Alright. Well, good evening everyone. Uh this evening, we do have our budget hearing. So, we will go ahead and call that to order. So Is there anyone here for the budget hearing? We have one person sitting in the audience. Alright. Seeing that we have noone here for the budget hearing. We shall, I guess to have a motion to adjourn the budget hearing. Motion to adjourn.
Alright, budget hearing is adjourned. Alright, we will now move into our work session. Um I guess we'll go ahead and do our Pledge of Allegiance. So, director Chavez, would you like to kick us off this evening? Allegiance to the flag. Public for which it stands. One nation under God With liberty and justice Alright, thank you director. Let's go ahead and see the national anthem. Yeah. Thank you, Director Chavez. Alright, this month, we celebrate
the Caribbean American Heritage Month. So, I will read our proclamation. Nice. Um whereas Caribbean American Heritage Month is a time to celebrate the achievements, culture, and contributions of the millions of individuals of Caribbean origin living in the United States and to honor a shared history of resilience that has strengthened and enriched our nation for generations. And whereas Caribbean Americans have played influential roles shaping our society, enriching fields like arts, business, education,
science, journalism, technology, government, and more. Their leadership and advocacy have helped drive progress and strength and strengthen communities across the country. And whereas the month of June has been nationally designated as Caribbean American Heritage Month offering an opportunity recognized and celebrate and reflect on the rich heritage, diverse traditions, and lasting impact of Caribbean Americans. And now therefore, be it resolved that the Mesa County Valley School District 51 Board of Education recognizes 2025 as Caribbean
American Heritage Month and encourages our community to celebrate the history, culture, and contributions of Caribbean Americans in our schools, community, and our country. Alright. So, this evening, we have our Strategic Plan Update. So, do we have Alex on the line? Yeah, I should have Alex on there. Doctor Carter, you on? I am everybody. How's it going? Hopefully you can. Hear me? Oh now we can. Okay, good. Oh that scared me. So, before I kick it over to Doctor
Carter, I do want to say this is, it's actually been a great day around the Strategic Plan. So, we start off this morning. Jen and Jackie and the team organized our last leadership academy which is where we bring all of our principals, assistant principals, central office staff together, and they did a really great activity where we did a gallery walk around the Noga Junction High School so people could see the high school but then also they had in every room the priorities that are in the new plan and so principals and have been
got the chance to actually take a deep dive into those priority areas and we got some feedback from them on that as well and so just a a great way to start off the morning. Everybody's really excited about this new strategic plan and so remember that tonight the board's not taking a vote on anything but we just wanted Doctor Carter to come one more time just to give an update on the final draft and answer any questions you might have and then we'll bring it back to the board on the 17th for a vote so that we can this new strategic plan kick off this fall. So, really just want to say gratitude to Jen and Jackie for this
morning and then also just gratitude to the board and everybody who's had a part to play in creation creation of this new strategy plan. So, with that, I'm going to kick it over to Doctor Carter. Great. Uh good evening, Board. Great to always spend time with my friends in Grand Junction. Excited to share this plan with you today. This is one of the more sophisticated, strategic plans that I've been in part a part of building and it's largely impart, well, it's 100% because of your community and your school district,
really leaning into this process. Having been diligent in executing the last strategic plan. So, I think people knew that this mattered, that this would drive action for the next 5 years. So, everyone really leaned in to this process. Um as we start thinking about how this thing happened. I just want to remind you that there's a small team that's been working on this from CEI, myself, my colleague Paul, Alicia, and Jaren have all been working on this for with
you guys really for the last 6 months. It took about two months of prep before we kick this off in the right around semester and now we're wrapping it up here in June. Um remember, everything you do in your Strategic Plan is designed to help students drive this global outcome. The that these students are engaged learners, equipped learners, and empowered learners that they're creative problem solvers, culturally connected, and ready for career in life. And that they can demonstrate these competencies that you've outlined by your
community in the graduate profile. Um this has been the most, without a doubt, not even close, the most robust data collection of any strategic plan we've ever been a part of. Just to let you know that it the data that we use to build this plan where over nine thousand student surveys over 2, 000 family surveys, over 1400 teacher surveys, 200twenty-four in-depth interviews by the steering committee and that's on top of input
from the superintendent's Principal Council, the Superintendent's Teachers Council, Student Advisories at each of the high schools and data collected from six school walkthroughs. So, this was a highly informed plan and we did a lot of data study and and what we is we kind of sifted through all that data to identify some themes. Um themes were pretty the the nice thing was there it wasn't noisy. It was very clear what this community wanted the school
district to continue focusing on and to improve. They want us to continue focusing on our strengths that really targeted focus on academic success. The commitment to student wellness. Um the improvements they recognize improvements and family and community engagement. Um really talking a lot about the quality leaders, quality teachers, and staff that exist in D51 and a lot of people highlighted the improved facilities that are that are we're seeing because of the new
buildings and things like that Greenwich and High School that is so terrific. There were also some clear themes on areas for improvement. Um they wanted to see focus and attention on staff retention and staff satisfaction, improving academic rigor. There was some some voice about, hey, we know that we're focusing on student achievement. Let's really up the rigor and make sure that that's what we're attending to over the next five years. There was a lot of input on in
continuing to improve. Family and community engagement. Um the interest in seeing more supports to multilingual learners and commitment to a continued commitment to improving facilities for students. So, these were kind of the themes that the steering committee and the staff were looking at addressing in this new strategic plan. So, the new strategic plans has four focus areas. That's one more than last time but the good news is we've won less strategic priorities. So, four focus areas.
