Welcome everyone to Tuesday, November 18, Montezuma Cortez, board meeting. If you could please stand for the pledge of allegiance, and I will call this meeting to order at 06:00. I pledge allegiance 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, if you can establish quorum, please. We have seven board members, present. Our mics are kind of poppy.
Are we okay, Mike? Or Alan? Mike. I had it in my mind. And we are logged into BoardDocs. Thank you. Can I please get a motion to set the agenda? I move to set the agenda. I'd like to second it. Madam president, I move that, the employee list we removed from the consent calendar and added to the action items as number nine h. Did you say I h? Or Nine h. Nine. Oh, thank you. Mister Rice, can we put that in your motion?
Thank you. That was the, hiring, Mike? Yeah. The monthly employment list. That was you put that in the q and a. I thought I did. I don't know why it wasn't taken out. I thought that was. So I looked to set the agenda by and removing with with removing, do monthly employment list and putting that in as item nine h. Online voting is now available. Director Cheney, did yours pop up? No. How do you vote? Yes. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously.
Alright. If I could please get a motion to move to executive session pursuant to CRS 24 dash six dash four zero two parenthesis four parenthesis b and e for legal advice regarding the superintendent contract terms and for negotiations on the superintendent's contract. I move to adjourn to executive session pursuant to Colorado revised statute 24 dash six dash four zero two, parentheses four, parentheses b and e, for legal advice regarding the superintendent contract terms and for negotiations on the superintendent contract.
Online voting is now available. Motion passes six to one. Okay. Deborah, we'd like to invite in the board and the district's legal counsel. K. Well, we'll move out of this meeting. Justin Wilson. Oh, and to I'm I'm sorry. And Justin Schmidt. Sure. And I would, like to, move out of this meeting at 06:05. Hang on. We are recording. Okay. We exited out of our executive session at 07:08, and I would like to move back into our regular board meeting at 07:11.
Okay. If I can get a motion to approve the superintendent's contract. Mhmm. I accept the proposal, the superintendent contract with Eddie Ramirez with an end date of 06/30/2028. Is that the motion or the second? I'll second it. Can you give me the end date again? 06/30/2028. Do we have a second? Did I miss a second? It it is a second. Oh, thank you. I did not hear you, mister Rice.
President Noyce, are you ready for a vote? Online voting is now available. Motion passes five to two. Alright. We will move on to celebration reports. Celebration reports, does anybody have anything to celebrate? I would like to say I would like to celebrate that that's the don't believe we need to, have any more meetings on superintendent contract. So that's a celebration. Mister Burrows, we have some celebrations, some people to celebrate. Yes. We do. We do. So we have some really awesome volunteer board members that have done such Thank you.
This one says Montezuma Cortez School District r e one celebrates Paul Beckler for two years on the board of education in appreciation of your superior dedication and outstanding service to the MCSDRE one. Look back with pride. Look forward with dignity. And it's signed by superintendent. Oh, here is a two year recognition for director Collins. Years for director Collins. Four years for mister Rice and ten years. I'm not kidding. This is a great job. You have been wonderful to work with.
I was the new services superintendent. I would like a picture of all of you. So bring your plaques and it comes down. Now hold for it. Even you guys. I don't care. Hold it. I'll hold your present for you. I'm in there too. And I would just like to say that, mister Burrows, it's just been an honor
to work with you and your admin team to move this district the way that we we know it needs to be going. So thank you for for for pushing through and and just doing what was right. Thank you for being a great board president. Always supportive. Always knew what was going on. You know, there's big things yet to come or I think the biggest is our separation making AU for our self with BOCES. That's been something that we've worked on for three years.
There's I've seen online where they want to reverse that. Ask Ask anyone of the principals. Ask anyone of the directors. Ask anyone of the the board members who have been through that where we've been and why we've been. And, you'll see. And I would also like to say thank you very, very much for all of you sitting up here because it is not easy, but it's all worth it. If if you I mean, that's how I feel. All of it's been worth it, every last bit of it.
The good, the bad, the ugly. Ugly. And, I would do it again. I would do it again. Thank you. Thank you all for volunteering your time, and it's been it's been a pleasure as well and an honor to work with all of you as well. Alright. Any more celebrations? I hear that junior high had a play this last weekend, and I know that they always do a stellar job, and I'm sure they did again. I, unfortunately, Wrestling started.
So now we have to use for the basketball courts at least. Justin, do you know who made the all conference team for the football team and the volleyball teams? I didn't see the football, but I did see one volleyball player. I I don't wanna just name one, but I I know of at least one. Okay. I'll bring it I'll bring it up in the next meeting. K. Make sure I have it right. Alright. Also, in celebration, the quartet's FFA went to nationals in Kentucky. And from what I understand, they had a really, triplet really really well and, I
know some of the students especially enjoyed certain speeches given by like the, oh my gosh. It just lit my head. The person in charge of agriculture for the entire country. I totally forgot her name. But, anyway, they got to meet and listen to some interesting individuals, and they had a good time. So They also had a contest last week, that over in Durango that I helped judge, and it was a speaker from Cortez that won the prepared speaking I know. And her speech was on nuclear energy, which was really good.
And I didn't stay for the rest of the awards. I don't know who else won on that stuff, who won Creed and all that stuff. So but I know she did win the prepared speaking. There was a family engagement, event at the high school, since our last meeting. And, that seemed to go pretty well. Some of the sentiment that was expressed, was that they hope that that continues.
And just while we're still in celebrations, I, Deborah, miss Ramsey, I hope you know that that was for you too, but I just wanna give you a special shout out for everything that you have done for this district, from even from the very beginning, moving up into the admin office. Like, you've been with us for a long time, and, appreciate you, your longevity, and everything that you've done for us on this board, for this district. And, I just want everybody to know that she's a rock star, and she is
absolutely amazing and made our life so much much easier. Thank you. Always feel appreciated in this district. Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that. K. Any other reports, celebration reports? K. Moving on to student representative reports. And we don't have either of our representatives here, so we will move on to our superintendent's reports. Good evening, board. I know that you and I will be here at least one more meeting. But so anyway, new board, I got four of you back there.
Your your jobs as board members get a lot tougher than your jobs as observers. You have to make decisions on people. You have to make decisions on curriculum. You have to make decisions on how to move the district forward with kids. I've been in this business a long time, and I fired a principal in Roswell who said the reason my school can't achieve is because I've got low income families and they're Hispanic.
Once we've categorized and and made, you know, made excuses like that, then it's okay for us not to achieve, and that wasn't acceptable. I had a person here that said in a faculty meeting that the reason we are low in our scores is the demographics. I said the same thing. And if that's what you accept, then that's what you'll get. Kids will rise to the highest level of expectation or they will drop to it. One or the other.
