My mic's not up. Alright. Can we call our meeting to order? Stand oh, no. Just kidding. I'm gonna need to do a call first. Okay. Barkley? Here. Davidson? Here. Fielden Ness? Here. Jordan? Here. Green Street? Here. Okay. Now we will stand today. I believe this 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.
The woman next time, please. Thank you. K. It's first on the agenda is approval of the agenda, but I actually, to ask for a motion to amend the agenda, to move item number 11, the executive session up in the order to item number nine. And this is to better accommodate our lawyer's schedule so that she's not waiting for the network. Make a motion to move executive reading item at eleven as you get the first.
Any discussion on this? I. Bill Cosby. Aye. Davidston. Aye. Gilgamesh. Aye. Gordon. Aye. Green Street. Aye. Excellent. And then now, I ask for a motion to approve the amended agenda. I move to approve the amended agenda. I second. Roll call, please. Barkley. Aye. Davidson. Aye. Fielding Mass. Aye. Gordon. Aye. Green Street. Aye. Thank you very much. Perfect. So then we will start our meeting with our district and community spotlights. So first we have our Woodland Park Senior High School Scholarships and Athletic signings, which
is so exciting. I love this time of year for that. So we're going to have our assistant principal and our athletic director, Pat Decker, come up and help us recognize all of our awesome students and student athletes. Yeah. So your thoughts. Okay. So we're gonna start with our student athletes who we have signed to participate at the next level. We have Landon Baines. Go ahead and stand up. Landon Baines is going to McPherson in Kansas to play baseball. Addie Hughes, I do not see.
Addie is going just stay standing. You can stay stay standing. Stay standing. Addie is going to Kansas State for rowing. Okay. For rowing? Yeah. So they reached out. So Addie has a great story. She tore ACL not once but twice. Oh. She wanted to go for softball. That didn't work. Kansas State reached out for rowing, and she's going d one rowing. That's why I'm curious. Kansas State. Your question. I know. That was the last one. I know. That was the last one. I know. So I was So I was trying to get your time as well. Alyssa Smith is not here tonight.
She is going to Kansas Westland for cheer. She is I believe she's majoring in nursing, and Landon's going for, business. I forgot. Sorry, Landon. And then we have Easton Wachelowski. Yes. Fort Hayes Tech for wrestling, and you're majoring in welding. Correct? Awesome. Cheyenne Becker? Cheyenne is going to Otero Junior College for wrestling and majoring in nursing. And Kinsley Pecron, I do not see. She is going to the University of Nebraska for swim, and I'm not sure what
she's majoring in. Our most recent, Danielle, I saw you come in. Danielle, just this week, got a scholarship to South Dakota School of Mines for cross country and track. And that is our student athletes that are going to the next level. Thank you, guys. You have a seat. Some of you guys are gonna get stand up again right away. So this is I'm gonna read through all of our students who got scholarships and actually what scholarships they got. So these are scholarships that they have been awarded. They may not be accepting all of them, but they have been awarded all of
these scholarships. Landon Bain, he got athletic baseball scholarship, a scholar state scholarship. You gotta stand up, Landon. So much standing today. Cheyenne Becker, USF Achievement Scholarship, Presidential Scholarship, Journey Scholarship, Athletic Scholarship, Academic Scholarship, and Church Scholarships. Link Bryden, athletic scholarship, merit scholarship, first generation scholarship, GCU local life housing scholarship, dean scholarship, presidential scholarship, provost scholarship, nonresident scholarship, Mnook Mnook pledge scholarship, ASC scholarship, honor scholarship,
presidential scholarship, and chancellor's award. Alexandria Gee. She has the Nick Naples car carpe diem scholarship. Okay. Matthias Goldberg. Matthias has the Catherine Van Zaf Memorial Scholarship, the Paul j Kekkitsch Memorial Scholarship, the U Pass Wyldham Park Kiwanis Club scholarship. Siboniti Hoover. No. Not here tonight. She has the h HD Aero Engineering LLC scholarship and the Society of Women Engineers
scholarship. Okay. And then Sawyer Keller has the Catherine Banzhaf Memorial Scholarship, the Judith the Judith a Karen Scholarship, Nick Naples Carpe Diem Scholarship, and the Mountain Arts Virginia Shippee Scholarship. Sonia Catler has the Frederick Banzhoff Memorial Scholarship, the HD Aero Engineering LLC scholarship, the Nick Naples Carpe Diem scholarship, the Ute Pass William Clark Juarez scholarship, and the Mountain
Arts Virginia Shippee scholarship. Abigail Keizer. Okay. She has the Judith a Karen scholarship, the Woodland Park chapter l p or I l p e o scholarship, the an academic scholarship, an academic merit award, athletic scholarship, UNK distinguished scholars distinguished scholarship, New Nebraskan scholarship, housing scholarship, Green and Gold Scholarship, Provost Scholarship, Founders Award, Direct Presidential Direct President's Scholarship, Honor Servant Leadership Scholarship, Blope Life Housing
Scholarship. Connor Lambert. Okay. He has the Brown and Gold commitment and the Good Neighbor Award. Emma Larson. Okay. She has the Paul j Kekich Memorial Scholarship and the Rotary Club of the Pikes Peak Service Above Self Recognition Award. And then Elizabeth Lindbergh. We have the Honorary Deputy Sheriff's Association of the Teller County Sheriff's Office Scholarship and Greg Schillings Memorial scholarship. McKenna McCarthy. She has the Western Undergraduate Exchange scholarship. Mark Mesner, he has the forensic scholarship.
Sophie Neese, Sophie has the presidential scholarship, twice, and the first generation scholarship and Crimson and Gold scholarship. Meet The Ordiana. Maisie has the Greater Greater Wylden Park Chamber of Commerce Wagon Boss Scholarship. Laura Liebataque has the trustee award. Evan Snyder has the Colorado Rural Scholars sorry.
Colorado Rural Schools Association redefining rural scholarship. Paige Strawmat has the forensic scholarship and the Ute Pass Woodland Park Kiwanis scholarship. Danielle Taylor has the Greater Woodland Park Chamber of Commerce Wagon Boss scholarship and her athletic scholarship. Jamie Urban has the Navy ROTC and the Air Force Scholarships. Ada VanderMeer. She comes up. The Durham Scholarship and the Green and Gold Scholarship. And Easton Waszalewski has the Greg Schelling Memorial Scholarship, the Fort Hays Tech Northwestern Wrestling
Scholarship, and I guess they have that listed twice. It's welding. Okay. Oh, the welding one? Okay. I was like, I think one has to be something else. So welding and wrestling. And our last but not least is Miles Wiley. He has the green and gold scholarship, the trustee award, and the HD Aero Engineering LLC scholarship. Scholar winners at this point awarded. It is constantly updating. Some of them were just updated and may not have gotten the notification about this tonight. But, yeah. Thank you, guys. You guys have a nice You did not?
Oh, yeah. You're Alright.
Now that we've settled slightly, that'll bring us to our on wings of Eagles award. I'm pretty excited. I know Rob's gonna talk a little bit here, but just the the fact that we've had a second, nominee so quickly. I'm really excited that as people are recognizing others in the community. Yes. So we have our on the means of the Eagles recognition program for those of you who were here last board meeting. It's a program that the boards put together to recognize people or commute or organizations
within our community who have gone above and beyond to uplift and inspire our students, in their pursuit of academic excellence and personal responsibility and civic duty. So, go to the next slide. I'll tell you to go to the next one. That's how you said. So our next candidate and winner of the Enwings of Eagles award. Next slide, please. Miss miss missus Marcy Nicholsberg. This is Nick's work if you will join us up in front of the podium
with our president. Do you have the citation? Didn't wear my Yeah. There you go. The Woodland Park School District r u two board of education presents the on the wings of Eagles award to Marcy Nicholsberg. The citation reads, missus Marcy Nicholsberg rose above and beyond to perform distinguished service as executive producer and director of the junior Whittling players from June 20 from 06/02/2000 to April 2026.