The first focus area just like last time is focusing on prepared and supported students. The idea that every D 51 student will receive engaging, high-quality instruction every day, developing the enduring skills outlined in the D-51 graduate profile, and growing academically in core subjects. So, that's the focus of the first focus area. Second focus area is on wellness and belonging. This is a little different from last year. Where the the team that is really
leading wellness and belonging is a really cohesive team that focuses on student well and staff wellness. So, this team came together in the second focus area saying that D51 will cultivate a safe, inclusive, and supportive culture where every student and staff member feels valued, connected, and empowered to fully engage in their learning and work. A strong, sense of belonging will ensure that all members of the community thrive academically, socially, and professionally. So, that's focus area too. Focus area three is really on the functions of
our people department, our human resource and talent department and it's prepared and supported staff and this is hyper focused on retaining, developing, and attracting skilled and collaborative workforce, ensuring that every position is filled with staff members who are committed to advancing student success and the last focus area is on effective district operations. Um this is the team of with community partnerships and district operations, finance, and facilities and and all the
support and they said District 51 will responsibly manage the partnerships, resources, and facilities with our community to ensure that each and every D 51 student is engaged, equipped, and empowered. Really cool. How this this team said last time we were really focused on transparency and getting our systems in place. They still want to do that. They're not walking away from that. They're going to make that even more robust. But what they said is we really want to tie our work to the outcome of
the district. Our students being engaged equipped and empowered. So, so those are the focus areas. Now, we're we're going to go for a deep dive but I want to pause in case there are any questions here. Hearing none, we're going to move forward because I know you guys, it's almost summer and you're ready to get back to your barbecues. So, now, let's talk about the priorities. This is where the real work is identified of how we're going to move things forward. So, inside of prepared and supported students, there are two priorities but these are, I mean, you're going to, the
first one is not too bad. The first one is saying, the first priority is around academic success and they set two goals. The first goal, very under Remember last time in the last Strategic Plan, we said we wanted 100% of our schools to be in the top two performance categories in the state evaluation. and our state school performance frameworks. This time, they said we're going to have by 20 30, 90% of our schools are going to be in the very top performance, the
highest rated category. That is a bold, another bold goal but I'm going to tell you when last when they said 100% will be in the top two performance categories. I I said great. But I shook my head and you guys are I mean we haven't gotten the results back yet. But it's going to be really darn close. So this team said we want to keep focusing on the overall metric of school performance and we want to see that rise. So 90% in the top performing category. This one's going to hurt your eyes. This is goal two. So this
response to that push from the community to continue focusing on academic results and increasing rigor. Well, this team said, we know how to increase rigor. So, they've divided up into the really the overall goal is D 51 students will achieve academic excellence across all grade levels and they broke it down by early literacy, upper elementary, achievement, middle school performance, and high school success and they've gotten really clear about what the metrics are for each. This is going to be a lot of work
but you know what? That's a team that does a lot of Work. This is this is going to help them really organize their efforts and and professional learning and support student instructors to make sure that we're getting to those really high instructional outcomes. The second priority for the first focus area, prepared and sports students is around student opportunities and the goal there is first with robust path robust pathway options. They won 100% by 2030, 100% of D 51 families having
access to regionally and vertically aligned program options. So, in the last strategic plan, remember, we really got our hands around. What are the options available to students? Now, we make sure that all students are having access to those options. So, that's the robust pathways option. The second one is graduate profile implementation. This is something that we got into the water in the first strategic plan. But the team said we if we want to see those graduate profile competencies really just like students no matter
where they're coming from. Getting to those graduate profile competencies. The only way to do that is to say we're going to measure it. So by goal two says by 2030, all students will demonstrate skills aligned to the graduate profile as appropriate to their grade level. So, that's going to require this team to really build out grade-level rubrics and then, help help teachers learn how to build instructional plans where students can practice those competencies and then, evaluate whether they're meeting a grade-level expectations. So,
that's a really ambitious but I think really, really important goal for for that team. Alright, let's move to the second focus area. Well being and belonging. Um priority one is around student wellness. Priority two is going to be around staff wellness. Student wellness we're really focusing on their first goals are around belonging. So there this is something that they the team got amazing success at in the first Strategic Plan. They're going to continue that good work in the second Strategic Plan because we're hearing from the community. This is
still important. We want to see our students increase. Um six 12th grade who say that they feel like they mostly or completely belong on their students. They want to increase that by 7%. I just want to point out 7% is huge. Uh people are like, oh, 7%. I'm like, no. 7%, that's a big lift. So, in the next 5 years, they're really trying to get more than a percentage point per year where students are saying this is where I belong at school. Um goal two is students third through fifth grade
who feel like it. Again, by 7% from 60 5 to seventy-two and then goal three is this above the school median level in student belonging and they want to see a growth of over 1% a year. So, that's in third through twelfth grade on the student perception survey. So, that's all around student belonging and what do we think what that will contribute to if I belong at school? What do I want to do? I want to attend school. So, the second area of focus is all around
student attendance and they're really focusing on decreasing chronic absenteeism from 37% to 17%. So, that's over that's over like half of the existing chronic absentee, a a student's chronically absent. If they're missed school over 10% of the time. So, that's a pretty big swing right there to decrease it by 20 points and then the second one is to really focus on, okay? So, those are the chronically absent students. What about all the other students?