This sounds like a sermon, but it's really not. It's from the heart. I've done this a long time. I'm focused on kids. I know if I I've heard a lot of people's feelings in doing what I've done here, but if it was always about kids, it's always okay. I had one person come in to talk to me that was a potential board member at that time who said, I want I want kids away from the riffraff. I said, what do you mean about riffraff? And she said, you know, those thugs. That's not right. If you don't have the highest expectation of all your kids, you're leaving kids behind,
and that's the wrong place to be if you were a board member. Level the playing field for all students. I took Asellus out of the high school because we put our a lot of our kids into those classes and gave credits just like giving candy. We got them to graduate. There were great graduation rates, but they couldn't get a job. They couldn't qualify to go to college. That'll be on you guys to move that needle. Be careful of the people who want to set up special arrangements and special things
to get their kids ahead. Being valedictorian is not the most important job in life. Being a good person, being a good student, achieving well in college is what's important. Expect that teachers do lesson plans. When I came, there was no lesson plans that had been done at the high school since 2008. So if you don't do lesson plans, you have no plan about what you're doing, you just do stuff that feels good. Make sure they do that. You're probably the hardest one for a board. Mike Mike and I will laugh about this one.
50% of a board time needs to be devoted to student outcomes. Who made that rule? AJ Kriegel. AJ Kriegel. You gotta focus on what you're here for. And he'll ask you, why are we here? And after forty five minutes of asking, he'll tell you to improve student outcomes. We're not here to have shiny buses. We're not here to have the best meals in the county. We're not here to have the squeaky clean desks. We're here for student outcomes. And as hard as it is sometimes, one of the things I've done in working
with the numerous people I've had on boards is staying in your own lane. You have three chores as a board. You do you watch the budget, you fix the budget, you develop policies, superintendent. You have one employee. That's it. You can't go to the school and go, you know, I think you ought to do this. You can't tell the superintendent, I think you ought to tell that person to do that. You work as a board, and individually, you're just another individual from the community.
I also put in my board report in the last two weeks, I've had some very serious personnel issues. So I get I get the comments on Facebook, well, he's not transparent. He doesn't tell us why. I can't tell you why. It's personnel. I did tell you enough in that to to know that we had a teacher who was under the influence in class. We had a situation with somebody who didn't fill out an application correctly, truthfully. And we had a situation of a person writing something that they shouldn't have written.
Yeah. I dealt with them all. I had law enforcement in with it. That's what we do. These guys all know who those people are and what the situation is because they get to know, but the public does not. Told you two months ago that I'd give you sixty days to find somebody, and now you got Eddie. And I don't know when the start date is, but, whatever the start date is, I'll cover until Eddie gets here. Just on a other note, the HVAC systems in the three schools, you know, on
Facebook, we've spent extreme amount of money on legal services, and you're right. And the one that's cost the most money is the HVAC. Wanna stop that? You can. But you've got 3 and a half million dollars worth of metal junk sitting on roofs at three elementary schools that won't run. Your option is to replace it. It's gonna be replaced out of the carryover. That's why you have a $19,000,000 carryover. So I can go in and spend 3 and a half or $4,000,000 on getting
that stuff replaced, and it won't be done until probably next fall. But without it, Ray, can you maintain all those systems? So there you are. We're back to nothing. You either spend the money or you don't. Our attorney is $650 an hour. That's way too much. What's the alternative? So the latest on that is we will go out to bid for engineering services. The last systems were not engineered. They were just kinda put in. We'll do engineering services, then we'll bid the job and hopefully have it done by next fall.
Mike, F and M Architects, we finally got the final draft that they were working on for us. Thanks for pushing for that. They didn't they didn't live up to their contract until they delivered that. That's absolutely true. I've got it in my office. I don't know if you've seen it yet or not. I've got a copy of it. And my new skis and four wheel drive are waiting on me, and I'm hoping that snow comes and drives you out completely completely out of your country. And you you have a nice winter, and all of you guys do too.
Thank you all for what you've done for the school district. A special thanks to Leland. He and I started out things probably not so well, and I would call him a friend now. Yes. We've we've come a long way. You just have to be in the mix and understand how the mix works. And when he got there, he goes, yeah. This This is what we need to do. He's one that at the very beginning on BOCES didn't want out. Now he's one of the first ones to say we want out. So Leland, thank you for your friendship, and thank you for, your representation of the
tribe. I talked to Manuel this morning, and I told him the same thing about you. Thank you. Appreciate you. You're welcome. And, of course, to you, Sherry. Thank you. Alrighty. How long is this going? For mister Burrows? No? Okay. Alright. We will move along to the assistant superintendent's report, which is in your packet here on your board docs. So if you have any questions. Madam President, may I have a question? Yes. Mr. Burrows, I have a question on the Facilitron one of the Facilitron reports.
You may or may not know the answer to this, but on that report, it shows that, at Lewis Areola Elementary School, there's time reserved for cursive writing classes. And I was just wondering if you could, or someone could help us understand more about what that's all about because I know that in the, I think it was in 2008, but some sometime after 2000, schools stopped teaching cursive and it would be
great to know that more than one elementary is teaching cursive, but I'd be happy just to find out that there's one. Yep. Yes, please do. Sorry. Is this Can you hear me? Is that on? So first of all, Lewis as a school still teaches cursive. So it is part of what we do. Usually starting in third, fourth grade, the teachers practice with the kids. Not as like a full curriculum though. But this year we have a retired, teacher, Charlene Satley, who worked in the district for years, who has volunteered in the schools.
And I think she contacted Mr. Burris first, and then he told her to reach out to me. So she comes out on Wednesday evenings for an hour, and works with 20 students. We had more sign up, but we only had space for 20. And so she is teaching them cursive writing. It started about three, four weeks ago. It'll go I think she wants to go till the end of the year, and the kids love it. They feel like they're grown up by learning it. And it is such good brain hand coordination that we miss with all the computer stuff in schools. I mean, if you look at a lot of research, that is an important connection,
the brain to hand. So cursive writing is a huge piece of what I believe, you know, the kids still need. I I agree with you. I've recently read, two or three articles or seen, interviews about this. And, it's more than just cursive. It's bringing three things together, and, apparently, it improves the achievement levels in reading, and writing, just learning cursive. So I'm I'm happy to hear that it's I think there's a lot of research out there that we just aren't always in tune with for some simple stuff like
that. And it's not that I'm anti computers at all. I mean, kids need to have those skills. But I'm also very disappointed that the state decided to get away from paper and pencil CMASS and that we are tied now to doing just computer based testing this year. So, I think it's a a hard format for kids. But, yeah, I mean, miss Natalie's been great. The kids love it. They'd probably stay for a couple hours if we let them to to do it. So Well, thank you for doing that. I hope, I hope more of our schools will adopt that. Now, if we have any more volunteers, that would be great.
I I I I too like that a whole bunch. How are they supposed to read the constitution, you know, if they don't know how to write cursive and read it and stuff. My son, he's a first grade teacher. He has he has, chicken scratch as his name, and he he taught himself how to do cursive because, he it it was given up, and I think it's a lost thing that we need to bring back. You know? We or we need to teach our kids how to read and write and cursive. So I applaud you for doing that, and I wish more of our board here
would bring that upon this just down here in Cortez and teach that. And even if we have to start small, like I always said, you know, there's always a start and a beginning, and it gets bigger. You know? Yeah. And I I I was so impressed. Like, the kids were just really excited about it too. We don't have a lot of after school programs out there just because of the nature. So, again, it was miss Satley that contest contacted the district. So thank you, mister Burris, for kind of funneling our way because even when I pull math groups, the kids are taking notes in cursive now. So I'm kind of like to just speed it up a little bit since they're
still learning. They they just want to use it all over. So yeah. Any other questions? Thank you. Any other questions on the assistant superintendent's report? Again, I'd like to thank our directors, food service, transportation, and maintenance for your reports each month. Thank you so much. Okay. We will be moving on to the executive director of finance reports. Do you have any questions on any of that? Madam president, I have a question. I'm not sure who can answer this, mister Burrows, but I noticed on the on one of the MLO pages, the MLO financial summary and then the MLO payout count
that, the numbers of teachers and paras for Pleasantview is zero in this report. And I was kind of warning wondering if someone can give us more information about that, why that why that is. Mister Lynch, Casey Hammerslag provided part of that report. She may be able to answer questions on it. The question was about Pleasant View. So we just received the reports, misson? Yeah. We received the reports from the different charter schools.