Missus Nicholsberg and her team have introduced performing arts to Columbine, Gateway, and Summit Elementary's, Woodland Park Junior and Senior High School, Merit Academy, and homeschooled students. Since the 2000, Marcy has led theater summer camps where hundreds of students have spent several weeks learning music, dance, set design, and all aspects of drama and acting. Students lead their productions demonstrating teamwork and encouraging each other as they build resilient character
and long lasting relationships. Students learn their shows cannot run without each person in the cast and crew, and Marcy reminds students of the significance of this now in the theater setting and in their future communities. As a result of Marcy's inspirational instruction, 3 Woodland Park Senior High Students since 2024 were nominated by the Denver Center for Performing Arts to compete for Colorado's Boggy g Awards, which recognized outstanding performance production and technical excellence in Colorado High School Musical Theater.
One nominee was awarded with the Bobby g Award for outstanding performance in leading role and traveled to New York City to represent Colorado in the National High School Musical Theatre Awards, a prestigious event that celebrates the achievements of high school musical theater students across The United States. Missus Nicholsberg's outstanding devotion to inspire and uplift students in their pursuit of academic excellence, personal responsibility, and civic duty reflect the highest credit upon herself and the junior Woodland
players. Citation signed this date, 05/13/2026. 2026. President Keegan r Markley, president of the school board. Congratulations. Thanks. Thank you very much, you guys. Thank you. Now I have to go to the bathhouse. Yeah. Alright. That brings us to our volunteer spotlight. Hey. Call them back. Call them back. Oh, come back. We're a bunch of theaters. We're about to recognize you. Almost. We'll be quick here. We did want to recognize, our our theater parents, volunteer group as well, for all
the hard work that you all put into, making the theater happen. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of wrangling regardless of the age of the students, and we just wanted to, recognize that and and recognize the impact that theater can have on so many students, giving them a place to really shine and and try out new things and and figure out who they are and, you know, something maybe outside of academics or or sports for some of the kids that, you know, that doesn't work for.
So thank you for for doing that. These three over here are die hards. So Yeah. One one's not one over two. There's two others that are there. They're at Michael Jackson. They're at Michael Jackson. Sure was my request. You know? It's here in their appearances. I'm talking bad. Thank you. Oh. Oh, is it Richie? That's a public comment. Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's after the administrative. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, we're not thinking. No. We're not. Great. Yeah. Board of Education reports. Does anyone have things they would like to share this evening That isn't somewhere else
on the agenda already. I've got a couple. Yep. Okay. Give kudos out to the wildfire mitigation team, Jason Farris. We're leading the, the efforts that come online and here at the junior senior high school. Great job in organizing that and pulling in the team to, make a huge difference on our property. Ryan Schultz, kudos to him for capturing before and after drone shots of the the property. And Earthwise, we wanna thank them for donating two forty yard or 40 yard debris
bins where we could put slash into. And if you lock the property, you realize we needed more than two vents. Yeah. So we got work to do still. And, shout out to No Flow Co. They sent 67 members to assist the school district. They mitigated four acres of forest land. Over 2,200 trees and stems were removed. So it could be a stem, you know, like your your finger coming up out of the ground. So 2,200 trims were removed from the property. It still looks healthy out there. They created almost seven cords of firewood, and the mitigation value that they performed for
the school district was over $26,000 that we would have to purchase if they didn't come in and volunteer. All that work was done, and then they fed us afterwards. And all that was done with no injuries. So, you know, hang on a minute. That's it on the safe and secure campus updates. Thank you. Yeah. That was, a bit of wonderful gift. Yep. Mhmm. Yeah. I guess I would just like to say there were several of us here that had the opportunity to go and and, thank our our staff members last week.
And, it's always so enjoyable to walk through the halls of a school and to see the kids engaged and just watch what's going on. And, I I just think it's hard to have a calm looking elementary school. And somehow, I walked through elementary school that seemed very, very calm and focused. So I just, always enjoy that. And, also, I was at the silent auction for Seminole at Summit when they, are
trying to, get all the money they need for a destination imagination and the creativity of a couple of parents there. In just a couple of week weeks, they pulled together a silent auction that netted over $5,000 to go towards destination imagination. It was great. Yeah. I just wanted to share, together with a few amazing women, Kathy and Dana, Rashid, and Kim, I've been able to knock out nine of the vehicles that needed detailing.
And I also just wanna make a plug for serve day that if you haven't signed up, if you're out there on YouTube watching, sign up, and there's a few more vehicles to do. And, yeah, hope to see you there. Also just wanna say, Rob and I attended the local business leaders meeting a couple weeks ago, and, it was a great opportunity just to connect with our our local business owners and leaders in town and to hear from them about what's important to them as kids are entering workforce and, and, how they can better partner with us and, and the things that we're doing here in the district.
So I appreciate a teacher for organizing that. And it was just a great, great opportunity to touch base with our business community. Okay. That brings us to our superintendent report. Alright. Starting off with each school, Columbine students got to experience the Love Planetarium Mobile today. Is it today? No. Which was a really cool field trip that their parent group arranged, which is wonderful. Fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students are heading up to the summit of Pikes Peak over the the next few days, so they'll get to have some snow up there. Good thing they waited till now.
Right? And then, Paul and Biden is looking forward to wrapping up the school year next week with Super Kids Day, which is a fun event. Family barbecue on Wednesday and firewall, excuse me, assembly on Thursday. Oh, and they're having a new event. It looks like I haven't done this one before. Lost and found fashion show. So Great event. That's awesome. Summit Elementary, Students had a blast taking the role as principal, and Katie Rexford held her own in their classrooms.
This was part of their readathon wrap up. And then she's also excited to welcome the wonderful volunteers of JA in a Day to Summit tomorrow. And then in between their lessons on financial literacy, students are going to share mini puppet shows with their handcrafted puppets and finishing up, strong at summit. And, excuse me, the junior senior high school is in celebration mode. On Monday, they held the athletics activities and academic awards night.
We also had a choir and band concert this week. I think it's right now. Next Wednesday, they will recognize their eighth graders as they take their next steps to the senior high school. And then finally, the class of 2026 is gearing up for graduation. We are celebrating our seniors with our tea and capping ceremony on Monday. And, of course, our graduation ceremony will be on I I think it's Friday. It's Friday. Right? Okay. Sorry. I think I have a wrong date on here. But Friday, and will be a special as they say goodbye to their seniors and
send them on to their next check. And so then a few other updates. Karen's been working hard on grants. I'm really excited to announce that, we received the literacy grant for $230,000 for the last four months. And, few other updates. Lindsay had been working on updating our web page, and so we now have, Merit Academy partnership web page so that we can ensure that we are being transparent and up to date as we move forward. And David and I actually had a meeting today with Mackenzie Khan from KACSCA, and
we were talking about hiring a liaison. And so what she has suggested, and she's gonna, create for us, I think, by Monday, and and authorize her diagnostic report so we can decide exactly what we need in a liaison so they can guide us in who to hire and, moving forward. So excited to find out more information about that. I'm also excited to announce that, we did hire Katie Rexford.
I know this is happy for a lot of people, kind of bittersweet for some other people, but she was very excited to, move on in representing our school district and supporting our students and staff. And she is going to be our next principal starting in July 1 at the junior senior high school. And so just letting everyone know that we are going to conduct the summit principal search. We're working on it. The job's been posted. We're going to process as we did for the junior senior high school.
