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Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=Gwju35FmmTk

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We are recording when you're ready. Director Dwit, can you hear me? >> Yes, I can hear you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Like to welcome everybody uh that is joining our Montuma Cortez School District meeting today. Um today

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is August 4th. time is 6:00 p.m. Also like to thank anybody that's joined us virtually uh for this meeting. We will start today with our pledge of allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

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republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. And just to reiterate, uh, Director Det is with us virtually. Um,

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and before we get into all our other fun stuff, want to remind everybody of our vision and mission and mission. Our vision Montazuma Cortez Schools inspire resilience, long long life learning and civic purpose by fostering high

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expectations, critical thinking and accountability in a safe and diverse environment. Our mission as we strive to become a district of choice. We celebrate diversity, build meaningful relationships, and open doors to personal growth and a world of possibilities for every student. Can we

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have a call to order, please? >> Thank you. Uh we do have Laura Dwit by Zoom tonight and then we have four additional board members. Um and we are using microphones. We're recording this meeting. We're on

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diligent and we are broadcasting on YouTube. >> Very good. All right. We will move to set our agenda. >> I move to set the agenda. >> I'll second.

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>> [snorts] >> Online voting is now available. Director Hall, did you get the popup? >> I just did. >> Oh, thank you. Motion passes unanimously. >> All right. And we'll go straight into our presentations. Uh the first one we

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have up on our docket is the CDE and Denver Broncos attendance presentation. And I just want to make a quick reminder that we have set aside 10 minutes for all presentations. So just try your best to stay within that. If you go a little over, that's fine. Okay. Good evening. Thank you for um

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letting me speak on this important work that we're doing. Um I've been on the district attendance uh committee for about this will be my fourth year on that. We've made a lot of improvements since I've started this work and we're

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at about 90%. Um, and we want to get the district at 94% to make the gains that we want to make. Um, we're sort of at the end of our ideas and the things that have worked in the past three years. And

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so we had this opportunity brought to us from CDE, Denver Broncos. And there's one more organization that's involved in this and it's called Attendance Works. And they provide training and help for schools and districts with um

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strategies, systems that help schools improve their attendance. So, I don't really know yet what Denver Broncos is going to do for us. I'm hoping some things, but I'm not quite sure yet. Maybe they're just a funding source, but I have already been reached out to by

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CDE. Um, they're going to provide different meetings. Attendance works going to provide training for our staff and it's just hopefully going to push us into that 94% for all schools. Lewis Areola is already at 94%, but the rest

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of our schools are only at about 90. And with our short school year, attendance is even more important. and we need that buyin from the the community and it is going to take your support and it's going to take the support of the teachers, the community. It's going to

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take everybody to move us up to that number. So, I don't have a lot of details other than we are going to get trained. We have in-person network events that we have to travel to Denver for and that's probably going to be

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meeting with other school districts and see what's worked for them and gather some more strategies. So, do you have any questions? >> Is there anything that we as a board personally can do to help? >> Um, you could attend some of the attendance

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committee meetings when we bring back some strategies and your input on like if we think that would work for our community. That'd be very helpful. And then I guess resources as far as money. It's always money, right? and how we can

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implement that in our schools. So, and we'll know more as soon as we get those trainings and we get those networking events and then we come back with some ideas, then we might reach out to you for some some support. >> One of one of the difficulties I've

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found in attending meetings in this district is you don't ever you're not ever told when the meetings are. >> Gotcha. >> So, I have not ever seen um a meeting invitation for the attendance committee. Okay. But if you

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make that available to the board, I'm sure >> one or two of us will come. >> Okay. Yeah. I think right now we're thinking Mondays. Um and it does include pinion project. It includes um child protective services. It includes the

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truency officer from Toyok and then a representative from each school. So, we've got a pretty good group and we are welcome to any ideas. Even if you can't make the meeting, but you've you've had some ideas from community members or from yourself, we would love to hear those.

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>> So, the idea of this is to somehow incentivize the students to improve their attendance so we could hit our marker. I'm not sure if it's incentives or just more structures and systems in place to

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to improve attendance and engagement. Um there might be some incentives from the Denver Broncos that haven't really said, but the problem we've ran into with incentives in the past, especially when it's tied to things, is you give the thing, the money runs out.

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Where are you at? Right? So we want to we want to produce programs and systems that are sustainable and work every year without necessarily bribing kids to come to school. It's more engaging kids to come to school, engaging families to see

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the importance of attendance. >> One thing we might not all be aware of, and hopefully you know the numbers off the top of your head because I can't remember them, [laughter] but a couple a couple years ago, our tenants in the last couple years I know ever since

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you've been handling it, yeah, >> we have improved drastically. And I don't if you want to tell us those numbers, I I know they're astonishing, but I just want everybody else to know about it, too. >> I remember specifically the high school, we were at 84%.