So, they goal two is we want our average daily attendance to be ninety-seven percent in elementary school, 95% in middle school, and 92% in high school. I'm just going to tell you, the gold standard, if you can achieve 95% attendance rates overall for a district, that's the gold standard. If you meet these, you'll be at the gold standard. So, that's the goal in this next strategic plan. The second priority for well and belongings around staff
wellness. And this is really measuring staff well being and belonging. Goal one is around staff belonging. And goal two is measuring students reporting that they feel favorable in their well being. So they're really trying to drive those up by 5% over five years. So they're really trying to chug and make one percent more of your staff feel like they belong every year and feel well and support in their well being. So that's focus area too. Focus area three. We're almost there. We're
halfway home. Focus area three is prepared and supported staff. This one again is remember all around HR. I love that Nikki Joe said you know a lot of people talk about recruitment and retention. She goes nope. It's retention and recruitment. We're going to first focus on keeping the great people we have. So the goal here is to increase favorable responses to job satisfaction in the staff panorama by 20 percent. They want 20% more people to feel satisfied at
work. That is bold. The second area of focus is going to be on job embedded professional learning because we know from the research that when people feel like they're getting support to develop and grow professionally, they feel more satisfied at work. So, these are mutually supportive priorities that they're looking at. The second priority is around staff recruitment. Remember, retention first, then, recruitment and the goal here is that 95percent, they and we know that one of the ways to get
better recruitment is word of mouth that your employees are reporting that D-51 is a good place to work. If people ask, hey, how do you like your district? And they're like, D 51 is an awesome place to work. The chance of them applying to work at D51 go up. So, that'll get that'll really address staff recruitment. Okay, focus area four, effective district operations. Um priority one is all around community partnership. It's pretty cool. The the team said, what are our resources? Well number one resources are community
supporters. So, that's really where they said that they wanted to put their first priority and here, what we're doing is we're trying to continue to engage and increase active participation with our local community partners. So, they're trying to increase community partners over the next of five years by 10% more and you already have a very active, robust community partnership system and then, priority area two is around effective district operations So, the first one is financial, healthy and sustainable financial standing
and one of the ways that we're going to respond to that or measure that is if staff say that they feel like they get the resources they need to do their job. So, we're going to go back to the TLCC survey, the staff survey, and if people, they want 85% of staff to say that they get the instructional resources they need to support student learning and then, Clint Garcia and his team in district support services were also found a question in TLCC that we think is very very aligned with getting to
great outcomes for kids and that's a question that TLC that teachers respond positively to. Teachers and support personnel have adequate physical space to work productively so they can do their jobs well. And the second one is our school is a safe place to work. This was this really was responsive to some of the data we got. We really care about school safety and that that our school workplaces are productive. So, that's the second focus area. Whoo. That was a lot. I'm going to stop
presenting now and ask if you guys have any questions that I can answer or you want any other information about the current draft of the Strategic Plan? And and just so the public knows like we've this is obviously been a process. So, we've shared the draft with the board already. You've had time to look through it. Uh you know, beneath all of this is the strategies. That's where the real work happens and the real meat is and so, I know Alex and the team are as soon as it's, you know, approved, they're
ready to go with creating kind of a visually appealing version of this that we can update on the website and we can start distributing that will list out all of those strategies that the team has come up with to address all of these priority areas focus areas and and how we're going to measure this along the way. So, I I just want to mention that that this this has been shared already. We've got a lot of feedback from the board and other individuals but there is a lot beneath this that will also be in the final report that will be on the website as well. So. Any questions for Alex right now? So,
Alex, just real quick. Um what was the thought press behind 85% of the teachers making sure they have what they have, the need, the tools. Why not go for a hundred? I I'm I just think that I mean 85% is good but we want all our teachers to feel like they're supported and they that they have the tools they need to survive or not to survive but to to teach our kids. Yeah, no, that's board member Jones. I that's a really good point. Um we what we did is we worked with the team, looked at the current the current baseline TLCC data. Um right now,
you're already better than the state average, in D fifty-one, the state average is 78% of teachers respond positively across the state. You guys are already at 80 and what the team said is we're just we just want to do like that 1% more per year. But I think with that I think with exactly what he said with that ultimate goal that we want everyone to say that they get the support they need. But this is a five year plan. Let's let's take a bite that we can get at over the next five years. But if you'd like to see move up. I