I think it's really important to have our our teachers part of those interviews. We had our DAC chairperson. So as we move on to Summit principal search, we will have a group of we'll have two interviews, groups. One will be Summit Elementary staff and one of their parents either from the Sacrodact. And then the other group will be the district leadership teams. And, I'm happy to announce that we already have four candidates that have applied for that job, and I just posted it last night at, like, 10:00.
So, and I know of at least two more people who reached out that are planning to apply. So I'm excited to get that done, bring someone else on, and keep moving forward. I also wanted to just talk a little bit about our community connections. We've had a few since the last board meeting. We met with small business owners and local business leaders as, Cassie already stated, but we also met with local religious leaders. Both of those meetings provided valuable perspectives and highlighted additional ways we can continue to
collaborate and strengthen our partnerships within the community. I thought they were both every community connection we've had this year has been really helpful and brings great perspective to us in ways that we can continue to bridge the gaps that we have. So I'm really happy to that we've had those, and I'm hoping to continue those next year. I also talked to Doug Miller after the business meeting, and, I am going to be I was voted in to be part of the chamber. So I have my first meeting tomorrow night or tomorrow morning.
Sorry. Not tomorrow night. And, I also wanted to report that student advisory council, we met we met on May 6 to gather feedback report regarding qualities they wanted to see in the principal search for the junior senior high school. So they also gave us feedback. And then we met with them today and talked more about, safety and security and how they're feeling at their school and got a lot of love of the perspectives of the students. And they're very honest, and, we create a safe place for them to be able to be honest with us.
So we got some really good feedback. And then, also, I know that you all know this, but the public probably doesn't know this. Lindsay has, acquired a booth for us at the farmer's market. So the district is going to have a booth there to it's not to sell anything. It's more of informational, but we are going to sign up to be at it a few probably three or four times during the summer. We're going to extend that also for the board if you'd like to take, Friday
here or there, and then principals and parent clubs if they'd like to use it as well. But it is informational. It's not to sell things. This is anyway. Correct, Lindsay? Okay. And I'm just looking through any other upcoming events that we might talked about. I know Jason's gonna talk about the third day in a in a few minutes. One other thing we haven't talked about is the summer kickoff district family fun night. So that is next Tuesday, May 19, 05:30 to 07:30. At that evening, we've invited, different community groups to come in with booths and games.
We have, free books to hand out to our students, and we are going to show, the movie screenagers, for students and their families. Our goal really is to give our families different opportunities for students during the summer besides just being on their screens. And so that's that's our Alright. Jason. I wanna start out by reiterating our thanks to John and Tony Moore with No
FlowCo and their entire group. And a big thanks to Rob. He said that I helped coordinate that, and I did very little rough for us today. So thanks for shouting me out, but it was it wouldn't happen without you. Appreciate it. And Laura and her fantastic crew detailing, they found all kinds of interesting items. Tucked away under the seats of buses advance, and they look fantastic. And we have a few more to do Saturday. Hopefully, we'll get all those knocked out, but thank you so much for doing that. The serve day, the number of participants we feel is best suited for one campus.
So we have decided to consolidate that to the junior senior high campus to help prepare for graduation, and we've notified everyone that had signed up for another location. Most of those participants have agreed to, serve at the junior senior high, so we're looking forward to that. We're gonna meet at, just a little before 8AM right in front of the district office is where everybody will meet, sign their waivers, get their equipment, and then I'll start cracking the lip. Are you still looking for more volunteers? Absolutely. So if you have not signed up is the sign up genius still live, Lindsay?
I believe it's live. Yeah. You can still go, if you go to the Woodland Park School District Facebook page, you can find the link for the sign up genius there. We would love to have anybody that wants to come and participate. I'm gonna call out the date again for everyone. It's this this Saturday, the sixteenth, from 8AM to 11AM. And then one last thing, you may have heard or not heard, but, the regulatory body that oversees our elevator in the junior senior high has red tagged our elevator
and shut it down. So we knew of an issue, several weeks ago. We ordered the part. Well, I say we the elevator repair company ordered the part. We're not allowed to work on the elevator. So we're not internally, we're not licensed to do that. But they ordered the part. It did not resolve the problem. It turns out it's something upstream from that in one of the control boards. Because of the age of our elevator, they are extremely difficult to locate, and we're still waiting on the parts. Bikes Peak Regional building department, that's the regulatory body, said, sorry.
We're not gonna give you any more time, and they shut the elevator down. Has affected one staff member. I don't know about any others, but, it will not. There's no chance it'll be up and running before school's out. So just so everybody knows, if you hear something, that's what's going on there. And it's just a key switch that's not operating. The elevator is not unsafe, but it's not passing inspection. So, we're gonna have to wait and see if we can even locate the control board. The last time we had a control board go out, I had to buy one
from a supplier in New York that very reluctantly gave the control board up, but it's significantly higher than retail price because it was the only one left in the country. If we run into that situation again, we could be looking at the only other option would be in total elevator upgrade if we can't locate the control board at all. And the last time I had a quote on that was about a $175,000. And we've been looking at the possibility of trying to upgrade the elevator. Obviously, David does not like me seeing these sorts of things.
It is the world I live. But other than that, I don't have anything else to report. I have a question about the elevators. Yes. Do we need that that elevator to be ADA compliant in our schools? K. Yeah. Well, I said it. We have other entrances that are compliant, but we do like, if we for teachers that are in the lower level of the clock tower, that that's those are the teachers that it affects, and we do have one teacher that it is affecting right now. So we're looking at possibility of relocating her to another room where it's not affecting
her ability to because no bathrooms on the lower level. So So that's not very fun. But we will figure this out, but I know it won't be able to push things out. Sure. If it is required for ADA, is there a timeline on on, like, how much time we have to fix? No. I mean, at this point, shut down and Pikes Peak is we'll have to prove that they can pass inspection for them to turn on that. Right. The the regulatory body that oversees ADA doesn't come on a rate.
Like, it's usually, like, once every four, five years. So, I mean, the the only time that would come into play is if we had an issue where it was affecting someone and we couldn't resolve it or provide alternate accommodations. Okay. Any other questions? Jason, do we have any other equipment or items within the facilities that have critical spares that we should be tracking and that you can highlight that, hey. We don't have that critical spare on the shelf if it goes into route.
Do you have a list of those type of items? I don't have a specific list. We have several pieces of HVAC equipment, but I was expecting I would a lot of those parts just aren't. It's not we couldn't obtain a critical spare if we wanted one because they don't they're just not available. We have quite a few pieces of equipment in that boat. There's not very many things that I would say, like, we keep some things in stock. The elevator pieces are something we normally wouldn't keep. Yeah. That's interesting. I tried to see if there was an extra control board when we bought the
last one, and my understanding was that was the last one in the country. So but there's multiple control boards. Like, they don't even know if it's the same one that's down right now. So, I think, TKE, the elevator repair company's coming in tomorrow, they're gonna evaluate which part of the board. Sometimes you can repair them, but oftentimes you cannot. So we'll we'll cross that bridge when we get there. But, hopefully, it's one that we can find and get that thing back up.
Alright. Thanks. You bet. Okay. So real quick. One more question. You mentioned, a handful of grants that you were applying for that were related to facilities, and I'm just wondering if there's any updates on any of those. And my best grant, board review is tomorrow afternoon between 01:30 and 03:30. We just we have to be on the live stream, and when it's our turn, we get two minutes. Oh. So it's not very long. So I'm working on my two minute presentation, and, hopefully, we'll know something. It's worth the week of June.
