Good evening everyone. I would like to um invite you to Tuesday, April 22nd Moncortez school board meeting. If you could please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge al to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic
for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Deb, I'm calling this meeting to order at 6 o'clock. You could please establish quorum.
Thank you. We have four board members available and logged into board docs. Correct. Is everybody logged in? And um is if your mics are on that would be great. Executive team if your mics could be turned on. Thank you.
All right. If I can get a motion to set the agenda, please. Move to set the agenda. Online voting is now available. Be here for the presentation. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. No, she did. Okay, we'll move on
to our presentations. We have the MCMS science programming. Do we have somebody here to Is that going to be you, Mr. Par? Mr. Okay. Well, maybe we will. Um, if needs be, would it be appropriate
to have that presentation during my report? Okay, we can do that. Okay. Yep. I think so. Okay. Or for punishment, we can do it at the very end, too. There's that as well. Okay. Reports. Celebration reports.
Well, I would just like to celebrate um a lot of our students getting the scholarships and just the recognition for those kids that are moving forward after graduation. Um I would also like to just celebrate Cruz tonight. this will be his last meeting um with us and
so I just want to say thank you um for continuing to to to dedicate your time. Um your senior time is busy for sure. So thank you and it's been it's been it's been a a joy just watching you like I said since you know junior high on and all your accomplishments. So thank you.
So I'm celebrating you. Madame President, I very seldom have these kind of awards or these kind of conversations, but this afternoon I received an email from the commissioner. It's about the school and district
awards ceremony. Schools and districts earn these awards based on their performance across key performance indicators that best reflect the student academic success, academic achievement, academic growth, reduced academic growth
gaps, and post-secary and workforce readiness. Districts rated as accredited with distinction are in the top 10% and receive more than 80% of the points on the district performance framework report. More
information about that is is available. But in the middle there is an awards ceremony that will be at the CSU Spur campus in Denver. Your district and or schools in your district will be
recognized as this year's in this year's ceremony where the department will be presenting awards to the superintendent representing the schools awarded in the following categories. Those I just read were invited. Celebration, hard work of an admin team
and hard work of principles and uh they've gone from three on the clock to an award ceremony. That's pretty amazing guys. You guys are amazing. Thank you. That's cool. That was neat.
Um, I just left the soccer game before I came here and they were winning two to nothing at halftime. So, that was good. Um, another one. I don't know if this is really a celebration. I don't if anybody's looked at our the new Casby website. We're on the website now on the homepage and they got my bald head in
it. I'm sitting next to Victor from Memphis that's got a hair down to here. You know, it's like so but we are on there. So, it's pretty cool. [Music] Madam President, yes, I just wanted to uh say that I attended the all district
band um performance and auction. Um they did a great job and I understand at least they announced at the time that uh that auction uh raised more money than any previous auction. So, it was just a
good night. Glad to hear that. It's nice. And I I did also attend the and some other board members and people, but um the Louisis Areola chili dinner by auction that they've um and that was a
good turnout and really good and I and I think this the way I understand it now pretty much all of that money that's raised goes to pay for all the students supplies. They don't need to, the parents do not
need to go purchase their um their supplies for school. So, that's nice. Anybody else? Oh, yes. All right. Um, we'll move on to student
representative report. I I don't I never know if it's a celebration or whatever, but so I just save it for my slot. But the girls golf is kicking butt. They uh Amita's what? Um she's finished second and third a
couple times. Ain finished her first and the team is ranked 10th in Yeah. So I think that's worth recognizing and I know that the baseball team is doing well in addition. Um, and then I just want to say thank you for giving me the opportunity to sit through the meetings
and put my input whenever. And yeah, thank you to Mr. Burrus for giving me the chance to do it. So yeah, certainly. Thank you. You have to come up with your replacement. I'm working on the replacement right now. Yes. Yes. And all of that's Yes.
All of that's a celebration. Yeah. So, President Noise. Yes. I understand you have a pretty pretty uh solid girls soccer team out there as well right now. That's what I'm hearing. I have not been
able to go watch them, but yeah. All right. Uh superintendent report. Good evening, board. Uh most of my reports your my reports in your packet, but there are pieces of this report I do want to report out on. We have um established the committee that's
going to oversee the mill levy uh monies. The banker is Ed Merritt. Business owner is Cody Wells. Two district teachers, Roxanne Stevens, Julie Engel. DAC representative is Casey Hammershag. Two parents, Jenny Totochini
and Rafe O'Brien. Two county residents, Alan Maize and Kelly Hardgraves. And a charter school rep is Melissa Carver. Uh also uh in your board packet you will find that the dates that I have for the
visiting of the two elementary schools. Tuesday, April 29th at Keer. Um if you would like to come, let me know. And Monday, May 5th will be at Mesa. Sorry, just reverse to that. Mesa
is April 29th. Keer is May 5th. Also, I have been in contact with Dave Kmet. He works for the Jewish Solar that they're planning a a solar array out north of town. And one of the things
that I was interested in and have asked of other solar companies before is to would you put a small array at the high school and let kids figure out how it all works and and kind of make a uh a a presentation a couple times a year to
kids and they said they would. So I met with an engineer from Shaw Solar today and they're looking at about 20 panels at the high school and couple of spots to mount those would be on that wall outside of the A room uh facing south of
course and then they could also pedestal mount those. and he is going to going to draw up those two plans and should this thing actually materialize um the solar company wants to go ahead and do the install there at the H high
school so we have a teaching moment for students and lastly I need to pick either May 6th or May 20th which are both Tuesdays which are both um schoolboard nights one for a concert
quite a band concert and one for a banquet uh for a senior girl and uh Roswell, New Mexico. I'll let you know which which or both of those I go to. Thank you.
Any questions on Mr. Burus's report? Okay. Um let's move on to um report E, executive director of finance. I'm sorry, assistant superintendent report item D. President President Noise and members of the board. I have a brief synopsis of
each of the director uh under uh the assistant superintendent and the organizational chart. They're here present also to answer any questions. Uh the grants department of course has or administers a total uh budget of federal
and state of 3,190,442. What's uh important about this is the uh expended date or the total budget of $3,711,4125 which is the includes the carryover. in red uh on this you'll see
what's been expended to date leaving a budget balance of a little bit over 2,154,27687 which 511,54 of the budget is uh attributed to the charter schools distribution. If you have any questions about the
federal grants, I believe uh Mr. uh Dean Ponquist will be here in a few minutes and we can come back and circle if you have any questions about his attachment. Also in the uh superintendent, assistant superintendent report, we have
uh a synopsis of Mr. Ray Lopez, the director of facilities, uh a listing of summer projects, uh that's being uh paid for out of the existing approved uh budget and also the transportation and
various reports and feedback from the board uh of uh summarizing and a simpler and non uh information that's not uh deemed necessary by the board. And then of course technology, we have Mr. Mark
Knox in the audience, our director of technology. Uh there's a bulleted item of uh his report uh on the sonic deployment that that's been completed. The conversion of the internet connectivity from the city of Cortez
fiber to the clear networks fiber scheduled for July the 11th. Uh the state assessment window that began and has has been going well. I'm sure Mr. Parr has more information on that for you. also uh the district enrollment of
the students and the clarification of the chart and table that Mr. Knox provided and we thank uh Mr. Lynch for um his positive comments on that and his nutrition services and questions on the
document at the beginning of uh the agenda. you'll see uh some information in reference to those questions, but also uh the uncertainty of how the food program is going to be implemented by the state of Colorado this coming year.
They're looking at the C program being funded from July through December 2025 and that maybe the need to go back to the previous reduced and paid meal model of free and reduced lunch uh may uh continue in the spring of
2026. This not finalized and more information will be provided by the state as they finally adopt uh the financial plan or the or the funding of public schools for this coming school year. I stand for any questions that you may have and we also have the directors
here for more specific questions that maybe are beyond my understanding. So, what's going to be done with the area Ray at the high school where those lockers are? Is that just going to be left open or it's funny because that was I
remember when that building was being designed that was a lot of discussion about lockers and how much to put in there and stuff and and we actually went really minimal amount on them and now we're not even needing those I guess. So So yeah, so we're planning on taking them out. Um, but I think that's more of
a Jennifer question. So that way we I think it's more or less a security thing that we want to deal with. Uh, putting backpacks in lockers. Yeah, he's correct. We we have a lot of kids who like to hide back there and try to, you know, do things. Um, they're
also a stash place. If kids want to hide something, it's a good place to hide things. We do zip tie them, but that's not a secure kids can get through a zip tie. Um, we've thought about making it an office space. We've thought about making it more more lunch tables. Right now, we don't have enough lunch tables to fit
all of our students by far. Um, so just having a few extra seats. Kids do like to eat, especially downstairs in that little area, but it's not safe right now with all the lockers and you can get into the little crannies. So, we're taking those out. No more hiding spots and either making office space,
cafeteria tables. I've seen some schools put like a a couch and like a hangout area for when they're on lunch. There's there's ideas. We haven't settled on one for sure, but just a safer place for sure. We also considered leaving one set
in and making them cell phone lockers. I don't know that they work super well for that, but that was some one idea as well, but I think we just get rid of them al together. Thanks,
Would you have any more discussion on the Mr. Ramirez's report or any of the director reports? Okay, moving on to the executive director of finance report which should
be in there. Um, but if you have any questions, I don't know if maybe Mr. Burus or somebody can answer, Mr. Schmidt can answer those for you. Or we can call Danielle. Hi. All right. So, we'll move on to the
executive director of student academic services report. Mr. Parr. Good evening, board. Um, in my report, I highlighted a couple areas that I just want to touch on with you uh real briefly. Um first of
all, thank you all for attending the uh strategic planning work that we conducted um on the 11th and 12th of April. Um we had a great representation of all board members um some folks from the community, some staff um to kind of
dive into that hard hard work of trying to guide the ship into the future. So I appreciate your your participation in that. Um we are kind of just scratching the surface on that. That work is is
still in progress. Um as an administrative team, we will be meeting with uh Dr. Arsenio Romero later this week to uh look at what's been put together. And I I have copies of what he shared with us. It's just a compilation of all the the documents from each group
that uh we're working on that. But um we'll be looking through that and starting to kind of refine what that looks like. So um so it's it's uh some of the heavy lift is done, but it's still going to be ongoing. I don't
anticipate that we'll have a final product probably until this summer at some point. So um so it'll be ready for the 25 26 school year. Um to Mr. Ramirez's point. I did
not actually highlight it too too much in my report, but we are in our final week of uh state testing and um I would like to thank all of the school assessment coordinators and all the building teachers and administrators for
making that happen. Um it's no no small feat to to get all these tests in and tests out and get all those kids uh to come and sit down for multiple hours to take the test. So, so their efforts to encourage kids to be be there, be on
time, and take the testing is um it's it's very well appreciated and um and because of it, I think we saw some results based on what Mr. Burus was saying about about the movement we see in the district. So, um we're still not
done yet. We got a couple more days, but we're about to put a bow on it for this year and uh be be done with it for another year. So, thanks to everyone again. And um I I was just I I was just going to mention that to Mr. Pearson that we
skipped him and that we were going to have you speak after Mr. Par was I sincere. Yep. Oh. Oh, perfect. Don't worry. We'll segue nicely for you. Okay. Um the other two items that I
highlighted in my report are just some uh some some planned summer work that we have going on or are going to be conducting. Obviously summer school is in there and some of the information around summer school. Um we are working this week and into next week to uh
finalize staffing for that um so that we can have them start starting to prepare for summer school. And um also we have some planned work with some teachers around um refinement of programming pacing and assessments going into next
year. So um I've worked with Danielle uh Bradford to establish a budget for that work. So we're going to get some people together and work on that this summer and and uh have have that available as we go into the next school year. Um and then of course
lastly, Mr. Dr. Drew Pearson from Cortez Middle School would like to discuss his science programming adoption. Superintendent Bruce, again, I do apologize for missing the first thing. I thought I was during Jim, so I was late.