Pleasant View had not yet decided what they were doing with their funds, and it was still held in the separate account. Okay. That's all we know so far. Yeah. K. Thanks. And then Battle Rock should be is out of that now. Right? Mhmm. Right. Okay. Yeah. And there just, a point of that, mister Rice, Battle Rock does not receive any of the MLL funds from us. They get compensated to that same level through the state. And it showed a surplus in there to do a bonus in December for teachers.
And that might be on how about roughly how much that's gonna be and stuff? Or Justin, where did we finally come to? I'd probably be something. We didn't wanna prescribe an amount. We wanted the board to to be able to to do that. We had discussed, potentially doing one just before Christmas that could be considered a staff appreciation stipend, and then one, potentially, at the end of the year, if the funding if the fund's still allowed for that at the end of the year, that could be a staff retention bonus, or stipend incentive. Whatever stipend incentive, whatever terminology you wanna use.
It it it depends on how much the board would want to do, but we could potentially do, you know, anywhere from, like, a thousand to $1,500 in for all staff in the in December and then that same amount potentially at the end of the year. So the one in December, let me clarify just a little bit, would be all out of operational carryover. But the one and we don't get the the new MLO funds until April or so, and then it would be sort of a true up situation with MLO money.
Correct? My understanding is that this particular item that Danielle has on there is is specifically general fund only Mhmm. For all staff, including teachers. Right. If there was a MLO true up, it would be an addition to this is my understanding. It wouldn't be this. And we'll have to wait and see what we have left at the end of the year and what has come in. The big volatility of our MLO money is really lies in Kinder Morgan. $76,000,000 drop last year, and everybody I talked to said, well, my taxes went up.
Yeah. But Kinder Morgan contributes a lot to the tax base here. And with them shutting down production, which that's what it appears, we are getting less money. We've got right at a million dollars in that MLL fund. You could eat that up real quickly if you had Kinder Morgan pull out. And that $1,000,000 is for paying from from now until Right. The new tax revenue comes in for the next year for Paris and the already
approved upon, stipend for Paris and and teachers. And Danielle is not she would be more comfortable with a little bit more of that as a cushion Because you can't take money away from teachers. So if we overspend in the MLO, there's only one place it comes from, operational carryover. So I'd like to caution the board where we were talking about MLO and now we're talking about MLO and, the, regular operating budget. And I I would, hope that the board can make sure that we're not mixing
the two and getting the public confused about what we're talking about. If we're gonna talk about the MLO, let's talk about that. Let's not confuse it with these other ideas for payouts, that might happen in December. I'd I'd appreciate that. A staff appreciation December would come out of the operational carryover, would be completely operational, and would be one whatever we decide. We we looked at $1,200, and it would be $1,200 to every employee that's bus
drivers and and cooks and paraprofessionals and administrators and, everybody, and give everybody the same amount of money. The one in May or June, whenever you attack that, that you're gonna have to have a lot more conversation on where the county taxation level came, and we won't know that for a while yet. But this one that we're proposing for the next board meeting would be completely, operational.
Be about I think Danielle figured $575,000 or something like that. Yeah. We have to that was sort of a preliminary number before we actually calculate the exact payment. Right. The thing that she was looking at was the amount of take home versus the amount that has to go into PERA and taxes and everything else. So we wanted to make sure that the take home was the amount that you were just saying, that the the rest of it would be wouldn't come out of that take home. Correct. Figuring the the retirement.
Anytime you pay somebody, you've gotta figure retirement, taxes and all that stuff. I I think you'll see in in in, Danielle's report that the reason that that request is coming now is that, you know, the preliminary portion of the of the audit has been completed, and and they feel pretty comfortable with that with that number from last year's audit. Any other questions on the finance report? Okay. Alright. Moving on to the executive director of academic services report. I don't have very much, in the report tonight.
But before I get started, I did wanna turn it over to, doctor Boniface. She has the answer to the question that you asked director Hall a few minutes ago. So she wants to she wants to acknowledge those all conference awards. Good evening. Let me just pull it up. Give me just a second. My phone's being fun. Come on, technology. Alrighty. I have a bunch for you. So volleyball, first team was Tessa Jackson. Second team was Keeley Clark. For football, first team, we had Wyatt Oliver, Parker Conrad, Rusty Snyder, Cooper Sofa, and
Zane Coffee. Second team, we had Charlie Jensen, Maliko Esquivel, Isaac Dozel, who also is recovering from surgery. So give him a shout out. That was a pretty big one. Jasper Gilliland and then Karsten Osment had an honorable mention. And then for cross country, Cruz Plew for second team. Soccer was Deegan Lake, Josh Yarborough for first team, and Abner Garcia for second team. For softball was Paisley Mes Mesdisk. Anna, Lisa Abeyta, and Reagan Veach for second team. And then, we haven't had our last banquet yet, so we're waiting for that last
one before we can announce the rest. So yeah. Yeah. Thanks for getting that. Yep. Yes. Yes. That's all I want. Yeah. It was a lot. A lot of our kids doing great things. So, while I'm up here, I'll just tell you about a couple quick things too. We did have a a really nice turnout for our Veterans Day event. It was the first we've ever done it, and it was a pretty nice turnout. But I really wanna shout out for our kids. They the band got up. The choir got up and honored our veterans. And we also had a couple of students write some really nice pieces, and they did a great job. So I wanted to give them Out, and hopefully, we'll make this a yearly tradition.
And then our theater program is rebuilding and trying to put stuff together. So they're putting a little thing on no. Thursday night, they're doing a dramatic reading of A Christmas Carol. And so if you wanna go check that out, come check it out. It's a lot different than what you've seen before, but they're just rebuilding. So it it'll be good to have the support. So thank you. Thank you, doctor Ronald. Thanks. Alright. Okay. So the the the other things that I had in my report just briefly, include, concurrent enrollment update.
We've been working to get additional teachers certified to teach, through the college. What the college requires in order for them to be to teach what is referred to as guaranteed transfer courses is that they have at least eighteen credit hours to master's level in that content area. If they already have that, they're certified. The the school will certify them. If they don't, we can put we they can be on a professional growth plan, and they can they can teach those classes while on the plan. So we have a couple of teachers at the high school who are classes while on the plan. So we have a couple of teachers at the high school who are recently, certified
who can be begin teaching courses this next semester, in the in English, French, and Spanish. We have some teachers who are gonna be entering have already been approved by PCC to be on a professional growth plan, in the areas of biology and either chemistry or physics. So those are some additional, or those are some updates on the concurrent enrollment, for those of you that might be interested in that. So the ones that so the ones that are approved to be on the plan, will they be able to do it this spring semester?