And that grant is just the one to provide funds for the replacement of the roof in Summit Elementary. The grant, will only provide up to 50% of the funds. It's about $1,200,000 project. So there's still a big chunk of that we would have to come up with if we are awarded the grant. There there is kind of a stipulation to that if because I had to apply for a waiver to get up to 50%. Our standard match for the district is, like, 74%, I believe, is what we would
typically have to come up with of that project. I think I've got a pretty strong case for the waiver to get us to 50%. So I've got some feedback from some of the individuals that work in that department and said they feel like we have a strong case for that. Good luck. Thank you. Yeah. Any more questions? John, a lot of questions. Good. Alright. We're good. Thank you, Jason. Okay. So that brings us to our public comment section of the evening. So please be aware that any personnel or individual student matters are considered confidential under
Colorado Colorado law, and it is out of respect of the law and our employees and students that we require those discussions to take place privately in executive session. Individual comments are limited to three minutes or a total of fifteen minutes total for a particular topic. The intent of public comment is to give the board of education the opportunity to hear your comments. However, the board will make no decisions and take no action on public comment during the meeting. Kail, Eric? Yes. Good evening. As a board, I know you are aware of many considerations for the merit contract.
However, I feel some items should be identified to the public. I have attended all of the merit board meetings since December 2025, and I attended and I attend district meetings. At a recent district audit meeting, merits audit, I sat next to I'm sorry. I was here. I sat next to holding and company CPA and managing audit partner, Tom Syshtar. After the meeting, I asked him, did the previous board and superintendent, cause this district's
financial disaster? He answered in one sounding word. Yes. I believe any new contract with Merit has to first be addressed from a financial basis. The district has recognized its current financial hardships. Although Merit is operating functionally, there could be questions to re related to its long term financial health. For example, audits from 2024 and 2025 show a decreasing fund balance with 2025 being
1,000 I'm sorry. 103,267. Is this a balance that reflects three months of operating expenses, which is considered the amount needed for a healthy reserve. Since only 2024 quarterly reports are posted online, it's difficult to review recent financial facts. A second issue which came to light while attending Merit's board meeting is a lack of communication. More than once, it's been reported at Merit board meeting that the district has not
given Merit some financial information. But the district CFO has reported an exchange of information with the Merit CFO. This can be substantiated in emails. If Merit Video recorded their meetings and listened to district meetings, it seems this problem could be resolved. And their mention to my the liaison, of course, is a major factor. It should be legally reviewed, but CRS 22Dash35104 appears to state an authorizing district can
require a charter school to video record their meetings. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Reverend Nate Williams. Did you already start it? I didn't start it. Yeah. Okay. It might take more than three minutes, but I've tried really hard, to get this under time. And I'm not asking anybody to resign. And I'm not telling you to close school even though they have almost a million dollar deficit. Okay. The world our students face so and good evening, members of the board, superintendent.
We often talk about preparing our students for the real world. We equip them with math, science, and history, but the twenty first century, the real world is increasingly interconnected and multilingual. Today, I am here to propose a bold foundational investment in our children, the establishment of a comprehensive k through 12 dual language immersion program designed to culminate in every graduating senior, earning the official state seal of biliteracy.
Here's the opportunity. Beyond the classroom, we know that linguistic proficiency is not just about vocabulary. It's about cognitive development, executive function, and cultural empathy. Research consistently shows that students who participate in dual language instruction outperform their peers in core subjects. They develop higher levels of critical thinking and possess a distinct advantage in our global economy. By integrating Spanish language proficiency, which by the way is by far and above the
number one language taught in American schools by 10 to one. We're not just teaching a subject. We're teaching a way of seeing the world. We're ensuring that a Woodland Park graduate is not limited by borders or language barriers. And, here's the gold. The Colorado seal of biliteracy. Our ultimate milestone is for our students to earn the state seal of Biliteracy from the Colorado Department of Education. This is a formal recognition of a student's diploma that certifies they have reached high
levels of proficiency in both English and another world language. This certification is a powerful asset. It's widely accepted and valued by colleges, universities, and employers alike as evidence of a student's high level communication skills and dedication. When a student walks across that stage of graduation, a seal of biliteracy acts as a passport, telling the world that this student has the discipline, the intellect, and the
communication skills to navigate a diverse environment. Here's our federal and state opportunities. The benefit of this program extends well beyond graduation day. As our students gain proficiency, they unlock exclusive opportunities for their future. Their state department scholarships, students who achieves achieve high language high levels of language proficiency cannot qualify for prestigious US Department of State sponsored programs such as the Critical Language
Scholarship and the National Security Language Initiative for Youth. These programs provide students with invaluable international experiences, further distinguishing them as future leaders and global citizens. Here's the investment in our future funding. We're also advocating for our district to remain at the forefront of national funding opportunities. Legislation such as the World Language Advancement and Readiness Act is currently being championed to
create competitive, multiyear federal grant programs to support the establishment and improvement of dual language immersion programs. By positioning Woodland Park as a leader in this space now, we prepare ourselves to capitalize on these federal resources as they become available. There's actually currently 52 districts and schools that participate in this certification program. So here's the call of action. I'm asking the board to support the planning and implementation of a district wide dual
language pathway. This is a journey that begins in kindergarten and builds upon itself year after year. For our students, it offers a competitive edge in higher education, scholarships, and the workforce. For our families, it offers the pride of preserving heritage and the joy of global connection. For Woodland Park, it signals that we are a forward thinking, innovative district that provides every child the best tools to succeed in a global society.
Let's commit to a future where every student who graduates from Woodland Park is a bridge builder, a citizen capable of speaking across lines of difference. I urged Ford to move forward the formal adapt adoption and funding of this program, including seeking federally available grants, so that we can open the doors to this brighter bilingual future. Thanks for your time, your dedication to our students, and your willingness to invest in
the collective future. Thank you, Nate. Thank you. There's just the two. Right? Alright. So that leads us to consent agenda. Sorry. Let's just double check. I didn't actually make note. I think I've heard of this. Great. I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda. Approve the consent agenda. You got a second? I second it. Any discussion? Hi. Marjolee. Hi. Davidson. Hi. Susan Est. Hi. Gordon. Hi. Green Street.
Hi. K. Now that brings us to our executive sessions. I'm just gonna make it up. Formal thing here. So, when I vote to convene into executive session for the purpose of conferring with the school district district's attorney. So I just want to clarify that, for the record that we have issues we are going to discuss in executive session to confer with, like, an attorney pursuant to
CRS 24 dash six dash four zero two four b to receive advice on specific legal questions concerning the term of Merit Academy Charter contract. So do I have a motion to go into executive session? So moved. Second. Alright. Any discussion? Marquis? Barkley. Aye. Davidson. Aye. Kevin Nash. Aye. Morgan. Aye. Green Street. Aye. Assistant. Okay. So then we will be adjourning to executive session. In the meeting, we'll have Melissa Barber, who's the inter From Capitalist in Earnest, right arm superintendent, Ginger Slocum, and our chief financial officer, David
Kuritar, along with the rest of the board members. We'll be back. We're good. Yeah. So that's Like, that coming up like, I guess in a minute, I'm gonna use that to, like, you guys and then reach a beam. Okay. Like, really, I just move on to I move on to the end of the discussion. You didn't get any better. No. We have a what? All the discussion. Yeah. You can You Yeah.