My apologies. Um, this will be pretty quick and simple. I do want to say thank you for considering us for a science curriculum. This is something that is very exciting to me. This will be our final core content that would be adopting a curriculum which means that all of our contents now have a
curriculum in place which is very very important to us. I think our teachers will be very grateful as they've been working over the past few years to try to adapt and adopt different pieces but this will be something that can be systemic for our program within the school and help our teachers to really have a good program that they can build from. So what I did is just kind of
shared a little bit. It's a quick um quick presentation that kind of just gives a quick overview of the three options. We actually put out requests for four. Um we got responses from three of the curriculum companies to be able to get samples to review. Um Savas, who
is a formerly known as Pearson, um unfortunately did not get us anything till about a week after spring break. So it was kind of too late to be able to review as we were well into the process at that time. So we reviewed the three that we had. Um, if you want to go forward, I'm Oh, I've got a clicker.
Cool. That's probably easier. So, just to give you a quick overview of what we cover, um, sixth grade, there's two different pathways of looking at science in middle school. You can kind of do a um, a conceptbased or they can do a little bit more of a linear where it's grade level. We prefer to do the concept
base. And so, this is what we cover presently. In sixth grade, we cover earth and space science, seventh grade life science, and eighth grade physical science. And this is kind of just a quick overview of the pieces um that they look for. And so we really were able to pull out from each of the three
options just to look and see what parts of these were covered and how well they were covered. Um and so we did the two reviews, one of them with our schools department, our science department within the school and then our school accountability committee. Um the first one that we reviewed was Huffman and Hardcourt. It's called into science six
through eight. Um just to give some of the promoted highlights they they consider very hands-on um method of working on it. They use both NGSS which is um next generation science standards is what that refers to and that is actually kind of the preferred method of
science standards. It is aligned with Colorado state standards but is a little bit more um conceptbased as well in different approach. Um they talk about research based science pedigogy differentiation and all these different things. I'm not going to read all the slides because that's one of my least
favorite things when people do that to me. So, I'm just going to kind of give you an overview. Um, there was two different options from them. They have an online option and then they had this which was a more hands-on mixed option. And we looked at this from HMH from McGraill. Um, we looked at it's
called Inspire Science. Um, it's a little bit more phenomenon based. Um, has a lot of crosscurricular stuff. One of the things that we were excited about is it does have a K12 progression. So, a lot of the others are kind of segmented by uh K5, 68, um, and high school. And
this one actually has a complete progression through. And as you are well aware, this is what the high school adopted. And the last one is an online exclusive option. It's called Open Science Ed. We had a lot of referrals for this um from some different people.
Um and it is a a recognized science curriculum but is exclusively online. Um it's framework constructed so it's a little bit different. It uses kind of a storyline approach. Um and a lot of routine based inquiry and one of their big things is that as I mentioned their Google classroom integrated which is up
there. These are the three that we reviewed. um that is not pretty but those are the concepts that are over that you have to look through in the rubric when we do those reviews. So you look at all these different elements on the rubric um out of 50 points possible.
So there's 10 categories you can rate them that's correct um this is the what we came back with. So the HMH after our science department reviewed it, they gave it a score of a 42 out of 50. And our school accountability committee also
gave it a score of 42 out of 50. Um for the McGra Hill, the science department re gave it a 44 out of 50 and the school of accountability committee gave it a 41.5 out of 50. And finally for the open
science ed one. This one was rated as a 27 by our um our science department. And unfortunately though I had people trying they were unable to access it and I was that was why I was a little bit late getting the slideshow in trying to get this last score and we could not get
anybody from the school accountability committee to review this last one. But it was the lowest rated by our um science department. So after that basically after our review and looking through those um we have decided that we really the science department reviewed and they decided that they really liked
McGra Hill. Um they said that it was very evident in the standards and the flow was very easy. Um they felt that it was easy to find that that the curriculum was easy to use and they really felt that it was just user friendly in terms of students could find concepts as they were working through
both the the teacher book and the student book. And so they really liked it overall and there was the added bonus that um our high school has adopted it well. They thought it as well and they thought that would be very nice to have that cohesiveness moving from middle school to high school. In speaking with
the school accountability committee, there was a very close score between the two that they reviewed. Um it was off by a half a point, but ultimately they when they found out that the high school had adopted McGra Hill, that was kind of their ultimate recommendation, too. They did like how it was very easy to use. Um
and so that was the ultimate decision. That being said, that is our recommendation to you as a board is we would like to recommend the McGra Hill for adoption. Um as is the case, we have all those materials that we'll put out for public review. And at this point, I believe it goes out for the 30 days and
then it comes to you guys for decision. So we have kind of done our part. I will stand for any questions that you might have about the curriculum. Um but that's our recommendation and our our hope at this point. assume you're wanting to implement this by fall. Is that right? That is our
goal. Yeah. With the timeline, I think that um talking with Jim, I think that if we were able to make a decision in the next two meetings, it gives us time to get everything ready um to get some professional development right before the beginning of the school year and adopt and implement. Okay.
Will the uh 30-day review be done in the same manner that the last one was for the high school where um the curriculum is available here. There's a sign-in sheet. There are comment sheets for their review to be written on and
it's all turned in here when they do the review. Is that going to be how it's done? That is my understanding of the pattern, but I'm going to defer to Mr. Parr on that. Yes, sir. Mr. Excellent. That is that is standard practice for all of those um adoptions. Thank you.
Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation, Mr. Pearson. All right, we will move on to executive director of ESS report, Lisa Migle. Thank you and good evening, board. Uh
just wanted to real quick update. Um a few things that have been going on. Uh one is we had received a letter from uh office of civil rights. They had some questions for us and uh I was able to provide answers to that. Um and
basically their findings were that they had everything that they needed and um everything was okay there. Uh have provided a couple of different trainings. We allow we had our high school special education teachers go to Pagosa Springs to learn um more about
transition and writing IEPs related to transition. So that was a an excellent training for them to go to to really help um boost their uh their paperwork um as well as provide things for our students. So that was exciting. And then I was able to bring
uh two of our IEP support people in to do training on a Friday with our staff. So they've been working with them online virtually, reviewing all their documents, sitting with them in IEPs, those types of things. So they were able to come down
and meet with those teachers and do some additional training, which was a very a valuable day. Uh definitely something that I'm I'm glad that we did. We got a lot of questions answered. uh and I think will even improve our processes. The other two things that I
had on my list were there were conversations about third party review. Just wanted to let you know those things are still happening. uh we expect to have answers here pretty soon and I don't know you wanted any more said on that and uh discussion with Boseies about how
we're moving forward into next year and we have some good plans going forward and things that we can uh work on to offer better services as we go through the year. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. I actually do. I'm a little off the wall though. Not not
according to your uh not regarding your report there, but I was at school high school last week for my day that I'm helping with bag classes some. And I had a student in the commons there wearing a hood that I asked him to take his hood off and he refused to. He told me
absolutely not. Won't do it. Went and talked to Mr. Thirsten about it. He did go talk to the student. Mr. Thirstston came back and reported to me that it was on his IEP that he could do that. Is that appropriate? Hoods to me as a teacher that the only reason I was
put in there was for safety reasons. So, can an IEP override safety rules or dress code rules or anything else at the school? Basically, if it's in the best interest of the student, those those things definitely have to be considered there.
Um I know of this one and we have had significant discussions about it. It's the be is best for this particular student. It's all I could say on that. Okay. we we we have to look at the needs of each student and not all students
fall have the same needs and so of course we have to look at all of the school rules and all of those pieces but um all things are taken into consideration. I don't know if that answers your question well enough.
So I guess the question would be yes, sometimes those do override the school rules. Yes, the IEPs. Okay. And we obviously we have those those conversations. It's not a here whatever you want. There's we have to go through
a process. Thank you. All right. Um executive director of human resources report, Mr. Schmidt. So I asked Mr. Burus if we could do a book study and
and uh the principles and the executive team have agreed to be through chapter 10 by the end of this week. Just kidding. Made that part up. But I have one of these for each of you. There's a name in it. So if it's not your name, please pass it down. That one's Jennifer. Jennifer down that way.
