Good afternoon and welcome. Today is April 14th, 2026. The time is 2:00 PM, and I'm going to call the District 60 Board of Education special board meeting to order, and ask that our secretary call the roll. Director Farrell? Here. Director Ibarra? Here. Director Mays? Here. Director Pannunzio? Here. Director Thibeau? Here. With five present and no absences, everyone's here, of course, and we have a quorum to proceed. The first item we have on our agenda will require us to take a short recess, and
we are at least going to attempt to get into an executive session. And at this time, I would like to read a required recitation of putting us into executive session. I want to clarify on the record that the Board of Education has issues to discuss in executive session as follows: To confer with the school district's attorney for the purpose of receiving legal advice pursuant to CRS 24-6-402 numerical four in paren, small B in paren, on the following specific legal
questions. The board's authority and any limitations on that authority under the Charter Schools Act and District Policy LBD, Relations with District Charter Schools, Regulation LBD-R, Relations with District Charter Schools, and intent to apply to become a district charter school, LBD-E1, collectively district policies concerning whether to accept a charter application for review, legal counsel's interpretation of relevant sections of the
Charter Schools Act and district policies with respect to a decision whether to accept or to not accept a charter application for review, and legal counsel's opinion concerning any potential legal consequences of a decision either to accept or to not accept an application for review. Do I have a motion to go into executive session for the previously stated purposes? I'll make that motion. Motion made by Director Farrell. Is there a member of the board who wishes to second that motion?
Second. And the second is by Director Ibarra. Is there any discussion by the board with respect to the motion that's on the table? Seeing no or hearing no discussion, I will call for the roll and mention that there is an affirmative vote of two-thirds of the quorum present in order for this motion to pass. Secretary, please call the roll. Director Farrell. Aye. Director Ibarra. Aye. Director Mays. Aye. Director Pannunzio. Aye. Director Thibeau. Aye. With five aye votes and no no votes, it is unanimous and meets the two-thirds required vote.
So I will now announce that we will be going into executive session, and joining the board in executive session will be Richard Bump, the district's attorney, and our superintendent, Barbara Kimsey. So we will take a recess while the board and those individuals meet in executive session, and we will come back to order once that is concluded. Thank you. Thank you all for your patience. The Board of Education will now reconvene in open session. And I think that's a call from somebody wondering if we're in open session or
not, right? I'm just teasing. Okay, so we've completed our executive session. Will you all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? 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. All right. Thank you very much for that. The next item on our agenda is any corrections and modifications to the agenda. Does any board member have any corrections or modifications to the agenda? Or does our superintendent wish to suggest any corrections or
modifications to the agenda? Seeing none and hearing none, then we'll move on to the adoption of the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda as presented in our materials for today's special board meeting? I'll move that we adopt the agenda as presented. Thank you, Director Farrell, for that motion. Is there a second? Second. Second, Director Panunzio. Is there any discussion on that motion? With no discussion, we'll ask the secretary to call the roll on the adoption of the agenda. Director Farrell? Aye. Director Ibarra? Aye. Director Mays? Aye. Director Panunzio? Aye. Director Thibeau? Aye. With five aye votes and no no votes, that passes and
is declared adopted. So we'll now move into our work session, and we have three items on our work session agenda, and I will turn it over to our superintendent, Dr. Kimsey, for introduction of the presentations. Thank you so much, President Thibeau. Members of our directors of our Board of Education, it is my distinct honor and pleasure to invite forward members of our Superintendent Student Advisory Cabinet. And while they're coming up to the
microphone, I would like to share how proud I am of the work they have done under the direction of their sponsors, Mr. Madrid, Ms. Armenta, and Mr. Lewis, who have really helped these young people bring this forward to you today. And with that, Student Advisory Cabinet, go ahead and begin with your introductions. And we're looking forward to hearing what you have to share. And let me just say initially that as you make your presentations, some board members may have a question as you're going along just to clarify some things.