What do you mean? I was trying to remember when you guys were in with. I think it was it was I think it'd be darn close. I think it was, like, eleven around there when we came out. Yeah. I mean, it was an important day, and there's a lot of still calm there. Yeah. And next is Are you ready? Sorry. I think I'm gonna open my cookies. I don't usually eat that every night, but I need I know. I don't need them, but I need each other. Right. He's coughing here. Like, I mean, I'm ready. My cookies are ready. I'm gonna die now. I need some water. Just I'm a die now. Need some water. Got proof. I'm a watery person.
Yeah. No. I thought you'd be I turned it to you. On the record. About your bedtimes. Yep. But, we've come out of this negative session. And we, no decisions were made, and we only conversed about only conversed about legal questions concerning the terms of the Merit Academy Charter pursuant to CRS 24 dash six Dash4024B.
Alright. So that brings us down to our discussion items. First on there is the strategic plan part one. Cascio, I believe you have that. I do have that. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to, introduce the discussion, and then think we have a possible action item here. So, yes. So I I think, to bring us up to date on where we are, kinda where we've been. So we started the process in January, of course, with our whole day work session, including staff, capturing all of that.
Kind of the I was initial discussion around it, what we first called priorities or priority areas, send that out to the community for feedback, came back with the feedback that then, informed well, backing up a little bit. And that mean we also discussed our mission, vision, and values as well as our priority areas and and related initiatives and ideas around that. Brought that took that to the community, got the feedback, came back, tried to formalize that draft a little further, revised our mission, vision, and values and refined them in,
future work sessions. Also refined and discussed the goals as they were written by the board and reviewed them in work session. Initially, went in and and built kind of, like, essentially reacted to the feedback to try to identify action items and key initiatives that would that would respond to the different elements of feedback, community feedback that we heard. Also engaged the leadership team in that feedback a little bit. Just put it in front of them, gave them an opportunity to react to it, captured a lot of notes. I took those notes and summarized them for actions I thought that the board might
consider in the future work session about how we revised our mission, vision, values, and goals, specifically with the intent, trying to work towards a phase or part part one of the plan heading into our state of the district, which was our last most recent opportunity for the public to provide feedback on the strategic plan as it was written. And I think at this point now, our hope is to solidify, for the most part, the part one that we've determined, which is our mission values and what we've
renamed our original priority areas to pillars and then the, essentially, the goals with the intent of giving that back to staff and giving them the opportunity to take that a step further, identify the key initiatives, specify the the detailed key performance indicators as the, success metrics. And that's likely to happen in June. And then, plan to come back in August and, approve a final version of a strategic plan.
The I think of one what two important things I wanna note from further discussion and also from the feedback from the state of the district. One of them is the, again, the change from priority areas to pillars, which instead of saying these are our priorities, right, numbering them in any order, we actually identified pillars that actually represent the areas that we need to be thinking about for a healthy district. Right? So it's just like a a a framework to be thinking about it. And in our strategic plan and the later iteration, we identified kind of the the,
the three phase framework of stabilize, strengthen, and thrive, which should also help guide our areas of importance and urgency in terms of the way that we tackle things. And I think the most important thing I wanna have come out of this discussion and the action that we have for tonight is that we wanna give staff the opportunity to make sure the plan is reflective of our of their thoughts and priorities and needs, and we've already engaged in that. But I also think, in addition to pulling back on the key initiatives, we can
also look back at the goals themselves, give the staff the ability to kind of look at those goals through the same lens of the stabilize, strengthen, and thrive and determine which of them we would initiate and or when and still have some room for revision in that space. So I I wanna make sure that when we're talking about approving the goals, I don't think they have to be like, like, we're not even approving really the strategic plan. I think we're really just signaling our general consensus that we like the direction the
plan is going. We're ready to hand it off to staff for the phase two component, and then it can fully represent, I think, finalized goals, finalized key initiatives, finalized key performance indicators and success metrics and the iteration that we see in August. But this is essentially our version that we're handing to staff with a pretty solid, I think, mission, vision, values, very clear pillars, goals that I think reflect the feedback that we've heard and what we've discussed, think is important, and are just kind of
handing it off. So that's my that's my intro. I think the other thing I would note is that and this is something that we're talking a lot about in the where I'm working and, in terms of, like, real clarity and focus on planning that we're doing is I would also encourage staff, Ginger as you go back to them, and thinking about things from a start, keep, and stop perspective too. Like, what do we need to start doing? What do we need to keep doing? And what do we need to stop doing to say laser focus on the things that are most important to us, whether it's becoming better at something that we do
well or saying we can't do this anymore if we wanna continue to, like, really fulfill our mission. So I think the hard thing about this plan is that it feels big right now. Right? It feels big, and I've heard that feedback that it feels there's a lot of volume and a lot of ambition in, like, what we wanna accomplish, and we don't want that to feel overwhelming. At the same time, I think we can be thoughtful about how do we attack the things that are most urgent and most important to us right now and then figure out a way to build for the future. But I think that clarity and that level of focus, strategic focus is what moves
good organizations to great ones because they can accomplish the things they set out to do instead of saying, we're gonna boil those. And we wanted to be really cautious of that from the beginning. So, anyway, that's a long intro, but that's where we are. We'd love to hear other people's thoughts on where it stands, but that's my take. Yeah. And I I think because I read through the feedback after, our state of the district. Right? But people use the QR codes, which I was excited they did, and did see some of that, like, you know, comments of this is very ambitious. Right?
Ambitious one. The word actually came up several times. Mhmm. And it and it is. Right? Because a school district needs to do a lot of things well in order to meet the needs of its students. Right? Like, schools are ambitious. But I but I didn't hear anyone say I would remove this piece or that piece. Right? Like, but it it just seemed like everyone appreciated that there's a lot of work that needs to go into making sure our school is successful.
But I didn't see any feedback that said you're focusing on, you know, the wrong thing, or you should, you know, forget about, you know, community engagement for right now, or you should forget about academic excellence. Right? Like, it seems like there is a consensus that all the things we've identified are in fact important. It's just a lot to to do was the takeaway I got from it. I and I would say, yes. It's ambitious, and, yes, it it needs to be. Here's my concern.
An illustration that I've used recently when I'm trying to explain things to people, which I think we just witnessed. When we have something that's fairly important, and there's so little margin in the lives of our staff that it's two weeks before something important can get addressed. And the illustration that I've used with people is that our district from the teachers, maybe even maybe even Paris, but from everybody at all levels, it's like we have
we're playing a basketball game, and we have four players on the on the court. And there's nobody on the bench. And all of our all of our whole team are freshmen, because they're all fairly new at their job. And so my biggest concern about the plan is that we should again, I like what you just said about the goals are kind of a, hey. This is kind of what we're thinking.
But we also have are gonna have at least two well, we're gonna have two schools with brand new principals too. And I wanna leave room to dream. And I want just kind of like what Nate came and said tonight. Have any of us ever thought of that before? The dual language school? You know, I mean, my my youngest went to a language immersion school. Yeah. Charter school is is kindergarten here. Yeah. And and I think that's awesome. But Yeah. Yeah. Is that something we can initiate? I I don't know.
But I guess my point that'd be great. Right. My point is my point is, what I would propose that we do tonight is, maybe even say we're going to, vote. We're gonna agree on the strategic plan except for the goals. And just take the goals off. And, I mean, they're there, And the leadership team has them to to work on and what you said also about, you know, what are the priorities.
And and maybe we're even missing goals. Maybe there are goals that are better or more important for where we need to be as a school district and academically. And I would love for the, administration staff, teachers, whoever is pulled into that to propose goals that have a stability that are, at that first level, which I love the the identification of that, stabilize, grow, thrive.