certainly, I bet that team would say, alright, give us a a bolder goal. Wow. That was the one that they settled on. The other thing I would add to that too is the good thing about having this be a five-year plan that is we can can adapt as well. So, let's let's say hypothetically we hit that 85% target in year 2. Um we can adjust them to say, okay, for your three, four, and five then we want to continue to grow it. Um I do think, I agree with what you're saying like I I like to have 100% on everything and then we also have to be realistic in like what are those incremental gains that we can make as a district. So, but I would
love to hit that target earlier and then we can adjust beyond that. So, it's a good question. It's kind of like graduation, right? It seems, it's hard to say like anything less than a hundred we're going to be okay with but nobody has 100% graduation rate. So, what can we actually attain and then if we hit that target, let's adjust and and go even higher. That's a good question. Thank you. The the one thing I wish I had said at the beginning, I usually say this when I remind boards that there's never been a strategic plan that's ever been written that was perfect when it
was written and just like I I think General Patton used to say, no matter how good your battle plan is, the minute you put it in action, it it like you have to start adjusting it. It never goes as planned. So, what Doctor Hill just said is and we did that with the last strategic plan is went back and looked at what were our metrics, what were our goals. Some of them we beat like really fast and we adjusted them in years two, three. We don't really like to ever say, well, we're not doing very well. It's lower the bar. We still try to keep that bar high even if we're not quite getting
there and we report out that's harder than we thought but we do adjust up sometimes. Thank you. What I am looking forward to was I I I do like the plan. Uh what I'm looking forward to is seeing what the staff when they speak to us about the how. Hm. How are they going to get that? What is the need of it? Because I think that's a good plan but I like to hear later on certainly we will on how are they going to reach all of these goals? How are they going to reach all
of the percentages that are going up? How are they going to make the options for education for all students, not just for some, how are they going to do all that? So, I'm looking forward and I think that's the hard work. Mm hmm. That the staff is have is going to have to do is figure out the how and that's what I'm interested in. Yeah, I you know, thinking back to, that's a good point too. So, thinking back to three years ago when we first implemented the current strategic plan, you know, I would say the the
idea when I because I moved into this role that same year. Ideally, we would had the assistant superintendent role kind of leading that work, right? And since we didn't backfill that position, we really leaned in on Doctor Carter and the CEI team and they'll continue to support us in that way where they come out monthly and they meet with our I'm calling teams but there's a different term for it but we have teams dedicated to each of those. We have nine priorities right now but we'll have eight and even today, Jackie and Jen, we're asking principals and folks who wants to
serve on those committees with us. So, you want it to be made up of folks on the ground, in the schools, central office staff that are supporting if it makes sense having outside community partners as well at the table and they're meeting monthly for exactly what you're talking about and then, that's what we want to be able to continue to report out to the board every month. So, one thing I really proud of the work that happened to develop the last plan and the follow through but also this board's dedication to accountability and saying like we want you to come present every month and give us updates and so yes like once this is approved we've we've
already started that work but once it's approved we want to hit the ground running with developing those teams that are dedicated to each of the priority areas they're going to be meeting how do we actually operationalize it as you're talking about and then how do we monitor it throughout and give updates to the board and the public along the way as well because to your point, it all looks really good until you actually can get into it and talk about the, like how the sausage is made. So, and that's the work that's to come and I'm super appreciative to Alex and his team for supporting us through that and in the absence of
having that position for us and we'll continue to do that moving forward. Great. Thanks, Alex. That was great. We look forward. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it. Um Boyd, I want you to know. So, I've already told Dr. Hill, I I want to recommend that Doctor or am I, am I still there? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, good. Like the Doctor Hill write a proposal for Cosby because other boards need to hear about how this board in D 51 supports the team and holds the team accountable for
moving the district forward to Strategic vision. Um I'm going to tell you that there that we have the pleasure of working with lots of districts and I don't think there's a better system of accountability and support that happens in D fifty-one. So, I just want to let you know that that's not a joke. I I talk about you guys all over the state because it's you're doing the right work. Well, thanks Alex. I think your suggestion early on. I remember you telling us right when we because this the plan started right as we were even. Came on
board. And I think just your words saying, don't let this just sit on the shelf and so, I think that really, I think with having Doctor Hill be a new superintendent and us being a new board, I don't think we knew any difference. So, we just, we just decided that we needed to let them present to us and tell us how to, you know, what they were doing and just report back and you know, whether it was a challenge or whether it was good, we needed to know what was working or what wasn't working and and just how we could support them.
