about it. So thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you this evening. Um I ask you in the fall when you ask me I needed to help my school
move along. My response was more time Um that need for time hasn't lessened in the six months since I last spoke with you. Um and in fact given more time to think about it I'd like to share that one of the messages when I was at Lincoln Orchard Mesa that I shared with my staff and that we strove for was this idea that students don't come to school for six one year journeys. They come for one six year journey at the elementary level. And so the need for coherent instruction kindergarten through
fifth grade was was ever present the idea that what you learn in kindergarten builds to what you learn in first grade all the way through fifth grade. Um was crucial for us and and and helped us to see the successes that we saw while I was the principal at that building. Um the other component of that is when we have students who are struggling the ability to have a conversation with teachers at all grade levels. Uh a fourth grade student who's struggling but has been a part of the school for several years. A
conversation with all of those teachers who had successes and failures with that student built a better picture for for who that student was as a learner. Um at the middle school level, those needs are not any different. The idea that we need one coherent three-year journey through middle school is no different than that need for one six-year journey at the elementary but at the middle school, we don't simply don't have the time for our teachers to sit down and plan that pathway for instruction for our
learners. Um and when we talk about students who are struggling, students struggle at middle school just like they did at the elementary level and so the ability for our teachers to sit down sixth, seventh, and 8th grade and have a conversation to help a student feel more successful. Um is imperative. At present, that time simply doesn't exist in our day but but with the with the opportunity for early release, we can begin to have those conversations on a monthly basis and
as miss Marsh was referring to professional learning at the elementary happened on a monthly basis and so we learned small bites and then we went back and practice in the classrooms. Um district level professional learning. It was the same opportunity. We took a small portion. The teachers got to practice it and then they got to use it for a month and come back and revisit that. Middle school is the same way. Um Strive is a is a fantastic resource for us. The ability to have a a consistent instructional model. Um
is fantastic but because we only have in-service opportunities every quarter, the teachers learn it. They go back and practice it, but the ability to reflect on that professional learning isn't as ready or or present as if we had a chance to do it monthly. Um, on an early release day. So, strongly support the idea of early release and I hope if you have any questions about that at the end, you'll feel free to ask those. Early release provides an opportunity to focus on student
academic and behavioral success while allowing educators dedicated time for collaboration, skill building, and deeper implementation with process like MTSS. For high school students, early release can foster robust learning experiences and stronger business and community connection opportunities. Prioritizing this time ensures that support systems become an integral part of school culture which benefits students. We envision each school developing a
plan that focuses on three key areas. Student behavioral support, student academics, and staff collaboration. This approach ensures that each building's plan is tailored to its unique needs while aligning with our broader, strategic goals. By prioritizing these areas during early release, we aim to create supportive academically, enriching, and collaborative environment for both staff and students. Early release aligns directly with
our strategic plan. Supporting both prepared and supported students as well as prepared and supported staff. This design will continue into our upcoming strategic plan. While the next strategic plan is still in draft form, it will emphasize intentionally and continuity. Focusing on key areas for growth while reef right reinforcing existing strengths and belonging, coherence, and consistency. Now, I would like for Danny to share a little bit about the
work that we've that was done in the past. We're looking forward in the future. Can you do it yourself? I think I've got. Yeah so it's exciting to be back here. It's been almost two years ago since we shelved this conversation because there were urgent needs. But if you recall when we pulled together all whatever it is sixteen, 17, middle, and high school leaders. Two years ago we started with this idea of each and every student. Realizing the graduate profile. And we asked our building
leaders to answer this question. How might a system wide early release advance our strategic plan priorities and students realization of graduate profiles in unique ways based on each school's context. So it's not a one size fit all. But it is also balance of what's the district trying to move? Do we have time? How does that look different at each school? And so, continuing to build on that, what we know about quality professional learning is that it's focused on ultimately helping our students get where they gotta go. Like, that's the end product. Did this help kids? Um
but that you gotta support our staff to get there and so, it's sustained with regular and a frequent cadence waiting every quarter like mister Foster talked about is to and frequent, you're not going to make changes. Think about sports. It's relevant to our educator practices and our school goals. It involves feedback and those precision moves and then it it needs to be characterized by collaboration, ongoing collaboration. Um when we think about what this is going to entail, these three big ideas is that we, it shouldn't be random acts and
that was something that oversight matters. It can't just be folks leaving. Um there needs to be a shared vision and there are outcomes aligned to our strap plan that we're going to look at models of what do this well. We're not just going to be willy nilly with time and that we're going to consider logistical elements because this is it is a it is a change that needs to be planned for. This is probably pretty relevant to y'all when you think, well, what would this time be if any community member would ask? This is an ask on time. These are those must haves.
Each school must have an explicit focus on MTSS which is really who are those kids that aren't getting it. You should be able to talk to any building leader or any any it and say how are you supporting through those tiered supports Which kids aren't getting it? What are we going to do different? If there is learning community time, it's guided and it's outcome based. It's not just hearsome planning time. It's not in place of existing planning times. That there's a monthly ongoing cadence that actually lowers the stress load of things. It's like, you know, we got a consistent rhythm here
and then, what you see new and this is, I think, what makes this better now than two years ago is that there's this idea of a district Friday that been the secret sauce for elementary for years but this idea that we would be at our secondary schools we'd be acting on district developed PL from Strive. Um Strive has given us great learning. We meet NIC teams. What we don't have is the time to apply that learning with staff. So we're not able to move that as quick as perhaps we could if we met more frequently. You might wonder about how does this
play out across the state? So we did a study as we first started looking at this of districts across Colorado and you'll see that well, Josh who supported us from relay said early release would be a huge game changer for you all in D fifty-one and if you look at systems, many districts across Colorado have early release. There's variability in the frequency and format. Often, it does link to the district priorities. Sometimes, it's school directed. Um many smaller districts utilize even our charter schools here in town, utilize a four-day week and then,
when you look at some of the highest performing networks of schools across the state almost always a a keystone of them having a weekly early release. It's how they bring the team together to say how are we doing? What are we going to do next? And so just as we get ready to pass this off, what would this look like? We asked building leaders to talk about what would this look like at your school to move your the school goals? What flexibilities do you need? And then we want to keep thinking about what is that look like to integrate the strive work. So here's a prototype. Um imagine each week
really being mapped out. So it's predictable, unpredictability lowers stress with kids, with adults. Um so you'd really have two components usually and this would look different in each school. This is just a model. Week one of each month would be something like district Friday. Here's the strive learning we've had. Maybe it's that the the behavior and student support department. There's some learning from them. Um this idea of staff wellness is a part of our strategic plan. There can be space for school business. Right now we have a staff meeting once a month for 30 minutes from 330 to four when you try to take
time to connect, celebrate, and talk about learning or updates. It's just too much to put into there, right? That frequency is not there and then, looking at the curricular work, the blue is, how are you moving? That's the work of those professional learning communities. How do we know kids are learning? What are we going to do about it when they're not? You see, MTSS Kid Talks, that's an idea of who are that 10 to 15percent of learners that are really struggling in sixth, seventh, 8th grade, ninth, tenth, 11th, 12th and then, this would actually link to those building and services. So,
this isn't competing with but really complementing. It's getting those bite-sized goals and so, this was a model that Fruita developed two years ago. Uh Principal Johnson's in the audience right now. His team developed this collaboratively as a committee. So, it just shows you each school, these would probably look different and I think Dan is going to take some time to tell us what Palisade thought about this. Hi, thanks for having me up here as well. Um yeah, this is something that we had developed with our leadership
team as well and like I said, it's it's nothing is set in stone and I think the idea creates a lot of some flexibility for us but I think this is really what what came to my mind. First quarter, we did the professional development. We modeled what a data cycle looks like. We watched videos and we modeled what that looks like. Um you give the assessments, you grade norm, you grade the assessments, you create the data, you look over the data to see what you notice, and then how do you adjust after that, how do you reteach, how do you, and that's just
one day to cycle, and doing that, we we modeled that, I think teachers were excited about that, and then after a couple weeks in the amount of time and effort they put into that, it kind of goes away and kind of like as Randy had, and I wouldn't say goes away, but it doesn't stay on top of their mind, because teaching kids and kind of as Randy, Randy said, the reflection isn't as prevalent if you're not doing it each week. Second quarter, we modeled what rigor looks like through critical thinking and giving students a lot of verses,
giving students a lot of work. I mean, a lot of teachers will say, you know, I I have them do seventy problems a night. That's rigorous. It's not rigorous. That's a lot of work, right? And so, the first level, we had them evaluating facts. Second level, exploring structures. The third level context and the fourth level was evaluating concepts and transferring that knowledge and we had the the teachers all go through this looking at a at a a historical picture They went back. They were excited about it. They they
did it for a little while and then they were like but we've still got to teach and the reflection wasn't there. The third quarter we we talked about structures and routines and we we modeled some of the practices that they that they show and again, teachers were excited about it and then, they there wasn't time to reflect on it. At the fourth quarter, we did the same kind of thing and we talked about what is a bell ringer look like. What is proximity in your classroom look like and teachers go back and they're changing their proximity and they don't have time during their PLCs as
they're looking at their assessments as they're looking at their common assessments as they're looking at their unit plans to talk about how did proximity adjust or or change their practice. There's just not time to reflect as if we were doing weekly I think it would give us a lot more time And kind of the analogy I use is and and I know Will coaches football but imagine if you came in on Saturday and you had an eight hour practice but then you don't practice until the game on Friday. The game on Friday you play and you're like what?
You didn't get what we practiced last Saturday for eight hours and you think what's more effective? An eight hour practice on Saturday or for two hour practices throughout the week. And so that's kind of the way I look at is we have once a quarter, we've got professional development but we don't look through it as well as we could if we were able to do this for chunks of time every Friday. So, the second side, they they asked, you know, how did this look when my my accountability committee, I went
through each one of the expectations of our staff with learning communities and instructional leadership team, an operational leadership team, and all of our staff are on different teams with no time to do it. So, we're asking staff to come in at 7 o'clock. We're asking staff to stay late asking staff to eat their lunch during these meetings. We're asking staff to do a lot of things. And I think to a I I think at Palisade a fairly successful level or level of success. But I think about how much
better we could be doing if we designated some some real time for this stuff. And so when I explained this to my accountability committee to my parents and I'll have somewhere sometime ten, sometimes 15 parents, not a ton but They looked and said, this is a no-brainer. So, for those few parents, it was a no-brainer that we would have an early release Friday and they were very supportive of it and so, yeah. Okay. Thank you, Dan. Mm
hmm. So, building off that input and what a number of our principals were asked to and did last year speak with their school accountability committee. Surveys have been conducted to gather input and measure support for early release including feedback from families. We did that in twenty twenty-three. Building administrators in December of 20 twenty-four and teachers and staff in February of twenty twenty-five. This ongoing input helps shape a plan
meets the needs of our students, educators, and our community. In 2023, we surveyed parents and the community to engage support for a secondary early release. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Nearly 77% expressing favorability to the idea. This strong endorsement highlights the community's recognition of the value of dedicated time for professional learning and student support. In December of
20twenty-four, a survey was conducted with our building administrators to assess support for the secondary early release. An overwhelming 91% responded favorably, reinforcing the need for a dedicated time to enhance professional learning, collaboration, and student success. Hey, Jen. On that, can you, are these the numbers of respondents that you had? Yes. So, it which I wanted to add a little bit right now like. Turn around, I can't get it all in one place. Yeah. I can see it. So, do you
want me to go back? Are you looking on yours? No, I'm just curious. Um so, it looks like six, 7, eight, nine, maybe 1100? Yes, we had a large number of people respond. Yes. Out of what was the total number? No, this is parent and community. How many did we send out total? I I can't tell you that. Or how how many not because I don't. So are there that I'm just curious. So it's a good question. So
we don't have that hard number but you have 20000ish kids and we only sent it out to secondary. So you're talking half of that. So it's a a pretty good representation of this the families who have kids in secondary schools. In the district. Okay. So yeah. We had over a we were actually we're pretty darn impressed. A thousand people responded. Parents and community members. So that's parents and community members. So out of somewhere around 10, 000 we ended up. Ish. Ten. Correct. Okay.
We're going to ballpark those numbers. Um this one is for building administrators. We did this at a level meeting and I do want to highlight well we're a number of us are here up at the podium this evening. We have a number of principals that are attending this evening to show their support for early release. And they overwhelmingly said, obviously, it was favorable, favorable, and then to what extent do you expect weekly, early release to be beneficial? You can see that it was well over 90%.
We got a couple. This is a little more busy than the rest. But this district wide survey collected input from secondary middle school and high school teachers across multiple campuses regarding the potential shift to an early release on Fridays. Five hundred and seventy-two respondents essentially with a super majority. Support implementing early release across middle school and high school levels. Particularly for its potential to improve teacher collaboration allow time for
backwards planning, and MTSS meetings. Increase student outcomes through better prepared instruction. There was an additional survey sent out only to middle school teachers indicating that the proposed early release change would reduce individual planning time just on Fridays. Um in exchange for a focus professional learning time on Friday. Um and to include structured media, meetings, discussions and again more MTSS collaborations. 71% of the
210 responding teachers across all middle school support and early release. Highlighting the benefits such as structure time, content team time, and relief from before and after school meetings. So, this is the boards part in support of early release. I would like to propose a modification to the D 51 school calendar for next year. From middle school that I believe would benefit both students and educators. Specifically, I would
like to request that the board consider exchanging two existing middle school in-service days for two additional instructional days for students. By replacing two in service days with full instructional days, students would gain additional time for that in-depth learning, structured classroom activities, and better preparation assessments. While I recognize the importance of professional development for educators, I believe that maintaining a balance between teacher in service and direct
student instruction is essential for maximizing student achievement. So, those days, you see in that with those yellow arrows, those green days right now in the calendar that we've adopted, you've adopted and approved. Um those days are elementary planning which would remain middle school in service in high schools are in session. My proposal is that middle school and high school would be in session on those days. Now, I'm going to pass it on to Nikki.
As Jennifer mentioned earlier, we envision each school developing a plan that focuses on three key areas. Student behavior support, student academics, and staff collaboration. This approach ensures that each building's plan is tailored to its unique needs while aligning to our broader strategic goals. By prioritizing these areas, we aim to create a supportive, academically enriching, and collaborative environment for both
students and staff. Additionally, each building team will develop its own plan ensuring opportunities for teacher input in the process. Our timeline for early release viability is structured to ensure thorough planning, stakeholder engagement, and seamless implementation for early release. From 2023 to February 202five, we focused on developing models and engaging key stakeholders. In March
and April, we will finalize essential logistics, confirm the calendar, and secure necessary support. Beginning in May and beyond, site leadership teams will take the lead in developing professional learning plans and logistical frameworks ensuring a smooth and effective transition. Our next steps for early release focus on collaborative work groups that will refine key areas of implementation to ensure alignment
with our strategic plan priorities. These efforts will include developing, operational logistics, designing learning experience for students and staff, and ensure compliance with policies and scheduling requirements. Middle and high school teams will explore models that best support their unique needs while leadership will provide guidance across all levels. Through this structured approach, we will create a
sustainable early release model that enhances student learning, staff collaboration, and overall operational efficiency. The next steps of early release focus on finalizing decisions, organizing work groups, and ensuring school specific planning. Senior leadership will need to make a final decision based on a board calendar vote. We're hoping all this will happen by April first. Following this, early release work groups will organize for action, addressing key areas such as policy, curriculum, professional learning, and logistics.