So please don't consider that a rude interruption. It's just sort of the way things are. Take your time and identify yourself, and we're happy to have you here and pleased to hear what you have to say. Thank you. Hello, I'm Santino Deters, and I'm a sophomore at South High School. Hi, I'm Brandon Martinez. I'm a senior at Central. Hi, my name is Aurora Madrid. I'm a junior at East High School. Hi, I'm Austin Shepard. I'm a sophomore at South High School. Hi, I'm Lily Alvarez, and I'm a freshman at Central High School. Good afternoon, President Thibeau, Dr. Kimsey, and distinguished members of the board. Hold on, Santino. We want to make sure your
presentation is up. Is it? Okay. And board directors, you have a yellow folder with materials regarding this presentation as well. Sorry, Santino. Start again. Good afternoon, President Thibeau, Dr. Kimsey, and distinguished members of the board. Today we are going to be talking about why a student representative to the Board of Education is a D60 necessity. To begin, we are going to take a look at the overview of our presentation. First, we will explore what is our purpose and intention. Second, how will this look in action? Third, what is the selection process? And lastly, what are the qualifications for this non-voting position?
Why is a student representative necessary? Having a student representative gives students a voice to receive and give feedback. It allows students to advocate for the change they want to see in the district. It also builds a bridge between the student body and the district board. Finally, having a student representative allows students to help build policy from real-life student experiences. The action plan. Having a student representative would be a vital part of the school's organizations. The student representative would help build a bridge between central administration, schools' administrators, and the entire student
body across the city. The representative would advocate for real change within the school communities. In addition to the selected rep, we would like to propose having a rep alternate for student representative as well. Having an alternate would ensure that in case of an illness or pre-planned extracurricular activity on the day of a board meeting, representation and student voice would still be present in the meeting. Also, having both representatives would streamline the implementation of new ideas and the solutions, allowing for a representative and alternate to work together on implementation across the district.
The selection process. There are two ways to submit an application for consideration to be a representative. The first way is to self-advocate and self-nominate.The application, which includes a resume submission and an essay portion, will be open to all five of the high schools. The essay would be between 300 to 500 words with the prompt being, "Why would you be a good candidate to be a student representative?" The second way for a student to be nominated is by having a counselor and/or administrator nominate them, then the student successfully
submitting an application completed in its entirety. To help advertise the student representative opportunity, we could partner with high school student councils and link crews who can encourage their peers to apply. After the deadline for submission has passed, the administrators of each high school will look through their own student applications. For example, East High School's admin will look through East High School's applicants. To ensure they are complete and remove any that do not meet the minimum qualifications.
Once that is done, they will submit the applications to the Student Advisory Cabinet, who will review all applications according to criteria, the established rubric with adult supervision, and then select the best applicants to interview based upon the review. Qualifications. Applicants must be a sophomore or junior at the start of their one-year term. So, at the time of applying, students will be a current freshman or sophomore. Students must have a 3.5 cumulative GPA and be on track to graduate. Student Advisory Cabinet membership is not needed, and Brandon will
expand on this more in a few moments. Students must be comfortable speaking in front of large groups and may not have any disciplinary actions from the current school year. Current juniors are not able to apply as it is a large voluntary and time commitment. Students will be selected in the spring and will be provided training over summer so that they will be ready to begin attending board meetings in August. Next is the interview rubric and scoring process, which have physical copies provided both in front of you. Once applicants have been screened and sent to the Superintendent Student Advisory Cabinet, their interview and selection process will begin.
Interviews will be blind, and interviewees will include current seniors on the Superintendent's Student Advisory Cabinet under supervision from committee sponsors, including Ms. Armenta from East High School, Mr. Madrid from the Superintendent's office, and Mr. Lewis from Centennial High School. The interview panel will score each interviewee using the established rubric. Since seniors can't run, they will be involved in the interview process too. But to prevent any type of conflict of interest, if seniors are close friends with any applicants, they will be excluded from the interview process. Also, like Austin stated, a membership to the Superintendent Student
Advisory Committee is not needed, but if selected for this role, you will automatically be put into the cabinet. Right in front of you right now is the essay rubric and scoring guide and the interview scoring guide, with the essay having five total categories, with a total point of 20 points, with the top-scoring essay being moved on to the interview process. Some of the categories are organization, did you answer the prompt, and did you show examples of student needs? Now, moving on to the interview process, there's eight total questions that will be asked, some being: What do you think the biggest challenge is students in District 60
are facing right now, and why? How would you make sure you're hearing from students at different schools and different experiences? If students don't agree with you and something you supported, how would you respond? There's a total of six categories with a total possible points of 30 points. These categories include communication skills, representativity and inclusivity, and making sure you know the responsibility and time management this role has. With the interview being over, the top candidate with the top scoring interview will be selected for the position to be the student representative on the school board, and the person with
the second highest scoring interview will be the alternate. As the Superintendent Student Advisory Cabinet, we would also expect the representative to create and send out a survey to the entire student body of all high schools. This would allow the district students to submit feedback, concerns, and ideas. Like Aurora stated before, student councils and other school clubs can help push it out and market the survey. The representative will also be tasked with going to upper middle schools and elementary school classrooms monthly to talk to students to gauge ideas and
build the bridge we mentioned before. We would like to thank you all for your time and consideration of our recommendation to have a non-voting student representative to the Pueblo School District 60 Board of Education. Thank you for your time, and we are open to questions. Thank you. Do the board members have any questions or comments? Director Mays. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. Always impressed every time I see students come up here and do the magnificent jobs that they do. And just shows you that we're in great shape for the future. So I've got one question here. And maybe
I misunderstood, but there's a process that a student would be eliminated from consideration if he or she is a close friend with whom? So for the interview process, since seniors, we have friends that are juniors, sophomores, and those are theparticular people running for the position. We don't want there to be any type of favoritism, conflict of interest. So if seniors have a close relationship with anybody applying, they will be asked to step away from the interview and be replaced with someone else. Tell me how that process is going to work.