This is Paul. Yes, I can take it down. Paul, this is Jen. Sure. Yeah. I wanted you guys to be able to participate in the fun. Oh, wow. That book is about the impact of of cell
phones on student attention and how it impacts them in the classroom and u it's pretty pretty pertinent to some of the situations that we're dealing with in our school right now. So well thank you for this already
intrigued. Yeah. Now what's the real timeline? We haven't given them one yet. It's a busy time of year. Does this include kids with special needs? I I don't know that they differentiate between
different types of kids. Um I would I would refer you to the book to to check that out because I don't remember enough of it to tell you that detail. That's a great question. A we attended a superintendent's West Slope superintendent conference last week and
Brian and I don't remember his name, the superintendent from Grand Junction. They've implemented a no cell phone across the board policy and he said that he's gotten two calls um opposing it and lots of people going finally you've done
it. So I think there's there's a big movement of getting cell phones out of the out of the classroom. He's got it where they can have the phone, they can use it after school, before school, but in the classrooms they're not. And I
asked him about what about earbuds because they'll hide it and make the earbuds go. We don't allow earbuds even smart watches. So yeah, I did have the opportunity to read that um book last summer and it was it's pretty eye opening for me. So I wanted to share it with with you guys if
you wanted to take a read. I'll send you a uh I thought I don't know if I shared with anybody else on here or not, but I have a really good video of a conference uh where the keynote speaker was talking about not just cell phones but overall technology in this generation. It's about 20-minute deal. It's a really
really good talk about what it's doing to Sounds good. I think our community is wondering the title and author of the book. You can't see it from out there. It is called The Anxious Generation. Um, what is the subtitle? A great rewiring
of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. It's by Jonathan Hate. H AI DT. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that, Deb. As far as my report, I don't have anything to give other than what I've
already submitted. Much of what I have for the board is in the action item sections of the agenda for today. I do have I am here I'm available for questions if anybody has any. [Music] Okay, moving on to the last part of our
reports, the board reports. I would just like to reiterate the the strategic planning and thank you to everybody that came out for that and the work that was done and we look forward to to um that compilation of all of that. And then also
um just a lot of things happening this time of year for the the seniors, you know, the awards, you know, or all of our students, the awards night, the choir concerts, the band concerts, the um of course graduation. Um so many things going on. So encourage everybody
to hit as many of those as they could. I think we're done with the the choir and band at this point. I think I I haven't received a schedule. And I do believe back Oh, one more. There's more choir. Oh, more choir. Okay. Okay.
And I do believe this year is the first year we've swapped balora and awards nights. Oh, that way you guys can also attend awards night. Okay, perfect. What's the date on that? Um, Balorat will be that
Tuesday and then the awards night will be Wednesday of next week. Is Balorat um in the Rev? No. Is is Baloria in the auditorium? Yes. Okay. I thought I heard the site changed. Thank you. We just swapped. Okay, cool. Thank
you. I have a couple things here, I guess. Um, little bit of legislative stuff. First of all, um, House Bill 1274, the healthy meals. Um, our legislature is going to be putting that to vote in November for the
people to actually vote on whether or not or how it's going to continue, if it does continue or however. Um, so that'll be coming up in November. Um, there's been a huge huge financial loss on that program. So the legislature doesn't I guess they're just throwing their hands up and saying we don't know what to do with it. So let's figure out let
somebody else figure it out, I guess. So um and Mr. Miller might be able to shed a little bit on uh Senate Bill 77, the Kora. Um that was vetoed by the governor, but they're going to try to get
it redone, I guess, or something. So So there was a Brad Miller speaking. there was a big enough majority in passage that it could overcome the veto if that was the will of the legislature. Yes. So this is a bill about the open records
act that would prioritize different sorts of constituents um with respect to their core request so that media would have a quicker response time and that there could be cumulative fees for multiple cororas within a certain time frame on
and things like that. the the governor um vetoed it and I suspect that that will be maintained, but there's a chance it could be over overvoted. Good. Um let's see a couple other ones coming up. I don't know if I have this
number right. 123, the transgender one that they're it's going to be forced on the schools and stuff. You're referring, I believe, to House Bill 251312. Okay. Uh that is a bill that had multiple components, a couple of which
were applicable to schools. They have a a component that has to do with dress code for transgender youth and and the fact that a school can't have a gender specific dress code. And then uh the other element had to do with uh the
terms misgendering and dead naming. Uh so a student's choice to um adopt a a a new name or new pronouns um and a violation of those by a staff member could constitute a violation of katada which could create civil penalties and
so forth. So uh that that's something to be attentive to for sure. So is that something that we need policy we need to adopt a policy on? Absolutely. We're going to have uh so I think there'll be a couple curricular policies we're going to have
to adopt because there's changes potentially in that. This one in terms of individual rights will be um necessarily addressed by policy and that will actually back implicate some of the things we've done on non-legal name change for example and and so forth. So
it will hit an array of our policies potentially. Okay. Okay. And then another one that was of concern to me that you probably don't follow was House Bill 1250. Um the state legislature is going to try to mandate curriculum into every school in
Colorado regarding red flag law and the unsafe use of firearms in the house which I think is way out of their realm but they're going pretty crazy this year when it comes to second amendment. So um some other things as far as Boseies I'll
get off the legislation part. go to Boseies. Uh we had a boies meeting last uh Wednesday right after our last meeting. Um and that was then we have a special meeting tomorrow night and I am actually on the agenda Mr. Burrus to
request the joint meeting with the superintendent after four months finally. There you go. Um our Bosey's president is resigning. Um Deb Wilhelm from Bayfield, she is going to totally get off of her school board. So she's resigning from the Boseies board. So
they'll be looking for a new uh chair for that for the Boseies board there. Um basically the last meeting our main part was going over the uh um salary schedules for all the employees of Boseis. Um we did vote to
approve one uh with no additional cost to any district in Boseis. Um, so now tomorrow night at our special meeting, they're going to have the budget for that to show how they're going to work positions and stuff to keep that budget to where it's no additional cost to any
district. So, um I did ask also about the gifted program because I know several people I think even at our uh um strategic planning asked about the gifted program too. Um there's $269,000 revenue for for gifted in
Boseies, excuse me. 80,000 of that goes to employee benefit, 11,000 for meetings and travel, leaving 118,000 net revenue. Um, I talked with Angie a little bit about this at our strategic planning, too, about the gifted program and how that works and stuff. So, I'm going to
keep following up on that and anything that I can do as far as Boseies wide ang let me know for the district and stuff for that. Um, I did a question. E school, there's 52 full-time students in e school and 25 to 30 part-time
students. Um, and then just a follow up from an and this teacher is not here, but they did email email me and I did already reply back to it. Uh, but they were asking about the budget and how that relates when we're talking about doing a salary for the salary schedule tonight. Does that have a direct
relation to positions? are we cutting positions because of that and so on. Um I did already email her back but I just to clarify that uh for everybody here too. Um I checked since 2022 we're down to 250 students. Um that equates to
about $2.5 million in income. So yes somewhere and if you're down 250 students obviously we have too much staff. So if you're 250 students short. So some somewhere or another it comes out of there. Um, and what I stressed to her was that the the last two raises
that we did for teachers did come out of our general funds. So that she and she didn't understand that that she thought it was all about the mil levy override. Um, so that was she was really glad to learn that that it did come out of our general funds. So yes, we do have to work things out budget wise to make things balance out when we're going into
a deficit budget. So I think that's all I had. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Oh, okay. All right, Mark. Yeah. Okay. All right. We will move on to um
citizens address the board. It's a 1 hour limit, three minutes each. Must turn in a filled out ticket prior to the meeting. All righty. So, MB McAfee Yeah, this on. I can never tell. Okay, thank you.
Um, thank you for uh the particip for doing the strategic planning. It was an interesting two days. Um, I think I learned a lot. I'm proud of our middle school. It was the group I was in. That's the part I know what I can say can be proud about.
Um, as I was looking over the agenda and I was looking at the salary schedule with my glasses and trying to look at the tiny numbers because some of the pages are full of tiny numbers. Uh, three things struck out stuck out to me.
One is I'm glad to see that our beginning salary is 47,000. So I think that's better than looking at a salary schedule of 40 or whatever the one would have been prior to the mill levby. So that that was encouraging to see. Um and two other
things stood out that I wish you would I would really urge you to talk about before you adopt the salary schedule tonight. Uh the first one is uh I I got to the salary the the page
about co coaches and assistant coaches and sort of dumbfounded that every sport has an assistant coach. It just went on and on and on. Um but also I was struck at how little those folks are paid. I mean, when I stopped to think about how
coaches impact kids lives in so many ways, when I taught PE, kids who didn't do very well scholastically, PE stands for physical education, didn't do very well scholastically, did well in my classes.
And so I know that there are kids whose lives are touched through school, through sports, and if if indeed that we have a um budget surplus, as Danielle states in her report, it doesn't seem like raising those salaries would be
much of an impact and would probably be a great benefit. That's the second thing that struck me. And the third thing that struck me is as I looked at the schedule and I'm reading along, I was very unhappy to see that the
superintendent schedule is not listed. And it seems only fair that administrative staff, all of whom are here or not not here anyway, their their salaries are listed. Names are attached and so people can look and see at the salary schedule and see how much money
Mr. Ramirez is making. for instance. Uh it doesn't and that part seems transparent I believe. But I think that we should also be able to see the superintendent salary. That seems only fair, right? And and transparent to me and I I hope that
you'll talk about that right after public comment. Thanks. Thank you, Em. All right, Melinda Evans. Good evening, board. I don't know if you want Oh, there it goes. Thank you. Uh, I just wanted to say thank you for taking the
time to review the information that I sent to you regarding the school reorganization and for the information you sent to me regarding my Kora request. Um, as a followup, I would just uh highly recommend that if the school
hasn't adopted a policy regarding the mandatory reporting of child abuse that they consider um holding a training for teachers yearly to review that mandatory reporting training. Um, the Colorado
Child Welfare Training System has a wonderful free training that's available. um Illuminate Colorado and also our local child advocacy center offer trainings regarding um that purpose. So just a recommendation to the
board. I hope that you will look into those and um possibly even take that training yourself if you haven't already done so. Um mandatory reporting laws include school board members and all in school employee personnel. So, um,
everyone from janitors to secretaries and in between. Um, so as a child welfare professional, I would just ask that you review those items. Um, and with the meetings coming up about the school reorg, I just hope that you guys
will be present at those meetings and come with open minds and ready for conversations from parents. Thank you. Thank you, Melinda. Okay. So, moving on to um board discussion. That's the first question I
had. Uh Mr. Smith, wasn't coaching salaries adjusted some on that new schedule? They were not. Okay. I thought they were. Okay. I didn't compare them to the old one. Our base teacher salary did not change the change to the base teacher salary
was not changing salary. How do those compare with other districts around us? That's probably the one complaint I've heard of coach, but I've heard both ways. I've heard Durango's basically the same salary and then I've heard other coaches say that they're getting a thousand more for a
head coach, not excluding ship. We're all pretty comparable. I believe that at this point, Cortez, I don't want to say record for sure, but believe either right there or a little higher than before.