Principals will develop those school specific schedules to ensure all required elements are incorporated into their plan and in quarter four, principals will share these plans with their school about accountability committees to provide rationale and gather parent input ensuring well-informed and community supported implementation. So, when will teachers and and staff be ready to roll with this? Like, plans are made. We know what we're doing. Today, we start, correct? Our
principles, while they're here, they've been working on this with an anticipation that this was going to happen. There were some other additional background pieces that we needed to work on. We needed Clint and I and Ari, we worked with STA to ensure that transportation because we all know buses run our schedules, right? And so, ensuring that all schedules could be with our buses, could be met with transportation and they can. So, our we asked our, like I
said, that survey with our principals back in December. Our principals have not forgotten and Doctor Hill can attest that this idea of early release. Um and they have just been waiting for that right time. They're really the ones that resurrected release and they've been planning it and they'll be ready to go once we make that decision or once that decision has been made. They'll be ready to go. They'll be ready to go. I'm sure they'll answer. So, the the request is this fall. It's. Correct. That's what we're hearing. Correct. Okay. Correct.
Right. So, they'll continue to plan and and get their ducks in a row. So, get their ducks in a row. Through the rest of this year. Correct. And be ready to go when we start this new schedule in the fall things will be in place to start this actually happening. There won't be just more planning for another extended period of time. Absolutely. Okay, I don't know how to answer it. Absolutely not to half of that question. Well, don't be ready. Until Jim. You understand what what
I'm getting. I think the board is just looking for clarity on what we're needing, I think, to just make a decision on, I think the, so, to Jen's point, she's being very nice. Um, I've I've been one of the barriers in this but So, the schools are, they're, they could do this tomorrow, probably if they had to. So, and some, many of our secondary schools are already doing they're all doing this when I said I was the barrier, it's great. Um, so yeah. I did too. Yeah. Um, I, some of them are
already doing a modified version of a, of a different release anyways. And remember, our, our elementary schools have been doing this for a very long time. So, it's not new for our district. It would be new for secondary as a uniformed plan. Like I said, we already schools that have already been doing late starts things of that nature. So, it would have some uniformity which would help with transportation, would help with families that maybe have kids in multiple grade levels. Um so, really what the board, the board's responsibility in this is not to make a decision on whether or not to to
implement early release. It's really, we would need to change the the ask is around changing the calendar and the reason why the calendar idea was brought up was because one of the pieces of feedback we got was what we we don't want to lose instructional time with kids. Um and so Jen and her team went back, worked with the principals, and talked about how could we gain back some of that instructional time and that's where those in-service days came back. So, that was based on some feedback we got and that's even, I should say, that's even with seventy plus percent of families saying we already support
this the way it was presented to begin with but some of the feedback we got was we don't want to lose instructional time and so they they gain some of that back through that and I, you know, I would just say kind of a pitch for this too is that anytime you talk about losing something and that that there may be fear there but you know, sometimes there's addition through subtraction and so if you're, if you're just constantly pushing but you're not giving folks time to actually plan around what they're pushing for, then, are you really getting high quality or the highest quality product in the end
and so, I think that this would obviously we're hearing directly from folks at the schools that they would benefit from this and I think we would see the impact on students in the end but that was some of the delays was me and then STA making sure we can get the transportation in place and then trying to get back some of that instructional time for for students and that's where the board would come in. It would be a modification to the calendar for next year. That is on Fridays, right, Jen? Right. Okay. Same as. Right. I said you guys answered and asked all my questions. I know with a lot of schools that have
four-day weeks, they tend to start earlier in the year. So, with that, that wouldn't be a change to our calendar? No. And you're going to vote on those calendars, a number of those calendars this afternoon. They're elementary calendars. They're not secondary schedules and it's not, it's an early release. It's not a four-day week. It's on a less. Four-day week. Week. Yeah. Day or week. Mm hmm. All of our school, they will just have
shorter periods every Friday. So, they'll still have their full schedule. They'll meet with all of their teachers but they will just meet less than their scheduled time during the week. Okay. I I think I had heard somewhere where maybe it was the comparative districts that some of them had 40 weeks. So, I think I, sorry, I was mixing the two together. So, okay. Yeah, the the other thing I just want to reiterate that was already said but this is time for
teachers and admin and staff to have its planning professional learning but it's also really having conversations around students that maybe struggling and how do we provide more support. So, I don't want people to hear this and think, well, it's just everyone's just going to have a two-hour kind of hangout on Fridays like there's actually structure to this. Um and the issue we ran in two years ago with this is as we've been going through declining enrollment and it's been harder and harder to staff secondary schools in a way where it allows them to have some of that common planning
time during the day or time for their, you know, whether it be grade levels or content areas to meet together, that's become more of a more of a challenge and I think it will continue to be a challenge for us. This provides, you know, some relief there to be able to say you have this dedicated two hours to be able to have some of this planning on on a Friday. So, just to be clear, it's it's the teachers will be doing that work on those Fridays. Um and we're trying to keep it within their hours, right? Because otherwise, then you're staying after for hours and it's and it's outside your contract time and so, it's putting extra demand on on
folks if we don't do something like that. So, this gives them those two hours on Fridays to be able to have that structured time for their but at the end of the day, the goal is better outcomes for kids whether that be academically or or student well being is having that time to actually have those discussions and we've seen success as Jen mentioned at the elementary level. Um this is a request around secondary being able to do that as well. I think maybe it would be helpful because as I was going through this, I haven't been able to be in all the meetings when y'all been having these conversations Overwhelmingly, there was support in the surveys but
why would why would a teacher say I don't want this? I don't know if there's a reason why somebody might say I don't I don't think this is a good thing. Um the few teachers that we spoke to that were unsure hadn't seen the the layout of it and they thought it was just going to be two hours of free time. And so when they saw that every school already has a structure like this that's dedicated to specific tasks. It's not just 2
hours. A lot of them said well if I would have known that I wouldn't have voted that way we did follow up with some of the teachers who said no and most of them wanted us a very good structure for those Fridays. Yeah, I think that was last time when this came around, I think that was some of the feedback I got was they felt like they were losing instructional time. However, I think when some of you then spoke to
them about what they would get in exchange for that, I think that made more sense to them so that because I also heard that the newer teachers wanted to be able to have time to collaborate with more seasoned teachers because our newer teachers were feeling like they were not getting time to have sort of that mentorship with the seasoned teachers of like, hey, how do you do this and how do you do that when I think we were walking through some of the middle schools at the time and so, they were either having to come in
early or stay late and that can be really hard especially when you have two different schedule that may not accommodate times to do that. So, yeah, that was, I, I recall that being some of the feedback we got last time when we were talking about this. Okay. Well, and and to feedback on that, yeah, that feedback from family saying, if I have a younger kid on Fridays, they go home and there's nobody there. It's not for every family but if you have an older sibling now, they have somebody that's also out on Fridays as well. I
think there's there's other benefits as well. I mean, around athletics and and other things too that don't apply to every single kid but there are other benefits as well around this. So, added to to the question really for the board it's more around and we're not taking any votes tonight but thinking about giving back those in-service days next year as instructional days and that would just be a modification to the calendar. And I haven't modified that calendar yet so I can do that and we can put it on the agenda next. Tuesday. Next week. Already.
Next. Next week. I was talking to a parent. Um today after school and they said my kids a three sport athlete and we require all sophomores to do an internship. Um for career and I said, well, what if they had that early release Friday and they had that two hours to do that internship and they were like, oh my gosh, that'd be amazing. So, that's not why we're doing it but it's a a possible consequence or kind of like what Doctor Hill was talking about about babysitting. We're not doing it because of that but it's it's
it's a pro to it. Well, the other thing that we wanted to make sure and and Jen and and Clint and and all their teams have been working really hard on this to try to cross all the Ts and. the Isis around. concurrent enrollment, career center, things like that. So, just making sure that we don't pull back on opportunities for kids because you don't have something on our fighting anymore. I know they've worked through all all that. Yes, well. Um Career Center was one of our concerns because we have three mods every day and so, what would that mod schedule and structure look like for our career center and Todd is here. Um
all of our principals were invited to speak at public comment. I don't know how many of them will other than you can see them talking with their body language behind me, correct? Uh and I know Todd and his team came together to identify what would that schedule look like and STA was able to accommodate their schedule. Sherry has been working with CMU Tech to ensure that our students aren't losing opportunities and then of course we have our concurrent students who are taking classes. Um and Ari actually took some time to dig
in to our students who are taking concurrent classes at the college. Not early I mean early scholars not students are taking college courses at the high school and many of those they don't, if they take so many classes, they're not taking any classes at the high school, so they're not, their day isn't being jeopardized at the college or at their high school. So, we really did, you know, the the dotting the eyes and the crossing the T's truly tried to make sure that we were trying to
ensure all students, no student would be left behind or left out because of early release on Friday. They are. They have an abbreviated schedule already and so, yes, but they're able to accommodate. And the the last thing I'll say no quit talking is it where this is it may feel somewhat reactionary if nobody somebody hasn't been paying attention this whole time but really this is an over two year conversation we've been having and really even before that this was a request from schools prior to that but also this is
something we would want to monitor. Um so if we put this in place next year we want to kind of monitor it. See if it's actually effective. See if we need to make any adjustments along the way. Um so that would be something that we would do as well as a district. Maybe you'll hear more. No pressure, principals. Alright, thank you very much. Alright and then the the last presentation is we've got Dan Burke coming up to give a quick overview of Board book which we've switched to for where we store and share
documents and information for our board meetings. One second here. Oh, do you need them lower? Brighter? We can turn them down. Hello, Bord and thank you for having me come up and explain a little bit about Board Buck. I'm going to make this brief. It is a very simple product. It is really about media consumption for the public and really trying to trying to make sure our strategy plan and transparency and things like that out to the community. Make it more easier to
stomach and and find that information. So, we're going to get into it. Um I've kind of told you a little bit about about the presentation board book Um it's going to be our main platform for board meetings. Essentially, it is a cloud-based program that houses our meeting agenda, PDF forms that we, that we use in the meetings and anything else like reports or something like that that the board would see. Um the public will have access to it. Um kind of kind of went
over. I'm just giving you a kind of a good book or kind of look here but the big things about this is going to be our meeting management. Um being able to create the agenda with you guys not having to be in the and be able to just, you know, approve 'em, find different things, break something else that needs to be talked about. Document access and transparency, like I said, it should be a lot better for the board to be able to access the documents but really and truly, it's going to be nice to be able to give those or make 'em available to the public in a PDF form, a very easy way to
find it and and and consume the the information. Um we're going to go into here and like I said, the public access website, we've published it on a couple place is here. Um we have it under our menu under our Board of Education. We have it there under Board Book and we also have it if you go into the Board of Education website. It'll be right there on the left called Board book. This will take you. Now, now, so I am someone, I make sure that I'm clear on this. This is
not the site that you guys will go in to log in to, right? This is for public. So, public will come into this. And be able to find our meeting, March 25th and you can click on agenda here. But let me show you the part that's really kind of neat. And that's, you can subscribe to this site. So, when you when you subscribe, you can put any Email in. You don't have to sign up. It doesn't create your account. All it
does is create a mailing list that gives you access anytime, anything changes on the site or anything new gets added. So, I just want to show that real fast for you because like I said, that's going to be a huge engagement for our community. As you look at the agenda, you can kind of follow it. Um you can look over here. There's a couple things that you can either show or not. I like to have all those selected. Kind of a neat thing as you download all of this by one button and it'll download the whole
pamphlet for you and you'll have it. If you follow along in the board meeting, you can come in here and click on the recognition or I'm sorry, the recognitions, read the documents, follow along. The neat thing about these and this is in a gigantic document but it has a search feature, right? So, if you really wanted to get back in here and say, hey, my daughter was recognized today. Um can I find it, right? There it is, Ripper highlights it down here and so, it makes it a little bit easier
to find and and process information Um let's see Let me go back and so like I said the agenda, like I said, it's all here and I just want to show you just a couple of the other kind of just just the the files and like I said, it makes it very easy to view them. Um I've I've looked at this on a phone. Um it has a built-in PDF viewer. So, very very mobile friendly and so like I said, having the ability to go in there and
search documents. Um we will be able to link videos on the same place where the agenda is. So, it's the and we hope to be able to archive our videos to be able to search for certain things. Now, that is something that so that you can do but we are we're we're working on that and so, I'm sorry. Let me get that slideshow finish here. So, the public. So, our did our live demonstration. So, our big things, right? Appliance and governance is the transparency Um historical records and centralized
documentation. That's where they stay, that's where they live. Going further in the program, I mean, I think we have some, you know, we we have a chance to, to enhance it, we've gotta take a look at new things coming out with it. I think questioning you guys and making sure that we're talking with the public and see what things are working good for them and what is not and make sure that we can strengthen that and then, exploring additional features every week, every month that they may come out, it may be viable for us to use that but
then, again, it may, like I said, we want to keep it as simple as we can for our public. So, just a recap. Meeting management, being able to make meetings and agree with them, document access and transparency. We have improved efficiency and the big one for me was the notification of subscription features for our community. I'd like to open the door for any questions. Like I said, it's very simple but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. I just have one question. I'm not sure
that you answered it fully. Can we do a link? just for the video? Yeah, absolutely. Meeting s. Um yes, in fact, we've got one. I'm working with them right now to be able to because we host from Facebook. Mm hmm. Um it's got a link to that and then it's gotta do a handshake through. So, we're trying to get that handshake to work. Got it. But I I feel very very confident that we'll have that fixed result. Right. Oh, that looks good. I had not seen the public facing side yet. I do know on our side, it has been much more
manageable for me to find the agendas. Um I know just the search feature alone has been helpful because I'll I'll I'll think about a meeting from some time ago and think like, oh gosh, what was that thing we were talking about and then the search feature and I'm sure our community as well. They're like, what meeting did we talk about such and such and then, or like you said, a and they can go in and find it and so I'm I'm really excited that this will be much more user-friendly for our
community and future boards to be able to use both on the back end and also on the front end for our community. And as and if it gets better and stuff like that, we have it, we do have the the ability to do some training videos and stuff like that. So if there's something that gets more complicated, we'll definitely create some stuff out to our public to make sure that they understand how to use it. Yeah. This is great. I like that it's all in one place. Yeah. Yeah, if you remember how it was before it was individual links on our website and to President
Heights point, it was, you, like, I, we couldn't even find, when did we talk about that five years ago? Um, what meeting was that? So, that will be beneficial and and Bert mentioned this, but the, the main goal here was tying it back to the strategic plan on how we, how do we provide better communication and transparency for our community, and this is one way to be able to do that. So, and then because this is a organization that works with a lot of school districts in the state, I know they work with Casby and and other organizations as well. It's tailored to and catered to
school districts. So, that's another benefit of as well. So, thanks to Burke and his team for and Amy and everybody's been working on getting board book up and running. So, we really appreciate it. Amy is the true all-star. Yeah. Well, thank you and I think it makes it a little easier for Amy to honestly help take minutes and roll call and stuff as well. So, it just creates better efficiency and it's just a much user-friendly for, like I said, future, our board, future boards, and for the community. So, this is, it's just fantastic. So, thanks Dan
for presenting and. Absolutely. Thanks, Amy for learning the whole program and anything future that will. So, thanks for presenting on it, Dan. So. Absolutely, guys. Thank you. Right. Does the board need a break or I guess we'll see how many. I don't know. Amy, how many public comments do we have? One. Okay. Let's do it. We can. Your 30-minute break. Go for it, Will. Alrighty. So, for our one and only audience
comment, miss Deborah Settler. Nobody's on deck, nobody's on the hole. You still only get 3 minutes. Good evening board members. And Doctor Hill. My name is Deborah Stettler. I'm a 12 year resident of Grand Junction. A big supporter of public schools. And a member of the League of Women Voters of Mesa County's Education Advocacy Team. Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you and for the dedication, diligence, and professionalism
that you bring to D fifty-one. The League of Women Voters believes that an equitable quality public education is critical to developing informed, engaged citizens. Students must learn to think critically about important current events and classroom discussion is essential to this learning. Teaching must reflect the perspectives and experiences of all people including marginalized groups. I'm speaking to you tonight on behalf of the league to follow up on