I- Who's going to... Is somebody going to come up and say, "I think Judge Mays is a little bit too close to his daughter to vote for her." So how is that process actually going to work out? Is there going to be a process set up? Is a person who is being considered or is being asked not to apply going to have any kind of a right to due process or anything like that? As of right now, we didn't think about a true stepping away. When I think about it, I believe that it is the integrity of the
seniors on the interview process to be honest, and honest with the people in the interview process and our committee sponsors to say, "Hey, I know that person. I'm close friends with them. I'm going to step away from that." Let me tell you one of the reasons I'm asking that question. As a judge, for instance, being in Pueblo, Colorado, you end up knowing just all kind of people. So I have people come before me all the time that I've associated with in some way or another. And, the rule pretty much is that the judge has the
responsibility to make that determination himself or herself, and there's also a process within the rules for someone to say, "Well, you didn't step down, Judge Mays, but we think you should for these reasons." And I guess what I'm getting at is the difficulty that might present itself, and just the recommendation that perhaps there needs to be a deep dive into making sure that you're not excluding someone, right? That might otherwise be a good representative.
Thank you. Thank you. Superintendent Kinsey. May I clarify? It wouldn't be excluding a candidate, it would be excluding a member of the interview panel, so that if any member of the interview panel knows one of the candidates, then they would recuse themselves. And that would be automatic as far as you're concerned. That's what we had discussed. Mm-hmm. And they would do that under the direction of their sponsors, including me. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Other questions? Director Ferrell.
I want to start by sincerely thanking all of you for coming and presenting this. It was an idea that I had a while ago, but other things became priorities at that time. But I think it's even more important that this idea now is coming forward from students and not even one of us. And in fact, I took a session at our CASB convention about student representatives on school boards, got to talk with student representatives in other districts and their
adult colleagues on their boards about how it works, what issues they have, what concerns they had, what exciting things happened because of it, and it renewed my excitement about it. As far as this board, we all have our own experiences and perspectives, and we all want to always act in the best interest of students, but sometimes we don't hear from a student what that really means to them.