Yep. They'll be sorry. I I left that out. They will be able to teach second semester as well. Spring semester, those kids can get PCC credits? Correct. If they are in that if they register for the college section. Yes. Not Yep. The other items, I think, are coming up later in the agenda, strategic planning calendar. So I don't think I need to say anything about those. Okay. Alright. Unless there's questions. Any questions for mister Schmidt? Okay. Moving on to the executive director of ESS report, Lisa Meagle. Alright. Thank you, and good evening. I submitted my report, and I just wanna give some special attention for the family
engagement night. We did, we had that on November 7, and thank you, mister Lynch, for coming. It was nice to see you there. So we did do I wanted to give some special thanks to some of our performances. So our Filipino teachers, did a couple dances and provided, Filipino food for sampling so everybody could try that. The Ute Mountain Ute Royalty, we had a couple of girls come and talk about their regalia and then also did a, a dance, with with the, the people that
were there and, presented fry bread. Stefan Hatch played his native flutes and spoke about the benefits of the flute and then Seamus, which is usually Seamus and Andy, Andy was not there that night, but they were a Celtic, father and son group and they played Celtic music for us. We had several vendors that came that are community services, that are open to helping families So they were there with booths set up. And then I just wanted also to put out a special thanks to our custodial
team, the technology department for hooking us up with, sound, and then just the high school administration and team for getting the building ready and human resources for their support. So, any other questions for my report? I'll talk I'll talk about what what I talked to you about earlier, when it comes to the BOCES thing. When it comes to the new school board getting seated, I would like to to get a meeting set up between you and the new school board and all the
principals and have you make a presentation to us. I don't know how that's done, about the reasons for leaving BOCES in and and your your guys' perspective on it so you can educate us as a board, especially the new board, to to go over all of that. And, I'll get with whoever I need to to get that set up, but I would love for you guys to to do that for us. Yeah. We would appreciate that opportunity. Absolutely. Thank you. So I have more questions. Yes. On the board report, item number four on this page is, the gifted and talented,
and there's several bulleted items that mention things. I was wondering if you could, tell us a little bit about each of those things and, whether they're new or whether they've been going on and what what are they about because I can't tell from the names. Sure. Sure. And, actually, I'll probably take some help from that from miss Angie because she is actually the the gifted and talented coordinator, and that's why she's here. So talk a little bit about, destination of imagination, battle of the books.
I concluded the knowledge bowl in here. ALPs are the, the annual, like, plans that we do with students. So those are almost completed, kinda like an IEP or a specialized plan to know what their process is for the year. There's, screeners that come up so that we can figure out, which students qualify or are, maybe on the, like, that enrichment program on that track. And, then grades three through five do take a CogAT, which is one of the assessments for placement.
Are you able to speak a little bit, Angie, on the Are there any specific questions? Just what I think what does a lot. So Destination, Imagination, Battle of the Books, and Knowledge Bowl. So, currently, we part of the programming for, gifted and talented includes some of these things. There's multiple options. It's up to kind of each school what they can get going. We are very limited right now because we did not fill that gifted and talented position this year that was posted. So we are still operating with having building liaisons that volunteer.
They're these are they're teaching full time and they're volunteering to do this work. They get paid for, you know, the outside work, but it is it is hard to get the program back up and running to full speed like it was before COVID. But so we have destination imagination. That's a national, organization. Lewis is this is their third year that they've got their teams back up. We had teams in Kemper a couple of years ago, but right now Lewis is the only school doing that. We've got two teams. They'll go compete at the regionals in Durango, and then, like, the last couple of years, we've made it to the state level for the competition.
So it's just really creativity. There are sponsors and parent volunteers, but not to be involved with the planning. This is all the kids coming up with that. So a lot of the schools in the area do that program, so again, we're just trying to get ours back up. Battle of the Books is new for Cortez this year. It was offered last year, but now we have three schools doing that. It Lewis is doing it, Kemper, and Mesa. So this is the first time that we've done that. The kids have a book book list. They, pick teams of four to five. It's really for fourth and fifth grade right now, that will get to go to
the competition. And they we do, like, a runoff at the schools to take the top team, and then they all go over to Durango. And, again, it's similar to DI where there's a competition. They answer, kinda like knowledgeable questions where, you know, they're timed and, you know, things on the the characters of the book and the plot and all that kind of stuff. So it's just really to get kids reading. They they do none of the kids have to be identified as gifted to participate in these programs. We have gifted kids, and then we have kids in what we call a talent pool, kids that are showing, you know, really high levels of things in any of the 14 areas.
And so, but any kid can participate in any of these. And then what, we've got knowledgeable going at the high school, which great because that has been a tough one to get going. We did it at the elementary. We try and get these programs going K-twelve, so we've got some gaps right now with that. So I know that there are they've got a team together and, again, that's a pretty you know, Dolores always does that, so the schools around here always compete in that. So it's good for our high school to get a team for that. Yeah. So that's the programming that we've got going on right now. A lot of the secondary programming, it shifts from year to year just depending on
what staff we have to do it. And then we always just rely on advanced courses at the high school level too to kinda help those kids decide which tracks to go in academically. But there's 14 areas that kids can be identified in anywhere from, like, a psychomotor PE to creativity to your strict academic areas. So there's lots of different opportunities for kids in the district to get identified. We screen with an agliere, which is a nonverbal test for second and sixth graders. Every year, every student in those two grades get screened. So it helps us at the elementary identify. And then we can actually use the code gap for any grade level, first through
twelfth. If we have kids come to the district or if kids are, showing, you know, exceptionality in certain areas. So we'll go back. And those are cognitive tests. They have to have three normed points in order to be identified gifted. I think that was it. Yeah. Thank you very much. Alright. Thanks. Additionally sorry. No. You're fine. So number eight talks about nurses, and I was confused by what it says. It says nurses are able to use devices such as iPads to monitor students that
have monitoring devices without interrupting the classroom to check levels. Each nurse now has a device to use to monitor levels. What for diabetes. What are the monitoring devices? So that it's for diabetes. Yeah. It's Generally speaking, it's for diabetes. Yeah. It is for it is for diabetes. And apparently, I left that out of my, title there, so I apologize. So we have, students that have monitoring devices that help monitor their blood levels for, for diabetes or sugar levels, I guess. And we were in some buildings, there you can set up an iPad and so
they can monitor them right from their desk. But we had in a couple buildings where this the nurses were still having to go check on the students, and going to classes. So we found out, oh, this couple don't have iPads. So we were able to get them connected, to do that, which helps not interrupt the student, and we can track them more regularly. Are those the continuous glucose monitors, the CGMs? I I think a Libra Libra two. I have a Libra two, and I have that hooked up with my doctor. And she monitors my my levels and stuff and checks and calls me if my
levels are getting high and making sure that I'm eating and drinking what I'm supposed to. Yeah. But there's that's the only monitoring you're talking about. Yes. Right now, that is. Yes. Alright. Thank you. Absolutely. Any other questions for miss Miggle? Alrighty. Alright. We will move on to the last of our reports. This is board reports. President You're lucky this time. There was one issue, that we, will be changing our voting delegate for the CASB convention. I didn't know Ed is currently listed as our delegate who would like to do
that service and has the history in it. Mike, are you good with it? I guess you don't have much of a choice. I mean, Chase? Have you ever been there? You have the one that was most up on our resolution that we put in and stuff which Yeah. Is not submitted for December. So Do you wanna do it? I've never been there. 40 a week? Okay. I I could figure it out. I'm sure. But And and anybody can go you can go into a meeting still, but each district only gets one voting delegate. So but anybody go into the meetings.