What what give us goals that are are stabilizing with a growth mindset. You know, we're not just stabilizing because we don't wanna just stabilize. We wanna grow. But I've I I I am very comfortable with approving everything. I just, I don't I don't if if we're saying, hey. You guys take the goals and and do what you want with them, then why are we approving the goals tonight? I just say, let's let's give them the plan and let them play with the
goals and come back to the goals for us. But the idea was that we give them the goal and they figure out the how and and when. Right? Like, so what's a what's a reasonable time when you get there? What steps do you actually need to take to achieve? We're giving them 15 goals. That's huge. 15 goals is huge for the team that we have in place. What I want a strategic plan to be is energizing. Not and and the other point that I'll bring up is we have not gone
through the executive expectations this year with our superintendent. But right now, that is the evaluation tool we have. Mhmm. And that is gonna require now I would propose that we start to change that and we start to align the reporting around our goals. But heading into a new year, it's only reasonable for our superintendent to look at this rubric and say this is how I'm going to be evaluated. And so we're also asking for reporting on this monthly basis.
Some months there are three reports, due on the executive expectations level. And so I'm I'm just saying, I'm concerned that rather than giving them a strategic plan that is going to energize them and set them free and excite them with what we can do. If we get too far into it, like like, outlining the goals for sure for them, that we may be, throwing water on the fire rather than fanning the fire
just because of the workload. That's my that is my big concern right now. Well, I wanna know, like, when I emphasize a little bit of, like, the opportunity that the like, Ginger opened it up and shared the, the plan with the leadership team and, like, the number of comments and the red line on that is really significant. And I my goal was to drink to try to summarize that and bring it back to the work session and give us a chance to react to that. So I just wanna be cognizant of the fact that, like, we have I felt I have felt as though we have included staff along the way in our original
work session, the opportunities for feedback, engaging with the leadership team, and I want to solve for what you're saying. What I what I don't wanna do is is is, completely strike all of the good work that's already been done. I agree with you that we can still hand it to them, give opportunity to to evolve it based on the needs of what we have. And maybe and maybe I think that's where I think the key here too is that, like, this isn't something we're gonna accomplish all in one year or anything.
Right? That's part of the idea of the timing. And maybe that's maybe that's a worthwhile discussion to have too, which is is 26 to 29 a reasonable expectation for the scope of work that we've set out to achieve? If it's not, maybe we just need to cut it back. And maybe we're cutting things that are kind of in that thriving space where we just don't maybe expect to get to. We could give staff the opportunity to come back to us. But I but I don't what feels what doesn't feel right to me is to say, we're just gonna chop the goals up, but we're not gonna do goals at all. None. That's not a that's not a let You know? Yeah. I'm not saying we don't do goals.
I'm saying we give that piece to the staff to come back and propose to us. Yeah. And I think we I think we agree on where we're on where we are. I just don't know if that anything really specific needs to change about the language. I just don't want to I don't wanna go through the goals as a improve on the the goals. No. I don't. And not to advance them to staff, like, to approve them to serve staff? This whole this whole piece is gonna go to the staff. Mhmm. And but I don't want the staff to feel like this is this is what
they they have to work with. I want I want the staff to look at them and go, oh, these are and they know. Ginger knows. Karen knows. David knows. Everybody knows where where it's come from. Mhmm. But, I want them to have the freedom to come back with some different goals. And I think if we approach the goals, does that then actually give them the freedom to do that? Or do we why can't we just take that piece off and wait on that
piece? I'd like to present the third option. Okay. I think and I think it addresses both pieces here. So we're currently agreeing that we like the the strategic plan's mission, vision, and values Yeah. And the pillars. So we're we're good with those. And that's kinda what the board's role is, is to create that framework Right. The district to work on. So that's that was what we've done, and we put that out for a survey. We got feedback. They're listening to us from staff and community. We feel really good about that. Yep. Now we're at the point where we're kind of like on a you know, I'm
you you asked us to imagine a basketball court. I'm gonna ask you to imagine a bridge. But we're walking across this bridge with the strategic plan. Now from our listening tours, we've heard from staff, we've heard from community, and we think we've grasped the goals. And we've documented those. And this is a great opportunity to present those goals to staff and the community to get their feedback, and and it's great feedback to the board. Did we hear what the staff was saying? Did we miss any goals?
Or did we put too many in? But keep the goals in there so that we can use that across that bridge and hand it for goals and say, ask those questions. You know what? This is kind of a collaboration back and forth. And now we're modeling that for our district, for our community, that we're working together to come up with what those goals are. We think we have an answer. What do you think? Give us that back. The other end of that bridge, like we did the mission, vision, vision, and values, and pillars, other end of that bridge is where the staff takes the yep.
The determined upon goals and creates those key initiatives and key performance indicators. That's where the staff gets in and make sausage and says, these are the timelines. These are the stabilization efforts. These are the the the the strengthen and drive timelines. But we're at that bridge point. And while we're walking up over that bridge to hand the strategic plan to the staff, I don't wanna dump the goals into the river and then not have them see that because it's an opportunity for them to to see that we heard them.
And I don't wanna lose that chance. I think we're saying the same thing. And I hear your question, Carol, is that you don't wanna approve them exactly as is. Right. But we sell I just wanna make sure that we can move them forward to staff. Oh, absolutely. You know what I mean? I have a suggestion too. Because at the CASB meetings about, like, what's four's level, what, you know, governance Uh-huh. That kind of thing, they call them ends. And I think that helps us see, like, well, the end of '29 or whatever
year. These will we're hoping we'll have be at least starting on the five is kinda and so maybe year one, fiscal year twenty seven, we're not actively doing 10 of the goals. Maybe we're only doing exactly that. Yeah. Where they're already at maybe most of them are stabilized, and one is, like, we're actually able to strengthen this one. And and that maybe is where the the admin comes back to us and says, after their retreat, like, hey.
For fiscal year twenty seven, these are the goals we we're wanting to pursue or the ends where, like, at the stabilized phase. These are where we will strengthen. And these other ones, we're not their norms rise and we're not ready for that. And then Yeah. Create only key initiatives within where they see us flying. Yeah. And that that was kind of what I saw when we said, okay. Here's here's what we want to achieve. You tell us what the timeline looks like and how you're doing it. Because to me, like, when I look at the goals, none of them feel very,
like like, I don't feel like saying improve student academic performance. Like, is that boxing anybody in or telling them how to do it or telling them when it has to be done by or, you know, the other goal, right, is it's it's also not an exceptional goal because it's not doesn't have good metrics. So, you know, to But we're not selling the metrics. Right? Like, so so then we because it has to start with where we are now and what improvement looks like. So as as board members, we're hoping we will continue to improve, and then we
send that to the school. And we say, how okay. How do we you're the expert in how and and how long you tell us and and send that back to us. But, like, as a board, we're hoping that all of the the things that we're doing and and what we're striving for and the time we're spending is going to help improve, you know, academic achievement. Or I think you you could sort of argue that, like, the goals as they're written now are more reflective of priorities in a sense than they are written as
goals in the more traditional structured smart. However, you would attack that. Right? And the key initiatives are almost like the the goals that are gonna advance those priorities. So, I mean, the language is is the language, but I I I think that, like, Carol, I think we are all hearing you and saying, like, we don't want to, like, crush staff with a crazy strategic plan that feels unreasonable. But I also wanna give a meaningful hand off of the work that we've done, and I think that's what what Rob is suggesting with the bridge approach. So I guess I would ask you, like, what your or ask you all of
you. Like, if approving the goals feels too much, like, we're approving them as they exactly are and this strategic plan, this part of it is in stone and it can't change, then what what would be the right course of action? And what would you you mentioned, Carol, like, maybe taking the goals off, but that doesn't mean taking them away. Right. Exactly. Taking them off of the language of what we're approving. Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. And I also think the most important thing is the discussion that we've had because I want it crystal clear for the staff as to what our expectations actually are.