And I think that's an important piece this board's missing, and I'm very excited that you brought this forward. I don't have any questions, just wanted to say thank you, and I think that this is a great idea and very important to this board. Thank you. Other comments or questions? I have been talking to the superintendent about this, and I asked her that my first question was going to be, "Why aren't you in school?" But it was just in jest that I mentioned that to her. With respect to the representation, I noticed in the presentation that a
3.5 cumulative average, I didn't hear anything about somebody being on student council or in student leadership positions, and those type of things. And I'm just wondering, do you feel that those kinds of qualifications yield the best type of person who would represent students? In other words, could there be someone who doesn't have a 3.5 average that has skills and ability to participate, to do the job, if you will? I'm just kind of curious about that and just how
students will be recruited and their qualifications, and how you feel about that. Anybody can answer that question, or you can all answer it. Not at one time, but separately.Your mic isn't working. Oh, you're... Okay. You're thinking on the side. Okay. So when it came to- Excellent. Go ahead ... when it came to the GPA, we needed to have a minimum GPA that we used for the qualifications, because not everyone should be able to qualify for such an elite position. But also, when it comes to the GPA, we looked at that, and we thought
and landed on that a 3.5 minimum is acceptable when it comes to trying to qualify for such an elite position. Superintendent Kimsey. I'll prompt you guys. Remember your conversations when you talked about how are you going to make sure... What did we call them in that first meeting in January? The unknown. Yes. Why don't you talk about how you've developed your process to include them. So the whole point of this process was to get feedback from individuals and students that weren't able to speak up and that weren't heard,
so we classified them as the unknown. And like we said, just this whole point of getting the student rep was to get the voices and opinions from the unknown, and to establish the change that was needed to make their experiences in this district better. And could I add, one of the reasons they talked about a self-nomination process was so that any student, they don't have to be on my cabinet. Any student can self-nominate, can submit an application. So it's not even dependent on
counselors, on teachers, on any student in the school. In addition, they really talked about... They're very nervous. That's why they're... They also had a robust conversation multiple times about how they would get the word out, and that's what Aurora was talking about with using the crew, using student council, using different clubs and activities, putting information out on social media. They had a robust conversation about how to even advertise
this to the entire student body. Thank you. So how many representatives would then be participating in this with the board? Does anybody have a comment on that? There would just be two persons with this opportunity. Would there be two plus two alternates or- No. Just one and one ... one and an alternate. Yeah. And, have you discussed the... I don't know how to put this, but we do some very important work for the community as well as the district. Is your process going to yield someone who
is not afraid to express an opinion, even though it might be different than our esteemed five board members here, that we know everything? But you know what I'm saying. This is not just a exercise. This is a representation that you need to take very seriously and to state your case, even if you're standing alone. Is that part of what you've discussed? Yes. Like on the slides, one of the qualifications was being comfortable speaking with adults, working with adults, and speaking in large crowds. That's also a part of the interview process, your communication
skills, and that also comes down to the question on the interview where if you supported something or didn't support something and others are upset with you, how is you as a student representative going to explain your reasons and stand your ground, basically. And how are you going to do that? I believe it's really up to the representative. One thing we didn't mention is the representative is always going to come back and talk to the superintendent student advisory cabinet. So they're always going to be more people having that robust conversation, making
sure we know what we want to do, and that representative is going to have a script of what they want to do, what they want to stand their ground on. It's not always just going to be that person and the alternate making the decision. It's going to be the whole entire cabinet. Thank you. That's well put. Sure. Anybody else have a comment or a question? Director Farrell maybe has something. I did think of a question, and I think this is more for Superintendent Kimsey. What do we need to do for the board to take this up to consider? Do we need to adopt a policy, adapt current policy? What do the next steps look like?
So thank you for asking, Director Farrell. At this point, so the board could choose to... This is simply a presentation today, which we like to do, give you the presentation, let you think. Then the board could adopt a resolution in the future stating you would like to have a student representative and alternate, and then turn it over to the administration to draft a policy with the help of our legal counsel in order to bring that to the board for consideration and adoption
And realizing it's already April, do you think we can accomplish that, to have a student representative by the next school year? I do. We have had long, robust conversations with these young people about that as well. If the board chooses to act relatively promptly, then we could get that policy in place. We could also begin the process of recruiting students to apply and all of that kind of simultaneously, and then get that done before our seniors leave for the
great post-secondary careers they have in their futures. And we have some powerful students in this group. Just so the board knows, this group is about 25 students. These are just the ones who have put in the work on this issue. But there are another 20 students behind them. Thank you, Director Ferrell. Anyone else? Director Ibarra. No questions. Just want to say it's great to see you all again. I remember having this conversation with most of you at the CASB conference, and I'm so proud of you, and I'm excited to witness the work that you do.
Very good. Anything else? I think we are very appreciative of your presentation. And along the lines of what Director Ferrell is saying, I think we can work with Superintendent Kimsey to get things moving as quickly as possible, because I'd like to see August 1st a representative. There's a lot of details that have to be worked out. Where do you sit? Anybody like this chair? You could try this chair out for a while. Just about a lot of those technical things. But I think it's exciting, and good for you for doing it. So we'll take it from here and
stay involved, and if there's any issues that come up, please get with our superintendent so we can ferret those out and make it all work. Anything else? If not, we'll conclude this presentation with our thanks. And so as they are dismounting, we'll move on to the right serving plan. And I'll just have you introduce the presenters, Dr. Kimsey. Thank you, President Thibeau. It's my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce our two assistant superintendents who will provide you with a brief right serving implementation
update. Okay, I'll go first. Good afternoon, Superintendent Kimsey, President Thibeau, and members of the board. We're honored to give you an update on things that have occurred since the last board meeting. We've had two significant kind of events in the staffing world since our last meeting. On April 3rd, we hosted a district-wide job fair for our non-probationary teachers at the closing schools, and it was very successful. In fact, we have placed all teachers from the closing schools except for one at this time, who was just unable to attend for some personal reasons that occurred. But we look forward to getting her situated really
quickly, and we're actually moving towards a regular hiring cycle at this point in time. So that's kind of been taken care of, so that's great news. And the second event was last Thursday, we had a probationary support session for our probationary teachers from the closing schools and gave them opportunity for one, to have support filling out an application or looking at all the jobs that we currently have available, because all of our jobs are currently up now. And also an opportunity for principals who have positions to come and put a face to a name and see those people, those probationary teachers that we're excited to get hired as soon as possible.