I don't care. If you don't want to, I'll do it. But if you want to, I'd prefer you do it. For this year, Mike? Do I have to decide now? I just need to let CASB know this week. To submit it to CASB. So Yeah. This week. Okay. Email it to that effect today. Yeah. You choose. If you want if you decide you wanna do it, go ahead. No. I'll do it. You guys are asking that. I defer. I my plate's full. I defer if you're willing to learn. I'll do it. Okay. Mister Rice, can you get let him know where to find the stuff he needs to read?
I probably don't have any of that stuff anymore. Actually, we didn't have a BOCES meeting this last week ago, I guess, or they did have one, but they decided to now send out the notices through CASB through board books that I wasn't told about. So, I didn't know about a board meeting. And I also cut off from CASB because Matt Cook sent out the advocacy deal about a week ago and asked, you know, for all board members that weren't gonna be continuing on with the advocacy group to let them know so that you could take them off the CASB list.
So somewhere in that mix, I got cut shut off there. So I didn't know about, BOCES meeting on Wednesday a week ago, I believe it was. So there's no report on that part and stuff. But that's how I guess they're gonna send out their stuff now is through CASB through board books. So Okay. Thank you. I appreciate you volunteering. Yep. Yep. Thank you. I'm voting delegate for CASB. Okay. Any other board reports? B what? Mhmm. Right. No. You were there. Just a c a s b.
B. K. Alright. We will move to, citizens address the board. Citizens address the board, one hour limit, three minutes each. Must turn in a filled out ticket prior to the meeting. Deborah, do we have any We do have one, but that person was not here at 06:00. They are here now. Are you willing to accept that? Yeah. Yeah. We'll go ahead and stop that. Yeah. Casey Hammer Schlage. Good evening, again.
As I shared my email last week week regarding the strategic plan, and also in previous stakeholder meetings, I fully agree with and appreciate the sense of urgency you've placed on literacy and the district's strategic plan. With that in mind, I'm surprised that the plan still does not include any action steps specifically supporting your preschool program or families preparing for their young children to become later students. In the outlier episode of Soul to Story podcast, one of the highlighted steps the Steubenville district took to address early literacy struggles was strengthening the quality of oral language
environments in their preschool programs because that aligns with a large body of research that shows a strong oral language foundation in the first five years of a child's life is a positive predictor of later literacy. This is a component of the science of reading research. If we wait until kindergarten to begin the work, we make these ambitious goals significantly harder to achieve. Yet in the action steps section of your strategic plan, each school level is represented, elementary, middle school, and high school, but preschool is not listed. There are no action steps there. It is admirable to set ambitious goals and they should be ambitious.
But if you want to increase the odds of catching excellence, there needs to be an intention to support preschool educators and include them in achieving these literacy outcomes. That needs to be stated and documented clearly. Elevating preschool in the action steps would also signal to your preschool team and families that their role in learning is valued and supported. Finally, I hope the strategic plan truly is a living document to keep the information current. I encourage the board to consider creating a public facing dashboard so the board, administration, staff, and the community can all see how we are progressing toward these goals.
That in and of itself would do a lot in your communication and transparency goals. Thank you. Thank you, Casey. Thank you. Change. Thank you. Okay. Go ahead, doctor Boniface. Yes. So I encouraged my staff to start trying to come to board meetings and just talk to you guys. And, it was my fault I did not mention the ticket process. But I do have one here who would like to speak to you all if you're willing to let him come up. Oh, yeah. I'll allow it. Awesome. Thank you. Hi, y'all. My name is Samuel Thomas. I'm an English teacher at the high school, and it's my privilege to, teach your
kids. I wanted to spread some gratitude all the way around. When I was watching the board meeting since then, our motto in class, which is progress, not perfection. And every time they come up against something that's pretty hard, I say, y'all know the standards. Y'all know you're being tested against other students in other schools, in other states, and
I know you can do better than what we've been performing as. And my students have risen to the challenge from the ELL to the students who have an IEP, what's really cool is to see people come alongside one another, the students. I have students that were former students of mine who are now seniors who come to me and they say, how can I help? And because they speak another language, and I don't have that that skill, I'll, show
them the assignment that this student is trying to work on. And they'll take them to the library. Never got a complaint from the librarian, and they continue to do make make incredible progress. And I'm really proud of the progress those students are making. And they wouldn't be making that if I didn't sit there and chew on the hard news that y'all gave us. So my first gratitude is to y'all, the board. So thank you for what you're doing. Thanks for equipping our admin to equip us. And that's where I wanted to turn next. We, we've been a little short staffed this year on our admin team.
You wouldn't know it. Things are flowing flowing really well. I had a student the other day who, was one of those tough kids. Really tough nuts to crack, you know. And he, he was having a tough time. And when I came up on him, I just noticed it, put my hand on his arm and said, what's going on young man? Actually I said, what's up bro? Since I'm here I tried to clean it up. And he he shared something really hard that's going on at home. And for him school is the safest eight hours a day.
And he said, I just need to go see miss Vonage Base. She said, I can come anytime. So within the safest place he has, he has the safest space and that's his principal's office. Truly care. They care about the safety of the kids from the morning when we're doing our backpack checks and everything like that. It's not just, what are you bringing? What are you, you know, just checking on the kid. It's checking on their spirit. How you feeling today? You ready to learn? Encouraging progress, not perfection. So I'm really grateful to our administrators.
And then I'd say the teachers. I look around around and we're flawed, we're not all perfect, and I think for a lot of for a lot of people it's it's easy to to feel the weight of the burden that is real, which is educating these kids and raising the standards around here. And they rise to the challenge every day with a smile, with encouragement, not just building into them academically, and I know they do, because those are the side conversations
we have in the hall. But they also build into their character. Sup, dude, you are moving way too slow. I've seen you in the hall, like, three times today. And we all know what that means, you know? This is somebody who's trying to avoid work and the hard stuff and the gritty. But these teachers care enough to not be liked sometimes. And I'm really proud of the teachers that I work with. And I I really am pleased with the growth that we've had from last year to this year. I haven't been here a long time. But I've seen a camaraderie develop.
Again, props. Because that doesn't just happen. That's that's obviously the work of deliberate administrators who are trying to facilitate a team that wants to sharpen each other as iron sharpens iron. So I'm really proud of them. But I say my final gratitude for the the work that I see every day with the students. And it is not always easy. And if you don't see tears periodically, you know they're not being pushed hard enough. And you find you find you find that balance of encouragement and challenging.
And, I had a student just today who stepped in it. They were they didn't do their proudest work. Let's just put it that way. And when they were called out on it, I got an email three periods later, and that student said, mister T, I need to be honest with you. And they told me the areas in which they had been slacking. And they said, can I try hard? Can I try again?