Yeah. Because I fear that that we don't you know, you talk about the bridge, Rob, which is great, but we haven't crossed the bridge enough times to know each other well. And I and I am concerned that there was maybe some feeling that, hey. We have to come back with exactly this and with all of these initiatives under each one. And I think the discussion that we've had tonight is helpful in setting expectations for
the staff. Yeah. And that and that has been my biggest concern. I I see the workload. I see the workload. And the thought of of increasing the workload is hard. Yeah. And and one of the things I wanted to talk about tonight was, the expectation of, like, when we would have any sort of metrics. Yeah. Even set. Like, not that there would be numbers attached to it yet, but, like, even to to say, hey. Here's what we are are going to be looking at.
I think it would be unreasonable to ask the staff to have anything completed before the beginning of next year. Like, there is way too much happening right now. I I don't think it's reasonable for us to say we're approving the metrics by August. I think maybe maybe it's presented in August if we get feedback from the from the staff that says we can have that done. So that that would that was my caution was that I don't wanna put extra burden on them to say, hey. You need to set, hey. We've created this thing, and now you have a month to give us your KPIs.
Like, I I don't think that's reasonable, but I still like the idea of of setting goals. Well, and what if, I mean, if maybe the other adjustment that we can make instead of saying approving it as is is that we introduce the the language of of draft. Because I think that still that implies that the whole thing is a work in progress, but we're still approving the work that's been done. Agreed. So it's not saying this is the final approved strategic plan. It's just saying this is a version of it that we all feel good about. We wanna hand off to staff, and then we're going to continue to build on it over time.
Would you need to build that? I like that. I like that. I'd like to invite Ginger into the conversation. Yep. Just your comments on what we've talked about. Well, first of all, I sincerely appreciate all the work that's gone into this. And I think, every time I look at a new version, it looks even better. And so, I like the phases, the stabilize, strengthen, and thrive. And I feel like Karen and I planning on working on this and working on it with principals, at the June retreat. It might be that we work on some of it in July when we have
our other retreat when everyone comes back, and we'll have some new staff with us. I personally or professionally feel like stabilize and strengthen are the areas we should start building out because I don't know like, I think we need to be able to see where we're at before we necessarily start seeing drive because some things are gonna stabilize probably sooner and easier than others, and even be in the strengthen phase or
could even be there. Some of these things could be there now, but we we really need the time to sit down and look at it. I like I like the goals. I do think it would be worth giving us a little bit of time to just again, we had a leadership meeting with principals, and we didn't have as much time as, like, I would have liked. But I think it all looks very much like what you want to see in any school you're walking into. But I think that, we definitely need time to do it well and come back
and present it and make it manageable and not feel overwhelmed by it. And so I think, like, the the first step for the for the staff would be to look at each of these areas and and identify which phase we're currently in. Mhmm. Right? Is is this a a thing where we need to stabilize? Are we already in stabilization phase and we can build on strengthening? Or are we already, you know, pretty strong and we're in the thrive phase for each of them? And but only build out a goal for the next phase.
So, like, if we're in a place where we just need to stabilize, then you're only building goals in the stabilization phase. You're not building for the next two. Yeah. Yeah. You're just building for that one. Yeah. Unless you know them. There are some opportunities where within the CTE environment where you know you're, in two years, you have to have 100% of students at a certain point of three different pathways. So you know you've gotta be there. Now maybe that is stabilizing. Mhmm. Mhmm. But between here and then, there's a couple of activities or activities that the KPIs
that you can address. But I don't I you know, we're I agree. We don't wanna speak in what we believe the KIs and the KPIs are. That's where the staff comes back across the bridge and says, here's a way we think. What do you guys I I'm I'm comfortable if we move on. I'm comfortable with the draft. Draft? I love the draft. Okay. So I'm comfortable if we wanna move on to the next year. If we, like, need the notion that it was to actually approve anything.
I think what we would love to do is be able to feel comfortable posting something on the website and saying, yeah, this is a working strategy. Right. It's moving that Yeah. Which is what I said right, like, when when I was presenting it in the the state of the district, and I meant it. Right? Like, this is never set in stone. Right. It's something we're ready to move forward with and iterate as necessary, but, like, we like this space right now, and we'd like to start taking steps to move forward and implementing it. So, like, again, you know, if we feel good and we can say let's push
this to the website and then start talking with staff about asking them to to provide feedback on what, you know, what state we're in and and what a what a measurable goal could be. Now maybe that and and I don't even know that we need to take a formal, you know, motion to approve the the strategic plan as as written. Yeah. We're not approving the strategic plan as written. We're I would recommend just labeling it as draft, living documents, all the term or expectation with it. But draft Working documents. The draft states that we're giving this whole property to make comments to it.
And it could be even all the way up to the the values. You know? There may be some that come back and say, what about x? What? Yeah. Just to clarify that, Keegan, so are you saying that we just wouldn't act on the action item? Are you You don't have to. Yeah. I I was just pointing that out as as a thing that could happen. Right? Like, there's no legal requirement that we as a board approve, a strategic plan. I think it would be very good for us as a board to come to
a consensus that we feel good about this and we're willing to post it on the website. I think I think from what I'm hearing, we are actually at that place, and maybe that's just what we do. And this discussion was enough to say, yes. We have a consensus. Let's post it to the website and see what feedback we get from here. Yeah. I feel like that's basically the same thing that we've just decided on with, like, a draft. Like, we're just we're we are With publishing a draft. So even if that language itself I think it's failed and we can still take action. Yep. And I I think I think so I I think what we're we're getting stuck
on semantics of what action is. Like, we can move forward on consensus without it. If we make a motion and approve it, it does feel a little bit more stuck in stone. I think for for some folks, it might present a different message to the staff who is trying to, execute on on what we've made a motion for. Whereas if we just say, hey. We've got a consensus that this is what we'd like to move forward with, and we post it to the website and have some requests, then that might ease some of the tension that Carol was talking about.
And it's still going forward. We're still proceeding. It's it's just slightly different language that helps the staff not feel so stressed. Right. So I just wanna clarify. So you're suggesting we don't take action formal action. You have a vote on it tonight. So how do we do that? Do we just skip it? Like, how does that work? Well, when we get to that, I would say, do we have a motion to do this? And And no one has to make a motion. Correct. Okay. Okay. That's all I was wondering. Yeah. Yeah. And I would I would just say post it as a draft. Yeah. That means say it's a draft. Alright. I know. I don't like the draft. I know. Okay.
Because draft feels like any part of it could change. And I don't intend to change the mission or the values. Like, I feel like we've I agree with that. If I leave that open, like, you could go on forever and ever, and people will always have something to say. At some point, you have to make a decision. But I do think the goals and or the timeline and and KPIs are still, a fluid part of this discussion. Okay. So maybe we do have an action to approve the mission, vision, values, and pillars and say, but the goals are draft for the superintendent to take to I I
would just leave it. Unlike Keegan, I would just not vote on it. Well, but then it leaves it wide open for the staff to think. Unless we communicate really clear to Ginger right now that we'll ask him for Hey, Rob. I think you're gonna win. You guys. That was the goal the whole time. It's not right now. So, anyway, we we still have time to mull this over. The action item isn't right now. We're still in our discussion. It won't be till we get to the action section. I think we've discussed this Enough.
Enough at this point. We're not taking action at this part of the agenda because we're not in the action items. We're gonna go through the rest of our discussions, and then we'll get to the action items. And at that point, someone can make a motion. We could have another discussion after a motion, first and second, and vote however is appropriate at that time. K. Okay. So then I will pass it over to Laura for the financial committee slash fiscal oversight committee. Perfect.