And so I think it's been really great to hear what the successes have been and what the challenges have been because from the board level, that 30, 000-foot view, it helps give us an idea of like what we need to maybe go ask our community of what, you know, you know, our our teachers and staff and everybody needs and it that just helps us unders give a have a better understanding when we're talking with our community. So, yeah, I like you said, can't just put this on the shelf and then not do anything with it. Plus, it's really not fair to our
staff to to do this and then ask them to put all the work in and then, then, what, then, what did they do? It just follows flat. So, yeah. So, thank you. It's, yeah, been a good team effort. It's, it's refreshing to work with as a system that says, we're going to make an ambitious plan and then, we're going to do it and it's the hard part is doing it. Lots of people love making plans. That's actually not the hard part. Even though it was arduous task, the hard part is doing is is like what Director Chavez said like get those get those
plan like let's get to that operational level. How are we going to do it? What are the month by month, the 90-day plans, and and then following through but then coming back to the board and say, okay, Board, we're ready to report and the board being receptive to say we want to hear about it. So, just sorry, this is taking too much time. I know you guys have a busy Oh, it's great. Thanks, Alex. Okay. I appreciate that. Thanks, everybody. Alright, have a good evening. You did the same. Alright. Alright, next up we have our school closure update. So, just as a recap,
we just have asked the staff to kind of keep us apprised of how the process has just been going and just giving us the board an update as things have been progressing. So, they are going to give us an update. Good evening, Board. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to come and share all of the things that we've been doing with the the closure and the update. Um while it was a hard decision to to have had to make on your
part and then everything that we needed to do to support. I'm actually really proud of how it's all been playing out. So, tonight, you're going to hear from the four of us and I just wanted to remind everybody yeah, that's good. Just wanted to remind everybody what the purpose of that of the transition was and it's you can go to the next slide. This statement was something that we read every time I met or we all met with
our closing and our receiving schools just to focus on what we needed to do and so I'd like to take that opportunity to to read it out loud for you all. Um we are committed to addressing the adaptive challenges of school closure of the school closure a process with empathy, collaboration, and student-centered focus By fostering unity and transparent communication, we will guide our community through the lost, learning, reinvention necessary to ensure a transition that prioritizes what is best for
students. So, just quickly, again, you have seen this slide a couple of times. There'll be a couple in here just for reminders but the phases by month on the the work that needs to be done. We've already gone through phase one and phase 2. We are now in phase three. Um which is May, June, and July. That summer moving projects but we're going to share with you what we've done March, April, and May this evening. Again, those are the phases. And more to come
on the last phase, the next time we come together. Again, this is a slide. You've seen the slide in the passport presentations and it serves as a reminder of all of the district supports to support both closing and receiving schools and manage complex change. The district organized and led a comprehensive coordinated system of meetings. Meetings with closing and receiving school teams alongside district personnel, weekly senior leadership team meetings focused on closure updates and logistics and
weekly collaborative time between teaching and learning and students' services to align those instructional supports. Additionally, operations and teaching and learning staff met weekly to plan logistics and weekly meetings with site directors and building principals to ensure consistent communication and alignment across the levels. With that, I'm now going to pass it the mic over to Alright, so in the finance piece, we've been talking about this for a while now, right? Um because school
districts in Colorado are funded based on the number of students enrolled, that means declines in enrollment cause a loss of funding. And the state has long had a mechanism in place called student count averaging that helps school districts deal with declining enrollment. Where reductions were taken over a number of years rather than all at once. Um, in the current year, the district 51 has received about nine and a half million dollars in fund above our current student count through student count averaging which currently is calculated at five years and just a
reminder, next year, twenty-5, twenty-six, that calculation will reduce to 4 years, and three years is proposed for the twenty-sixth, 27 year. Um, further decreasing this benefit, of student count averaging. This means that districts like ours are facing an even quicker loss of funding than previously expected. With that in mind, due to decreases declines in enrollment, initial staffing projections compiled in the fall showed over forty unfunded positions at the elementary level, amounting to over $4 million dollars
in costs. Pre closure, 20 of twenty-four elementary schools had some level of over staffing based on projected enrollments for twenty-five, twenty-six. Through closures, the district was able to recoup twenty-five point eight eight SSE. Of these unfunded positions and an additional seven SSE were reduced in elementary schools outside of the closure process. Meaning that in total, thirty-two point eight nine SSE of the unfunded positions were able to be addressed. Um this process, while
difficult, allows us to better utilize buildings and staff schools, boosting enrollment and staffing at receiving schools rather than further straining resources through continued reductions. For next year, because of the closures of the three elementary schools 10 elementary schools will receive additional staffing. Six will be able to maintain current staffing levels and reductions of point three eight to 3 point 24 positions were still necessary at schools that didn't receive additional students through closures. Like the closure decisions in the
past, these savings are ongoing. The budgeted general fund savings are nearly 2. 4 million accumulated through systemic staffing changes, health office savings, and net of transportation costs. In a tough budget year passed on to us from the state, these savings were even more critical than we knew at the time and are being reallocated to address significantly rising operational costs. I'll turn it over to Nikki for the HR update related to these staffing changes. Here we go. Okay. Number of
resignations across the system since January are a hundred and 95 year to date. The number of licensed positions posted since February 18 is broken down by level. So we had 106 at elementary. Thirty-5 at the middle schools. Twenty-four at high schools and 10 at our alternative campuses. And the number of licensed opening as of last Friday. And it's even changed since cent. But last Friday, we had eight positions