the student comments made at the February 18th meeting. At that meeting, some students expressed concerns that some teachers did not feel free to teach or discuss some topics. One student referred to quote recent conversations surrounding avoiding a research papers regarding sexuality, gender, or race, unquote, and to teachers quote, expressing concerns revolving around executive orders, immigration, and social issues, unquote. Students
also expressed concerns about such actions as philosicas being drawn on whiteboards and students telling other students that they were glad they might be deported. We that these comments do not represent a formal survey of students or teachers Nonetheless, we are concerned about the possibility of the learning environment being compromised by student behavior or teacher hesitancy to teach certain topics. We are very much in favor of D51's vision to engage, equip, and
empower each and every student, each and every day. To that end, we hope that there will be an attempt to learn whether students at other schools have similar concerns. And that teachers surveyed anonymously about the extent to which they may feel obliged to censor the teaching of comprehensive fact-based history or discussion of current events. We hope that any decisions made or actions taken will be shared with the community. Again, thank you
for the opportunity with you. And for everything you do for our community and for our learners. Thank you. Right here. Thanks, Todd. Yeah. Thanks, buddy. Yeah. I'm just going to. There you go. Here to support. I support you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Alright, Board. Thank you. Thanks for all the work you do. Um it's an enormous amount and I know I speak for the community when I say that we appreciate all the hard work you give to our our faculty, our staff, our students, and our overall
community. Um just in regard to the the possibility of of an of a unified early release. Um I want to share that and I'm, by the way, I'm Jory Sorensen. I'm Grand Junction principal. Um I want to share that we currently have a 40-minute early release and it's Mondays and this this Monday, so yesterday, we spent that time talking about our upcoming testing. So, our comprehensive
testing around Psat, SAT, and 11th grade C mass and we we talked to our teachers about what their role is during that, about all the logistics around it, about some different online training and onboarding as well as all logistics and the moving of kids. So, this is just one example Um and in that 40 minutes, we, it's really just directional information. And the what we expect of them and that and there's four different roles my faculty has during that depending on what it is
their job is. So, we're expecting them to take that information and then go out and and operationalize it in a way that puts our students in the best possible situation to prove their knowledge, to prove their content understanding, and to perform their best for their future. Um If we had more time, we would have given our teachers time to go through that together in their group, in their group of four, whichever of the four groups they were in and say,
okay, what is this look like? How will I make sure I'm preparing my room, preparing my students and it's really a big thing for us. It's you know, our aim, one of our big goals is around SAT improvement. Um it's around sea mass improvement really doing our best with everything we do. And in at Grand Junction High School with ninety-eight teachers in order for us to move consistently and with coherence from grade to grade. Um yeah, just as mister Foster was discussing, it's very important
that our teachers have time to collaborate. The other context of Junction High School, what you know about is we built this school for maximum utility. And I'm proud to see you're doing that. We're using it. We're using just about room, just about every period. Um what that what that means is we, our master schedule doesn't allow like ninth grade comp teachers to meet together during their day. We provide that during that early release time. So, Unified
Early Release Time would help that for for really guided planning. So, I think I'm out of time. You can get to know 3 minutes. Two, one, yeah. Alright. Alright, I'll follow whatever protocol. Okay, I'll switch. No. Hi, guys. Todd McClaskey, principal at Kerr Center. Um you know, I have always been kind of opposed to any kind of early release. Um I feel it's a huge responsibility and letting kids go. I've always, I've always
struggled with that. So, at Ferda, we experimented with a lot of ways. You know, collaborating, getting teachers together, providing professional development, moving our goals forward, our vision is really difficult. So, we tried a lot of ideas to be, we try to be really innovative at Fruda to hold our kids but free up some staff and it was, yeah, it was difficult. So, I'll say that. At the Kerr Center, you know, I
was nervous about this because I didn't want to go from three mods down to two. It it eliminate about a hundred and seventy kids from CTE programming and that's an obstacle we've been able to avert, you know, going from 110 minutes. We'll go to 70 minutes on Fridays. Still, you know, over hour. I think that's adequate. The the benefit to the Career Center is the uniformity of the early release. We really struggle with all the high schools being on they have
early releases now. Three of the four do. So, it poses a strong, it's a struggle for us to accommodate all the different schedules and the uniformity of early release Friday. Will be a big benefit to the Career Center in terms of consistency and and having students all the students there at the same time. You know, right now, we have some students from various schools that are gone on different days due to their schedules of the the current schedules of the existing high schools. So, that will be a big win, I
believe, for the Career Center. Another positive, as I've wrapped my brain around an early release, another positive for our staff is we do a lot of work with industry partners. Our construction program works with local electricians, plumbers, this would embed some time on Fridays for us to work with industry partners whether it's with a vet science or the health science or the construction program or a culinary program. It will allow our teachers to also with their advisory
boards. Uh typically they they try to jam those in during a a lunch. Um now we can embed those into some Fridays where our rewards and those are our industry partners can come in on those Fridays and work with our teachers to make sure our kids are getting the skills they need in that. In the tree. So, those are some benefits that I see. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, guys. It's marked today is the day that two of our principals broke protocol and took over Public Common. Thank you.
Alright. Alright. Come on, dude. Well, Alright. So, normally, we don't always have a response to public comment but miss Stetler, we do actually have some updates since the student comment from the nineteenth. So, we did get some information back from the school. So, they had not received any reports of swastikas being drawn on whiteboards. Um it was looked into.
Um there was a swastika that was found in a bathroom that was drawn in soap on a mirror but when situation like that arise. Um the school does their best to look at cameras to determine who may have drawn the image. Oftentimes, they do come up empty handed and they cannot pinpoint who committed the vandalism but the schools definitely do look into it and make sure that if they can pinpoint who it is that they take care of those things. Um they have not reprimanded any teachers for any of the reasons stated by the students
two weeks ago. Um there was a parent phone call with questions about how some of the topics including immigration and segregation were being handled in an American government class Um the principal met with the teacher to learn the teacher's side of it and then followed up with the parent and both parties were pleased with where things landed. And no disciplinary action or reprimand was taken. So so these the principles has worked very hard over the last few years to
address belonging in the school. And particularly with different subgroups. Um and it remain central focus especially at Fruit and Monument High School since that's where the students that had made public comment and they want to ensure that every student feels like they belong there. Um so, the principal did meet with the concerned students and at that point and obviously wanted to make sure that they felt heard and so, I will also state that we do have a controversials materials policy so
that anytime a teacher feels that they want to bring up any kind of controversial topic. Um we do have a policy that they can follow Um if they want to bring up something like that. And so it really just is revolves around making sure that parents are notified. And so if a parent either feels comfortable leaving their student in the classroom or not. Um and so we we definitely want to make sure obviously aligns with curriculum and it's not necessarily something out in left field because it needs to align with what we're doing in course work. So So, anyways,
it kind of came a shock as to the board because we definitely have policy that allows our teachers to definitely teach to certain things and those those concerns were brought up to the principal and he obviously went and addressed those. So, I hope that answers at least most of your concerns and if not, some things are still being looked into. So. Quickly. Yes. I I may not be able to respond back to you. So. Oh, no, no, no, no, I, we did not take it that, that anybody was asking for a teacher to be reprimanded, what we were, and we would, what, and that
students were not asking for a teacher, what we wanted to make clear, was that, the board also didn't want a teacher to feel like they were being reprimanded, and that they felt like if they could or could not teach on a certain subject, and I did not take your comments is that you're asking for anybody to be reprimanded. My, I took your comments that you want to make sure that a teacher is obviously looking at what they could or could not do and I want to let you know that we have policy as far as what teachers
can do. So, no, I did not take your comments that you're looking for someone to be reprimanded. So, thank you for the clarity. So, normally, we don't always have a quick follow-up like that but I wanted to let you know that our superintendent was was very expeditious in being able to get back to the board on those things in working in tandem with the principal. So, but we're thankful for the students to be able to come and voice those concerns but we do take those things very seriously and we do
want to make sure our teachers also aware of the policies in which they can operate in to do those types of things. So, alright, I do think our board leaders, board members, do you need a quick five-minute? Okay, because we just. We have executive session. Well, we have consent agenda and then we do have the business items to vote on. So, just let's make a quick five minutes because then we have, we do have executive session after this. Okay, quick five-minute biological break. Well, I was going to say and resume because we just have our consent agenda and business items
Alright. So, the consent agenda contains personal actions and the acceptance of gifts and items that are routine and can be approved by a single motion. Items on the consent agenda will not be discussed individually by the board unless an item is removed for individual consideration. Um I will say the total for the amount of gifts is thirty-one thousand eight hundred and forty-six dollars and 96 cents. So, we're thankful to our community for the amount of gifts. So, is anyone requesting for any items to be removed for individual consideration? Okay seeing none. Um
do I have a motion to approve the items on the consent agenda? Motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. So, next up, we have our business items. So, our first one up is J 1 which is our fee schedule adoption. Do I have a motion to move forward with RV schedule adoption for this year? Motion to move on the fee schedule adoption? Any, oh,
sorry. Second, okay. Director Jones, second in, any discussion? I think we we had went over fees of little well a few meetings ago. So, I don't think anything else had been updated since then. Alright, seeing no discussion, we can go ahead and call the vote. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. Uh next business item, Jtwo, we have the school calendar adoptions for Dual Immersion
Academy, Independence Academy Charter School, Juniper Ridge, Charter School, Mesa Valley Community, Charter School, and New Emerson. Do you have a motion to approve those following school calendars? Motion to approve the school calendars. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none. We can call them a vote. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes.
Alright and then next up Jthree. Um so we have the positions on the state house bills. Um so she had seven that she presented and obviously gave her recommendation. So probably look at these individually. Or unless you I I can't make the motion. So if somebody else would like to make a motion. I'd make the motion to take them all at once,
all seven. Okay, that's. Those are her recommendation. Okay. So how how would you like so how would that read? Motion to approve the recommended positions on the bills that were presented by Amy Atwood. Okay, so. What would, how would you, I would clarify that? I would almost do em individually because. Do individual? Yeah, because if we have. Cuz we're not in support of all of them. I I I don't think there's ones that there's ones that I have issues
with. So. Well, I think what I think what Director Lima is saying is is approving the recommended positions that Amy said but what I would put in the motion is if you want to clarify is what I what I would recommend is I would say on say for instance, 113five, a position of support, 11seventy8, a position of opposition. Just so that every board member understands what position we're taking. If if we're going to do
all of them at the same time, does that make sense? Yes. Unless you want to do 'em individually. Wait, do you want to? Sorry. Clarify the, clarify the motion. You think we can do it at one in one move? Okay. Okay. So, please let Why don't let's clarify just read the last four letters of the bill and and the position. Cuz I know on twelve seventy-8, she said there was no position. No position. Would be a monitor, would it? Or yeah, yeah,
monitor. That's right. Okay Do you have on director Jones? Yeah. So, on bill 113five, support and it might just motion in each one or just. Well, just state, state, state it. Okay. Just state it. Bill 11seventy8, oppose it. Bill 1192. So, I'm sorry, I oppose it. Bill 1210 support. Bill 11 or 12, excuse me, 12 78 would be a monitor. Bill 1300 post and Bill
one one thirty-three, one fifty-three. One fifty-three. Yes, those were her recommendations. Yes. Okay. So, the motion on the floor is to adopt all seven positions and as the positions were read by Director Jones, the motion was made by Director Lima. Do we have a second? Second. Okay and any discussion? She did a great job explaining knees and I'm in agreement with those positions. Let's take about eleven
seventy-eight. I mean, you know, I worked in the schools and I saw how this could be detrimental to everyone involved, you know. Absolutely. I mean, we have kids that have special needs and requirements and assistance and if we're taking a hard stance that we are not going to give them an area where they can calm down and cool down, you know, out of the viewpoint of other students, you know, that puts them just in in a really bad situation. I mean, the the
kids themselves and then, if there's a situation where they're, you know, being destructive or something of that nature, it puts other students at harm. So, I just, I absolutely adamantly oppose eleven seventy-eight. Yeah, that was the ban on student seclusion. Yes. Yeah. I agree. That one is that one is very difficult for I think districts. Yeah. Any other discussion? Yeah, I think going from the top down. Discussion. The communication devices in schools, I mean, I think Doctor Hill and and our board has
I think, you know, created a great process for implementing communication devices in schools, you know, with our policy. So, I think having a policy in place is good. I do agree that they don't need to tell us what the policy needs to look like but having a policy in place is good. So, I don't think that violates too much local control but having a policy in place is good. I agree with Director Evanson what you said about student seclusion. Literacy. We talked
about that earlier. Um I just I don't think you don't need to fill out a Fafsa if you're not going to go to college and not everybody will do that and I don't think some parents want to share that information if they don't need to. And then yeah the data reporting I think we need to support that. Um kind of help get that cleaned up. And then the worker compensation that one seems very ownerous on top of employers and obviously school districts
included on that one. Um and then the school financial reporting requirements that just seemed petty for them to ask about private monies being donated to schools. So. Right? Anything else? Okay, we can go ahead and take the vote for those positions. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. Okay. Um any other board discussion?
Okay. I don't think so. Uh we have future meetings. Um so we have one next week because it's the first of April on our first Tuesday. So we have our work session coming up. Um we have a board coffee Saturday, April 5th. That'll be at Pear Park Elementary in the cafeteria. Um and then we have our next board business meeting on April 15th. So that's it. Anything else? Uh Doctor Doctor Hill and I, myself are, is it April 27th? Oh, and we're
going to get beat in basketball? Yeah, we're playing basketball against the Harlem Gotrotters at Oh. Orchard Mesa Middle School. If you want to come see us get dunked on, come hang out at Orchard Mesa. Okay. Well, Alrighty. So, we are not going to adjourn yet because the board does have an executive session after this. So, So, pursuit into section twenty-four dash six dash 4024 B, Colorado Revised Statute for the purpose of receiving legal advice on specific legal questions and
pursuit into twenty-four dash six dash four oh two four E, Colorado Revised Statues for the purpose of determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations, developing strategy for negotiations, and or instructing negotiators regarding negotiations with Mesa Valley Education Association. So, the following Um hold on. Iowa State who will be in the following sessions. For our first session myself, Andrea Heitz, director Lima, director Jones, Director Evanson, Director Chavez,
Doctor Hill, Miss Tammy Arrett, Miss Jennifer Marsh, Miss Nikki Jost, Miss Melanie Trujillo, Mister Andy Means, and Miss Clint or Miss excuse me, Mister Clint Garcia will be in our first executive session. And then the second one will be myself, Andrea Heitz, miss Angela Lima, mister Will Jones, Doctor Brian Hill, Miss Tammy Arrett, mister Chavez, Miss Barb Evanson, Missus Marsh, Missus Jost, and Mister
Melanie Trujillo will be in our second session. So, do I have a motion to move in to executive session? Motion to win. Second. Okay. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yep. Alright and then we will come out and finish our meeting and adjourn. So, Part: 3
Joining our meeting this March twenty-fifth. We'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. There we go. Alright. Uh we're we're going to go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance and then after the Pledge of Allegiance, we sit down and have a brief moment of silence. Uh so, if you can stand with us and gentlemen, remove your hats. Uh Director Evanson, would you like to kick us off for the pledge? A pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under god, in
with liberty and justice for all Alright, thank you very much. Uh we, Amy, we can go ahead and do roll call. Mister Chavez. Here. Missus Evanson. Here. Missus Heitz. Here. Mister Jones. Here. Miss Lima. Here. Alright, do I have a motion to approve the agenda for this evening? Motion to approve the agenda. Second. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Uh do I have a motion to approve the
meeting minutes from February 4th, 2025 and February 18th 2025. Motion to approve the meeting minutes from the fourth and the eighteenth. Second. Mister Chavez. Proved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright, we'll move into our recognitions. So, just a reminder, when you come up to the front, miss Callie would like to take a picture of you. Uh so, please stay at the front. First off, we have our Girls State
Wrestling team and so director Jones is going to take care of that recognition for us. Good evening. When the girls wrestling team and coaches please join me at the front of the room. The D51 Phoenix girls wrestling team achieved a historic milestone last month competing in the two thousand twenty-five class five A Colorado State Wrestling Championship and bringing home the state title. Under the strong leadership of head coach Chad Dare, the D51 Phoenix girls wrestling team hit the mats with depth, determination, and impressive talent. They clinched the state title despite not having an individual champion. A true
testament of the team's overall strength and consistency. Eight wrestlers placed in the top five of the weight class. Including standout performances by Shali Tucson Clarice McCoy who finished who both finished a state runner ups at 155 and 170, and Violet Gray, who secured third place at a and30 pounds. This marks the first ever state wrestling title for the program. A well-earned award for their hard work, perseverance, and grit. These students athletes have shown over the past few seasons. Their success reflects not only
growth of girls wrestling in Colorado but also a high bar for the team to set in the future. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill would like to congratulate our D51 Phoenix Girls athletes and coaches on these tremendous achievements. We look forward to watching your continued and success of the seasons to come. Also, coach Chad Dare was the Chasha two-time coach of the year, recognized. Clarice McCoy. Shile Tucson. Not here. Violet gray Clara didn't. Ryah Burke.