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And then my first year working on it, we got to 88, which is a pretty good jump. And then this year, we got all the schools to 90. So, we are making gains and some of the systems we've have done have worked. But again, to push us to that 94,

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we're we're doing the things that we put into place and we're going to continue those. But we want we need another push. And I think right now we still have 37% of high schoolers are chronically absent. So that means they've missed

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more than 10% of the school year. So, we want we really want to target those families and see how we can engage them better. Any other questions? >> No, thank you for your attention. >> Thanks.

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[snorts] >> All right, we will go on to our next presentation, which is the Montazuma School for Farm Project presentation. Can we Is this for us to use? >> Okay. Do I just hit the arrows? Okay, good. Just checking. Um, so my name is

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Sorl Redford. I'm the executive director of the School to Farm Project and I've been with the organization for six years now. And this is Gwen Hoochins, our um, education director. So, we're just going to give you an update on what we did last year, a little bit about our organization, and then what we plan to

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do this school year, and then we have time hopefully for some questions at the end. Yeah. Um so our mission at school to farm is to unite our local agricultural heritage with our growing future by engaging

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students at the crossroads of food production, resource conservation and nutrition through educational experiences. So basically everything we teach will fit into either food production, resource conservation or nutrition in any of the schools. Those are the three pillars that we are trying

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to meet. And then those lessons are also all um standards aligned and NGSS aligned. And then our vision more broadly is to we envision leading the region in experiential garden education by creating generational change in

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students food literacy. So we are one of the biggest programs in well we are the biggest program in this region um by a lot and how many students we teach and then also the size of the gardens and the production that we have. So um we are trying to kind of create a model

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that other people can replicate around the country and then Gwen is going to tell you a little bit more about the education that we did last year. So, um, just going over a little bit

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what we've been doing at Keer Elementary recently is we this past summer, we've been visiting about two to three times a week to stay on top of maintenance and harvest some of the food that we've been growing. We're growing tomatoes, strawberries, herbs, potatoes, peas,

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flowers, greens, and then lots of perennial plants for students to kind of see change throughout the year as a part of the education side. And we plan on resuming teaching at Keer this year, starting in September and going all

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throughout the school year. And I will be teaching there with Americanore members this year as well. And this past spring semester, we taught from February to May. And we saw every single class every month. We taught all 510 students

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and dedicated 50.25 total hours of instruction time. So classes altogether this past spring took up that much time. And we also incorporate tastings into our lessons.

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At the very end, we give students a tasting of a new food or a food that's relevant to the lesson. We hope that it encourages healthy eating habits and get students to try new foods that they might otherwise not try. And then a lot

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of our lessons included concepts about plant adaptations and then teaching about worms and biodiversity and other concepts related to that. And then at Mesa Elementary, we are

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doing a renovation on the side of the garden that is closer to the school. So on the fence on the other side of the fence that's part of the school. We received $10,000 from the Lore Foundation to do this. And that includes

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wood chips, raised beds, soil, plants, seating, and mulch. And then nothing is set in stone yet, but we have been speaking with the Colorado Garden Foundation and they are willing us they are willing to give us some money as

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well to pitch in for that. We just spoke about that today. Um but this started in July. We started renovating kind of clearing everything out and then we hope to have it finished in October and students can help plant at that time.

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And we will also be resuming garden lessons at Mesa in September along with the Americanore. And then as well at Mesa Elementary, we're collaborating with the Dolores River Boating Advocates, San Juan Mountain Association, and Monizuma Land

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Conservancy to teach. So they'll come into the schools and do a lesson with the students to get more of a something different other than garden but still relevant to our three pillars. So natural resources, food production

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and nutrition. And then the funding for this is coming from the Walton Foundation and it'll also focus on water conservation. And we can the grant will also help to pay for field trips for Mesa students. Okay. And then at Cortez Middle School,

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which is our biggest area, we are we've been there every Monday, Wednesday, Friday throughout the whole summer, and we'll continue doing that. We have like over an acre in production there. Um so it's it's a lot of work. Most of that food um is going as much as we have is

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going to the schools. We did have that massive hail storm which did damage a lot of crops which happened everywhere. But um what we do have we'll be giving to Taylor um at the high school. So we've been doing community volunteer days which has helped out a lot because Gwen and I are the only full-time staff

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members. So we rely a lot on the students, teachers, volunteers, um and sometimes other groups come out and help. We planted a really big three sisters garden with some help from Brandon Francis who's a DA scientist. So he's been helping us like save seed and

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plant really really old varieties of seed. Um that's been something new we did this year also in response to the drought that we're in. Um we have you guys might know about this but there was a little bit of work that needed doing last fall and spring um due to some

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trees that were cut down. So, we worked with Legacy Tree Solutions um and the orchard has been like growing really well and has been repaired and then we put in almond trees, choke cherries, and a lot of other species along the burm. Uh we are super excited this year