posted at the elementary level. Two at the middle school. Five at the high school, and one at the alternative level. And just knowing that it's the beginning of June. Um that that's not too many open positions at this time of year. So we're excited about that. So the number of resignations and retirements from closing schools and this is just about licensed staff. We had 10 from schools. Number of staff from closing schools that have accepted a position. Right now,
we're at fifty-four and then, the number of licensed staff who were non renewed, we had four and those folks are still eligible to apply for any openings. Uh number of displaced teachers and displaced refers to those non-probationary teachers. We have four that are displaced and number of displaced administrators from closing schools are two and again, all three of those categories are still eligible to apply for openings and will you have openings
throughout the rest of the summer. And then in terms of our support staff, we had eight resignations in retirements from closing schools. 3-9 have been placed or accepted a position for next year. We have one support staff member that is still actively seeking a position and just a reminder that our custodians and our nutritional services employees have been reassigned in their department. I'll turn it over to Clint. Alright. Let me just start by saying how proud I am of everyone that
has been working on this over the past few months. There's a lot of logistics in the background that are going on to make a lot of this happen. So, very grateful to to all the folks that are doing that work. So, over the past month, our operations and warehouse teams have been out at each closing school walking the buildings and tagging all the furniture and supplies. Uh this helps keep us on track for what needs to move being stored and what's being reused. We also have Conex boxes out at each of the schools. We got those out early for staff so they could
start packing without having their classrooms cluttered. At the same time, we've been working with the title team to finish up the inventory of federally funded items and we've got a plan in place to share what is still good across the district. We know that there's still some good furniture there. Plus, we're getting ready for the big book giveaway event for anything extra. And to keep packing easy and organized. We shared a simple guide with school with the schools about how to label and pack the conex boxes.
Um believe me that was needed. There's a lot of conex boxes and a lot of stuff. So, over in the tech area, Dan and his group working with Eddie and his team have been busy taking down Aquas boards and getting them ready to move into schools that are welcoming new students and staff. We also brought in Gentle Hands and Mesa Movers to help us move classrooms in the last days so teachers could focus on packing up their stuff instead of worrying about the heavy lifting Um we've also set up a special staging
area at Nisley Elementary for the preschool classroom materials that are on the move. So everything stays organized and easy to find when it's time to set it back up again. Our maintenance crews are working on removing and reinstalling whiteboards and bulletin boards to get classrooms ready for the next year. And then for extra furniture and supplies we're using the Dfifty1 Marketplace and if you don't know what that is our purchasing department has a website that you can staff can go on and find furniture that they might need. Um they order it right From the website and then we
bring it out to the school. So we're using that as well. Receiving schools will get first pick of anything. Um any of those materials that they need them. Some are custodial schedules are all lined up to make sure that there's plenty of help for cleaning and setting up classrooms. And then over at Orchard Ave the new modular classrooms are coming together and we finalize plans for furniture. Including a new art room in in spaces for small group work. And with that I will pass it back to Jen. Uh the district was committed to supporting schools with that strong
finish for the twenty-four25 school year. Building level transition teams met regularly. At each site to guide and support schools specific transition activities. Which I'll go into a more into detail in a few more slides. Schools also received assistance with inventory. Um processes and the transfer of those curriculum materials. Title one funds and other classroom resources. Student student support services actively identified and plan for students on IEPs, AOPs, and
five oh fours and MLL student supports to ensure a continuity in of services at their new school. In addition, preparations for a relocation and the reduction of those classrooms and overall moving process of closing, receiving, and other classrooms in the district. Tight collaboration with operations for sure The teaching and learning department has created a dashboard. I talked about it the last time I was up here that monitors
staff, placement, statistics, furniture, technology, and curriculum needs. These needs are all identified and have been identified and addressed in two different ways. We had staffing, staff moving meetings, and teacher transition interviews that occurred during the fourth quarter. So, across the district, there were a total 35 new classrooms. That's over on the left and in 10 classrooms were reduced.
Not including the closing school classrooms. There were 45 classrooms across 15 buildings. New classrooms. These additions and reductions when response to the shifting enrollment patterns and probomatic needs across the district. On the right side, you'll see a breakdown of staff movement. Which includes both changes in grade levels and shifts in staff type placements. Such as teachers, specialists, or other support roles. It's important to note that
these figures reflect movement within the system. It's not necessarily the new hires or formal transfers. So, it's the entire system. This data helps us better understand how we are allocating or reallocating resources to meet student needs, support strategic staffing, and maintain fairness and instructional programming across the schools. I'd like to as a side note, give a shout out to our D51 Foundation who provided funds to our closing schools to provide students
with some of the visits as well across the district. Students on plans, all students on plans from each school, each closing school have been successfully assigned and routed to their designated receiving schools. Special Education teams have completed transition meetings and have had early access to student record to ensure that continuity of services. Students and center-based programs have been added to their new school appropriately with services
confirmed in families directly contacted. Additionally, all families whose students were on a plan have received a welcome from their new school. With assurances that their students needs will be fully supported. Staffing adjustments have been made to align with enrollment and service requirements at the receiving schools. This this slide highlights the concerted efforts made in April and May to support schools with affected by the elementary school closures.