Madalina Diaz. Kylie Keel Vanessa Milton Cheyenne Page Harley Prater. Marissa Martinez Quesada. Quesada? Yeah. Okay and Kendall Lee Stewart. Congratulations. They're going to send you something and then real super fast. The coaches were Chad Dare, Dan Burke, Jolin Harris, Lupe Quazada, and Mario Bostina. Would mister Tatum Williams come up front with me? In February, Tatum Williams, a senior at Food of Monument High School, closed out his high school
wrestling career by bringing home the 5 fiveA state championship title in the boys wrestling and earning his 100th high school career win. Give it up for him. Come on. Hundred and 150th win. Whoo In competing in the 2025 Colorado State Wrestling Championship, Tatum demonstrated outstanding skills, focus, mental toughness, and determination. Earning the top spot in his weight class and ending a championship drought for both district 51 and Freedom Monument. His victory highlighted the years of
hard work and long hours. He poured into the sport in the strength of Fruit of Monument Wrestling Program. Supported by dedicated coaches, teammates, and a proud Wildcat community. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill are proud to celebrate Tatum's success and congratulate him on his achievement. We look forward to seeing what's next for this talented Wildcat both on and off the mat. Congratulations. I just like that he politely corrected you and he could've like taken you down and into a hold. So, good job. He could've taken him down,
right? You wouldn't but you could've. Would Abigail Martinez please join me at the front of the room? Abby, a senior at Grand River Academy, and a dedicated member of D 51's Hosa team, has received the Barbara James service award, a national recognition honoring students who volunteer their time to support health related causes and serve their communities. This award created in memory of Barbara James, a former Hosa leader who wholeheartedly believed in the
power of service, highlight students, who go above and beyond to help others in their communities, especially in healthcare settings. Abby has gone above and beyond in her commitment to our community, volunteering, volunteering more than 100 hours at St. Mary's Hospital. Her time and dedication have made a meaningful impact on the local health care community showing what it truly means to care for others. Her compassion, leadership, and service embody the values of Hosa and the spirit of the Barbara James service award. The
Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill are proud to recognize Abby's achievement and celebrate her hard work, heart, and the that earned her this reward Award. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. We're on. She was trying to mess me up. She turned it off on me. Sorry. Will Olivia Campbell and coach Jeff Johnson please join me at the front of the room? Olivia, a senior at Fruda Monument High School, was named the 2025 Southwest League Girls Basketball Player of the Year after an outstanding season. As a five nine point and shooting guard, Olivia has
been a key player for the Wildcats throughout her high school career. She hit a major milestone this season by scoring her thousandth career point during a win over Denver North where she put up nineteen points over 95 varsity games. She averaged nearly 13 points, four rebounds, two assists, and three steals per game. Her leadership hu inconsistent play have made a significant impact on the team's success and reflect the core beliefs we celebrate here in D fifty-one. Since taking over as head coach in June of twenty twenty-two,
Jeff Johnson has made a big impact on the Freedom Monument High School girls basketball team. In the twenty-four 25 season, he led the Wildcats to a strong seventeen to seven overall record and an undefeated 10 to zero run in league play. Earning them the top spot in the standings. Coach Johnson is known for his steady leadership. Sharp game strategy and focus on player development. He builds his team around fundamentals, teamwork, and a strong work ethic, fostering a culture where athletes, no, sorry, grow both on and off the court. Under
his guidance, the Wildcats have proven they are not just skilled shooters with solid technique. They're tough, competitive, and able to rise to any challenge which they showed throughout this season. The Board of Education and Superintendent Doctor Hill congratulate Olivia and coach Johnson on their incredible season and being named the 2025 Southwest League player and coach of the year. We look forward to watching you and your continued success. Alright. Well, thank you everyone for those things. Um so, unless you're just dying to stay for the rest of the board meeting, we can get, I'll
give you guys a couple of minutes to make your way out. Um the large group, please stay in the lobby so Callie can get a group picture of you please. So, thank you all for coming and congratulations. So, Stanley doesn't have a car, how is he supposed to sub? I mean And you're just like, come on. This is getting. Why they always give me pretty stink? No. I think it's on purpose Oh yeah. Yeah. Like he just rolls with it. He's like good with it. Alright, sound, sounds good. Alright, we are going to move in to
our board reports. Uh so, board, gosh, it's been three weeks because we had spring break. So, we obviously bumped this meeting. So, any good things since we last met? Have a good calendar. Good spring break. Did everybody have a good break last week? Had a good break and a couple of us we went to couple of schools junction in Central for their with their council kids and it was a good time and learned good Bible things and other than that, spring break was good, quick but good. Yeah. Yeah, we've been one of the board
goals was to meet with the student groups. So, those have been good meetings. Yeah. Yeah, we had an opportunity to meet with Palisade and then I had one with Grand River Academy online. These kids are fun. It's good. Good stuff. Need to send out a Email to everybody just to give an update on all that. Uh huh. Just for good things. I went to Brookliff Middle School. I went to Simbra event that they had there. Those young individuals spoke about what how it is to be in their DF program. And how wonderful it is to
have to be able to have bilingual education in in their school. Uh they actually asked if there was a way that some of the students were asking can we ever present to the Board of Education of what we do. And and the gratitude that we have and the benefits of going to the Dia program for middle school. Well that's neat. Yeah. But it was it was really enjoyable to listen to them. They presented well. They had data. They had everything in PowerPoint. It was really nice to say. I think they have
presented before. It's probably time for them to do that again. Yeah. No. It's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. So, Director Jones and I met with Central High School. I'll make sure at our work session next week that I'll put some notes together. Yeah. Any committee or activity updates? We haven't had much going on since then. Okay did our strategic plan meetings. Oh yeah. A week and a half ago. So that was the first one I've had an opportunity to to sit in on and there was some good work like just I really appreciate the community
members that have that are taking the time to be a part of that. Um they took a lot of time to go out to a lot of our schools and you know, have conversations with administration and teachers and even students and just get some ideas on things that would be, you know, beneficial as a whole and then they brought that information back and presented it to the committee as a whole and then there was just a lot of like movement around and a lot of opportunity for conversation and thought provoking points that were brought up in the
last meeting. So, there was a lot of good work. I think it was a good one for me to attend a really, really appreciate the work that the committee is doing. I did the first three and I would agree, Barb, the number of people that showed up for that was really impressive and really a a wide swath of people and personalities and backgrounds that that all came together to make sure that our strategic plan Moving forward is is on target for our community. And we got to read it. Taylor Elementary. Oh. How about that? That's right. Yes. Yeah. Got to read.
I read the I read The Sour Grape book. That was a good book. Book with no pictures. I got to speed read Doctor Seuss at Fruit Villa Elementary and the kids loved it. Oh. It was great. I was told I read too fast and too slow by the same class. So, I don't know which. They were like, read it as fast as you can. It was great. It was a good book. Those are fun. Those are I appreciate our principals thinking of us when there's different events that we get to go and have fun like
that. So, that was a that was a good time. Yeah. Alright. Uh yeah, thanks for reminding. We've done a lot. I guess I forgot. So, alright. Is Amy on line for our legislative update? Alright. So, Amy A2od is our lobbyist for D fifty-one. So, there has been a lot going on at the Capitol and so while they have been in session, we have been trying to get on a regular update with her for legislative updates. So, she is going to update us on some state bills Um
so, Amy, if you're ready, go go right ahead. Sure. Good afternoon, evening. Amy A2od, contract lobbyist with the district. I'll, I think tonight, I'll start with an overview of the session and then we'll talk about the budget and then we can talk about any bills that I had sent through. So, overview of the legislature. It's we are six weeks in, so we're over halfway, or I'm sorry, we only have 6 weeks left. So,
we are over halfway, May 7th is the last day, and just as a reminder, in Colorado, we're in session for 120 days. And there is a hard stop, May seventh. So, bills either pass or are defeated, come May seventh. It it's it's been an interesting session because of the state budget and that the budget is is very tight. We went into the year Uh the state
budget went into this budget planning cycle over billion dollars in the hole in the red. So the joint budget committee has had to find places to cut. Um I don't think any department has gotten away without any cuts. I know that Department of Education has been cut, Medicaid will be cut, a higher ed will be, public safety, corrections, everyone has been cut. However, we do have a commitment
from a joint budget committee members. They're the ones that put the budget together to hold education flat or even increase it by $150 million dollars. So, while I'm sitting here right now, Representative Taggart is texting me because they're in the middle of those negotiations right now. We've been working on it for weeks but it's coming down to the wire. I bring up the budget because there are a lot of
bills. 500 just over 500 bills and many many of them take money. And so those bills are sitting in appropriations committee because until the budget passes then then the legislature knows how much money it has for new programs or any bills that are in the queue. So, let's let's transition that then into K -twelve. Like I said, we have a commitment from Joint Budget Committee members to
hold flat. There has also been discussion of increasing by $150 million. And if you remember last year, the board took a position to support the new school finance formula. There is a lot of discussion. It's culminating today on whether or not that new formula goes into place or not. And I've been working with Mel and with Doctor Hill. We've been going
back and forth, back and forth on the different scenarios for the school district. It still does look like D 51 will come out better if the new school finance formula is implemented. They've made some changes to it from what was passed last year. But D51 comes out better than if we had if we stay on the the current formula. So and I have to say Representative Taggart has he really cares what the
district thinks. And he and I have been in communication all session. And like I said it's I he's texting right now. So that's that's great. He really cares about the district. Um the budget in every year that I've been at the legislature which is 15 years has always been introduced the last week of March which would have been Monday. And the joint budget Committee said at the earliest Amy, we lost audio on you. Yeah, just. How about that? There you
go. There you go. Okay, I must have touched something. Sorry. Um I don't know where I was. The introduction of the budget being. Alright. Next week of March. So usually it's the last week of March and because there are so many cuts and so many big decisions to be made, it's not going to be introduced until next week and this impacts your budgets because it it takes two full weeks for the state budget to pass. So, it'll be at the earliest the 14th or 15th of
April before the state budget passes and once the budget passes, then, the School Finance Act can pass. The school finance act this year might run in tandem with the budget and may not come out after the budget like it usually does. I think, I think they're ready to introduce it before the end of this week. So, hopefully, we even know by by the 15th of April, what what school finance is going to
look like and be finished with that? Um So, just, just as you're looking towards your budgets, and I know, Mel and Doctor Hill, are right on top of all of this. It has been a low session for education bills and actually, it's been a low session for Bill's period. Usually, we have 700 to 750 pieces of legislation that are introduced and this year, we are just over 500 and they're not going to
introduce 250 more bills and and it's because of the budget situation. So, the report that I sent you yesterday has a number of those education bills on it. I think it has seven. These are bills that are still in play. Um and Andrea you and I went through many of these last week. Just as so we could talk through but I wanted to talk through with the board these bills
because you may be hearing about them. And they do have local control implications. Um so I don't know. Do you want me to just start going through? Yeah, Amy. I think it would be great for you to just go through these like you did with me and then. Great. Just just like you did, just explain through those. I've, as I, the last week, just been trying to kind of give as I ran into board members, just kind of give em a little bit of an update on this as I've
also sit on the legislative resolutions committee with Casby but you did such a good job going into this. So, if you can just go through that, then, the board members can ask you questions just as I did. So. Sure. Okay. Well, great. If we start with the first one, it's House Bill 11 thirty-five, communication devices in schools. This really is dealing with cellphones in schools. It is a bipartisan bill and it is well
supported actually by school districts because it is it's not it's not telling us what we have to do. It's it's allowing us to set our own policy. So, I guess it is telling you that you have to have a cellphone policy but that it it's not so restrictive as as the bills that we've seen the last two years that just straight up prohibit cellphones in schools. So, this was worked on with with districts
throughout the interim and appears to be a pretty good bill. Second one, 11seventy8. This one is is really interesting because there are two. This is banned student seclusion. There are two of these bills. Um on student seclusion. This first one on 1178 bans, prohibits any type of student seclusion. And so that that has been, that has been a problem for districts in Casby and
Case because the way inclusion is defined when schools have sensory rooms when a student needs to take a break in a sensory room. A sensory room would be would be banned. So, it the bill needs the bill as written just isn't it is just not good for districts. It just it tells you that you can't do this and what you what you're already doing by following state law, you can't
continue to do. And if we Let me see. Okay, so that's Band Student Seclusion The next one is 11 ninety-2, Financial Literacy graduation requirements. So, this is another interesting one when it comes to local control. It is saying that for graduation as a graduation requirement of graduation that a
student must pass course in financial literacy as a graduation requirement. So, the bill requires successful completion of a course in financial literacy. The other portion of the bill is it requires submission of of free a Fafsa application for state financial aid as a condition of high school graduation. Unless a student falls under one of the exceptions. So, it's mandated that as a graduation requirement, you
have to have a course in financial literacy which you may already have but then, it also requires that students fill out a Fafsa. There's been a lot of pushback on this bill from the State Board of Education to School Districts that it really is encroaching on on local control and most districts have a financial most high schools have a financial literacy course that they offer to their high school students. And just stop me if you have questions
as we're going along. I don't have any questions Amy but I be curious to know what the federal government who processes Fafsa's thinks about that requirement and what kind of workload increase they would incur. Um that's a really good question. So, there are number of states that have this requirement for graduation and they do see higher rates of students going into college
university their first year because in the states that have this as a requirement for graduation. So, the argument is this is showing students that they can they can qualify for money and that and that going to college is an option for them. So, it doesn't, I, I don't think, nobody has talked about what the workload would be for the Feds. Well, I I I more important than those that went for any initial length of
time, a semester, maybe a year. I would be more interested to see an outcome that shows completion and graduation. And it's very hard to track those students once say, you know, it it's it's an issue we have whether whether a student goes into a trade or goes to college we can't track them once they leave, once they leave the district. Well, and the the so case opposed this one, the association that represents superintendents
administrators and I think couple of their arguments too were one, because they have to look at large and small districts, and not every small district in the state can find someone that can teach a financial li course independently. So, now you're requiring districts to have to go find somebody to teach that. What if they can't. Um as Amy mentioned, we do teach financial literacy through our standards already. So, there are already our opportunities that exist in school districts for Saint Lee. We already have these things in place. Um and then with the financial aid piece, you know, if if folks are choosing a
different path, they shouldn't be required to fill out but also then they're sharing, you know, personal information with it. Maybe they don't want to be forced to share. So, there were a lot of reasons why case opposed this one as well. Well, in Cas opposed it as well for those very same reasons. Um the next one I think you'll feel as a relief even though the title is is I think a little bit deceiving. So this is House Bill 1210. Data reporting requirements for kindergarten through 12th grade schools. So what this does it does not
require you to do any more data reporting. It tells the CDE and sets up sets up the city to look at all of the reporting that districts do. And to look that reporting and see what is duplicative and what what isn't relevant anymore that is needing that is still being reported. So, it it looks at data that local education providers are required to report to
comply with state and federal laws. So, it it will look at how much time, local education providers spend reporting to the department whether they're more efficient ways to report the data an evaluation of the reporting protocols for local education providers. So, you know, we know reporting is so burdensome on a district. It, there is information that is definitely needed. There is data that is needed that needs to be needs to be pushed up to CDE but it it's
time to just look at everything and and how is it working? Um the RCDE had a budget request that has been approved to upgrade their data reporting system and their school finance system, their their software, and so, even amongst all the cuts in education, CDE, that, that decision was made on March 20th that they are going to get the money to continue to roll out that system,
which, which should help, at least after, after we get this report, we'll help with the data reporting. House Bill 1278. This is the Education Accountability System Bill. So, if you remember, I have talked for months really 2 years. It's been two years that the Education Accountability Task Force was meeting and they met for 2 years, they produced a report in November. There were 30
recommendations that came out of that task force and this bill has all 30 recommendations in it. Um there are about a dozen amendments that will be coming. I think it's backing committee, I think. I mean, look, I think it's backing committee this week and so, through those amendments, they have been listening to districts that it wasn't the the way the recommendation was written in the bill was not actually what the intent
of the task force. So, there's been some reworking on that. This bill has a fairly heavy fiscal note and I'm just, I just want to pull up that physical note. Yeah, the fiscal note is 5. 7 million dollars for 25, twenty-six, and it increases to over 6 million. So, there isn't the money to implement the entire bill. They wanted to make sure that it was written all of the recommendations were written
correctly and with consensus So, that when they come back with another bill, there there's at least consensus with how this was written. There are there are recommendations in the bill that are going to pass that do not take any money to implement and so it's going to be way paired back with no fiscal note but just getting it on paper where everybody agrees it is the springboard for when there is
money and it's time to implement some of these other these other recommendations. D51 has been a part has has seen reiteration of of the recommendations. I've gotten feedback from staff on all of the recommendations. So, the district's been aware of of how this how the bill has been drafted throughout the process. Okay, 1300, this is what we wouldn't typically think of as an education
bill. It's workers' compensation benefits, proof of entitlement. This is a bill that will impact, it will absolutely impact the district and your workman's comp. So, there are two big provisions in the bill. The bill provides injured workers control over the selection of their primary treating physician and workers' comp cases. So, right now it's it's for physicians. Um they can choose any physician that they
want that has a level one or level two accreditation. And I mean, there, the second portion of it, is it changes the burden of proof, of an injury. So, instead of the employee needing to prove that they have an injury, the employer has to prove they don't have an injury. So, this is a big shift in how workman's
comp how the policies would work and how the and and that proof of burden. It's it is a really big deal. It is a very expensive bill. It's even expensive for the state. There is discussion that the state would be exempt from the bill and not live by these by these parameters. Um and looking at who's opposing school districts are opposing. I don't
believe case has had has quite had the opportunity, hasn't had the opportunity yet to take a position. So, it's I'm putting it on the radar because it it is one that will impact your budget. Um I just want to check and see if Case has taken a position yet. Uh I didn't look this morning. I don't think that they have. I think you're right. Okay. Yeah and Casby, we have our legislative resolutions committee meeting this Friday. So, my guess is we'll go over it then. But. Okay.