I I actually looked at those this year and we're we're right in the middle of the pack. I think Durango pays a little bit more. I looked at Chiprock, um, Ignasho, Aosa Springs, all of our Boseis
area school districts and if you took the names on off of them, you couldn't pick which one was top and really which one was bottom. We're in we're in amongst them. So, I can what I would offer to do board, I can uh look at
those again and and bring them to you so you have the comparison list. Yeah, I I totally agree on the impact of those with kids and stuff. So, absolutely, I want to hear them, you know, make sure that they're no matter what you pay on on a coach, I'm sorry it's not enough because for the hours they put in. I
know, but but um Yeah. Yeah. So, you got to be doing because you love the sport or whatever it is you're coaching. I know. But, but we want to be be definitely fair. I've also heard um a coach ask about which and I don't agree with is getting extra pay for
postseason. I don't know that as a school district personally I don't feel like that should be something that should be an incentive out there to go with that all it is about is getting to the postseason then to me I don't know have some great high school coaches the
reason that the programs are successful is not just them have great theater programs program and so they feed all the way up. Our high school coaches that are the most successful right now are the ones that have had good theater program and that's not the discount that they've done, but they're not
exclusively responsible for getting them to where they're at. Yeah, it takes a lot of years to get get those kids that. Um, any other idea on the superintendent salary? I don't I've never seen a school district anywhere that post superintendent salaries because they are
totally negotiable. Um, normally any district will have a range if they're posting that position, but that's it. Everything else is negotiable from there. So, um, and definitely those are still open records. So, they are done. So, but I've never seen any district do that.
So have not and yes I am planning on being at all the reorganization meetings. Good. I'm pretty sure we already have that policy in place for the mandatory. We do and we have done that um every year our staff takector
training. Yep. So Okay. And uh one more thing with the coaching schedule, we did add a few items on there that a few items for positions that weren't there previously.
Um or we reorganized those. There are a couple that we need to still bring to the board. So when we do that, we can bring that analysis that Mr. Bur referred to for the coaching for Mr. Schmidt. Yes, ma'am. Can you just explain for the audience what vector
training is? Vector is uh they're on. Is he close enough to the microphone? Oh, sorry. That's why Jim said I had to leave. You're gonna have to scream at us. I turned it off because I kept coughing. Um so, Vector is a is a
platform that has a bunch of online training modules that we receive as a part of our benefits um package with I believe it's Anthem. Um but we do have basically we have tech credits from from some of our um benefits providers
and and we use part of those to purchase the vector training software and specifically we use mandatory reporting every year for staff uh and sexual harassment. There are other trainings that we have access to and there are times when particular staff members
might need uh training opportunity that we that we can find on that platform and provide those to them. Thank you, Madam President. I uh I'd also like to comment a couple things. Um one, uh want
to thank the people who come to the microphone during the public comment. um want to uh convey the idea that you're always welcome and I I hope you see that after you have come to the
microphone that even even if it doesn't happen uh the same evening that at some point in the future the things that you point out um are either talked about or addressed in some way. I also again uh
you're gonna you might get tired of me saying this, but I want to encourage um instructional staff in the district um as well as board members uh as well as parents along with their students to
listen to the many series of podcasts called sold a story. It can be found at soldastory.org and um I think it would be helpful if you listen to that uh in
order to um uh have a better conversation around reading and the science of reading. And um I hope it will uh influence our district to
uh achieve much higher uh proficiencies than what we have right now. And that's all I have. Thank you, Mike. Um on a different subject, um this was brought to my attention. Um, the graduation caps,
Jennifer. Um, does that include eagle feathers as Native American cultures and stuff like that? That has to be on the cap, the design. Please draw your cap design in the template provided to be sure to use
colors and indicate what material will be used. So, how do you do that? Like, is that going to be included in it? Cuz it's supposed to be. So, the purpose I assume you're talking about the graduation cap that how they have to design. We just want to approve that to make sure
nothing um graphic or controversial is on there. We will never say no to something that's a cultural representation. So, feathers, anything like that are completely allowed. Um we just want to make sure that graduation is appropriate. So, if they put on the
design, I'm going to have feathers. It doesn't even have to be drawn on there. sort of a indication of what should go on. That's fine. So, I've had some kids make a really elaborate design and turn it in. And I've had other kids just write, I'm going to have a feather here, have some beads here. Good. We just want
to make sure nothing real strange pops up. Okay. Yeah, cuz just a couple of parents had brought that up and stuff and wanted me to see, you know, to let you know. Yep. Feathers completely allowed. Any sort of um tribal or any cultural is completely fine. Okay. Yep.
Thank you. Yep. Okay. Um, let's move on to our action items. Um, can I get a motion to approve the consent calendar? I'd like to make a motion to accept the
consent calendar. Second it. Online voting is now available. Motion passes unanimously. All right. Action item B, the resolution of intent to participate in the 2025 election.
I get a motion. Please move to adopt the resolution of intent to participate in the November 4th, 2025 designated election. I second. Online voting is now available. motion passes unanimously.
Right. Action item C, the fiscal year 2526 salary schedule. I make a motion to approve the salary schedule. Second it. Madam President, if I have some comments. Yes. So at
our April 8th workshop, the administration presented a proposal to increase the salary schedule for staff except teachers and paras because teachers and paras had already gotten an increase with the MLO. Administration
shared that the cost of living increased by 7% between 21 and 23. From January 24 to 25, the cost of living further increased by approximately 2.3% for a total of about
9.3%. The district provides annual step increases ranging from approximately 1 to 2 and a.5% of an employees base salary. So for those same three years, compare 9.3 to a range given by the admin admin
of three to 7 and 12%. The approved mill levy override has allowed the district to provide salary increase to teachers and paras at approximately 17.5% and 10% respectively.
And I want to note that that was done because there was an identified need in order to compete for teachers and aids um better in our in our district. Uh further down, our goal, the
administration's goal was to try to propose a raise for other categories of employees that would get close to the 9.3% increase in cost of living that we've seen in the past 3 years. the annual step increase plus 5% would get us close to 9.3% and would have a cost
approximately 3/4 of a million dollars. And so that would add another year to the calculation. So 9 um three versus four years of the estimate. So that's 4 to
10% based on the step raises. And then my question is the $750,000 a year does that include teachers and paras or not? So the numbers in included steps for all
categories of employees including teachers and paras but the raise was specifically for categories that were not impacted by the MLO. Yeah. So, the the step increase um of $750,000 districtwide included teachers
and parents, right? Yes. Teachers and parents will receive a step as well. Yeah. So, um later farther down it says an annual step increase to salaries cost the district about uh 240,000. So,
um, did those two numbers get changed? I was understanding that the 240,000 was, um, step increases and the 750 I'm getting confused by those two numbers. My understand my understanding
is that in Danielle's numbers that the 740 is inclusive of the of the 240. Okay. And then the remainder of proposed increases are estimated to cost around 396. And this totals an increased cost of
$636,000. So um and then down at the bottom, the decreases in expenses in the budget by approximately 1.83 million to 2.03 03 million are what the administration has
estimated that the um budget savings will be as a result of some extraordinary efforts by the administration to reduce expenses and um uh balance our budget. And I want to
thank the administration for um doing that work. Uh it involved a lot of details, I'm sure. and and uh it looks like you're going to get us to the 1.8 million deficit that we've been carrying for the last couple of
years. So the conservative estimate of the budget reduction uh the range that was given is 1.83 to 2.03. So the conservative side of that is 1.83 and our budget deficit has that we've been carrying is 1.8. So basically
that um conservative estimate is a balanced budget. And so any salary increase that is given uh at this time would put us possibly
uh into a deficit situation. Again, depending on um whether the budget uh reductions are more or less than what has been estimated. So,
um if we add 750,000 in salary increases, we would then be in a 7.75 million deficit. Or if you just look at the the smaller number, it would be still deficit numbers.
the annual step increases are um I made that point already. So if the administration wants to give salary increases beyond the step increase, I think we should wait and see if the budget cuts actually come through
first. Perhaps in January 26, we could look at uh at it again and confirm whether we've actually made the estimated savings or not. Um however I do have a more fundamental concern about
this proposal this proposed salary increase. Um it excludes um by design the teachers and the paras. Many times during the discussions of the MLO, I
um pointed out that the MLO was intended to supplement not supplant the salary program of the teachers and paras. This means that it was to boost or add to the salary
program, not replace the salary program. And by excluding teachers and paras from a districtwide salary increase, the MLO is supplanting rather um or or replacing
the salary program. Um and I don't think that's right. Are are teachers and paras not worthy of protecting their salary from inflation also as the rest of the district would be? In my opinion, the salary increase goes against the intent
of the MLO. I tried to get this problem solved by adding text to the MLO, but I was not successful in doing that. But I do have other concerns. The increases to base salary range from 3.7 to
8.1% if I did the calculations right. without explanation. Um it I was thinking I was expecting a more uniform increase across across the board and it appears to be or rather it appears not
to be equitable in my opinion. The administration the administrator's page does not uh seem equitable um without explanation. Same with the administration support page. Two columns were removed from the admin support
page. I'm not sure why the SRO has a salary increase, but I thought that was a contracted um salary and determined by an agreement with the Cortez police, not a not something that we chose to do. I I may
be in uh misunderstanding that there is a new column on the custodial maintenance page without explaining um why at the retreat we discussed the uh unfair similarity between life skills
parah and specials medical assist per paras but um they weren't changed on this salary schedule which I didn't expect I expected there there to be a difference there. Um the lack of equity
on the transportation personnel page uh on the high school activities and coaching stipen which has been discussed already this evening. I didn't know it was going to be discussed but there are eight new positions. Um no no explanation. Also there are 0%
increases. Now I know why because it's based on the teachers and paras base salary which is not going up in the salary increase that um has been proposed um and as well the MS activities middle
school activities and coaching stipens same thing uh no increases other assignments page no increases so the main reason um that I have difficulty with this is that teachers and paras are
getting left out of a district-wide increase which uh my understanding was during the entire discussions on the MLO that that was not to happen. That was not the intent of the MLO is to cause teachers to be
considered differently when um district-wide salary increases were made. So, um, I would like to wait and see if the budget cuts become real. They're only estimated right now. I'd like to wait
until they become real and say, "Show me the money. Okay, it's there now. I'm good to go." um too many issues with the schedule that are not explained and it doesn't seem equitable to me, especially when there's a difference of 5% between the
minimum and the and the high that I calculated in in increases. So, I I have several concerns about it and um I'm really not in favor of it. Thanks. Would you like me to address some of those, Mr. Bur?