And I think they all appreciated that opportunity to meet them and put a face to a name and look forward to maybe getting them hired in the next couple of weeks. So along those lines, that's about where we are with staffing, and we're getting close to that part being completed. Good afternoon, President Thibeau, Superintendent Kimsey, and members of the board. In terms of the student support and the support for students and their families, it was about a month ago that we presented to you, and we were starting to formulate those collaborative committees. Those committees have been meeting now during the last month to plan a host of different kinds of activities for
students and for their families. So for example, Highland Park and Beulah Heights are both planning some grade-level specific team-building field trips at the receiving school. So they'll get kind of a special challenge or activity and kind of start working together and experiencing that. Something very similar happening on the east side with Parkview and Bradford. They're working to design a maker buddy activity using some of the stream resources that are in place at Parkview right now. In fact, Parkview staff is also later this week, going to be joining the Bradford staff over at the zoo for their Title One night and kind of
doing that. And then they have an activity later at the end of the month over at Parkview for families to come and see what's going on there. And I think Columbian actually has already hosted one of those events for families from the Bessemer community to come over and see the school and learn some of those things. So that work continues to move forward. We'll see more of those activities. As you know, we're in the middle of testing this month, and so we'll see more of those activities starting to happen as we progress through the end of the year. We also applied for and received a supplemental grant to our Title
IV grant funding, and we received that, and that's going to provide some training and supplies for our two new stream programs over at Columbian and Highland Park. You will see that as a grant award letter at the end of the month at the regular board meetingPreschool has been working hard to get all the licensing requirements, all those things fulfilled and ready to go. And they're exploring upgrades to the furniture, fixtures, and equipment for the preschool program. Hyde Park is continuing with its repairs and upgrades and working towards the goal of having an informational night on campus
before too long. Got to get the school in good enough shape to show it off, so they're working really hard to get that done. And then our work around community school resource center programs is also moving forward with the development excuse me, of a needs assessment that's going to be going out very shortly to stakeholders to get a sense of what different communities might need and also what they can bring to the table. So we'll continue to do this each opportunity we get, just update you on what's going on. Thank you so much for that presentation.
Any comments or questions or any discussion about our update, which is on our agenda each session that we meet? Nothing. So thank you for that presentation. We appreciate it. So our next one is related, I think, in terms of amending the instructional calendar. So Superintendent Kimsey, perhaps you can introduce the presenter on that. Thank you, President Thibeau and board directors. This one is a separate item because you are being asked to take action on this, and we wanted to make sure it was reflected on the record.
Our Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, it's my distinct honor to welcome back Mr. DeCesaro. Good afternoon again. Yes, these are very closely related. This is just another aspect of the Right-Serving Initiative. And we're proposing this afternoon a change to the student calendar that we brought forward on the consent agenda at the April 28th business meeting. We're requesting that the board move the last day of school for students from June 4th, 2026 to June 2nd, 2026 for the seven schools impacted by our
Right-Serving Initiative. This adjustment is intended to support the moving and transition needs within these schools. The approach aligns with past practice when school closures or transitions have occurred with sufficient notice and time to implement such a change. As a reminder of the impacted schools are Beulah Heights, Highland Park, Colombian, Bessemer, Bradford, D60 Online, and Parkview. We will also offer staff the option to work on June 8th and 9th with a stipend provided to allow time to complete moving and other end-of-the-year
transitions if necessary. Please note, only the impacted schools listed above will have a change to their student end date. All other district schools, I'm sure everybody hears that, all other district schools will remain unchanged and will have their last day with students still on June 4th. Any questions? Questions, Director Farrell? I guess my main question, which I think I probably know the answer to this based on how our snow days in winter looks, that still puts us in compliance with contact hours. This was one of the warmest years on record, and we have time. For once we do. Okay.