They'll likely oppose it. There's no way. I think they'd support that. Yeah and local governments are are opposed. Um I mean, I'm I'm just going through the list and I'm trying to see who who is actually supporting it. I'm not sure what AFSCME is Um but they are in support and they are the first one listed in support so likely helped. Um helped write the
bill. And the last one on the list is Senate Bill one fifty-three. This is an interesting one because it does require more data reporting where if you think the other one that we talked about which was 1210, which is to go study and see what you know what what are we reporting? This one actually does require you to do more and different reporting. There was a bill Last year, that was
only targeting charter schools and charter school institute schools and this year, Senator Coker bronze it to everyone. Districts would and the way the bill is written, it goes all the way down to the school level, requires a school district or school to report all information for itself and for each each of its traditional public schools and this is all the financial information including what is spent on marketing, what is spent on student recruitment, lobbying,
contractors, education management provider, expenditures, and all sources of revenue. So, the his intent originally last year was to find out how much private money charter schools are getting and that didn't pass. and so this year, he's bronded out to all school districts. So, any revenue to that you're getting in. Um that, you know, through PTA and other private donations would have to be reported. And that brings us to the end of the
list. Anybody have any questions Okay? Amy on the let's see the on 1210. Should we would your recommendation be to just monitor that one? Or or be in support of that one? I think support. Okay. Sends a great message. Okay. That there is a data reporting problem. And thank you for looking at it. And then for twelve 78 you I know
you said that obviously has a large fiscal note And that you've like you said it's more of a springboard Um do we need to take a position on that one or what is your thought on that? Uh Or just watch that one. I think I think we can just watch that one because it's going to get paired back so much. Okay. And then, the last one on one fifty-three, it seems a little, I mean, gosh, we'd have to ask all of our schools to monitor all their PTA money. I don't know. I mean, it seems
like Mel does a good job on breaking down all the moneys that we get. Does it just seem a little invasive? Like, we have a lot of our just local people that just tend to give very generously to each individual school for a lot of various reasons. I don't, I don't understand the the backing behind this. And so, if you, if you think of the intent, the intent last year was to find out where charter schools their money from because there is a perception
whether it's real or not that charter schools make a lot of money through private donations and sponsorships and that's not reported at all. So, that was the impetus for the bill but because it was only targeting charter schools, Um it didn't pass. So, he came back and said, okay, well, we should do this for all schools but really his his intent is to find out what's going on in charter schools. But we get, we get up in it. Yeah. But
what does it matter what a private citizen wants to donate to any school? I mean, we need to be transparent with taxpayer dollars what any individual wants to do with their own dollars doesn't matter. I just I find that a little too invasive in my opinion. Mm hmm. Whether you want to donate to a charter school, a private school, Montessori school, whatever. I just find this is going to be really difficult. Now, we're going to add one more thing onto our individual school level of having to monitor all the PTA
individual and even maybe like kind donations like if they donate equipment or somebody at the school level is going to have to monitor all of that now. And and it's actually it's not just that. It also is how much time is being spent on say student recruitment. And that that one it it's really vague because What does each school do to recruit kindergartners? You know, what what
and and how much time does that take to do that to say it's time for kindergarten enrollment? That is recruitment. Yeah, I think I think case opposed this one too and I think it was around just it's putting an extra burden on school district for something that doesn't seem to, we're not really sure what exactly what they're trying to do. So, I I just find this to be out of the purview of taxpayer dollars of if this is what I mean Yeah, I I don't need to get into
it. I just, I think, I think it's petty in my opinion board, did you guys have any other questions on just what Amy's opinion of is what you, you know, kind of we're, this is her expertise. I mean, she's she's kind of digs into these and what she thinks would be best for, you know, our area. Oh, Amy, did you have something more to say? I was just going to say, I think as a as a fourth bill to look at taking a position on, 1, 300 the workers' comp bill. Yeah. I
think that that that is one to definitely, definitely put, with an opposed position. Well, yeah, I personally, what I think is, the seclusion, I would oppose, because I would like to send a statement that, well, these, these in my personal opinion, violate local control, because they don't, they don't know what our teachers and what we need to do over here. I've, I mean, after I chat, chatted with you, Amy, I chatted with some of our Department heads on what these would mean in our
district and so yeah I just there's some others here that I when we get to that point in the business section we can have some discussion because I have some thoughts on a positions that the board could take. but yeah so you said thirteen hundred. Yeah. I was definitely wanting to take a position of opposition on the on that as well. And I I think case the reason why they're opposing the seclusion bill was last year. House 12 48
was put in place which they got input from that consortium of Special Education Directors and they came up with parameters and training and all sorts of things around seclusion already. So, they just felt like this is just, it's overreached now to say that you can't it can't be done ever. Um they've already got things in place from last year's bill. So, they strongly opposed that one. Yeah and then we talked about the financial literacy earlier. I think just again like Doctor Hill said small districts don't necessarily
have the means to do that and not every family wants to fill out a Fafsa. I just I think that's getting the state doesn't I wish they would come and talk to school districts and boards more because we already take care of a lot of these things at the local level. And then if we wanted to take a position on 1135 of support obviously Doctor Hill was very involved in in that, you know, just having a policy of, you know, devices in schools, but, but Board, we can get
into that into the business section, but if you have anything you want to ask Amy right now, she's online, otherwise, we'll, we can decide as a board if we want to take positions, because she will file these positions at the state. And it will send a message to the state on our behalf. And all else. So, lobby on your behalf with these positions. Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for your time. Amy. We'll we'll get we'll get this information back over to you
after our business portion. Yeah. Uh thanks for your time tonight. Sounds great. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Amy. Alright. Well, the next step, we have our D51 happenings and celebrations. Hi, Board. I'm Sierra Colson, marketing and communication specialist for Dfifty-one. Here to share with you the District 51 Happenings and Celebrations. Congratulations to Yvette Caldwell, our March Golden Apple winner from Chatfield Elementary. As a dedicated pair professional,
Yvette goes above and beyond to create a safe, engaging, and joyful environment for students. Her creative lessons and festive spirit inspire curiosity and excitement in the classroom. Yvette's commitment extends beyond the school day, volunteering her time to make learning truly special. Thank you Yvette for the incredible impact you make everyday. In March, D51 celebrated several outstanding members of our school community whose dedication makes a lasting impact. We recognize our incredible maintenance staff on national
school maintenance, worker appreciation day, thanking them for their tireless work behind the scenes to keep our schools clean, safe, and welcoming. During National School Breakfast Week, we celebrated our nutrition services teams for ensuring students start each day with a nutritious meal that fuels their learning. We also took time to honor the vital work of our school's social workers who provide support, resources, and advocacy to help students and families thrive. Whether it's maintaining our buildings, nourishing young minds,
or offering compassionate care, each of these individuals help create a strong foundation for students success. We are so grateful for commitment to our D 51 community Nearly 60 high school students from across D 51 participated in this year's healthcare career day at Community Hospital. Through interactive stations and realistic patient scenarios, they explored careers in emergency response, surgery, radiology, and more. Gaining real insight into the healthcare field. The event supports D51's commitment to
preparing students for life beyond graduation. A big thank you to Community Hospital for hosting this event each year. Continuing to help grow our students through being an engaged and supportive community partner and helping inspire the next generation of healthcare professionals. But Cliff Middle School students are getting a fun introduction to golf this month. Thanks to a partnership with the City of Grand Junction Golf Division. PGA professionals are leading golf-themed PE classes each week in
March. Helping students learn the basics while highlighting values like honesty, sportsmanship, and perseverance. The program also ties in with D51's more social, less media initiative by getting students moving and encouraging them to try something new. Big thanks to of Grand Junction and PGA intern professional Braden Kelly for making non-traditional sports more accessible to our students. Read Across America Day turned into a week-long celebration across D51
filled with creative activities that made reading fun and engaging. From guest readers at Taylor Elementary including Board of Education members and local first responders to readathons at Loma and Family Events at New Emerson. Schools embrace the joy of reading in unique ways. Thunder Mountain also welcomed Tony the Rapper who shared how building reads how reading builds success. And Nesley's student connected with future teachers through shared stories. Thank you to our teachers, librarians, board members, and
volunteers for inspiring a love of reading and supporting early literacy across the district. The Mesa County Safety Fair brought together public safety teams from across the valley to connect with D51 students and share important safety tips. Hosted at Mesa Mall, the event included hands-on demos that made learning real-life skills both fun and engaging. D51 crisis coordinator Jason Talley was also there talking with students about Safe To Tell. An anonymous tool they can use to report safety concerns,
threats, or bullying. We're thankful our students get to take part in this event each year and appreciate Mesa Mall and the Mesa County Safety Fair for creating such a valuable learning Experience. Grand Junction High School recently celebrated 50 years of girls basketball by welcoming back nearly 70 former players for a weekend full of memories and Tiger Pride. The celebration honored five decades of dedication, recognizing former head coaches Ken Carauthers, Max Kralisek, Carol Wilder, Sam
Prevenza, and current coach Mary Duanne. Alumni toured the new school caught up caught up during a angry and were recognized at a special varsity game with coaches honored at halftime. Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate this incredible legacy of teamwork and excellence. That's all we have for March happenings and celebrations. Be sure to keep up with all the latest D 51 happenings by following us on social media at D51 schools. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Alright, Doctor
Hill, we have your superintendent report. Alright, so we have two presentations this evening. I'll have the first team come up to talk about early release. Um the board of members, we we've been having this discussion actually for years. Um we discussed it two or 3 years ago and gather a lot of feedback and then we tabled it for a little bit but it's it's still been something we've been working on. So, we want to give an opportunity to refresh memories on the topic while we're even discussing it what the benefits
would be and also to hear from folks in the schools to see how it actually impact them. So, we're not asking for any decisions or anything tonight or or we're not making decisions but we just wanted to make sure that y'all and the public got an update on where we are with our the release. I'll turn it over to Jen and the team. Good evening. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to visit with you guys. I have a large number of friends here. I'm going to, let's just do introductions right now. I'm going to start left. Ari, you
want to start and then name and title My name is Oh, we're going to need. I'm sorry. We're going to need. And I gave the microphone. Need the microphone. My mom in place. Well, I have one. Yes. I'm Ari Goldberg and I'm the secondary director of Site Leadership. I'm Dan Bollinger. I'm principal at Palisade. Nikki Johnston, secondary director of curriculum and professional learning. Danny Medvid, Principal
Orchard Mason Middle School. Randy Foster, principal, Grand Mesa Middle School. Um in the spring of twenty twenty-three, clear and comprehensive early release plans were developed to support secondary schools. However, these plans were put on hold due to pressing challenges including declining enrollment, school closure, and the need to establish a sustainable response through committees such as EDEC. As we continue to address budget and enrollment concerns, the need for consistent and structured professional learning at the
secondary level remains a priority. Early release provides essential time for curriculum implementation, resource, learning application, and ongoing professional learning. With weekly early release and aligned learning communities, educators, engage, and structured development through multi year PL plans and design like with consultants like Strive. By investing in teacher growth, we strengthen instructional practices and ultimately enhance
student outcomes. Here's some data. I just want to share. I've got a couple slides of data that I want to share with you all tonight. This is elementary data. As you can see, our Kthree at or above grade level is been increasingly. We celebrate our data a lot here with you and with the district as a whole. The improvement over time can be attributed to intentional, consistent, and coherent professional learning designs that have in recent years
also been linked to the implementation of evidence-based resources and with the results-oriented and CDE approved partners such as Strive. You can see here a steady increase in students who establish a strong literacy foundation in the early years is only going to continue positive outcomes for our students. After this time. Steady Steady gains can be seen
across the upper elementary gains, grades as well. With this, I know this is a busy slide. What's really important is that you need to focus on the grade levels on the bottom, the percent at or above on the proficiency on the left. The gray is state and the green is the district. Focus on the those the the gray and the green. Well, we see improvements in middle school, the pattern has not consistent nor is the dedicated time for staff to learn evidence-based
practices alongside colleagues and to plan for supporting students. I'm going to Pastor Randy. He already has it. To share about the impact and difference of having and not having this consistent time and coherent model at all school levels. Wanna give a little bit of background to why you're the one to talk about it. So thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you this evening. Um I ask you in the fall when you ask me I needed to help my school
move along. My response was more time Um that need for time hasn't lessened in the six months since I last spoke with you. Um and in fact given more time to think about it I'd like to share that one of the messages when I was at Lincoln Orchard Mesa that I shared with my staff and that we strove for was this idea that students don't come to school for six one year journeys. They come for one six year journey at the elementary level. And so the need for coherent instruction kindergarten through
fifth grade was was ever present the idea that what you learn in kindergarten builds to what you learn in first grade all the way through fifth grade. Um was crucial for us and and and helped us to see the successes that we saw while I was the principal at that building. Um the other component of that is when we have students who are struggling the ability to have a conversation with teachers at all grade levels. Uh a fourth grade student who's struggling but has been a part of the school for several years. A
conversation with all of those teachers who had successes and failures with that student built a better picture for for who that student was as a learner. Um at the middle school level, those needs are not any different. The idea that we need one coherent three-year journey through middle school is no different than that need for one six-year journey at the elementary but at the middle school, we don't simply don't have the time for our teachers to sit down and plan that pathway for instruction for our
learners. Um and when we talk about students who are struggling, students struggle at middle school just like they did at the elementary level and so the ability for our teachers to sit down sixth, seventh, and 8th grade and have a conversation to help a student feel more successful. Um is imperative. At present, that time simply doesn't exist in our day but but with the with the opportunity for early release, we can begin to have those conversations on a monthly basis and
as miss Marsh was referring to professional learning at the elementary happened on a monthly basis and so we learned small bites and then we went back and practice in the classrooms. Um district level professional learning. It was the same opportunity. We took a small portion. The teachers got to practice it and then they got to use it for a month and come back and revisit that. Middle school is the same way. Um Strive is a is a fantastic resource for us. The ability to have a a consistent instructional model. Um