District admin worked with each school's transition support team through weekly after-school planning meetings, teams organized logistics for closing out the current school year and preparing for the next. A key component of the support was on April 3rd. We had a a school leadership meeting where the family partnership presented Strong Start Family Partnership presentation alongside a tool and a protocol designed to ensure a seamless transition of essential student information and to the
receiving schools. The team also facilitated weekly planning sessions with Paul JB and the Family Partnership team to ensure ongoing collaboration. In addition to bi-weekly meetings that were held, Paul and the CEI team, helped us with these transitions as well. Um which offered all receiving schools that last week at the D-51 Summer Institute. I'll share a little bit more about that. This collective approach guaranteed a smooth transition and effective strategic planning for
the upcoming school year. You've also seen this slide. We established again those school based transition teams and supported each team as they engaged in this work. These teams were the key drivers in the success in this transition. Our building level teams both from our closing and receiving. We're so invested in sharing that our closing schools invested ensuring that their students had a smooth transition Excuse me to the receiving schools and the receiving school transition
teams were so focused intently on making sure that their new staff and students felt felt important and felt welcomed. Again, D51 helped with that with funds to ensure that those site visits happened during the school year. Great School-based teams fulfilled the mission and purpose we gave them. They reached out to understand how families and students felt about this change. Um they work collaboratively with other schools
and kept a student centered focus and they acknowledged loss felt by staff, students, and families and they have engaged in reinventing themselves to meet these challenges. This slide again, you've seen, it's really orange. It looks a little yellow. Shows some of the specifics on how school-based teams fulfilled this mission. The school-based transition teams continue because they will, the receiving schools in the upcoming when we open for next year, a critical, they play a
critical role in guiding thoughtful site specific planning for both closing and receiving. Um the at the receiving schools transition teams are equally focused on finishing the year and anchoring in that to welcome their students. Go ahead. Here's some pictures of the open houses and then those field trip events. Um students and families were welcomed to their new schools, toward classrooms, asked questions, met teachers, and made new friends for
the upcoming school year. Um and here I'm going to give a specific shout out. I want to give a great shout out to D51 the foundation for providing providing funding for those field trip events from each of the closing schools to the receiving schools. Just last week, we had our summer institute, CEI and D -51 partners and organized and hosted a two-day summer institute course to allow teams that structured, facilitate an uninterrupted
thinking, and planning time to work through all of the details needed to adapt a school and its systems to the needs of their new families. This next picture just shows the the teams working. This was at Grand Junction High School and then each of the schools that were there, you can see these grids and this is how they were planning to receive their new staff and students. They were thoughtful and planned through the lens of students, families, and staff and orchestrated their actions along a timeline ranging
from before school through the first semester. This time was incredibly valuable since there will be so much to do when the staff and students return in the fall. Access opportunity and family partnerships supported these schools during these two days of thoughtful transition process. Um again, one last slide just to share all of the things that we've been doing in our family partnership Um department specifically. We're proud of all of the work and no, we're
not done yet. And that is it. Any questions for the team? I do. Two questions. First one is Fruitville Elementary. Are they going to receive any extra support for like counselors? Because of the children that are coming in that and I know that and I spoke with Brian about it and I understand that part of how we figure out what Steph if there's an increase in staff is by population in the building. My concern is that we
have children that are primary homeless. They'll be entering in Fruitville is going to be any way that they're going to get any extra help? Yeah. So, on top of the staffing model, FruitVail in particular is a title one school. So, they do receive additional support. We've just found out what our title one funding is just recently. So, there is most certainly that opportunity to use title fund their title funds on how they would like to use it for to ensure
that additional support but because they're getting extra students, they are getting extra money. But we will follow the same staffing model. Okay. The other question I had and thank you for that. The other question I have is the savings of 2. 3 million. Where will that be going to? Yep. So that number was included in our proposed budget as part of the savings and reductions that have been identified. And so essentially it's being reallocated to all of those additional costs that have
also unfortunately been identified around healthcare, around transportation. Um we had a much more needs than just the savings allowed unfortunately. Um but it's being reallocated for those purposes. And and I I'm glad you asked that. Um because I don't want to lose sight of again this it feels weird. We just talked about strategic plan and how excited we are for the next five years and then we're having to talk about these tough decisions as well and there is a human side of this that we talked about but there's there is the financial side of this and if we talk
about what we've had to do over the last few years around this, right? East Middle School, that was $1. 3 million dollars in ongoing cost that we had to pull back or we were able to pull back for the 8nine was 2. 1 million. Uh elementary schools is 2. 3 and then 1. 4 million in cuts at Central Office plus other cut or not cuts but reductions in the staffing model. I mean, you're talking over seven to 8 million dollars or maybe more than $8 million dollars that we've been able to pull back into the general fund budget to fund these other things. My issue is, if we had