Go ahead and start. I've got a couple. Okay. Uh first the one that just comes to mind the quickest uh Mr. Lynch is when we discussed the life skills parah that were doing medical related um had medical related responsibilities what we had requested is that we be allowed to
move them into the special par category. So a new category was not created. We added them to the existing category that they weren't previously a part of. Um to address your question about certain categories being removed, there were like we had a position um on the
administrative support page that we didn't have a single person in. It wasn't a position that we that we had um it was a finance secretary 9.5. We didn't have any finance secretary 9.5. We had finance secretary 10's and regular secretary 9.5. So it was a it
was a column that wasn't being used. So we removed that column. Um with regard to um the coaches, we already addressed that piece. Um with regard to the additions on the coaches page, those are not additional positions. Those are positions that we
had been using the rubric further down in the salary schedule to determine amounts uh per the discussion we had on April 8th. Um, Director Rice had requested that those be itemized on the on the list and
so we we moved them onto the list of stipen schedule instead of using the rubric to define the amount. Um, so those are not new. They're just reorganized. Okay. Um, with regard to the I'm trying to remember all of the
different things that you mentioned. Um, the SRO, uh, we actually don't have an SRO, uh, schedule on here. It's it's it's one for a security officer. We don't currently have a security officer employed. If we did have a security
officer employed, that's the salary schedule that they would they would fall under. Um, but the the SRO salary is not set by us. Um, let's see. That's what I can remember for right now. Mr. Bur, do you want to add something regarding
percentages? No, I want to go back to our our PPR revenue. PPR revenue is based on student numbers. We did that um look at the last five years of student numbers. Also at West Slope, we talked about if the
governor is able to go to single year or two-year averaging or three-year averaging or fiveyear and it's at four year right now. And if we go if the governor does cut that, what that's going to do to us because of the drop in
numbers, it's going to affect our affect significantly our PPR revenues. So that's another moving target in this piece. The other piece is of course the number of students who are in our
district and who continue to be in our district. In 2008 or so, there were over 3,000 students in the district. I think we looked at 1935 was the number from it's up on my
board. Started at 1926 at count and is up to 1936 now. Yeah. So, um, we we need to build those conversations into a budget discussion about whether this is going to be enough
of a cut to balance the budget or it's not. And I would, you know, I've said this before, in 22 2122, the base salary was 315. In 2223, the base salary was 36. In
23 24 the base salary was 40. So I looked at the teachers because those are the hardest positions to fill the most critical and I prioritized that and whatever that increase is it's fairly
sizable about a a 30% increase as my math guesses to get from 315 to 40. So, we've I look at this in a long-term view of here's what we've done to increase uh
where we have been in Cortez. Again, in 2008, we were paying teachers 27,000. In 2021-22, we were starting teachers at 315. So, this discussion at the board level and the at the community level had
not been had in 15 or 18 years. And there's no way we could have kept up if we hadn't bit the bullet. And um you will remember board members from when
Jim Greon was here. He did a estimate and he said don't go to third to 40,000. Go to 375 from 36 to 375. and um is my recommendation because of numbers of dropping students and
because because of the budget, but he also said in the same breath, if you don't go to 40, you're not going to be nearly competitive and get people. I would like to also tout the fact that at Keer, you have zero turnover in your
staff this year. Drew, do you have any turnover? Okay. So, we're we're getting it down. Angie Lewis Areola and I had the discussion with you. What's the biggest thing that'll make us make or break a school as far as achievement?
You said consistent staff. So, that's where where we're trying to get to. I want to bring everybody up. We We started two years ago with bus drivers making $15 an hour and we're now at Brad's not here. I think around 20 or
$21 an hour to start. So custodians are in the same boat. Your nurses are in the same boat. We've got to keep people here across the board. So all those all those people that were left out of the MLO
um through PPR, we get them to where they're competitive so we can keep them. It was just it was a design of mine uh member Lynch to uh work this direction. Yeah. So, let me be clear.
I'm not against a salary uh increase for the rest of the staff in the district. I'm against the timing and the um what I perceive, maybe it's just me, but what I
perceive as um not an equitable uh salary increase across the positions. And as long as I did the calculations correctly, I could also be making a mistake from here and there. I certainly volunteer that we could rattle this one
out and One thing I would say about the equitability of the difference, I mean the higher the salary, the lower the percentage typically. Um, but the other thing I would say is if we do a percentage base across the board on salary schedules, what that does is that creates a bigger and bigger gap as you
go down the salary schedule. We we have to do that by flat amounts when we can. Otherwise, it the math sort of just like escalates in the salary schedule. Yeah. And that's not what that's not what I'm I'm suggesting. Um there
um let me give you an example of one that I uh sure that I felt um was not uh very equitable um in regard to uh transportation. I think it was
um the uh m uh let's see maintenance. Nope. Okay. On the transportation personnel salary schedule, uh mechanics
are paid less than master mechanics. uh mechanics, it looks like their increase was 5% and master mechanics was 3.7. Um that didn't seem that's an
example of one that didn't seem equitable to me. So um there are others, but uh I just think there there should be a little bit more equity across the
district than I than what I calculated. Let me respond to that. Yep. Two ways to build a scout salary schedule. One on percentage and one on um equitable equitable not equitable the same pay between steps. And I am a fan of same
pay between steps. The salary schedule that I inherited 2122 had been several times increased by percentages across the board rather than uh consistent numbers across the board. And if you look at the teacher salary
schedule, that's the big one that I look at. All of the steps going down are $600 all the way across the board. And if you look at the 2122, um, that is not the case. They're not
the same. So there's a difference. The master mechanic may be 3%, but his salary is higher to start with. So that and I didn't look at it but I would guess that the um the dollar increase is
the same. That again is is my design of that. Um when you go percentages across the board, you grow your salary schedules differently and I think they become problematic
um in later years. So apparently there's a misunderstanding because I'm not talking about making percentage increases in the steps. I'm not talking about um what I think you're talking about. All I did is I took the base
salary and I looked at the difference between the new salary schedule and the old salary schedule on the base salary and calculated the increase. And those calculations don't seem equitable to me. I certainly think we can look at those
again and we can change the salary schedule at a later time if you would like to, but I I and I didn't look at that one, but I would like to review that one and see uh exactly what the numbers are.
I was seeing if Danielle was available to answer the other question, but I haven't heard yet. Um, okay. With regard to the budget deficit number, uh, one of the things that I know that Danielle would say if she was here is that that number of 1.8, she had been working on throughout the year to whittle that
number down below 1.8 at this point. um whether that be through addressing uh positions in the system um that were that were budgeted but not filled or whether it be for um you know positions that people had
had left partway through and that weren't refilled. And so she had worked to reduce that prior to now. So that 1.8 that was there at the beginning of the year isn't there today uh even before the proposed budget cuts going into next year. Um I would want I would not want
to go into greater detail than that without her on the phone, but that's that's my understanding of why that number is no longer 1.8. It's it's significantly less than that at this point. Yeah. So my my concern is I'd like to I'd like to see it. It it's an
estimate right now. It's um uh based on what she's found and I commend her for all the work that she's done. I'm I'm so thankful she's working on it because she seems very competent and and is in my opinion doing amazing job. But
uh I I'd rather see it in the budget before we take the step of adding um to salaries rather than uh adding to salaries before we see it and just um uh
relying on the estimates of uh budget reduction. I also like to point out that the 1.8 8 um million deficit that we've had so far. Uh of course that's based on the current education financing formula.
Um and we don't know what the legislation is what the legislature is going to do with uh education finance. it. I've been attending weekly rural alliance meetings and they give weekly
updates on on this and it's nobody knows where we're going to end up, but [Music] um what we did find out was in October our student count went down uh 190 some
odd students. That's roughly $1.9 million of um PPR which is going to go into that whatever formula they arrive at. That means we're going to have less revenue. I don't know how much because
that formula is pretty complicated, but um we're we're dealing with having less money next year as well. So um it's just something that I'm I'm worried about. I I want to have a balanced budget. I want to give salary increases when we can
afford it. I know they come out of the general fund. I think the teachers and paras shouldn't be handled the way they're being handled because we're actually treating them different now just because of the MLO which was not supposed to happen. And I just I don't
think this is the time for this. Throw a few things in here now too I guess. Um, first of all, we're going to beat this one to death. Going back to the coaches, I think you said that that that's 5%, right, of base is it's just based on base. If you look at the
schedule, it has it's based on a percentage of base. Not all coaching positions are the same percentage because some have longer seasons, some have different uh areas of responsibility. But did you use the base salary as 40,000 then? Right now, if you look at that salary
schedule, it says that it's a it's a percentage of base salary. Correct. And you use the number 40 for that though, not 47. All stipens are based on a designated percentage of the 40,000 general operating portion of the base salary. So why is why is it not based on
47? That's our base salary now. We can't back up on that. So that is the 7,000 my understanding would have to come out of MLO funds and they're not teachers or Paris. So, they wouldn't be eligible for that money. Well, we're not I don't guess I see what
you're saying there because it's not about them being eligible for that money. It's just that we're using that number for a base salary because that is our base salary. Now, to me, that that percentage should be based off of 47, not off of 40. Because I'm I'm once we put 47 in there, we can't back up. We
can't next year say, "Well, we can't afford this now, so we're going to go back to 40." And the reason that we were approaching it that way is because we we did hear um you know we felt like we heard consistently from the board that we needed to differentiate between those two piles of money that hey this is what the PPR is which we do but for this sake
I don't see the relevance on that part I guess. So personally I don't know if anybody else has anything to say on that I don't know. Yeah I um I think it's based on how you define it was set up based on base salary. So, how would the
base salary go up? We I don't think they ever thought about an MLO being used, especially in our county. So, um I think it just needs to be uh um I mean, if we're out there recruiting teachers, we're telling them
47,000 salary correctly, right? To me, we're using two different Yeah. two different things there. So, we are I agree with you. We are saying we are using that number. That's part of why we want that number so we can recruit. Um, but we are clearly stating on the salary schedule that that 47 is comprised of
two different numbers. That's and that's fine. And that's fine. But, but still I think that number that we're looking at there for the percentage for coaching should come off of 47, not off of 40. Okay. Um, couple other things. I understand your part, Mr. Lynch, on the uh not
supplanting this the MLO, but I think and we have talked about this before. I know that this I mean this is brand new ground for us. This is we're treading new ground here trying to get through this. And I think we've discussed this already, too, that this is a one-year thing that we've got to try to sort of level the playing field all the way
across. And I'm fine with that. Agreed. In future years, yes, if there is a pay raise in there, it should go straight across the board, everybody. But right now, I think we're just trying to level the playing field a little bit for everybody to to get it in there with the MLO and stuff. And I mean, like I said, it's all new ground for everybody. I
think um the budget I understand I'm not I'm not for putting off a year though. Um for budget reasons because as a business person too that you could be starting up a new business and everything's based off of a budget and
and it's even you're even going more blind with that because you have no idea what your revenue is going to be or anything else. At least right now we have a pretty good track record. We depend on Danielle to show us that and say, you know, this is where we're at and and based on her numbers, yes, this is feasible to do. And I'm comfortable
with that with Danielle doing that. And I would hate to see us put it off for a year for that reason personally. Three things I'll I'll throw in. We're at time to do contracts and that's going to that is a
big thing we're going towards. Passing this doesn't mean that you can't come back to it, especially on the coaching salary schedules, and I'll provide you those from around the area. So, you can see um what those are. You can propose a raise to that if you want to, a
percentage or or a dollar amount, and we can calculate that and see how much that'll cost. We can get that all done before um any of the coaching for next year starts. And that way you will have real firm numbers on it. Yeah, that's no
problem. Yeah, that would be no problem. I'd be good with that, too. But the the contracts were uh Brad, you could help me a little bit here. By uh the 1 of May, we've got to notify people if they're not coming back
or we've got to give them a letter of intent or a contract to say you are coming back. catching me unawares on that exact tecta or statutory provision, but let's face it, you're coming up to budget adoption. It would be prudent to go ahead and
adopt what you can here if you've got sounds like you could do this with amendments and that would be a great practical assist to Danielle in getting her budget figured out for next year and going forward on that. Correct. We've also talked about another
situation that may occur um with the evaluation of the the county that we may have extra money that the board gets to allocate allocate through the MLO in December or June of next year and that
extra money would only go to um to the teachers and the pair of professionals because it's MLO and you know How do we designate that with our the rest of our employees? That that'll complicate things. So, there's
many moving parts here. Yeah, we're building this plane as we're flying it. I've got a video that does that. Yeah. But I think the bottom line is we've been really good to all of our people throughout the district.