is fantastic but because we only have in-service opportunities every quarter, the teachers learn it. They go back and practice it, but the ability to reflect on that professional learning isn't as ready or or present as if we had a chance to do it monthly. Um, on an early release day. So, strongly support the idea of early release and I hope if you have any questions about that at the end, you'll feel free to ask those. Early release provides an opportunity to focus on student
academic and behavioral success while allowing educators dedicated time for collaboration, skill building, and deeper implementation with process like MTSS. For high school students, early release can foster robust learning experiences and stronger business and community connection opportunities. Prioritizing this time ensures that support systems become an integral part of school culture which benefits students. We envision each school developing a
plan that focuses on three key areas. Student behavioral support, student academics, and staff collaboration. This approach ensures that each building's plan is tailored to its unique needs while aligning with our broader, strategic goals. By prioritizing these areas during early release, we aim to create supportive academically, enriching, and collaborative environment for both staff and students. Early release aligns directly with
our strategic plan. Supporting both prepared and supported students as well as prepared and supported staff. This design will continue into our upcoming strategic plan. While the next strategic plan is still in draft form, it will emphasize intentionally and continuity. Focusing on key areas for growth while reef right reinforcing existing strengths and belonging, coherence, and consistency. Now, I would like for Danny to share a little bit about the
work that we've that was done in the past. We're looking forward in the future. Can you do it yourself? I think I've got. Yeah so it's exciting to be back here. It's been almost two years ago since we shelved this conversation because there were urgent needs. But if you recall when we pulled together all whatever it is sixteen, 17, middle, and high school leaders. Two years ago we started with this idea of each and every student. Realizing the graduate profile. And we asked our building
leaders to answer this question. How might a system wide early release advance our strategic plan priorities and students realization of graduate profiles in unique ways based on each school's context. So it's not a one size fit all. But it is also balance of what's the district trying to move? Do we have time? How does that look different at each school? And so, continuing to build on that, what we know about quality professional learning is that it's focused on ultimately helping our students get where they gotta go. Like, that's the end product. Did this help kids? Um
but that you gotta support our staff to get there and so, it's sustained with regular and a frequent cadence waiting every quarter like mister Foster talked about is to and frequent, you're not going to make changes. Think about sports. It's relevant to our educator practices and our school goals. It involves feedback and those precision moves and then it it needs to be characterized by collaboration, ongoing collaboration. Um when we think about what this is going to entail, these three big ideas is that we, it shouldn't be random acts and
that was something that oversight matters. It can't just be folks leaving. Um there needs to be a shared vision and there are outcomes aligned to our strap plan that we're going to look at models of what do this well. We're not just going to be willy nilly with time and that we're going to consider logistical elements because this is it is a it is a change that needs to be planned for. This is probably pretty relevant to y'all when you think, well, what would this time be if any community member would ask? This is an ask on time. These are those must haves.
Each school must have an explicit focus on MTSS which is really who are those kids that aren't getting it. You should be able to talk to any building leader or any any it and say how are you supporting through those tiered supports Which kids aren't getting it? What are we going to do different? If there is learning community time, it's guided and it's outcome based. It's not just hearsome planning time. It's not in place of existing planning times. That there's a monthly ongoing cadence that actually lowers the stress load of things. It's like, you know, we got a consistent rhythm here
and then, what you see new and this is, I think, what makes this better now than two years ago is that there's this idea of a district Friday that been the secret sauce for elementary for years but this idea that we would be at our secondary schools we'd be acting on district developed PL from Strive. Um Strive has given us great learning. We meet NIC teams. What we don't have is the time to apply that learning with staff. So we're not able to move that as quick as perhaps we could if we met more frequently. You might wonder about how does this
play out across the state? So we did a study as we first started looking at this of districts across Colorado and you'll see that well, Josh who supported us from relay said early release would be a huge game changer for you all in D fifty-one and if you look at systems, many districts across Colorado have early release. There's variability in the frequency and format. Often, it does link to the district priorities. Sometimes, it's school directed. Um many smaller districts utilize even our charter schools here in town, utilize a four-day week and then,
when you look at some of the highest performing networks of schools across the state almost always a a keystone of them having a weekly early release. It's how they bring the team together to say how are we doing? What are we going to do next? And so just as we get ready to pass this off, what would this look like? We asked building leaders to talk about what would this look like at your school to move your the school goals? What flexibilities do you need? And then we want to keep thinking about what is that look like to integrate the strive work. So here's a prototype. Um imagine each week
really being mapped out. So it's predictable, unpredictability lowers stress with kids, with adults. Um so you'd really have two components usually and this would look different in each school. This is just a model. Week one of each month would be something like district Friday. Here's the strive learning we've had. Maybe it's that the the behavior and student support department. There's some learning from them. Um this idea of staff wellness is a part of our strategic plan. There can be space for school business. Right now we have a staff meeting once a month for 30 minutes from 330 to four when you try to take
time to connect, celebrate, and talk about learning or updates. It's just too much to put into there, right? That frequency is not there and then, looking at the curricular work, the blue is, how are you moving? That's the work of those professional learning communities. How do we know kids are learning? What are we going to do about it when they're not? You see, MTSS Kid Talks, that's an idea of who are that 10 to 15percent of learners that are really struggling in sixth, seventh, 8th grade, ninth, tenth, 11th, 12th and then, this would actually link to those building and services. So,
this isn't competing with but really complementing. It's getting those bite-sized goals and so, this was a model that Fruita developed two years ago. Uh Principal Johnson's in the audience right now. His team developed this collaboratively as a committee. So, it just shows you each school, these would probably look different and I think Dan is going to take some time to tell us what Palisade thought about this. Hi, thanks for having me up here as well. Um yeah, this is something that we had developed with our leadership
team as well and like I said, it's it's nothing is set in stone and I think the idea creates a lot of some flexibility for us but I think this is really what what came to my mind. First quarter, we did the professional development. We modeled what a data cycle looks like. We watched videos and we modeled what that looks like. Um you give the assessments, you grade norm, you grade the assessments, you create the data, you look over the data to see what you notice, and then how do you adjust after that, how do you reteach, how do you, and that's just
one day to cycle, and doing that, we we modeled that, I think teachers were excited about that, and then after a couple weeks in the amount of time and effort they put into that, it kind of goes away and kind of like as Randy had, and I wouldn't say goes away, but it doesn't stay on top of their mind, because teaching kids and kind of as Randy, Randy said, the reflection isn't as prevalent if you're not doing it each week. Second quarter, we modeled what rigor looks like through critical thinking and giving students a lot of verses,
giving students a lot of work. I mean, a lot of teachers will say, you know, I I have them do seventy problems a night. That's rigorous. It's not rigorous. That's a lot of work, right? And so, the first level, we had them evaluating facts. Second level, exploring structures. The third level context and the fourth level was evaluating concepts and transferring that knowledge and we had the the teachers all go through this looking at a at a a historical picture They went back. They were excited about it. They they
did it for a little while and then they were like but we've still got to teach and the reflection wasn't there. The third quarter we we talked about structures and routines and we we modeled some of the practices that they that they show and again, teachers were excited about it and then, they there wasn't time to reflect on it. At the fourth quarter, we did the same kind of thing and we talked about what is a bell ringer look like. What is proximity in your classroom look like and teachers go back and they're changing their proximity and they don't have time during their PLCs as
they're looking at their assessments as they're looking at their common assessments as they're looking at their unit plans to talk about how did proximity adjust or or change their practice. There's just not time to reflect as if we were doing weekly I think it would give us a lot more time And kind of the analogy I use is and and I know Will coaches football but imagine if you came in on Saturday and you had an eight hour practice but then you don't practice until the game on Friday. The game on Friday you play and you're like what?
You didn't get what we practiced last Saturday for eight hours and you think what's more effective? An eight hour practice on Saturday or for two hour practices throughout the week. And so that's kind of the way I look at is we have once a quarter, we've got professional development but we don't look through it as well as we could if we were able to do this for chunks of time every Friday. So, the second side, they they asked, you know, how did this look when my my accountability committee, I went
through each one of the expectations of our staff with learning communities and instructional leadership team, an operational leadership team, and all of our staff are on different teams with no time to do it. So, we're asking staff to come in at 7 o'clock. We're asking staff to stay late asking staff to eat their lunch during these meetings. We're asking staff to do a lot of things. And I think to a I I think at Palisade a fairly successful level or level of success. But I think about how much
better we could be doing if we designated some some real time for this stuff. And so when I explained this to my accountability committee to my parents and I'll have somewhere sometime ten, sometimes 15 parents, not a ton but They looked and said, this is a no-brainer. So, for those few parents, it was a no-brainer that we would have an early release Friday and they were very supportive of it and so, yeah. Okay. Thank you, Dan. Mm
hmm. So, building off that input and what a number of our principals were asked to and did last year speak with their school accountability committee. Surveys have been conducted to gather input and measure support for early release including feedback from families. We did that in twenty twenty-three. Building administrators in December of 20 twenty-four and teachers and staff in February of twenty twenty-five. This ongoing input helps shape a plan
meets the needs of our students, educators, and our community. In 2023, we surveyed parents and the community to engage support for a secondary early release. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Nearly 77% expressing favorability to the idea. This strong endorsement highlights the community's recognition of the value of dedicated time for professional learning and student support. In December of
20twenty-four, a survey was conducted with our building administrators to assess support for the secondary early release. An overwhelming 91% responded favorably, reinforcing the need for a dedicated time to enhance professional learning, collaboration, and student success. Hey, Jen. On that, can you, are these the numbers of respondents that you had? Yes. So, it which I wanted to add a little bit right now like. Turn around, I can't get it all in one place. Yeah. I can see it. So, do you
want me to go back? Are you looking on yours? No, I'm just curious. Um so, it looks like six, 7, eight, nine, maybe 1100? Yes, we had a large number of people respond. Yes. Out of what was the total number? No, this is parent and community. How many did we send out total? I I can't tell you that. Or how how many not because I don't. So are there that I'm just curious. So it's a good question. So
we don't have that hard number but you have 20000ish kids and we only sent it out to secondary. So you're talking half of that. So it's a a pretty good representation of this the families who have kids in secondary schools. In the district. Okay. So yeah. We had over a we were actually we're pretty darn impressed. A thousand people responded. Parents and community members. So that's parents and community members. So out of somewhere around 10, 000 we ended up. Ish. Ten. Correct. Okay.
We're going to ballpark those numbers. Um this one is for building administrators. We did this at a level meeting and I do want to highlight well we're a number of us are here up at the podium this evening. We have a number of principals that are attending this evening to show their support for early release. And they overwhelmingly said, obviously, it was favorable, favorable, and then to what extent do you expect weekly, early release to be beneficial? You can see that it was well over 90%.
We got a couple. This is a little more busy than the rest. But this district wide survey collected input from secondary middle school and high school teachers across multiple campuses regarding the potential shift to an early release on Fridays. Five hundred and seventy-two respondents essentially with a super majority. Support implementing early release across middle school and high school levels. Particularly for its potential to improve teacher collaboration allow time for
backwards planning, and MTSS meetings. Increase student outcomes through better prepared instruction. There was an additional survey sent out only to middle school teachers indicating that the proposed early release change would reduce individual planning time just on Fridays. Um in exchange for a focus professional learning time on Friday. Um and to include structured media, meetings, discussions and again more MTSS collaborations. 71% of the
210 responding teachers across all middle school support and early release. Highlighting the benefits such as structure time, content team time, and relief from before and after school meetings. So, this is the boards part in support of early release. I would like to propose a modification to the D 51 school calendar for next year. From middle school that I believe would benefit both students and educators. Specifically, I would
like to request that the board consider exchanging two existing middle school in-service days for two additional instructional days for students. By replacing two in service days with full instructional days, students would gain additional time for that in-depth learning, structured classroom activities, and better preparation assessments. While I recognize the importance of professional development for educators, I believe that maintaining a balance between teacher in service and direct
student instruction is essential for maximizing student achievement. So, those days, you see in that with those yellow arrows, those green days right now in the calendar that we've adopted, you've adopted and approved. Um those days are elementary planning which would remain middle school in service in high schools are in session. My proposal is that middle school and high school would be in session on those days. Now, I'm going to pass it on to Nikki.
As Jennifer mentioned earlier, we envision each school developing a plan that focuses on three key areas. Student behavior support, student academics, and staff collaboration. This approach ensures that each building's plan is tailored to its unique needs while aligning to our broader strategic goals. By prioritizing these areas, we aim to create a supportive, academically enriching, and collaborative environment for both
students and staff. Additionally, each building team will develop its own plan ensuring opportunities for teacher input in the process. Our timeline for early release viability is structured to ensure thorough planning, stakeholder engagement, and seamless implementation for early release. From 2023 to February 202five, we focused on developing models and engaging key stakeholders. In March
and April, we will finalize essential logistics, confirm the calendar, and secure necessary support. Beginning in May and beyond, site leadership teams will take the lead in developing professional learning plans and logistical frameworks ensuring a smooth and effective transition. Our next steps for early release focus on collaborative work groups that will refine key areas of implementation to ensure alignment
with our strategic plan priorities. These efforts will include developing, operational logistics, designing learning experience for students and staff, and ensure compliance with policies and scheduling requirements. Middle and high school teams will explore models that best support their unique needs while leadership will provide guidance across all levels. Through this structured approach, we will create a
sustainable early release model that enhances student learning, staff collaboration, and overall operational efficiency. The next steps of early release focus on finalizing decisions, organizing work groups, and ensuring school specific planning. Senior leadership will need to make a final decision based on a board calendar vote. We're hoping all this will happen by April first. Following this, early release work groups will organize for action, addressing key areas such as policy, curriculum, professional learning, and logistics.