Please, can I try again? And I gave them the opportunity to do that, and I know they're gonna rise to that to the challenge because they look left and they look right, and they know the ones around them care. So I'm really grateful for the students that we have. It's not always easy, but we come every day with this privilege and this heavy responsibility. Y'all give us the responsibility to teach your kids, and the authority to shape our classrooms. And we we could not we could not do it without the board, the administrators,
and without kids who saw that we care. So I'm very grateful today, and I know when I'm watching the board meeting, sometimes it's heavy. And I just wanted to shed a little light and say, you know, it was great being the announcer for the football team. That was like the highlight of my week. But more than that, it's showing up in the morning and having the kids waiting early or saying, can I come back for lunch? Because they wanna talk about what they're learning in their social studies class. They want to talk about what they're learning in their science class.
And I can give them one more idea because I may have taught that subject at one time, and they go, oh, great idea, you know, and I just couldn't be more grateful. So thank you for the opportunity to teach here, and, if y'all and I guess I'll say this to any skeptics who exist out there. I love my classroom. I love my students, an appropriate amount. I love my calling. And my door is always open. Open. So if you're a board member, if you're an administrator, if you are a parent
watching this at home, just know if you want to see the work that's happening in the school, not just read about or hear the gossip from your neighbor, but if you wanna see the work that's happening, please call and make an appointment to come visit and ask for mister Thomas's class. My door is always open, And I wanna encourage any and everybody who thinks that they have their mind made up about what is or is not happening in the school district to come and see the progress that your students are making in our
space. Thanks for the privilege of addressing this group. Thank you. Mister Thomas, I would just like to say thank you for for that because that's gonna be one of the last things that I hear from this board. So thank you. And mister Thomas, I appreciate the the relationships too that you talked about. I don't know if you knew. I I retired from here, from RE1. And unless you've taught, I don't think you can understand those relationships. I have a student from twenty years ago, married, has four kids now, decided to go back to get her teaching degree. And six months ago, this is hard.
Told me to mark the date in December to walk the stage. Up up and learn me. So that's about having relationships. I'm I'm also, thankful for, what mister Thomas said because it's, very few and far between when we get constructive and appreciative messages from people who come to the podium. And so it's very refreshing but it's also very, I don't know, heart building to
hear that there are very positive changes occurring somewhere in our district and it's very, nice to hear, that that's happening. So thank you for that. The other thing I want to say, in the toward the first speaker, Casey, thanks for being one of the people who listen to Sola's story. I, I encourage everybody to to do that. Staff and, parents especially, along with their kids. I think, to be to be a part of the conversation and with knowledge that,
that really helps. Thank you for doing that. And I I agree with, some of the things you said. You're you're right from what I remember in Steubenville. One of the things that, they talk about is their, pre k. And, although I'm not a proponent of putting, individual action items like that, in the strategic plan, my I I was a proponent of having the, the North Star goals,
and then all the rest of it is, what the community came up with and the staff came up with in order to try and, make advancements in our district. But I I do concur with you in regard to, that, first step that Steubenville was taking that they felt was important in their program. And I hope that the superintendent, that is coming in will, will also address that
in some fashion. So thank you for bringing that up. Any other board discussions? I'd like to say, thank you for talking. You know, you teachers, you know, you guys do a lot here, and and I I had one one teacher that was a teacher in Towaoc. I went to go meet him before he passed, and, he talked about only reaching out 50% because he's been there all these years painting it in. And I sat down and talked to him and I was like, you know, as
a teacher, you know, yes, you you do get tired of reaching out and, you know, I tell them, but, you know, as a teacher, you're there to support the kids, you know, no matter how far, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, even a 100% you put in and you still reach out and you get that denial. You know, I want you guys to still keep reaching that 100%, you know, to all kids, you know, especially, you know, my youth kids because they need that support.
You know, they don't get that support at home, you know, a lot. So like you say, you know, they do escape to go to school to get that security and be there and stuff. So I want you guys, all you teachers, to think about all kids and teach all kids 100% reach out to them. You know, because, you know, that's where, you know, I thought that where I felt as a teacher that came to me, you know, I was a student that had all f's. All f's. You know, elementary, junior high, high school, you know, and I came from this district.
That's the way I was raised, you know. And so be it, I had to leave here to go get my GED. You know, GED, same as a high school diploma. You you make that effort. I you know, so I just wanna talk to you teachers out there. You know? Reach out there. Reach for all kids because they all do matter. You know? But it was good to be on this board to to see what it's like to help kids out. You know? And that's the number one goal is kids do matter. So thank you, guys. And I would just like to thank Tom and the rest of them for that
data that they did. We've I've not seen data like that in our district ever. And from my understanding, that's not even something that even statewide a lot of the the districts have ever seen. Correct. So, yeah. Thank you for for that deep dive into that data so that we can we can figure out where we need to pick up and move along or share or whatever we need to do to to get our kids that education that they so deserve. So thank you. Alright. Alright. We will move on to our action items now. Action item a, the consent calendar. If I can get a motion to approve that consent calendar.
I move to approve the consent calendar. Second? Is that Paul or anyone? No. It's Paul. Paul. Thank you. Online voting is now available. Motion passes unanimously. No. Okay. Please get a motion to approve the 2025 to 2029 strategic plan. I move to approve the 2529 to 2029 strategic plan. I second. Sorry, board. That wasn't actually entered already. So you got kind of a short version in front of you.
But online voting is now available. Okay. Motion passes unanimously. May I ask a question, madam president? When, when the secretary says unanimously, does that mean a six zero vote? That does mean that means a six zero vote. I removed mister Collins from the voting when he left the room. Thanks. Okay. Alright. Can I get a motion to approve the Bank of America authorization changes? I move to approve Bank of America authorization changes. I'll second. Online voting is now available.
Motion passes unanimously. Alright. Can I please get a motion to accept the student nutrition services vehicle request? Did you request this, ma'am? Pardon me? Did you request that? It's actually Taylor. Would you like to ask her a question? No. I just have a motion. A motion. Motion. Okay. Sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Didn't hear you right. Sorry. I'm going to accept the student nutrition services vehicle request. I second. K. Discussion. Mister Hall, did you have a question on that? I I was just wondering where that where that where it came from, or is it to make sure that it is the right vehicle? I'm sure you guys before it even gets to this point, I'm sure that you're
that that's the one that you feel is best for the job. Yeah. Okay. And do do we have a capital request form for this too? There wasn't one in there. Looks like it's coming out of the operating funds for that. I don't know the answer to that. In the public content there, it says this is an allowable expense as long as the vehicle is used solely for nutrition services and they have excess funds to spend out. Thank you, Taylor. So it would be coming out of the nutrition services budget. We do have a certain amount of carryover to spend on the vehicle.
It's an approved purchase by the state, and it would be coming out of my my food services budget. Thank you. Thank you. Good to know. Online voting is now available. Motion passes unanimously. Yeah. Alright. Action item e. Can I get a motion to approve diligent community proposal? This is the one that that was gonna it's gonna replace port docks. Yeah. I don't think I need more information. Could we get a motion, please? I move that we adopt the diligent community proposal.