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because middle school's always been like a kind of a gap in our programming and in like most programming it often just gets kind of ignored. So, we are piloting two new electives starting this August. There'll be two six week electives taught by different teachers. One will be focused on just garden in

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general and then the other one will be teaching our farm stand elective where the students harvest, market and then take the crops to the actual farmers market and sell it. Then they decide what to do with their profits and usually goes into the program for the next year. So we've been doing that in

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Manus for several years and now we have a teacher at CMS who's going to carry that on into this district. Um what else? So, that's kind of everything that we've been doing and are going to be doing. Do you have any questions

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or thoughts for us? >> Can you tell us what a three sisters garden is? >> Yes. A three sisters garden is kind of a traditional Native American way of growing crops. And it didn't just happen in this region. It happened in a lot of

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different places across the country. Um, and so here it was squash, beans, and corn. And then sometimes there's a fourth sister, and that's dependent on the specific tribe. So the scientist I've been working with, Brandon, his tribe, Gru Zinia, was like the fourth

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plant in there, four sisters garden. And so we have three. We have scarlet runner beans. We have some um, hopy blue corn that's mixed with a palenta that grows really well here. And then I think we planted hoverboard squash with ours.

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>> Thank you. Can you also tell us more about the tastings? >> Yeah, so the tastings in every lesson it's it's easy like now until December because we have stuff growing. So the children will like pick and eat as they go through the lesson. So if we're doing like if we're making a salad in the

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lesson, they can pick it from the garden and create it right then and eat it. And then as we move into spring um when we don't have as much growing, we just try and get them to try new foods. And they're usually local foods that either have been like maybe preserved or um

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saved. And we're just trying to kind of broaden their pallet and kind of expand and try and, you know, get them to maybe be able to go to the farmers market or make good choices at the grocery store and pick things that are local and healthy and safe for them to eat.

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So it includes food from outside the gardens then. >> Yeah. So obviously we have quite a short growing season here. So some things we store like we can store corn and grind it in winter or wheat and we can grind it in winter. Obviously other crops we

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can't do that with but there's you know there's other farmers we have kind of partnered with who maybe have commercial green houses so they can grow throughout the season. So then they'll give us food so we don't we're not relying on our school garden since we don't have a greenhouse. >> Thank you.

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>> Yeah. >> Well, I just want to say I've always been impressed with school to farm. Um it's just a really neat program and I'm just so thankful that the middle schoolers had that whole little area and there's room to grow there. That's wonderful and I was quite impressed with

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your website. So >> thanks. Great. Is there any possibility of doing a greenhouse in the future? >> I mean, it would be Yeah, we would love to have a greenhouse. We have like a high tunnel,

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but that's not really that helpful in this climate. A proper greenhouse with fans and heaters is what you would need to start seeds really early and then and then really extend the growing season. Um, I haven't been able to find the grant for that. It's and also because it

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is quite a big construction project, it would have to be something the district was like 100% in on, you know, they're going to like pour a foundation and like do it the right way. Um, there is a possibility of us working with the PCC because they have a grow dome. So, we

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have been talking with them about how students from this district could go to the grow dome and set it up and start growing in there. Um, but again, we'd need some teachers to kind of help because we're a little bit at like capacity and when we have maybe Americanore members, that could be

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something that they kind of help set up with like high schoolers perhaps. Yeah. >> All right. Well, thank you very much for your time. >> Okay. Thank you. [snorts] >> Oh, and uh board, you may say that they

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have brought you some special garden gifts. >> Oh, yes. Thank you for that. >> Oh, thank you. >> All right. Then we go to our next section which is citizens address the board. >> No items have been turned in today. >> Okay.

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And then we will go ahead and move on to our discussion items which we have As I scroll, our elementary HVAC proposal replacement plan. >> I think I think Danielle is going to

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speak to this one. >> Good evening, board. Um, we don't have a proposal for you tonight, but we want to start that discussion um and let you know that we are hoping to come to the meeting on August 18th with a proposal.

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Um, we have taken the new procurement policy, have been working with our legal team to really understand what that means, how that can be implemented appropriately. >> [snorts] >> Um, I've reached out to the Colorado Energy Performance um, contracting or

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Colorado Energy Office, I'm sorry, to see if we are eligible to participate in their program from our understandings um, after talking with our legal team that would fall within our cooperative um, purchasing possibility. So, right

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now we're doing some exploration. Um, but we know there's that need to get something in the works and we hope to come on the 18th with a proposal. >> Is is there any I know it's a shot in the dark, but to have anything done by this year is not, you know, obviously

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it's we're a week out. So, is that even in the works or are we trying to do like temporary type things or to Go ahead. >> Right now, it's um we are doing some temporary fixes. Um and Mr. Lopez can certainly speak to that probably better than I can, but I know we purchased a

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good number of portable AC units um to put into our elementary schools. Um, our maintenance crew is going to be going into the elementarymentaries in the morning, opening up windows, getting some air circulating, hopefully get it to a comfortable climate by the time teachers and students arrive. Um, it is,

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yeah, it's temporary right now. And we also have the issue of just the electrical load. Our buildings are old enough that it they can't support an AC unit in every single classroom. So, we are um yeah, we're trying to do the best we can temporarily for what we have.