Principals will develop those school specific schedules to ensure all required elements are incorporated into their plan and in quarter four, principals will share these plans with their school about accountability committees to provide rationale and gather parent input ensuring well-informed and community supported implementation. So, when will teachers and and staff be ready to roll with this? Like, plans are made. We know what we're doing. Today, we start, correct? Our
principles, while they're here, they've been working on this with an anticipation that this was going to happen. There were some other additional background pieces that we needed to work on. We needed Clint and I and Ari, we worked with STA to ensure that transportation because we all know buses run our schedules, right? And so, ensuring that all schedules could be with our buses, could be met with transportation and they can. So, our we asked our, like I
said, that survey with our principals back in December. Our principals have not forgotten and Doctor Hill can attest that this idea of early release. Um and they have just been waiting for that right time. They're really the ones that resurrected release and they've been planning it and they'll be ready to go once we make that decision or once that decision has been made. They'll be ready to go. They'll be ready to go. I'm sure they'll answer. So, the the request is this fall. It's. Correct. That's what we're hearing. Correct. Okay. Correct.
Right. So, they'll continue to plan and and get their ducks in a row. So, get their ducks in a row. Through the rest of this year. Correct. And be ready to go when we start this new schedule in the fall things will be in place to start this actually happening. There won't be just more planning for another extended period of time. Absolutely. Okay, I don't know how to answer it. Absolutely not to half of that question. Well, don't be ready. Until Jim. You understand what what
I'm getting. I think the board is just looking for clarity on what we're needing, I think, to just make a decision on, I think the, so, to Jen's point, she's being very nice. Um, I've I've been one of the barriers in this but So, the schools are, they're, they could do this tomorrow, probably if they had to. So, and some, many of our secondary schools are already doing they're all doing this when I said I was the barrier, it's great. Um, so yeah. I did too. Yeah. Um, I, some of them are
already doing a modified version of a, of a different release anyways. And remember, our, our elementary schools have been doing this for a very long time. So, it's not new for our district. It would be new for secondary as a uniformed plan. Like I said, we already schools that have already been doing late starts things of that nature. So, it would have some uniformity which would help with transportation, would help with families that maybe have kids in multiple grade levels. Um so, really what the board, the board's responsibility in this is not to make a decision on whether or not to to
implement early release. It's really, we would need to change the the ask is around changing the calendar and the reason why the calendar idea was brought up was because one of the pieces of feedback we got was what we we don't want to lose instructional time with kids. Um and so Jen and her team went back, worked with the principals, and talked about how could we gain back some of that instructional time and that's where those in-service days came back. So, that was based on some feedback we got and that's even, I should say, that's even with seventy plus percent of families saying we already support
this the way it was presented to begin with but some of the feedback we got was we don't want to lose instructional time and so they they gain some of that back through that and I, you know, I would just say kind of a pitch for this too is that anytime you talk about losing something and that that there may be fear there but you know, sometimes there's addition through subtraction and so if you're, if you're just constantly pushing but you're not giving folks time to actually plan around what they're pushing for, then, are you really getting high quality or the highest quality product in the end
and so, I think that this would obviously we're hearing directly from folks at the schools that they would benefit from this and I think we would see the impact on students in the end but that was some of the delays was me and then STA making sure we can get the transportation in place and then trying to get back some of that instructional time for for students and that's where the board would come in. It would be a modification to the calendar for next year. That is on Fridays, right, Jen? Right. Okay. Same as. Right. I said you guys answered and asked all my questions. I know with a lot of schools that have
four-day weeks, they tend to start earlier in the year. So, with that, that wouldn't be a change to our calendar? No. And you're going to vote on those calendars, a number of those calendars this afternoon. They're elementary calendars. They're not secondary schedules and it's not, it's an early release. It's not a four-day week. It's on a less. Four-day week. Week. Yeah. Day or week. Mm hmm. All of our school, they will just have
shorter periods every Friday. So, they'll still have their full schedule. They'll meet with all of their teachers but they will just meet less than their scheduled time during the week. Okay. I I think I had heard somewhere where maybe it was the comparative districts that some of them had 40 weeks. So, I think I, sorry, I was mixing the two together. So, okay. Yeah, the the other thing I just want to reiterate that was already said but this is time for
teachers and admin and staff to have its planning professional learning but it's also really having conversations around students that maybe struggling and how do we provide more support. So, I don't want people to hear this and think, well, it's just everyone's just going to have a two-hour kind of hangout on Fridays like there's actually structure to this. Um and the issue we ran in two years ago with this is as we've been going through declining enrollment and it's been harder and harder to staff secondary schools in a way where it allows them to have some of that common planning
time during the day or time for their, you know, whether it be grade levels or content areas to meet together, that's become more of a more of a challenge and I think it will continue to be a challenge for us. This provides, you know, some relief there to be able to say you have this dedicated two hours to be able to have some of this planning on on a Friday. So, just to be clear, it's it's the teachers will be doing that work on those Fridays. Um and we're trying to keep it within their hours, right? Because otherwise, then you're staying after for hours and it's and it's outside your contract time and so, it's putting extra demand on on
folks if we don't do something like that. So, this gives them those two hours on Fridays to be able to have that structured time for their but at the end of the day, the goal is better outcomes for kids whether that be academically or or student well being is having that time to actually have those discussions and we've seen success as Jen mentioned at the elementary level. Um this is a request around secondary being able to do that as well. I think maybe it would be helpful because as I was going through this, I haven't been able to be in all the meetings when y'all been having these conversations Overwhelmingly, there was support in the surveys but
why would why would a teacher say I don't want this? I don't know if there's a reason why somebody might say I don't I don't think this is a good thing. Um the few teachers that we spoke to that were unsure hadn't seen the the layout of it and they thought it was just going to be two hours of free time. And so when they saw that every school already has a structure like this that's dedicated to specific tasks. It's not just 2
hours. A lot of them said well if I would have known that I wouldn't have voted that way we did follow up with some of the teachers who said no and most of them wanted us a very good structure for those Fridays. Yeah, I think that was last time when this came around, I think that was some of the feedback I got was they felt like they were losing instructional time. However, I think when some of you then spoke to
them about what they would get in exchange for that, I think that made more sense to them so that because I also heard that the newer teachers wanted to be able to have time to collaborate with more seasoned teachers because our newer teachers were feeling like they were not getting time to have sort of that mentorship with the seasoned teachers of like, hey, how do you do this and how do you do that when I think we were walking through some of the middle schools at the time and so, they were either having to come in
early or stay late and that can be really hard especially when you have two different schedule that may not accommodate times to do that. So, yeah, that was, I, I recall that being some of the feedback we got last time when we were talking about this. Okay. Well, and and to feedback on that, yeah, that feedback from family saying, if I have a younger kid on Fridays, they go home and there's nobody there. It's not for every family but if you have an older sibling now, they have somebody that's also out on Fridays as well. I
think there's there's other benefits as well. I mean, around athletics and and other things too that don't apply to every single kid but there are other benefits as well around this. So, added to to the question really for the board it's more around and we're not taking any votes tonight but thinking about giving back those in-service days next year as instructional days and that would just be a modification to the calendar. And I haven't modified that calendar yet so I can do that and we can put it on the agenda next. Tuesday. Next week. Already.
Next. Next week. I was talking to a parent. Um today after school and they said my kids a three sport athlete and we require all sophomores to do an internship. Um for career and I said, well, what if they had that early release Friday and they had that two hours to do that internship and they were like, oh my gosh, that'd be amazing. So, that's not why we're doing it but it's a a possible consequence or kind of like what Doctor Hill was talking about about babysitting. We're not doing it because of that but it's it's
it's a pro to it. Well, the other thing that we wanted to make sure and and Jen and and Clint and and all their teams have been working really hard on this to try to cross all the Ts and. the Isis around. concurrent enrollment, career center, things like that. So, just making sure that we don't pull back on opportunities for kids because you don't have something on our fighting anymore. I know they've worked through all all that. Yes, well. Um Career Center was one of our concerns because we have three mods every day and so, what would that mod schedule and structure look like for our career center and Todd is here. Um
all of our principals were invited to speak at public comment. I don't know how many of them will other than you can see them talking with their body language behind me, correct? Uh and I know Todd and his team came together to identify what would that schedule look like and STA was able to accommodate their schedule. Sherry has been working with CMU Tech to ensure that our students aren't losing opportunities and then of course we have our concurrent students who are taking classes. Um and Ari actually took some time to dig
in to our students who are taking concurrent classes at the college. Not early I mean early scholars not students are taking college courses at the high school and many of those they don't, if they take so many classes, they're not taking any classes at the high school, so they're not, their day isn't being jeopardized at the college or at their high school. So, we really did, you know, the the dotting the eyes and the crossing the T's truly tried to make sure that we were trying to
ensure all students, no student would be left behind or left out because of early release on Friday. They are. They have an abbreviated schedule already and so, yes, but they're able to accommodate. And the the last thing I'll say no quit talking is it where this is it may feel somewhat reactionary if nobody somebody hasn't been paying attention this whole time but really this is an over two year conversation we've been having and really even before that this was a request from schools prior to that but also this is
something we would want to monitor. Um so if we put this in place next year we want to kind of monitor it. See if it's actually effective. See if we need to make any adjustments along the way. Um so that would be something that we would do as well as a district. Maybe you'll hear more. No pressure, principals. Alright, thank you very much. Alright and then the the last presentation is we've got Dan Burke coming up to give a quick overview of Board book which we've switched to for where we store and share
documents and information for our board meetings. One second here. Oh, do you need them lower? Brighter? We can turn them down. Hello, Bord and thank you for having me come up and explain a little bit about Board Buck. I'm going to make this brief. It is a very simple product. It is really about media consumption for the public and really trying to trying to make sure our strategy plan and transparency and things like that out to the community. Make it more easier to
stomach and and find that information. So, we're going to get into it. Um I've kind of told you a little bit about about the presentation board book Um it's going to be our main platform for board meetings. Essentially, it is a cloud-based program that houses our meeting agenda, PDF forms that we, that we use in the meetings and anything else like reports or something like that that the board would see. Um the public will have access to it. Um kind of kind of went
over. I'm just giving you a kind of a good book or kind of look here but the big things about this is going to be our meeting management. Um being able to create the agenda with you guys not having to be in the and be able to just, you know, approve 'em, find different things, break something else that needs to be talked about. Document access and transparency, like I said, it should be a lot better for the board to be able to access the documents but really and truly, it's going to be nice to be able to give those or make 'em available to the public in a PDF form, a very easy way to
find it and and and consume the the information. Um we're going to go into here and like I said, the public access website, we've published it on a couple place is here. Um we have it under our menu under our Board of Education. We have it there under Board Book and we also have it if you go into the Board of Education website. It'll be right there on the left called Board book. This will take you. Now, now, so I am someone, I make sure that I'm clear on this. This is
not the site that you guys will go in to log in to, right? This is for public. So, public will come into this. And be able to find our meeting, March 25th and you can click on agenda here. But let me show you the part that's really kind of neat. And that's, you can subscribe to this site. So, when you when you subscribe, you can put any Email in. You don't have to sign up. It doesn't create your account. All it
does is create a mailing list that gives you access anytime, anything changes on the site or anything new gets added. So, I just want to show that real fast for you because like I said, that's going to be a huge engagement for our community. As you look at the agenda, you can kind of follow it. Um you can look over here. There's a couple things that you can either show or not. I like to have all those selected. Kind of a neat thing as you download all of this by one button and it'll download the whole
pamphlet for you and you'll have it. If you follow along in the board meeting, you can come in here and click on the recognition or I'm sorry, the recognitions, read the documents, follow along. The neat thing about these and this is in a gigantic document but it has a search feature, right? So, if you really wanted to get back in here and say, hey, my daughter was recognized today. Um can I find it, right? There it is, Ripper highlights it down here and so, it makes it a little bit easier
to find and and process information Um let's see Let me go back and so like I said the agenda, like I said, it's all here and I just want to show you just a couple of the other kind of just just the the files and like I said, it makes it very easy to view them. Um I've I've looked at this on a phone. Um it has a built-in PDF viewer. So, very very mobile friendly and so like I said, having the ability to go in there and
search documents. Um we will be able to link videos on the same place where the agenda is. So, it's the and we hope to be able to archive our videos to be able to search for certain things. Now, that is something that so that you can do but we are we're we're working on that and so, I'm sorry. Let me get that slideshow finish here. So, the public. So, our did our live demonstration. So, our big things, right? Appliance and governance is the transparency Um historical records and centralized
documentation. That's where they stay, that's where they live. Going further in the program, I mean, I think we have some, you know, we we have a chance to, to enhance it, we've gotta take a look at new things coming out with it. I think questioning you guys and making sure that we're talking with the public and see what things are working good for them and what is not and make sure that we can strengthen that and then, exploring additional features every week, every month that they may come out, it may be viable for us to use that but
then, again, it may, like I said, we want to keep it as simple as we can for our public. So, just a recap. Meeting management, being able to make meetings and agree with them, document access and transparency. We have improved efficiency and the big one for me was the notification of subscription features for our community. I'd like to open the door for any questions. Like I said, it's very simple but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. I just have one question. I'm not sure
that you answered it fully. Can we do a link? just for the video? Yeah, absolutely. Meeting s. Um yes, in fact, we've got one. I'm working with them right now to be able to because we host from Facebook. Mm hmm. Um it's got a link to that and then it's gotta do a handshake through. So, we're trying to get that handshake to work. Got it. But I I feel very very confident that we'll have that fixed result. Right. Oh, that looks good. I had not seen the public facing side yet. I do know on our side, it has been much more
manageable for me to find the agendas. Um I know just the search feature alone has been helpful because I'll I'll I'll think about a meeting from some time ago and think like, oh gosh, what was that thing we were talking about and then the search feature and I'm sure our community as well. They're like, what meeting did we talk about such and such and then, or like you said, a and they can go in and find it and so I'm I'm really excited that this will be much more user-friendly for our
community and future boards to be able to use both on the back end and also on the front end for our community. And as and if it gets better and stuff like that, we have it, we do have the the ability to do some training videos and stuff like that. So if there's something that gets more complicated, we'll definitely create some stuff out to our public to make sure that they understand how to use it. Yeah. This is great. I like that it's all in one place. Yeah. Yeah, if you remember how it was before it was individual links on our website and to President
Heights point, it was, you, like, I, we couldn't even find, when did we talk about that five years ago? Um, what meeting was that? So, that will be beneficial and and Bert mentioned this, but the, the main goal here was tying it back to the strategic plan on how we, how do we provide better communication and transparency for our community, and this is one way to be able to do that. So, and then because this is a organization that works with a lot of school districts in the state, I know they work with Casby and and other organizations as well. It's tailored to and catered to
school districts. So, that's another benefit of as well. So, thanks to Burke and his team for and Amy and everybody's been working on getting board book up and running. So, we really appreciate it. Amy is the true all-star. Yeah. Well, thank you and I think it makes it a little easier for Amy to honestly help take minutes and roll call and stuff as well. So, it just creates better efficiency and it's just a much user-friendly for, like I said, future, our board, future boards, and for the community. So, this is, it's just fantastic. So, thanks Dan