We do have some, to be fair, there is something around D60 Online has some different things because of the way they're set up, but I've talked to Bruce about that already, and there's a way, unless we have a gigantic May two-day snowstorm knock on wood, I think we're still okay. Okay, thank you. Excuse me just one second. I'm conferring with the superintendent. Okay, I was just trying to clarify that on our agenda, it is the presentations for our information, and then it will be on our consent agenda, or at least we're planning to discuss that it be on the consent agenda- Right ... for the end of the month. Yeah. I was thinking that perhaps you wanted it on
today's consent agenda. So I was trying to figure out how I could get that done. Yeah. Policy's 30 days, so we planned it for as long as it's in place by the May 1st we should be good. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Okay, so that's all taken care of. Any other questions or concerns? Great job. Okay. Very good. So we'll move on now to the consent agenda. And we need to first ask if there's any board members who wish to remove any consent agenda items. They're items two, three, and four as presented in our board materials from the consent agenda to discuss or act on separately.
Is there any request for that? Seeing none or hearing none, then I will ask the board for a motion to approve the consent agenda items two, three, and four as it appears on our agenda for today in our board materials. President Thibeau, I'll move that the Board of Education approve consent agenda items two through four as presented in this afternoon's materials. Thank you, Director Farrell, for that motion. Is there a second? Second. Second, Director Mays. Any discussion on that particular motion? Any objection to that motion? Why don't we just have our secretary call
the roll. Director Farrell. Aye. Director Ibarra. Aye. Director Mays. Aye. Director Pannunzio. Aye. Director Thibeau. Aye. With five aye votes and no no votes, that passes unanimously and is declared adopted. So we'll now move on toOur action items, if I'm not mistaken, and the only item we have on our agenda for action is consideration and potential action concerning acceptance of a charter school application for review.
There is a summary and a recommendation in our board agenda as published today. Is there any board member who wishes to make a motion with respect to this action item? Director Mays. Mr. Teague, at this time, I would like to move that we adopt the resolution that's about to be read into the record, and does it need to be read entirely into the record? Yes. And I would assume also that it would reference any exhibits that are attached to the resolution as well. Yes, let's get a second, and you're correct in that. If we can get a second for discussion. That would be my objection.
Thank you. Second. Second by Director Ferrell. So Director Mays, the floor is yours to read the resolution into the record, and all the exhibits are incorporated by reference. I don't think you have to read the exhibits, but if you refer to them, I think in our materials, they're clear. As I indicated, just to be certain, I will read this resolution and incorporate all of the exhibits without reading them specifically, just to point out that they are part of the board packet that we received today. Pueblo School District Number 60 resolution.
Whereas pursuant to the Charter Schools Act, CRS 22-30-5-101 to -121, the Act, the Board of Education District Board of Public School District Number 60 school district has the authority to authorize charter schools within its boundaries. And whereas pursuant to Colorado law, the district board also has express authority to adopt policies and prescribe rules and regulations necessary and proper for the efficient administration of the affairs of the district pursuant to
CRS 22-32-109 [1] . And whereas CRS 22-30.5-10 [3.5] provides that nothing in this part one shall prohibit a school district from adopting one or more policies that encourage charter applicants to address specified school district needs. And whereas acting pursuant to its express authority and in order to meet the district board's goal and need to establish a deliberate and fair
charter school application process, the district board has adopted a policy and regulation governing relations with district charter schools, Policy LBD, Relations with District Charter Schools, Regulation LBD-R. Intent to apply to become a district charter school, LBD-E1, and charter school application, LBD-E2. And whereas the intent to apply to become a district charter school, intent to apply, includes as a specific condition precedent
that new district charter school applicants must file an intent to apply form, exhibit LBD-E1, with the district at least 30 days before submitting an application, but no later than March 1 of each year, emphasis added. And whereas CRS 22-30.5-107 [1] provides that a charter school applicant must file its application during the period beginning February 1 and ending April 1, 18 months before the charter is set to open. And whereas at 11:57 PM
on March 31, 2026, an email which is attached as Exhibit A, was sent to Ted Johnson, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Services for the school district by legal counsel for Colorado Choice Schools, CCS, formerly known as Pueblo's Choice Schools, which entity had previously filed its notice of intent to apply to become a district charter school to be authorized by Pueblo County School District D60. And whereas Exhibit A referenced that the charter application filing was