I second. What advantages does it have over board docks? Pardon me? What what advantages does that does it have over board Well, I can Do you have more information to share about this? I believe I can maybe share a little. So BoardDocs is actually timing out and diligent communities taking over. Our plan timeline to change, it is we'll start in January, and it will be in place in April. We don't have the option to keep BoardDocs. We do have the option to go on the market and get another product.
Like, CASB, they're currently using board books, and they're putting that out to their memberships. Board books is a little bit cheaper from what I saw because I kinda did a demo with both companies. I think that the familiarity is worth a lot with BoardDocs, and I also think BoardDocs is a little little easier to look at. And the diligent community has a lot more offerings for us than just regular BoardDocs does. It's like kinda like this but better version. So I So you would prefer diligent community over BoardBooks?
I would. I would. I was not really thrilled with the BoardBooks demo Right. That I sat through. But it was cheaper, I will tell you that, a couple thousand. The diligent product, I I could be wrong, but what it sounded like when I was reading that is that it also has, a portion that will help with our recording of board meetings. Is that did I get that right? Or There was a option that could be added, to do that.
But since we have a pretty solid system in place with our tech department, I didn't think we needed those services, but it is an option that we can consider and have them give us a demo for in the future if we wanna add it. So did you say this company bought out BoardDocs? Is that right? It's the Diligent is is who we've been making our check to for BoardDocs. Okay. They own it. Okay. And this is just their newer version, which I think 80% of their school districts are already moved over. We're slow to move over because I didn't realize you guys had to approve this
new rate, for them to start our implementation. How does this cost compare to what we've been paying for I think last year, you paid 11,500, somewhere in there. So they they have upped it. Not not by law. Yeah. And so when I say that, board books was cheaper, I would when I did that comparison, it was compared to last year's price. So so probably 3 to 4,000 maybe more for for diligent community.
I think board books also, that was just an initial offering with CASB offering that out there. That's very true. Yeah. It was a one time offer. Probably be pretty comparable to the same price as what anybody else in the market is. Yes. I think so. So yep. Well, and I know different people on different boards have used different versions too that there I mean, there'd be a third party that I'm not familiar with. And I can also tell you we used to not have any program, and I would advocate for always having a program because it's so much better.
We used to do 200 page board packets, one copy for each board member every single meeting. And that was a nightmare, and it was a lot of waste. So I advocate to always have a program. Yes. Absolutely. K. Whenever you're ready. Thank you. Online voting is now available. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you for it. That one benefits me. You should let us know what it was. Okay. Action item f, the revision of the approved school calendar twenty twenty five, twenty twenty
six. Would you like me to exploit? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. We'll we'll just get a motion first, and then we'll move to approve the school's calendar. Okay. Twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six. I second. Okay. Yeah. If you want to, So, what we're looking to do is not add any days just to shift some days around. Primarily, we have a a need to provide some high level special education, training to our we we've done this with teachers and district office personnel and and special education staff, but to our classroom teachers on what it looks like, the legal requirements to
provide special education accommodations and support in the classroom. We have an opportunity to provide some really high level training from an expert in that area, Elena Gallegos, who Mr. Burris knows well and Lisa Migos knows well. I I've been to her trainings very good. And so to do that, we really need a full day in December. And so what we're looking to do is to trade a day in December. I'm sorry. A day later in the year, a half a day, and then bring that half a day into December to make it a full day on December 12. The other thing that we're looking to do is, have a full day of data
review with staff on January 16. So we would replace a full day I mean, another half of a day, in order to make that a full day. And then third, the elementary principal specifically, had requested earlier parent teacher conferences so that when they meet with parents, they have, a lot more of the year left in order for the feedback given by the teachers to to actually be taken to heart by the kids and the parents and be able to then have an impact on
how they finish the year. I felt like the March date was too late. So we're proposing that we move the March So they'll still be in after semester grades. So there will still be a lot of good data to review with parents, but there'll be more the year, remaining afterwards. So those are the those are the changes requests. And that data does show up in time for that? Yeah. Yeah. That star data, once the testing is completed, it's instantaneous. Okay. Yeah. But we're also adding a date for parent teacher conferences?
No. Just moving it. Yeah. So right now, it's there's it's a two day, in March, and we just wanna move it to to January, Thursday, Friday, January instead of Thursday, Friday, March. Mister Schmidt, that does mean on the current calendar, the Thursday of parent teacher conferences in March for the in town elementaries, they did not have school. But in January, when we make the move, in January, they will attend that day. Correct. And and we would propose that even if we didn't make the move, they still attend that day. It it did cause some problems for them not to have school, when other schools
were in session. Specifically, if younger siblings are not in school and old then older siblings would have to miss school to stay home and wash them. It also created childcare issues for parents on those days. And so we're we would like for it just to be consistent with all of our buildings that they're in session on that day. There's not a need to just have two schools not in session. Everybody else in session. Yep. But thank you for pointing that out. I I didn't mention that. Online voting is now available. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. Action item g, the resolution to ratify CDE's decision for Montezuma Cortez School District to
form their own administration administrative unit. I meant to support the resolution for Montezuma Cortez School District to form their own administrative unit. I second. Do we have any questions? Do you have anything you wanna say, mister Burris, about that or what you've already said in thousand times probably as an It's a long conversation. Yeah. Again, this started three years ago. An AU is an administrative unit set up by the state. Because there were a lot of small school districts, they set up an AU to
serve several districts with specialized personnel. In New Mexico, they call them RECs, Regional Education Centers. Same idea. So the reasons that we would like to form our own AU have nothing to do about money. They have all to do about services to kids. Your administrative unit right now and for the last three years has been served by one director of special ed. We have a director of special ed for our kids. We have an assistant director of special ed for our kids.
I know there were other issues that I think, Lisa, you will go through with the new board members. Some of those are legal issues that this board did not wanted to be tied with that go back several years. Drew, you can attest to one that you got hung around your neck about changing IEPs without an IEP meeting. That comes back to a due process complaint.
And ladies and gentlemen of the new board, if you haven't been through one of those, you're missing a great time. You never win. It's just how bad you're gonna lose. And for every one of those, it could be in excess of a $100,000 easily and can consider compensatory education. So you have the support to get out of it, make our own AU. I shouldn't say get out of BOCES. Make our own AU. You have the support of every administrator, every central office administrator, and all the board,
to do that. We we can do this better. There you go. Thank you. Sure. A little bit more history for those of you that don't know too. Durango was part of this BOCES unit, and they got out of BOCES about seven or eight years ago, I believe. And that's always been the hang up on our form and our own AU now is because we are the biggest district in there. So now Durango came back this past year and is doing some contract services with BOCES by to utilize some of their staff.
So that's always an option too. So Now, Tom, you've always said it's not about the money, but what is the cost for creating the AU? Do we have a forecast for that? Absolutely, I do. So the special ed funding from the state and the federal is about $2,100,000 and all of that flows to BOCES. And then we, in addition to that, pay an administrative fee of about $340,000 If
we take if when we take over as the AU, all of the funding from state and federal will flow to us. The additional 300,000 was to cover their administrative costs. We wouldn't have that. Business manager. Justin would be the, curriculum person for special ed. Lisa's gonna be the special ed director. They're all we're all in place. So we can actually put that funding to, services. And, yeah, the question is, are those services easy to find?