for presenting and. Absolutely. Thanks, Amy for learning the whole program and anything future that will. So, thanks for presenting on it, Dan. So. Absolutely, guys. Thank you. Right. Does the board need a break or I guess we'll see how many. I don't know. Amy, how many public comments do we have? One. Okay. Let's do it. We can. Your 30-minute break. Go for it, Will. Alrighty. So, for our one and only audience
comment, miss Deborah Settler. Nobody's on deck, nobody's on the hole. You still only get 3 minutes. Good evening board members. And Doctor Hill. My name is Deborah Stettler. I'm a 12 year resident of Grand Junction. A big supporter of public schools. And a member of the League of Women Voters of Mesa County's Education Advocacy Team. Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you and for the dedication, diligence, and professionalism
that you bring to D fifty-one. The League of Women Voters believes that an equitable quality public education is critical to developing informed, engaged citizens. Students must learn to think critically about important current events and classroom discussion is essential to this learning. Teaching must reflect the perspectives and experiences of all people including marginalized groups. I'm speaking to you tonight on behalf of the league to follow up on
the student comments made at the February 18th meeting. At that meeting, some students expressed concerns that some teachers did not feel free to teach or discuss some topics. One student referred to quote recent conversations surrounding avoiding a research papers regarding sexuality, gender, or race, unquote, and to teachers quote, expressing concerns revolving around executive orders, immigration, and social issues, unquote. Students
also expressed concerns about such actions as philosicas being drawn on whiteboards and students telling other students that they were glad they might be deported. We that these comments do not represent a formal survey of students or teachers Nonetheless, we are concerned about the possibility of the learning environment being compromised by student behavior or teacher hesitancy to teach certain topics. We are very much in favor of D51's vision to engage, equip, and
empower each and every student, each and every day. To that end, we hope that there will be an attempt to learn whether students at other schools have similar concerns. And that teachers surveyed anonymously about the extent to which they may feel obliged to censor the teaching of comprehensive fact-based history or discussion of current events. We hope that any decisions made or actions taken will be shared with the community. Again, thank you
for the opportunity with you. And for everything you do for our community and for our learners. Thank you. Right here. Thanks, Todd. Yeah. Thanks, buddy. Yeah. I'm just going to. There you go. Here to support. I support you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Alright, Board. Thank you. Thanks for all the work you do. Um it's an enormous amount and I know I speak for the community when I say that we appreciate all the hard work you give to our our faculty, our staff, our students, and our overall
community. Um just in regard to the the possibility of of an of a unified early release. Um I want to share that and I'm, by the way, I'm Jory Sorensen. I'm Grand Junction principal. Um I want to share that we currently have a 40-minute early release and it's Mondays and this this Monday, so yesterday, we spent that time talking about our upcoming testing. So, our comprehensive
testing around Psat, SAT, and 11th grade C mass and we we talked to our teachers about what their role is during that, about all the logistics around it, about some different online training and onboarding as well as all logistics and the moving of kids. So, this is just one example Um and in that 40 minutes, we, it's really just directional information. And the what we expect of them and that and there's four different roles my faculty has during that depending on what it is
their job is. So, we're expecting them to take that information and then go out and and operationalize it in a way that puts our students in the best possible situation to prove their knowledge, to prove their content understanding, and to perform their best for their future. Um If we had more time, we would have given our teachers time to go through that together in their group, in their group of four, whichever of the four groups they were in and say,
okay, what is this look like? How will I make sure I'm preparing my room, preparing my students and it's really a big thing for us. It's you know, our aim, one of our big goals is around SAT improvement. Um it's around sea mass improvement really doing our best with everything we do. And in at Grand Junction High School with ninety-eight teachers in order for us to move consistently and with coherence from grade to grade. Um yeah, just as mister Foster was discussing, it's very important
that our teachers have time to collaborate. The other context of Junction High School, what you know about is we built this school for maximum utility. And I'm proud to see you're doing that. We're using it. We're using just about room, just about every period. Um what that what that means is we, our master schedule doesn't allow like ninth grade comp teachers to meet together during their day. We provide that during that early release time. So, Unified
Early Release Time would help that for for really guided planning. So, I think I'm out of time. You can get to know 3 minutes. Two, one, yeah. Alright. Alright, I'll follow whatever protocol. Okay, I'll switch. No. Hi, guys. Todd McClaskey, principal at Kerr Center. Um you know, I have always been kind of opposed to any kind of early release. Um I feel it's a huge responsibility and letting kids go. I've always, I've always
struggled with that. So, at Ferda, we experimented with a lot of ways. You know, collaborating, getting teachers together, providing professional development, moving our goals forward, our vision is really difficult. So, we tried a lot of ideas to be, we try to be really innovative at Fruda to hold our kids but free up some staff and it was, yeah, it was difficult. So, I'll say that. At the Kerr Center, you know, I
was nervous about this because I didn't want to go from three mods down to two. It it eliminate about a hundred and seventy kids from CTE programming and that's an obstacle we've been able to avert, you know, going from 110 minutes. We'll go to 70 minutes on Fridays. Still, you know, over hour. I think that's adequate. The the benefit to the Career Center is the uniformity of the early release. We really struggle with all the high schools being on they have
early releases now. Three of the four do. So, it poses a strong, it's a struggle for us to accommodate all the different schedules and the uniformity of early release Friday. Will be a big benefit to the Career Center in terms of consistency and and having students all the students there at the same time. You know, right now, we have some students from various schools that are gone on different days due to their schedules of the the current schedules of the existing high schools. So, that will be a big win, I
believe, for the Career Center. Another positive, as I've wrapped my brain around an early release, another positive for our staff is we do a lot of work with industry partners. Our construction program works with local electricians, plumbers, this would embed some time on Fridays for us to work with industry partners whether it's with a vet science or the health science or the construction program or a culinary program. It will allow our teachers to also with their advisory
boards. Uh typically they they try to jam those in during a a lunch. Um now we can embed those into some Fridays where our rewards and those are our industry partners can come in on those Fridays and work with our teachers to make sure our kids are getting the skills they need in that. In the tree. So, those are some benefits that I see. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, guys. It's marked today is the day that two of our principals broke protocol and took over Public Common. Thank you.
Alright. Alright. Come on, dude. Well, Alright. So, normally, we don't always have a response to public comment but miss Stetler, we do actually have some updates since the student comment from the nineteenth. So, we did get some information back from the school. So, they had not received any reports of swastikas being drawn on whiteboards. Um it was looked into.
Um there was a swastika that was found in a bathroom that was drawn in soap on a mirror but when situation like that arise. Um the school does their best to look at cameras to determine who may have drawn the image. Oftentimes, they do come up empty handed and they cannot pinpoint who committed the vandalism but the schools definitely do look into it and make sure that if they can pinpoint who it is that they take care of those things. Um they have not reprimanded any teachers for any of the reasons stated by the students
two weeks ago. Um there was a parent phone call with questions about how some of the topics including immigration and segregation were being handled in an American government class Um the principal met with the teacher to learn the teacher's side of it and then followed up with the parent and both parties were pleased with where things landed. And no disciplinary action or reprimand was taken. So so these the principles has worked very hard over the last few years to
address belonging in the school. And particularly with different subgroups. Um and it remain central focus especially at Fruit and Monument High School since that's where the students that had made public comment and they want to ensure that every student feels like they belong there. Um so, the principal did meet with the concerned students and at that point and obviously wanted to make sure that they felt heard and so, I will also state that we do have a controversials materials policy so
that anytime a teacher feels that they want to bring up any kind of controversial topic. Um we do have a policy that they can follow Um if they want to bring up something like that. And so it really just is revolves around making sure that parents are notified. And so if a parent either feels comfortable leaving their student in the classroom or not. Um and so we we definitely want to make sure obviously aligns with curriculum and it's not necessarily something out in left field because it needs to align with what we're doing in course work. So So, anyways,
it kind of came a shock as to the board because we definitely have policy that allows our teachers to definitely teach to certain things and those those concerns were brought up to the principal and he obviously went and addressed those. So, I hope that answers at least most of your concerns and if not, some things are still being looked into. So. Quickly. Yes. I I may not be able to respond back to you. So. Oh, no, no, no, no, I, we did not take it that, that anybody was asking for a teacher to be reprimanded, what we were, and we would, what, and that
students were not asking for a teacher, what we wanted to make clear, was that, the board also didn't want a teacher to feel like they were being reprimanded, and that they felt like if they could or could not teach on a certain subject, and I did not take your comments is that you're asking for anybody to be reprimanded. My, I took your comments that you want to make sure that a teacher is obviously looking at what they could or could not do and I want to let you know that we have policy as far as what teachers
can do. So, no, I did not take your comments that you're looking for someone to be reprimanded. So, thank you for the clarity. So, normally, we don't always have a quick follow-up like that but I wanted to let you know that our superintendent was was very expeditious in being able to get back to the board on those things in working in tandem with the principal. So, but we're thankful for the students to be able to come and voice those concerns but we do take those things very seriously and we do
want to make sure our teachers also aware of the policies in which they can operate in to do those types of things. So, alright, I do think our board leaders, board members, do you need a quick five-minute? Okay, because we just. We have executive session. Well, we have consent agenda and then we do have the business items to vote on. So, just let's make a quick five minutes because then we have, we do have executive session after this. Okay, quick five-minute biological break. Well, I was going to say and resume because we just have our consent agenda and business items
Alright. So, the consent agenda contains personal actions and the acceptance of gifts and items that are routine and can be approved by a single motion. Items on the consent agenda will not be discussed individually by the board unless an item is removed for individual consideration. Um I will say the total for the amount of gifts is thirty-one thousand eight hundred and forty-six dollars and 96 cents. So, we're thankful to our community for the amount of gifts. So, is anyone requesting for any items to be removed for individual consideration? Okay seeing none. Um
do I have a motion to approve the items on the consent agenda? Motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. So, next up, we have our business items. So, our first one up is J 1 which is our fee schedule adoption. Do I have a motion to move forward with RV schedule adoption for this year? Motion to move on the fee schedule adoption? Any, oh,
sorry. Second, okay. Director Jones, second in, any discussion? I think we we had went over fees of little well a few meetings ago. So, I don't think anything else had been updated since then. Alright, seeing no discussion, we can go ahead and call the vote. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. Uh next business item, Jtwo, we have the school calendar adoptions for Dual Immersion
Academy, Independence Academy Charter School, Juniper Ridge, Charter School, Mesa Valley Community, Charter School, and New Emerson. Do you have a motion to approve those following school calendars? Motion to approve the school calendars. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none. We can call them a vote. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes.
Alright and then next up Jthree. Um so we have the positions on the state house bills. Um so she had seven that she presented and obviously gave her recommendation. So probably look at these individually. Or unless you I I can't make the motion. So if somebody else would like to make a motion. I'd make the motion to take them all at once,
all seven. Okay, that's. Those are her recommendation. Okay. So how how would you like so how would that read? Motion to approve the recommended positions on the bills that were presented by Amy Atwood. Okay, so. What would, how would you, I would clarify that? I would almost do em individually because. Do individual? Yeah, because if we have. Cuz we're not in support of all of them. I I I don't think there's ones that there's ones that I have issues
with. So. Well, I think what I think what Director Lima is saying is is approving the recommended positions that Amy said but what I would put in the motion is if you want to clarify is what I what I would recommend is I would say on say for instance, 113five, a position of support, 11seventy8, a position of opposition. Just so that every board member understands what position we're taking. If if we're going to do
all of them at the same time, does that make sense? Yes. Unless you want to do 'em individually. Wait, do you want to? Sorry. Clarify the, clarify the motion. You think we can do it at one in one move? Okay. Okay. So, please let Why don't let's clarify just read the last four letters of the bill and and the position. Cuz I know on twelve seventy-8, she said there was no position. No position. Would be a monitor, would it? Or yeah, yeah,
monitor. That's right. Okay Do you have on director Jones? Yeah. So, on bill 113five, support and it might just motion in each one or just. Well, just state, state, state it. Okay. Just state it. Bill 11seventy8, oppose it. Bill 1192. So, I'm sorry, I oppose it. Bill 1210 support. Bill 11 or 12, excuse me, 12 78 would be a monitor. Bill 1300 post and Bill
one one thirty-three, one fifty-three. One fifty-three. Yes, those were her recommendations. Yes. Okay. So, the motion on the floor is to adopt all seven positions and as the positions were read by Director Jones, the motion was made by Director Lima. Do we have a second? Second. Okay and any discussion? She did a great job explaining knees and I'm in agreement with those positions. Let's take about eleven
seventy-eight. I mean, you know, I worked in the schools and I saw how this could be detrimental to everyone involved, you know. Absolutely. I mean, we have kids that have special needs and requirements and assistance and if we're taking a hard stance that we are not going to give them an area where they can calm down and cool down, you know, out of the viewpoint of other students, you know, that puts them just in in a really bad situation. I mean, the the
kids themselves and then, if there's a situation where they're, you know, being destructive or something of that nature, it puts other students at harm. So, I just, I absolutely adamantly oppose eleven seventy-eight. Yeah, that was the ban on student seclusion. Yes. Yeah. I agree. That one is that one is very difficult for I think districts. Yeah. Any other discussion? Yeah, I think going from the top down. Discussion. The communication devices in schools, I mean, I think Doctor Hill and and our board has
I think, you know, created a great process for implementing communication devices in schools, you know, with our policy. So, I think having a policy in place is good. I do agree that they don't need to tell us what the policy needs to look like but having a policy in place is good. So, I don't think that violates too much local control but having a policy in place is good. I agree with Director Evanson what you said about student seclusion. Literacy. We talked
about that earlier. Um I just I don't think you don't need to fill out a Fafsa if you're not going to go to college and not everybody will do that and I don't think some parents want to share that information if they don't need to. And then yeah the data reporting I think we need to support that. Um kind of help get that cleaned up. And then the worker compensation that one seems very ownerous on top of employers and obviously school districts
included on that one. Um and then the school financial reporting requirements that just seemed petty for them to ask about private monies being donated to schools. So. Right? Anything else? Okay, we can go ahead and take the vote for those positions. Mister Chavez. Approved. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yes. Alright. Okay. Um any other board discussion?
Okay. I don't think so. Uh we have future meetings. Um so we have one next week because it's the first of April on our first Tuesday. So we have our work session coming up. Um we have a board coffee Saturday, April 5th. That'll be at Pear Park Elementary in the cafeteria. Um and then we have our next board business meeting on April 15th. So that's it. Anything else? Uh Doctor Doctor Hill and I, myself are, is it April 27th? Oh, and we're
going to get beat in basketball? Yeah, we're playing basketball against the Harlem Gotrotters at Oh. Orchard Mesa Middle School. If you want to come see us get dunked on, come hang out at Orchard Mesa. Okay. Well, Alrighty. So, we are not going to adjourn yet because the board does have an executive session after this. So, So, pursuit into section twenty-four dash six dash 4024 B, Colorado Revised Statute for the purpose of receiving legal advice on specific legal questions and
pursuit into twenty-four dash six dash four oh two four E, Colorado Revised Statues for the purpose of determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations, developing strategy for negotiations, and or instructing negotiators regarding negotiations with Mesa Valley Education Association. So, the following Um hold on. Iowa State who will be in the following sessions. For our first session myself, Andrea Heitz, director Lima, director Jones, Director Evanson, Director Chavez,
Doctor Hill, Miss Tammy Arrett, Miss Jennifer Marsh, Miss Nikki Jost, Miss Melanie Trujillo, Mister Andy Means, and Miss Clint or Miss excuse me, Mister Clint Garcia will be in our first executive session. And then the second one will be myself, Andrea Heitz, miss Angela Lima, mister Will Jones, Doctor Brian Hill, Miss Tammy Arrett, mister Chavez, Miss Barb Evanson, Missus Marsh, Missus Jost, and Mister
Melanie Trujillo will be in our second session. So, do I have a motion to move in to executive session? Motion to win. Second. Okay. Mister Chavez. Yes. Missus Evanson. Yes. Missus Heitz. Yes. Mister Jones. Yes. Miss Lima. Yep. Alright and then we will come out and finish our meeting and adjourn. So,