for "Jefferson Classical Academy" rather than for the proposed "DaVinci Arts and Science Academy, Pueblo Charter," capital D, capital A, capital S, capital A. And whereas the intent to apply form purportedly filed previously and referred to in Exhibit A and made a part of the DASA's charter application was submitted to the school district on June 5, 2025, 313 days ago, attached as Exhibit B-CHPA, just prior to the expiration of the non-renewed Chavez Huerta
K-12 Preparatory Academy charter and was for a proposed district charter school for Chavez Huerta Preparatory Academy with an educational model or focus as shown in Section 5 of Exhibit B-CHPA. And whereas the following submission of Exhibit B-CHPA on June 11, 2025, Steven Barela asked the district board to place an item on its agenda to waive the timelines in the Act and applicable district policies to allow the
proposed Chavez Huerta Preparatory Academy to open in August 2025, Exhibit C.And whereas at the District Board's meeting of August 12, 2025, a proposed agenda action item titled "Extension of Deadline to Allow Pueblo Choice Schools to File Charter Application for Fall 2026 Opening" was removed from the agenda by a three to two vote under 2.0 Corrections and Modifications to the Agenda. Excerpt of minutes are attached as Exhibit D.
No further communication was received from Mr. Varela and no further action on Exhibit B, CHPA, was taken by the district board, making Exhibit B, CHPA, the June 5, 2025 intent to apply by Chavez Huerta Preparatory Academy moot. And whereas no intent to apply has been filed for DASA during March of this year or at any time, and the executive summary of the DASA charter application misstates that this proposed charter name was included in Exhibit B-CHPA.
And whereas the application submitted for DASA would be for a completely different charter than was prescribed in Exhibit B-CHPA. And whereas the school district has accepted and is currently reviewing two other charter school applications that were filed in a timely manner and submitted in compliance with district board policy and regulation, including intents to apply. And whereas prior to April 1, 2026, in reliance upon the intent to apply forms that were timely filed by the two current applicants, the school district scheduled
meetings in advance for its District Accountability Committee to review the applications as required by the Act, and at least one of these meetings has been held. And whereas the District Board has considered all the foregoing facts, the requirements of the Act, the school district's policy, LBD, regulation LBD-R, attached as Exhibit E, an intent to apply LBD-E1, Exhibit A, Exhibit B, CHPA, Exhibit C, Exhibit D, the timelines, and the best interest of the school district, its
students, and community. And whereas the District Board finds as follows. One, that CCS has not complied with the requirements of the Act, nor with the school district's policy, LBD, Relations with District Charter Schools, regulation LBD-R, Relations with District Charter Schools, nor intent to apply to become a district charter school, LBD-E1. And that CCS did not file a valid and timely intent to apply to become a district charter school for DASA as required by the District Board regulation
LB-R, an intent to apply to become a district charter school, LBD-E1. And three, that the prior intent to apply, Exhibit B, CHPA, filed on June 5, 2025, upon which CCS relies, has long since expired and was not renewed, amended, or otherwise conformed by March 1 of this year to be consistent with DASA's charter application. And four, the timely filing of a complete and accurate intent to apply to become a district
charter school and compliance with the procedural requirements of the school district's policy and regulation are jurisdictional prerequisites to the District Board's authority or obligation to review or consider a charter application that does not follow these procedures. And five, that CCS misstated it was filing an application for the Jefferson Classical Academy in March 31, 2026, communication to the school district, Exhibit A. And six, that excusing or waiving the failure of
CCS to comply with the Act and school district policy regulation, an intent to apply would subvert the validity and enforcement of the school district's policy, LBD, regulation LBD-R, an intent to apply LBD-E1, render them meaningless, and compromise the integrity of the District Board's charter school authorization process, in particular, when two other applicants did timely file and complied during this charter review window. And seven, that it is not in the best interest of the school district,
its students, and community to waive any of the foregoing failures to comply by CCS. Now therefore, be it resolved by the District Board as follows, incorporating the above recitals and findings. A, that because of the failures of CCS to comply with the procedural conditions, precedent, and prerequisites of the school district's policy and regulation governing relations with district charter schools, Policy LBD, Relations with District Charter Schools regulation, LBD-R, an intent to apply to become a district
charter school, LBD-E1. The District Board has no jurisdiction or duty to accept or review the proper Da Vinci Arts and Science Academy Pueblo charter application submitted with Exhibit A and hereby does not accept it for review. And B, that in addition, the District Board determines not to waive or excuse CCS's failure to comply as doing so would subvert the validity and enforcement of the school district's