No. But math teachers aren't easy to find either. So we, will be notified at the end of the month whether we get out whether the state is gonna allow us to get out of BOCES or not, forming our own AU. Then we will have from next week, basically, until school starts to advertise and get people online. And contract for services Yes. Through other providers? We may have to. When I was in Truth of Consequences, I contracted, some of my services one day
a week from a lady from Las Cruces. She drove up for those services. Last year, we had nine online providers with BOCES. So I one of the things that did happen last year too, that Lisa's taken care of this year, is we had a half million dollars with Vocal Visions. So Vocal Visions was writing our IEPs. We were paying $340,000, and we are giving all the 2,100,000.0 to BOCES. There's the money side of it. Great. Thank you. So, I'm going to respectfully disagree with mister Burrows.
Okay. Thank you. Mr. Burris, Mr. Burris said that it's, not about the money. It is primarily, and I agree with him when he said, it is first and foremost about, the students and getting their services that they deserve and better student outcomes. I agree with that 100%. But and I understand what he means when he says it's not about the money. It's not primarily about the money. But it is definitely about the money. These in particular the part that I'm more familiar with is the IEP process and
that process is highly regulated. There are laws that have to be followed in order to do that properly. And there are rights that go to the families who have students in those programs. And if the, the district does not, handle those cases properly, the district is liable for damages, whichever whatever that may be. And that's a financial thing, I believe. It would be hammered out in the courts.
But so there's a liability if you're not doing it right is what I'm trying to say, and it's not small numbers. As I if I remember correctly, Tom, correct me if I'm wrong, but, I think, in the past, two years ago or something, I don't remember, there was a sampling taken of, a random sampling of, I believe, 40 cases. 46. 46 cases. Thank you for the correction. And, those were reviewed to find out if the procedures were followed correctly.
Well, there was Concern over every single one of them. I'm not saying that they were they were done they weren't handled properly, but there were questions about the process of every one of those 46. So if there's more than 46 and you find 46 that have concerns, what are you gonna expect to find in the in the others? Similar things. And that puts this district at liability, not only for not teaching that child, that
student, what they were supposed to get, but a damages, sorry, a damages, thing if we're taken to court. And so it's a liability and it's a big liability. So I I do believe it is also about the money. Thank you for that perspective, Mike. One of our requirements, I'll just take a moment more, was that we had to prove that the BOCES serving the districts that they will have left after we're we're our own AU, that they could actually, by the numbers, they could serve those districts.
Walt Smith and Bateman was employed to do that study, and they, in fact, came back and said the BOCES can do that. They're like us, though. When I was here before, there were 3,400 kids. We've got 1,800 now. We don't have the same staffing. They will not have the same staffing. There will be opportunities for us to hire people, and we can do that. But be very clear that the independent auditor has found that the BOCES can survive and that they can offer the same services based on a smaller number of employees.
If you look at their website right now, I believe there are 96 employees of the BOCES. Some of those employees are employed because they're hard to find, but they don't serve but a handful of kids. And the the response is, well, they're hard to find, so we go ahead and hire them. I would rather, get either online services or, contract services rather than employing somebody that was less than full time.
That and we do have one of our employees, and I won't even describe the position. All you administrators in board know that we had an employee who had services supposed to be once a month for an hour, speech services, last year. In the full year, how many hours that kid get? Two. That employee was beyond livid but did not wanna sue the school district and could have done that.
So there are reasons why good reasons why we wanna form our own AU. We can oversee it better. We'll have our own people on the ground. Lisa's in all the schools. We we have a better team, and I I think that I'm not think I I'm confident that we can do this job with our kids to a higher degree of professionalism. So I I may not have made it clear. The the person who the the group who is responsible for that is the AU.
So the AU, San Juan BOCES, is responsible for that right now. And, apparently, it's not being done well enough. But the district believes we can do a better job. That's why there's problems. It's not because the district is not doing well. It's because the AU, which is San Juan BOCES, are not doing a good enough job, and we think we can do it better. Alright. Mhmm. One of the places that I got a little crosswise with with Leland, and I wish she was here. Initially, he was told that the services, the special ed services, would be dropped.
And that's not true at all. We employ all of the special ed teachers. We employ all the special ed paraprofessionals. There's no way we're gonna drop special ed services by getting out of a VAU. The people that they employ are the ancillary people, the school psychs, the OTs, PTs. Should you need them, they employ the deaf, the interpreter for the deaf kids, things like that. But right now, we don't need that position.
So should we need that, we we would go after it. But that's what they do with the $2,100,000, mister Beckler, is just the ancillary people. I know for you, it feels like beating a dead horse, but I think for sake of transparency, it's always good to hear it again. Well, good. If if there's any other questions, sir, please ask them. Ask away. The the ones that we've cleaned up are the ones that Mike, mister Lynch referred to. Statistically, if you sample 46 out of 300 and none are complete, how many out
of 300 are complete? And Lisa said, every every year, you have to have an IEP meeting. And it's been two years since that was found. And I would venture to say, we are on top of it, and we have every one of them compliant. And it's not, there's not anyone to thank other than Lisa Meagle and Katie Nelson. Yes. You we drove it. And actually, a little more history with that too, so everybody understands a little bit more with BOCES.
I beat a dead horse here, but There you go. But a year ago, when the same at the same exact time that they denied our application because we carried roughly one third of the budget for BOCES through the art school district. At the same time that they denied ours, they granted Steamboat Springs application to become their own AU, and they carried 54% of their budget for their for their BOCES. And how they can do that is beyond me. And I think not to mention that the BOCES board all has pretty much agreed
that let us out. -Mm -Damn. -Yeah. So Alright, Deb. Let's vote. -Let's go. -Thank you for leading us into this. Online voting is now available. In three or four hours, we could be done. Yeah. Open up. We're almost done. You got one left. Yeah. Motion passes unanimously. Alright. Our last action item of the night, action item h, the employee consent calendar. Madam president, I move that we adopt the monthly employee update. Second. I'd like to talk about one thing.
On this particular report, there are there is a list of resignations. On this particular port report, there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven resignations. It looks like three are teachers. There's a para and then some others. It has been many months since the board has been able to read exit surveys from people who resign, and I would like to find out, mister Burrows, when there
will be a new system that allows the board to see exit, surveys from people who resign because I believe those are very, very telling in regard to what's happening in the district. And and, sometimes they they just are are very polite and they don't say anything, but there have been a few in the past that have been, specific as to problems that they no longer wanna deal with and, they're kinda fed up. So I I find them important and I am wondering when we can start seeing
those again. Miss Tracy? That, survey is something that we've been working on, and I believe that it's ready to go out now. There were some technical issues, and, it'll go out to anyone starting now. And if you would like, I can try to send it to those seven people on that list, as well and get you those results. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I agree, Mike. Those were very helpful back when we did have those.
And now we do see letters, but that's not the whole picture, and it's also telling to know what people are moving on to. You know, if it's just due to family reasons or different opportunities, I think that's valuable information. Miss Tracy? Yes. When we did those in the past, we put them in the executive category because whether they were anonymous or not, they're still confidential. So when we do the next board meeting, let's work on that. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Are we good? Online voting is now available.
Motion passes unanimously. I move to adjourn. Okay. We'll adjourn this meeting at