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>> He was wonder if you should come. >> Yeah, come on down. [laughter] >> Yeah. So, basically, is it on? >> Yeah. >> So, Danielle mentioned everything that we've been working with. So, we are going to get some AC units or portables.

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Um the problem with that camper is the the building that was built back in the 50s. It's one circuit, runs two classrooms. So in order for possibly to for things to work work that are pulling a 10 12 amp to 12 amp portable AC unit a

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lot of the electrical items in the classrooms will have to be removed. So we've gone through that process but each individual classroom at Keer on the primary hall will not be able to carry one in portable AC units. um one classroom may have it and one may not at

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this point uh because of all the electronics in the classroom for schooling is still going to be involved with this same setup. Um Mesa is a little different. It was built in the 60s. So I believe uh the loads are a little bit better. So,

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we're going to try to attempt to have an AC unit in every classroom at Mesa, but the staff are going to have to understand that they can't have additional plugins for lights or anything else and at Mesa for it to work. So, there's like a pros and cons

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to the whole situation, but we're trying to make it to where the building's going to be comfortable for the students and staff for the first day of school. Um, by the end of the week, we should be receiving the portable AC unit. So, we'll get them in there as soon as possible. Um, talking with our

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consultants, they mentioned air circulation helps quite a bit, fans in the classroom as well. Hallways, uh, open up the windows in the morning like at Keer, we'll have to do it. And, uh, kind of get some air, maybe shut the windows around 10:00 before it gets

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real, real hot. maybe keep the windows closed and the air circulation window blinds they have the the staff are going to have to keep them shut as well because especially the buildings always face north and south. So the east coming up, those classrooms on the east side with

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the glass brick, horrible first thing in the morning, afternoon, it's the west side starting around probably 1 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon. There's a no- win situation, but we're going to do our best to try to get every every aspect out of the way to try to make it better

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for the kids and staff. It's been quite a while since I've been in the elementary classrooms and you were speaking about the windows on the east and west side. Um, have you have has any window film been is that a

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possibility just to block out some of that? >> We threw it around a little bit. I mean, we can probably still go through and get some maybe it probably be quicker to get a contractor in there to take care of it. Uh otherwise we'd have to order it by the time it comes in and install

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could be a couple weeks out. Um but I can look into it and see if that might be a possibility that we can do. Uh the bad thing about Keer, it's glass brick. So basically you wouldn't be able to put anything on that. Uh Mesa is a little bit different because it's actually a

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full sheet window. >> But the blinds are the key probably on some of this whole situation in the mornings in the daytime. I just put some of the reflective film in my in-laws house and it just sprayed on and I just it sealed up, >> right? >> It was the easiest thing and I don't

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know I'm I'm not not familiar with the windows but it sure was a game changer for us. >> We usually order from window film and we can give them our sizes that we need. So basically they cut it for us and we just have to come back and set it in. Nice. >> So it can be done.

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Anything else? Any questions? Nope. >> So hopefully it'll be comfortable by the time, you know, it's going to be miserable because I've been watching the weather report. This whole week's in the upper 90s. >> Um it's not going to cool down according to what I've been seeing like on Tuesday

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maybe of the upper 80s. So but it's still miserable. It's it's pretty uh pretty bad. >> Yeah. >> So to to answer Director Hall's question, like a long-term solution is not possible for the for the fall, right? We're looking Not this year. No.

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You know, we we did come to a few we had a few meetings and try and determine on to throw something in real quick. You know, probably about a month ago. It's just as far as if we're going to have a future HVAC system that's going to work

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correctly. Didn't really want to throw the district's money away to do a temporary whenever it may be taken out for new construction to take place for HBAC. So trying to like balance it out to where it's going to be a little bit more

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sufficient for the school and not waste it. Um because there's just a lot of stuff that's taking place that Danielle's been working on, Eddie, and and we just want to try to make we want to make sure we do it right the first time. That's the goal anyways.

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>> Yeah. [laughter] very much. >> Thanks for that. >> Okay, then we will move on. Um, we don't have any reports support today. So, I just wanted to remind uh the public

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that for our uh September 1st work session, uh we turned that into a a training session. Uh with our CDE board membership trainings. Uh so, we just wanted to make sure that they are aware

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of that. Um other than that we can move on to adjourn our meeting and today is August 4th at 6:29. >> Thank you.