I don't know what happened, Jennifer. Yeah, I I I'm suddenly feeling like I don't have enough information here. All right, then. Online voting's now available. Motion passes 4 to two. All right. Can get a motion uh to accept
the Lore Foundation donation for MCMS signage. To accept the Lore Foundation donation for MCMS signage. I'll second it. Yes. By Mr. Collins.
Madam President, I have some comments about the the grant. Um, so everyone likes free money. I like free money, but I think we need to be careful and consider the strings that
are attached to free money. Um, I have concerns about the language in the L uh foundation grant agreements. The language is unfavorable to our
district. Mrs. Crowley um and I have discussed uh some of my concerns and um she's asked the Lore Foundation uh about changes that could be made to the text and they said no.
Um it is their standard template I guess and they don't want to they don't want to change that. Um, I want to first of all uh thank Mrs. Crowley. She um agreed to
provide me with a list of all the um grants that uh have come to our district through the Lore Foundation. And uh I don't know if it was a comprehensive list, but it was a full page. And uh um I want to take
this opportunity to thank the Lore Foundation for all the support they've been in our district. I'm certainly not against support. [Music] Um, since the language cannot be changed, it would be uh prudent in my
opinion if from now on each of the Lore Foundation grant agreements be scrutinized to see if our district is at a foreseeable and likely risk of loss under the agreement. And if so, then the board should consider declining the
grant monies. Um, and that's just a general statement. It's not about this particular uh grant, but um for this grant of the 29,000 for signage at the middle school, I don't
see um any any danger to accepting this. And so, um I don't have a problem with this particular grant. So, is there certain language on there, Mr. Lynch, that you're concerned of or in there? Yeah, it bothers me. Um uh
what is the language there that you're under return of unused funds of course any unused funds I agree that they should go back to lore but um it it triggers some other things in that paragraph. In the event your organization breaches the terms of this
grant agreement. grantee shall be liable to the Lore Foundation for any and all damages suffered as a result of such a breach. So, um if we don't spend the money in time or we don't we're not successful in
spending the money and uh the Lore Foundation uh suffers damages from our lack of um following through on spending that money then we are liable for those damages. grantee agrees to maintain adequate financial and program
programmatic records and to retain those records for at least four years after the conclusion of the grant project. I doubt if that's a problem, but it I just it's something else that we need to make sure that we do. Under evaluation and monitoring, review financial and other
records and materials connected with the activities financed by this grant. grantee agrees to promptly provide such additional information, reports and documents as the Lore Foundation and its representatives may request. Who knows what would what they
will request under work product. that entire paragraph. Grantee and the Lore Foundation agree that all copyright and other interests in data processes and materials produced or developed by grantee as a result of this grant shall
be owned by grantee. But that grantee shall grant and shall cause any individuals who may have some interest to grant and hereby does grant to the Lore Foundation a non-exclusive, transferable, perpetual, and irrevocable royaltyfree paid up worldwide license to
use or publish. create derivative works and to slic the data processes, materials or other work products arising out of or resulting from grantees use of the grant funds, including all intellectual property rights. For the avoidance of doubt, the foregoing
assignment of rights does not apply to open- source materials or any other materials that are owned by and licensed from a third party or the proprietary information and practices of the grantee. And then under compliance if the grant was subject to
any conditions or restrictions all such conditions or restrictions were observed under insurance and liability grantee agrees to indemnify defend and hold harmless the law foundation from any liability loss that would be expected um
as a result of the lore foundation's funding of the project or any action or non-action taken action or non-action taken in connection with the grant or any assets submitted to the law foundation by grantee including any claim of intellectual property
infringement or violation of the right of publicity. So I that language is the language I'm talking about that I don't believe is favorable to our district and um I believe it would be prudent for us to
review each instance to make sure that there are no um potential issues with that language and the uh things that the grant might be paying for. Okay. So, if I'm if I'm understanding
right, this is the same language in every contract and so it just depends on what we're using that money for is is your concern, right, Mr. Lynch? Okay. Yes, ma'am. That's correct. Okay. That's been looked at by Mr. Miller, I'm assuming, too. Right. So,
I've got it in front of me. I I find it to be standard language for a grant and be the similar we're working through u statewide certifications on title six funding right now with the federal government and there's similar sorts of promises to be made. I think the part
that Mr. Lynch observed that is of most interest is probably the work product section and that might be applicable to to certain artistic works and things of that nature that we we would want to pause on. And I appreciate all the look at the
language and stuff. Personally, when I look at grants, the biggest thing that I will look at is the company of the grant personally and see what they stand for. So, and this one I have no issue with and stuff, but I there are grants out
there that I will say I will not take just because of what they stand for. So, Okay, thank you for that discussion. Um um Deb, I think we're probably ready for online voting's now available.
Motion passes unanimously. If I can get a motion to approve the Lure Foundation donation for supplies for new athletic training position at MCHS. But did I say that correct? Yes, it's for supplies for the new athletic training position. So, okay. Okay.
I move to accept the lower foundation donation for supplies for the new athletic training position at MCHS. It's a career pathway, not a position for career pathway. Are you in agreement with that? It supplies for the CTE
program, the class, the CTE class that's happening for athletic training, not his right. Not his training that he does for sports. This is for the students enrolled in the CTE program. Mr. Rice, can you give me your wording
again now that we've said that? Let's see more. Sorry. Well, then I'll even confuse it more because it's probably not a CTE program at this point. It's not an approved program, I don't think. But um I move to accept the Lore Foundation donation for supplies for the career pathway for
students to be studying athletic training at MCHS. Good. Good. a second. Yes. Oh, yes. Please go ahead, Mr. Lynch. Thank you. So, um I don't I don't have
any issues with what this is, um paying for, but uh part of the grant agreement is a start date and an end date. And so, I'd like to ask Miss uh Mrs. Crowley uh with a start date of 211 and an end date of
523. Um is it possible for us to accomplish this within that timeline? The hot seat. So we can look at the term end date two different ways. Money expended or students utilizing the
supplies that are purchased. So right now I'm it probably would be worthwhile to push back um even to get the money expended um just because that takes time to purchase things. So um what we do
internally is I will create um if a date is decided on maybe by um by doc by uh Mrs. Bonaface and uh Mrs. Bradford like what would be a good date that this money would all go out. We just do that
internally. An email will be sent to to to both of them to uh Mr. Ta and I'll include m uh superintendent Burus on that. Um so that way we've got everybody is aware of that new final date of when
that's going to be. So we've got two options. We could go let's wait and see how the students utilize it. Let's do through semester 1 or let's do through when we spend the money. We can look at that two different ways. and I'm good either way. So, Madame President, yes, I
might recommend that we use our ending of our fiscal year of June 30th and this will give us sufficient time for the setup and the expenditure and all the paperwork. So, is this class currently going on or is this a class? It is currently happening. Yes. And they don't have the
athletic tape or pre and things like that that they need. They've got a lot of kids in the program and they went through what the initial supplies were really really quickly. So, go ahead Dr. Bonaface better for next year in the
future with this being a newer program or a newer class there wasn't really a budget for him and so we have to bridge obviously helping us with that to get the supplies he needs but In the future, we need to re-evaluate the budget for
that class, but for now, it's a good solution to get students. So would would this require um as far as that um contract changing
dates and and issuing a new contract or do we approve this contract with an amended date? Uh perhaps our council could give us some advice. Why not go ahead and um redo the the
motion and and just put the the new proposed effect or end date into the motion and if let's just go that way. We've already got a motion on the second floor, right? So, um I would suggest just an amendment to it and then
otherwise we got to withdraw that motion, get rid of it and then start over again. So I think just an amendment to it. So I move to amend the main motion by striking the date 523 2025 and inserting 6:30 2025.
I second it. U Mr. Rice, can you give me those dates again? We're striking 523 2025 and inserting 630 2025. statement. Okay. From Mr. Collins. Gave a second. Okay.
Online voting is now available and we're voting only on the amendment. Correct. Yes. [Music] trying to think how to fix that. Um, I'm thinking that um the way it's worded,
it looks like it's worded such that it's already been amended. Okay, let's I'm going to remove your vote. Sorry, I'm trying to work with board docs here. And resend it to you. Okay. Um with just
a vote to amend at this point. Online voting recent running slow. Did you get your votes? No. Like the only one that didn't get it? No. Miss Tracy, did you get it?
No. How do you vote to amend? President Noise. Um I Mr. Rice I. Miss Tracy I. Motion passes unanimously to amend the made motion as
amended. Okay. Send you the next one. Are thine votings now available with the amended uh motion? Oh, except for it should say 25 instead of 35 for the year. Sorry about that. We had a long time to spend at
that long time. It's fixed on my side. You can't see it up on the screen. Sorry. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Sorry for the delay. No, thank you, Deborah. All right. Action item F the
Laura Foundation donation to expand mental health services at this school clinic. I get a motion for that. I move to accept the uh Laura Foundation donation for the mental health services. No, second.