not done these things, we're, I mean, we're having a hard time right now just balancing our budget for next year and so, if we had to also try to find an additional eight, 9 million dollars in our budget. Uh we'd be in a really bad position. So, while these are tough decisions, a reason behind them and ideally to your question and to Mel's point, it it helps us to be able to to better provide resources to the schools that remain open because otherwise, we'd be pulling staff out of buildings, cutting staff from from buildings and then
you cut programs and and it and it goes on that cycle. So, this is painful for everybody. Nobody wants to do it. I hate that we're becoming better at being able to like do these plans because nobody wants to be in that position. Um but it's the reality we find ourselves in and that is those are the numbers behind it, right? Of we would, we'd have ourselves in a really bad position as a district if we hadn't made of these tough decisions as far as the budget's concerned and and I I do want to commend the team. I this is a lot of work. Um this is a ten, 15 slide
presentation but the amount of work that has gone on behind the scenes on this has been pretty remarkable. Um it hasn't nothing's perfect but it's they've done a lot of great work and the schools that are closing have done a lot of work and the schools are receiving to the point now where we have districts reaching out to us asking for meetings because every district is going to be dealing with us at some point especially in Colorado and we've got folks reaching out to us saying, can you walk us through what y'all have done because again, while nobody wants to do this, you try to do it as smoothly as possible and so, I'm really proud of the team for the amount of work they
put into this and the schools that have had to deal with it and at the same time, I just want to remind folks of why we've had to do this. Um the budget situation is not ideal and again, to do all those reductions and do all the things that we've had to do and and all the stuff Mel's department has had to do and still be having a hard time being able to figure out how to balance the budget for next year. It's just, it just shows you how inadequate our state funding is from from the state of Colorado. So, just want to highlight the team but also just point out those numbers behind it as well. So, it's a good question. And I mean, with the 2. 3 that we.
Saved from this. I hate to use that word but that we were able to put aside from this and then, I mean, just from your budget, presentation, two board meetings ago. I mean, we're still, we're still in the negative was 130000, was it? It's 1 47 I think is our current number. Yeah. So we're close and this to the scale of our budget but we aren't still quite balanced yet. Um I did have one question. Uh sorry. There was a slide and if I can get back to it, I just wanted to know if you
could give a the total new classrooms and rounds. Can you give a little bit more clarification on that one? That one's kind of busy and hard for me to understand a little bit. So, this one? Yes. So, if you look to the left, Oh, sorry. If you look to the far left, you can see unfortunately, it's it's the blue on blue but you have a K one, two, three, and four. Those are the classrooms. At the K level, this is district wide. There was an additional five classrooms
but then we also had to reduce by two classrooms somewhere else. An additional 5 classrooms had to be added somewhere in the district. Okay. At for receiving. Is that what I'm saying? Uh huh. Yeah, it could be. Mm hmm. Yeah. Um and then at first grade, we had five additional classrooms, classrooms or or rounds but we also had to cut three classrooms. In the district somewhere else. Then
second grade was four with a reduction of one. Does that help with that? This is from this is going into next year. This is yeah, this is going into next year. So, we had to plan. So, kindergarten or let's look at third grade right in the middle. Seven new third grade classrooms. So, we had to make sure that those seven new third grade classrooms had all the third grade materials. So, all of content materials if you just think about your four content, ELA, Math,
Science, and Social Studies. So, we had to make sure that we had seven classroom worth of resources, worth of stuff needed to go into those classrooms. Does that help you? Definitely. Okay. And so, what ended up being hard and we could not identify. in fact, when this was all over, I think our teams were I don't know what the right it was a little it was perplexing that so many if you even just think about our closing schools not all of our third
grade teachers became third grade teachers and so I think that we had thought we would have more third grade teachers becoming third grade teachers so they would back up box up all of their stuff and then they would take because our operations friends could not could not move everything in the classrooms and pack it up so we had hope that all of our third grade teachers would box up their classrooms and put their stuff in condex boxes then the operations people would move it their new place. Well, that wasn't the case because if
you look over to the right-hand side, only 50 and this is again, district wide, only 52 teachers out of all of the teachers went to their same grade level. Where the majority, 80 teachers went to a different grade level. So, they could pack up their stuff but they weren't going to bring their stuff with them. That's yes. No, that's across the but we still had to prepare teaching and learning. Jackie's team still needed to make sure regard where did all of the where did all of the
resources from the the closing classrooms. We we can't lose that. That's pretty important. That's a a pricey inventory. If we didn't know where they were. It helps me to understand now that this was like a a bigger Yeah diagram here and it was providing the information that I didn't understand but now I understand. Oh, you got it. It was inclusive. It just added to the complexity. Yes. In a different location Thank you for that clarification. Yeah. Thank you
for asking because it was complex. Any other questions? Alright. Thank you for the update. That was really good information. So, appreciate your guys' work on that. Alright, Board. Um anything else? We have Open Board Discussion? Right? Have a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Alright, thank you everybody. Have a good evening.