policy, regulation, and intent to apply requirements, render them meaningless, compromise the integrity of the District Board's charter school authorization processunfairly treat the two current charter applicants who have fully complied with the school district's policy, regulation, and intent to apply, and whose applications are currently under consideration, and establish an untenable precedent for future charter school applicants that the district board is unwilling to do, as doing so would not be in the best interest of the school district, its
students, and community. And C, that the secretary of the district board is directed to notify the Colorado Department of Education of this resolution within 15 days as required by CRS 22-30.5-107 (4) . Adopted this blank day and places for the signature of Mr. William Thibaut as the board president, attested to by Jerry Petrone,
secretary. I would move that at this time. Thank you, Director Mays. I appreciate that. It's been moved and seconded for the adoption of that resolution. Is there any discussion or comments by any board member with respect to that motion? Director Mays. I just think, Mr. Thibaut, that process is important, and policies that we have either should be honored or removed from our policies. And I think the resolution adequately sets forth
the reasons why that wasn't done in this particular instance. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for those comments. Any other board member wish to comment? I'm going to make just a few comments to clarify a few things. The first thing that I want to clarify is that I have studied the Charter School Institute practice for the charter school applications, and they do have, as one of their best practices, the requirement of a timely and valid notice of intent to apply for a charter school. And usually what they do is
they have an orientation before that is completed, and they have a form online for its completion. The other thing that I think is important to me that is related to this particular resolution is that under 22-30.5-106, the contents of an application for a charter school, this is under our Colorado law, at a minimum, includes those items set forth in that statute. At a minimum. And of course, this resolution indicates that the board has the authority
to establish policy with respect to this matter. And there are minimum requirements, but I think it also allows reasonable additional requirements, and I believe our intent to apply is a reasonable additional requirement so long as it is a timely and completed document. The other thing that I think is important to realize is that on the intent to apply, I believe it's under Section 5, but it is contained in that intent, a wholly different kind of curriculum
than is proposed in the charter application. And I think that's important for our superintendent and the administration to know exactly what kind of curriculum any kind of charter school is proposing. And the unfortunate situation here is that in the June intent to apply, there was one kind of curriculum and efforts being undertaken versus a completely different kind of curriculum and undertakings under the Da Vinci Arts and Science Academy Pueblo Charter. And also, I think it's important to
realize that at least on the intent to apply, there is a portion that talks about whether or not the applicant is going to be engaging in other charter school applications throughout the state anywhere. And at least the first or June intent to apply clearly set forth that there was no other applications going to be filed, yet we know for a fact that at least in Delta County, this organization, this entity is
filing for a charter application. So I think those are deficiencies that really come to the authority and jurisdiction of the board to not be able to deal with this. We're not dealing with the substance of the application because we don't seem to have the authority to do that until these procedural matters are taken care of. So I wanted to just mention those as well. I also feel there are numerous issues relating to our Colorado Constitution dealing with control of instructionDealing with local control, that
is, and what the control of instruction clause means, and what kind of power and authority this board has under that. And while I won't get into that for any administrative body higher than this board or judicial officer higher than all of us is listening to what I have to say, I'll have a lot to say about control of instruction and the authority that this board has under our Colorado Constitution. So with that, those are explanations for why I will be supporting this resolution. Does any other board member have a comment or thought based on my
comments or other comments that were made? If not, and there's no further discussion, I'll ask the secretary to call the roll on the motion. Director Ferrell? Aye. Director Ibarra? Aye. Director Mays? Aye. Director Panunzio? Aye. Director Thibeau? Aye. That passes five to zero unanimously and is declared adopted. So we'll move on to the next item on the agenda, and it is adjournment. So do I hear a motion to adjourn from any member of the board? So moved. Moved by Director Mays. Is there a second? Second. Second by Director Panunzio. I'll ask the secretary to call the roll because I don't think there's any
discussion on that. Director Ferrell? Aye. Director Ibarra? Aye. Director Mays? Aye. Director Panunzio? Aye. Director Thibeau? Aye. With five aye votes and no no votes, that passes and is declared adopted, and so we stand adjourned. Thank you all.