Right. Go ahead, Mr. Lynch. No, I welcome it. So, I do have um concerns about this, but not for the reasons about uh conflict with the text. [Music] Um, this one says, "The problem is that
the Cortez students have limited space to have therapy appointments at the school-based clinic at the high school, which restricts access to mental health services for students of all ages. The solution is to expand the floor plan of the school-based clinic by
adding a door in a wall behind the clinic that would allow access to an additional space where behavioral health services will be provided for Cortez students. So it involves a facility improvement. Facility improvements in my opinion
should start with an approved plan by the district recognizing the problem to be initiated by the district and not the lore foundation. It also involves expanding a district service at least it sounds like it which um I also believe
should be initiated by the district and not the lore foundation. Finally, it involves expanding the school clinic's ability to have mental health therapy appointments. And I would uh I would want to know a lot more about that before I um would want to vote for
something like this. I I um have concerns about our uh on-site clinic and what uh services they should be providing uh or not be providing. So, I'm definitely concerned about this
one. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Um, I would just want to talk to you a little bit about the background. So, this was initiated by the clinic along with myself and the high school
admin team. Right now we do have the health clinic that is not part of our they are not our employees but they are on our site and we don't they don't have enough space to where their mental health person has an office and so right
now she is living in our counselor's office and so when there is a student or maybe not a student maybe it's a community member coming in for their therapy appointments they're coming in and having to go all the way through the school into our counselors office to
meet with that person. Um, we really for many reasons want the clinic staff to be all together, but we also want that space to be welcoming and to be able to provide mental health services, which are really important. Our students rely on it, but other people in the community do as well. But it's a safety concern to
have people coming in from the outside and coming across our school. We're also losing an office space that hopefully will be for a counselor on our staff that would be in our counseling office and right now we don't have that because she's in there and we welcome them. They
are very useful for our kids and for everyone else. The staff also utilizes the clinic. Um but to have them all housed in one area makes more sense. And really all it requires is a door and connect those office spaces. You can
also separate the kids who are sick from the kids who are healthy and there for mental health versus you know you have a throwing up student. You don't really want them in the same office um to where you know kid A comes out from having strep throat and next kid comes in who
needs a therapy appointment. Um much like a doctor office you you would normally have two different offices for that. So that would provide that. Um but we would no longer have people marching across the school. they come in the outside entrance and just be right there for all of their appointments. Um, but I
agree usually the redesign of a school, you would go through maintenance, which Ry Lopez was involved with this plan and went through kind of what it would require, how much it would cost, um, the impact on the school building, and then,
um, the clinic staff approached me and Nikki at that time. So, I do welcome your questions. I don't know if I explained that exactly well enough. Thank you. Do you have any questions for me? I can see that. And Durango has that
too cuz I take my kids over to to the one in Durango at their pediatric partners and stuff and they do have a door on the side there that just does the clinic and stuff. And I do like that that they have that. Yeah. And it is a really helpful service. I do want to say I mean we do like the partnership with
them. It is just strange to have them separated. It really seems like they should be in one area. There needs to be a little bit more space and that's the intent of this proposal. So I would assume that like this equipment list with the details in your stuff that all came from Ray then I'm assuming. Yeah.
But he can probably answer some of those questions about what those are and the costs if you want more detail. Was listed on his maintenance list in Mr. as well.
Any other questions for me? No. Okay. Thank you. All right. Online voting is now available. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Can I get a motion not to approve but just to acknowledge
the policy first reading of BBBG board elections to acknowledge the first reading for file BBBG board elections. I'll second So, um, Madame President, I think you remember that the reason for this policy
change is to, um, uh, make a correction to the schedule of our elections due to a mistake that was made in um, recent past
in regarding to our director elections. So, um it's it's a very uh easy change to make and it fixes the problem, I think. Yes.
All right. Yeah. Get back on track on that one. Okay. Okay. Moving on to policy or I'm sorry action I'm H policy second reading JLCDA students with food
allergies. Madam President, I move that we adopt policy JLCDA as amended. I second. Madame President, this is the second reading. So, if it's adopted
tonight, the editing that you see will be adopted and that will become our new um uh amended policy. And uh if you'll remember, this was initiated by nurse at the high school. And um so we
um the policy advisory committee got with her and uh came up with the appropriate language to change it and uh it's been reviewed and ready for vote. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.
Online voting is now available. Motion passes unanimously. All right. Action item I policy second reading AEA standards focused education. Madame President, I move that we adopt
policy AEA as amended. Um there are two Oops. I second. Okay. So proceed. So you'll see two colors there. The red was done previously and at our last regular
meeting. um this policy was tabled due to concern about um the language that it had and how it might confuse people with uh programs that have been historically talked about. So as a result of that
concern um director Rice uh suggested a change and I think that took takes care of it and uh the text uh below the title has been changed as well. So if we uh vote to approve this, this is the second
reading. So the uh policy will be adopted as amended and become one of our policies. Uh, President Noise, I was going to note that um the last wave of policies we approved um CASBY has a new site now and
we have now have that link up and running and we've cut down the number of clicks on our website to um get to that too and we've kind of changed the wording to be more user friendly. Just public knowledge there. Online voting is now
available. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. And our last action item J is the graduation requirements. I get a motion. I'd like to make a motion to accept the graduation requirements.
I second. Okay. And um Dr. Dr. Bonaface, would you like to talk speak a little bit on these? Sure. Um, okay. So, there are quite a few changes in here. So, I just want to make sure that you are aware of what these changes are. And of course,
that's part of my notes right here. Um, two of the main reasons we wanted to do new graduation requirements. One, when we moved to a seven period day, we needed to make that adjustment. uh we were at 23 credits, seven periods a day,
students have the opportunity to earn 28. That's a big gap where you can have a lot of free time. Um so we needed to adjust for that. We also needed to adjust to make sure our students are college ready or career ready and our former requirements at least in my
opinion and my admin team's opinion um we were not preparing them for that with only three levels of math and some other things um that colleges require. So um another change just to highlight previously we had three diploma tracks.
We had the standard diploma, honors diploma, CT diploma. Um it became sort of a the CT diploma became sort of a place to put students who couldn't quite meet the standard diploma requirements. That is not the intent. the CT diploma is
meant for career ready students who are going into the field of welding, let's say, or um plumbing, things like that. So, we've kind of gone away from having three separate diplomas and we have graduation requirements. Now, a student can still choose more of an advanced
trajectory and still earn the sticker that shows I was on this honors track. They can also earn the sticker that shows I've completed a CTE pathway, but the requirements are essentially the same. And I did a lot of research into other schools from around our area and
also up Denver area. And a lot of schools just have it broken down like you'll see where it just has kind of your core requirements. It doesn't get real specific with you must have physical science or you must have title of course, but you must have this many
credits. And so just going through that a little bit, our former requirements um had only three for a standard diploma and we changed that to four. That is what colleges require and that's what they expect for students coming out of
high school. So we did up that by one. Um now just so you know with the careerbound recommendations, we do allow for business math to take the place of algebra 2. So that still allows students to get more of that financial literacy. um that's more businessoriented if
they're not heading off to college or they don't think they are. We also have pushed social studies up to four. Um all of the cores are at four except for science and the reason being two of those must be lab-based. So it's still a pretty hefty load to take three science
classes with two having labs. Um we also included a foreign language which wasn't there previously and it was just an elective. So many students were graduating from our high school with no foreign language. Colleges expect at least one. Some expect two. So having
one is essential, but on the college Brown recommendations, you'll see that we recommend having two. Um and then we also put in a new requirement or a recommendation. For the careerbound students, instead of just general
electives, we included a work study or internship. A lot of kids want those anyway, but we think they should go out into the field in that area they're interested in and have one elective where they're actually getting that experience while they're in high school. And so those are some of the basics. We
also upped it to 25. So from 23 to 25 on the regular standard diploma if kids do want that more advanced track, it's 226 because of that extra foreign language. Um, CTE used to be a lower requirement, but we actually have it equal to our
standard diploma just with some differences in what you can take to match up with more of their pathway. The other thing you'll notice in there, so while we're going away from the different diplomas, we want counselors and admin and parents and students to
partner together to complete this form every year. And so there should be no surprises. and students are picking their pathway and they know what they're supposed to take. So, it's listed all the options for ninth grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, and they already
have a preset plan and you can help guide them with the parents insight as well. What are you wanting to do in the future? Let's make sure you're lined up with what classes you need next year. And that way, kids aren't just taking a smattering of things and they get to senior year and go, "Oh, well, I missed
I missed those classes somehow." Um, let's see what else. Oh, I do want to tell you about one thing that isn't on here and this, um, needs to be and so if you want to discuss it or ask questions, feel free. So, right now we
have college concurrent enrollment classes that we give one full credit for or a semester long, sometimes an 8week long class. A lot of the neighboring districts give a half credit because it is a half year. Um we've debated and debated
and gone over this, done a ton of research and we really feel we should be giving a half credit. Um they can still earn a full credit if they take both semesters and they are still given the college credits. So let's say you take English
1021 that is only sometimes an 8week long class. If they're earning one full credit in eight weeks and our other students are spending a full year to earn that one credit, there's some discrepancies there. Um, we're also not hitting every
standard in English 1021 because colleges expect students have already met all the high school standards. So, we need to be a little more careful about how we're just awarding credits. Um, but they will still get the full college credits. So, English 1021 college is usually a 3 to five college
credit class. Kids will still get that. They just won't get the full credit for high school. Um, so I hope that makes sense. Um, we are not discouraging kids to pursue the college classes. We think those are still a good thing and we want to offer
more of those. So, I just want to make sure that's clear. We also are going to try to move away from having the 8-week concurrent enrollment classes. If there's a semester option, we really want them in the semester option. It becomes a really big risk when we have kids take an 8week long class, it ends.
Where do they go? Do they just go home? Do they sit and cause trouble? Um, and sometimes you can't usually you can't find another 8week long class to put them in because enrollment has ended. So, we really don't want to offer the 8week. We want the full semester long
concurrent enrollment classes and we're also looking to get more of our teachers credentialed to teach them in person. We want kids to have that opportunity but not always to have to be online. Um so that's our intent. And so we have
meetings set up with PCC. Um but that's also going to be part of the plan. So when you see some of the more advanced classes that are listed in junior senior year, it just says concurrent. There's a that can be offered there. I just want if you have questions about that, feel
free to ask. I'm going check my notes if I missed anything else. [Music] So, um I'll just mention this just for the parents sake. Uh there was a lot of rumors, especially at our freshman night, that we're trying to get rid of
advanced options. That is absolutely not the case. And we did put some language in here that will hopefully go into our eighth grade about how kids pursue that honors track. So if a student takes algebra 1 and as an eighth grader, they should come in and take geometry. That's
an advanced track. Um science, if you want to go ahead into physics or chemistry straight from biology, you can. You just can't drop down a level, but you can always go further up. So I just wanted to make that clear that we
are pushing for more advanced options, but we want to make sure the curriculum is actually matching with those and we also have the staff who are capable of teaching that. So, yeah. Any questions? President, can I ask a question? Yes,
please. So, you mentioned the diploma would have a sticker. Is that going to be something that's marked on the legal document of the transcript? So, it's usually just the transcript has the classes the student has taken. It won't be. It never has notated like honors or
this or that. It says this kid has all these higher level classes. Okay, thank you. That's essentially what it is. I love that we're raising the bar a little bit, but uh is is there any provision for those who might be falling behind to get them additional opportunities for catching
up? Do you mean like credit recovery? Yes. So we are looking at our master schedule right now. Hope is to include some what what are called flex classes and that will be a place for concurrent enrollment students to be but also some concur or I'm sorry credit recovery
students to be. Um it is not a study hall. It will be actually supported by a teacher. Um and that way right now it's been sort of a nightmare this year just having kids some choose to stay on campus, some choose to go home, sometimes you're not sure. and our concurrent enrollment students are kind
of living in the library for those periods. That's not great. So, we really want them to be in a classroom um and be with a teacher and same for credit recovery. If we can get them in house and get that attention from the teacher, that's a lot better than sticking them
online on a class with no sport. So, that's our hope. Um yeah, did that answer your question? Somewhat. Um, so a couple things I had the the college credit versus the high school credit. Really, there's no relevancy
there between the two of them anyway. College credit is all based on every 15 hours of seat time, right? And it shouldn't have anything to do with and I don't know where you came up with eight eightweek classes. We never had 8week classes. I don't know why they're doing that. It's it's pretty crazy. So, um, so
yeah, we always just gave if you were in whatever class for one credit for high school credit that had no relevancy to what they got for their college credits. So, um, I have an issue with the foreign language thing as far as, um, requiring every student. Number one, I don't know that you could have enough teachers
there to have if you're require every student. And I personally don't feel like every student out there needs even one credit of foreign language. A lot do, but there are some out there that don't. I think we're wasting their time on taking that to me. And then what
about science credit in other ways? Um, such as like vet science classes, things like that that are offered through other classes. Are those issued as science credit? So, they are issued as science like animal sciences uh science credit. Um, it I don't believe would count as one of the lab based, but it would count
as the other science credit. And as far as foreign language um for the reason we think it's valuable for any student is right now in the workforce a lot of jobs ask you even on the application do you speak any Spanish? Do you speak anything? And it actually gives you a
leg up um with other applicants if you do speak some Spanish. And so we think it will be valuable for every student and within four years you can get one credit. Now, two, you have to be a little bit more mindful and plan that with your counselor to make sure you can
fit it in your schedule, but we still have four years to get two. We can definitely get one within four. And some kids might not want Spanish. They might want German or they might have some We had a student last year who wanted to go to Italy to do a babysitting thing. That's not what it's called. Um, maybe
they want to take an online class and then they can go to a flex class and take that in there with the support of a teacher. So, I hear you, but I also think there is benefit to that and jobs are asking for it. I've been asked a lot of times, "How much Spanish do you
speak?" I'm like, "I speak Dora Spanish." Yeah, I think it's really common for high schools to require one year of of foreign language. I Oh, one thing I wanted to mention, too. You mentioned the high school versus college. Another
thing I just want you to keep in mind, if parents ask and bring up concerns, um, right now there is a real discrepancy with the GPA waiting. When we give one full credit for a concurrent enrollment class, that counts automatically as five, but sometimes it
actually counts as 12 points. And so if you have a student who's in a one-year long high school class, they're only getting four. Four. But if you have a student who is in a concurrent enrollment class, they can get sometimes 12 GPA points for one class. Did I say
that right? I said it wrong. 10. It was close. Um, and so if you take six of those, your GPA is going to skyrocket, but you might not be any different than the student who is just as advanced and has just as good of grades who took high
school advanced classes. So, we just want to be mindful and actually honor the kids who are working just as hard and it's not a faulty GPA. It's a true representation of what they've achieved. So, that's Let's explain that a little bit more.
The 10 where you come come up with these numbers and stuff. I'd like So, college classes are usually um like three credit class and so it's not just five points. It's you you double that. And if you take, let's say, the 8week class, if I took four of those in a year, I'm going
to get 5 10 15 20 in one year, 20 points just for those 8week classes. When a student who's spending classroom time in the high school, they can only get four four GPA points. And those GPA points add up. Um, and so it really does just
blow the GPA out of the water when you see some kids with GPA like 4.8. eight sometimes. That's why Yeah, please do. Um I'm not explaining it well. Um right now we have a weighted GPA for degree AP classes. So if a student earns
a traditional an A in a traditional course that counts as four GPA points. If you earn if you earn an AP class that counts as 5G. That's if we're giving a half credit, a standard half credit for a one semester course, just like we do for any other
one semester course. Sorry, I always forget that. But if we give double credit for a one semester course, so we give a full credit for one semester course. Now you're giving those five GPA points twice. So now a student for a one
semester course earns 10 GPA points instead of the five they would get for a regular for a college class or a four that they would get for a high school class provided they got an A. So it it they already get the weighted GPA but it doubles it if we double the credits for
a one semester class. And it even gets more exacerbated when you have an 8week class. So potentially right now a kid could take an 8week class, get an A, earn 10 GPA points. Whereas a student in a regular high school class could take a class all semester, get an A, and they
only get four. So that kid gets two and a half times the GPA credits as a regular student in a regular class. So we're not just waiting, we're double two and a half times waiting. Thank you. Explains it better. Yeah, that makes sense.
We just want to be more equitable and fair, but we do want kids to still have the opportunity to take college classes. We absolutely want that. We just want it to be fair, more fair. Four points for a semester, four points for the year. So, any
just in calculating your GPA, anytime you get an A, you get four GPA points and anytime you get a B, you get three. But with with a a one semester class, because you're counting it as a full credit, that's like getting an A for two semesters in a row. And because it's weighted, it's like getting a five
because we add a point for the for the weighted. So it's like you're getting five two semesters in a row. Well, it's also causing high school kids to almost be afraid to take high school classes because once you've stacked up so many college classes that are worth so many
points, then when you take a high school class and get an A, it actually drops your GPA. So, it really is making things complicated and it's not great and they just don't want to take high school classes. So then they're just
piling on more and more college places. And right now a lot of them can do them from home and some of them most are pretty good. Some aren't passing or they're getting dropped out of the class. And we as a school don't have as much scrutiny on checking grades or
parents don't either because it's a college class. And so you don't even have access. I don't have access unless I ask the student, hey, please show me your concurrent enrollment class. Um, and so if the student isn't ready and we're sending them home, taking four of these in a year, it's not always great.
So, we just want to have a little more insight. We want to make sure it's appropriately leveled. And then for a lot of students, keep them in house with a teacher in a flex class so they have support needed to pass the class. So, that's kind of the intent with that. But
some of that wording isn't in here because we just were still figuring it out. So, I wanted to make sure you were aware of that as we were looking at the new requirements. There's also a box, and this is no different than really what you see currently. Colorado
has graduation competency requirements, and that's set by the state. So, SAT is the major one. Kids have to get a 470 or 480 in reading and math. If they do not, we have two other assessments. ASVAB which is meant for more of the military
students and then ACT works they can take that with a certain score to meet the graduation competency and the last way is the concurrent enrollment but it has to be an English or a math class that is approved that's equally rigorous
as our SAT would be and they have to get at least a C. So that really hasn't changed it's just in a different format. Any other questions for me? So pretty much on that site it's just one of the four. Yeah. You have to Okay.
And there are some capstone projects um for Okay. certain students that might need that. So that's also part of it. And you do three classes in the summer where kids can catch up. Yes. That's another place. Yep. Okay. Okay. Thank
you. Um, one one comment I'd like to make and and I first of all I'd like to applaud Dr. Bonaface and her team for the work that they put in because absolutely they're they're leveling and clarifying a lot of things that have brought up a lot of question for us. Um,
as far as my concern here, it's more about the proceeding. Um, because if you'll note, our current graduation requirements are part of district policy. Yeah. and it may require an amendment to policy for that change to
take place. So, I'm not sure that what you might be voting on this evening does not need to go through the proper channels of policy. So, I would leave that to you, particularly you, Mr. Lynch, as it relates to this. But, um, that's that's just, um, it's it's not a
concern about the content of what it is, but really the process that we we we certainly don't want to circumvent policy to do this. Yeah. May I answer? Yes. So, um yes, you're correct. We have policies that
um that um cover the graduation requirements. So, um, whatever is passed tonight, uh, will, uh, go to the policy advisory committee and basically all we're going to do is take what is passed and, um,
merge it into the policy to make it work. We're not going to be doing any editing to, um, what is being proposed. So whatever is adopted here is going to basically become our policy when we merge it with the appropriate policy
numbers. It'll be her handbook also. I'm sorry. Her handbook will be the big thing because that's what all the parents get, all the kids get. Online voting's now available. Motion passes unanimously. All right. Okay. At this time, um, I
need to get a motion to move into an executive session pursuant to Colorado Revised Statute 24-6-204 um, parenthesis 4 parenthesis B for legal advice regarding options for responding to false
defam defamatory allegations presented to law enforcement. I'll move to uh go into executive session pursuant to CRS 24-6-402 parenthesis 4 parenthesis B for
legal advice regarding options for responding to false defamatory allegations presented to law enforcement. I second. Louder. I second. [Music]
We will be inviting the board and our legal counsel Brad Miller and um Superintendent Burus. Um does HR need to
I don't think so. Okay. Okay. We do. We'll amend and come get you. Okay. You'll be here. Okay. Okay. So, we will pause this meeting at 8:28. Wait. Really? I almost made it through a
meeting without that. I'm adding your people here. Sorry. Online voting is now available. Motion passes unanimously. Uh, President Noise, I would suggest a five minute bathroom break before your executive session
starts. Okay, we will do that. We can do that. Yeah. And and then we will pause this meeting at 8:29. Deborah working the auction this weekend too lines. Oh yeah, this was good stuff. Okay, I'd like to open up our regular meeting um
at 9:06. Deborah, if you could document that. And I would like to get a motion uh to engage council to initiate legal action as discussed in executive session. I move to engage council to initiate uh
legal action as discussed in executive session. I second. I move to engage council to initiate legal action as discussed in executive session. Voting's now available. Not sure about
my spelling. Yeah, it's not quite right. Um, is there a wording? Yeah, it says move to engage council to initiate as discussed. So, it would be initiate what' you say? Legal action. Legal
action. to engage council to initiate legal action as discussed in executive session. Legal action session. Yeah. Yes. Okay. I'm removing your voting and resending. Online voting has been reset. Okay. Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you everyone for coming this evening. I will adjourn this meeting at 9:09.