So, first, I just wanna say that the charge I shared is another draft working document. I think it's a rather large scope, and so totally open to input on that. But, I wrote it to be able to be just put into our GP seven policy, amended in, with similar, you know, purpose, which is the charge and then membership.
That's the format that our our committees in g p seven have. I condensed multiple committees from other districts into this one. Some districts have long range planning committees and, mill bond oversight committees, audit committees. And this one, could it starts with the scope, but there is one point that
basically says we can task them with a financial, find it right now. Any financial matter that we want them to review and make recommendations for. And so that gives it an open open, you know, ability to look at things that come up down the road. At the sources I use where my own I attended a fiscal oversight committee and
little bond oversight committee in Douglas County and used the d eleven audit committee charge that Glenn Gustafson shared with David Curator and I. And then also looked at Jeff from public schools for their policy around it, around fiscal oversight committees. And then also put in some scope that were things the auditor gave us feedback. One thing that stood out to me on his presentation was that we as a
board need to take ownership in order to see clean audits happen again and and not just get to the point of the presentation and feel like we're rubber stamping. It's rather we've been involved in the process. And I see the committee as being that in between between the admin and the board to keep us in the loop on that. Yeah. Pros and cons are that the Douglas County board member said it's her favorite committee
to promote, that she really learned a lot about school finance. And I think in a time where school you know, when you have boards changing over and school finance be it's such a huge subject to learn and understand. To have a committee of community members who are committed to understanding school finance, and and then they are advising future boards Mhmm. And and serving in that capacity, I think, is something we don't have.
We've been missing. I think, it's accountability to the community, which is something they've been asking for and we want as well. The cons are just I don't want it to be too much overload on our CFO and finance staff, and I so I wanna just be mindful of that as we consider it. So the things I want to discuss I'm hoping we can discuss are just the charges, your thoughts on what I've written here, and then membership, and then next steps.
So I I I think our district needs this. I think it falls in line with our, fiscal, goals that we've set in our strategic plan. I I agree with all the the pros that you mentioned about making sure that there is some form of continuity between board elections since since that can be a fairly quick turnover, to have a stable group of people who know some of the history and can and can help inform the board. I think based on some of our recent conversations and and some of our other
contracts we have going on, we'll wanna make sure the language in this is is tight so that, the board retains the authority to appoint or, or select in in a way that makes the most sense for the district. That's my only current concern. What would be the I mean, is there I don't think it's specified, but is there any kind of a term to understand what's going on? That is in when the committee goes and creates bylaws.
But I'm not sure if we can have a say in the fiscal oversight committee that I observed. It was three year terms, but no limit so they could be renewed. And, I did note that the committee would make recommendations of member appointments at to be approved as consent agenda. And that was something that the board member at, Douglas County said they do as
a way to acknowledge, like, this this committee is doing the work to preview, and we don't want to micromanage the committee. But I don't know that that's necessary to keep that exact wording in. That was a question I had. Yeah. I think, like, from my perspective, the the importance of this is that there's another group of people who are overseeing and and have access to the financials so that it's not relying on just the board or or just the CFO.
Obviously, our district has seen what can go wrong if if people in charge are either not paying attention or don't know what to look for. And so when we're looking at this thinking forward, right, this group is not always going to be the board in charge. And I think it'll be you might want to have parameters on what makes somebody eligible to be on the committee, you know, criteria of, experience on there so that going forward, you know that the committee is is comprised of people who have the
knowledge necessary to actually be able to advise. And on here, it did say Yeah. Showing I'm not sure if I can write now. Oh, who demonstrated working familiarity familiarity of finance and the commitment to expand their knowledge of school finance. I don't know if that's I think we might want I think we might need to be more Yeah. Explicit. K. Well and I would I mean, I would think part of that too, Keegan, is like the, city council.
For all of the groups that the city council works with, they interview, they ask questions, and I think to a degree, we're gonna be able to tease that out, you know, in the applicants as they We we are. And I trust that we will. I think what I'm saying is I see what happened with the last board and who they who was hired as a superintendent and who was then hired as CFO. And they were okay with bringing people in who had huge effects over the district
that did not have, but really the experience necessary to be successful there. And I just I think maybe I'm being overcautious, but I wanna make sure that this is a committee that someone in the future can't just fill up with their buddies and everyone's still giving a rubber stamp and the committee winds up being useless. That that is my only concern. I agree with you, Keegan. I think we could create the standard and something that is approved by the board board. It would have to be changed by a future board, and then it would be
obvious what standard they're changing to if they want to or what they're taking out of. So I to your point, I think it's important to have that in there very strongly. I also like the fact that it gives David, it helps multiply his forces Mhmm. And and more people to pull on it to to help with some of the tasks. One thing that I would probably want to highlight is who is the lead on this on this committee? Who is the leader? The chair.
Mhmm. And it gives it reports to the board, but who's gonna be the the person who says, okay. Right. I'm making that decision. Who's that guy? Hope you have. Yeah. So the SOC in Douglas County has a chairperson, and they're the they but they the CFO is a nonvoting member. Okay. How did they choose the chairperson? That I I think that the voting members vote unchair. The committee committee members? Yes. But if they choose one, that's the person.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. So it's And and I would say so what I hear you saying because I think even the term I know for sure is in the bylaws and eligibility, I think, might be in there too. I didn't particularly rebook for that. So we're wanting to pull that out of bylaws and have it in policy so that it is obvious as policies change, hopefully. Or or not being followed. Yeah. I think that yes. Is that something well, when you say policy, is that, like, board policy that we
would need to Right. Since this thing is the the charge? It will be four. This is the yeah. The 49 Which at g p seven Gotcha. That maybe call it, like, charge or purpose and membership outlined, and then also, another a second committee. And so we will This would be a third committee with these purpose and membership. It's just like a committee policy, and you're saying Just add to that. Yes. So I think maybe a sec no.
I guess that's just drafted. When are you recommending that this move forward, Lauren? No. Yeah. I we are also due to be reviewing GP seven, and so I think it would fit to review it at the same time that we're looking to amend it. Mhmm. And then which would then take it, you know, if we're amending it, we'd need to vote on the policy. But I think that then says the committee is a go, and then we start
getting up soon. We send out application form for community first to fill out. And and the hope is well, yeah. Well, that's a good yes. That's what I'm gonna say. Yes. Sounds good. Is there a minimum number of members? Is that something that's been stated in the bylaws? So this is saying five voting members and two or three non voting members, which, I I don't know if we wanna even say just two or three because some
staff could sit in and and get be needed for input, different finance staff or and so I would I would say you can leave it at this. Okay. And and with the opportunity to invite anyone who's necessary to come and speak at something, but these would be the people that would make up the committee and then are the ones that are, you know, this this is this is when we meet, etcetera. It doesn't have to then eliminate the ability to invite an expertise expert to come.
And just like any other committee, this will be open to the public. So I was more concerned about if there's, like if if there's only two or three people that are interested, at what point is the committee itself no longer viable? Mhmm. Mhmm. I don't know if that's probably we would have, but I just wanna be cognizant of, like, how we can add more people for sure. But, like, is it a committee if there's only one or two? Sure. Yeah. Right. And and I did yeah. Do we need to put that in, I think, a minimum of, I don't wanna
say a minimum of three because I just feel it feels too little. Well, I think I think what you have here is, like, okay. You need at least one DAC member. Like, I think this points out what who has to be on it. And if you don't have that, then we need to go find them. Yeah. And and I think I think it's important. I don't like, I don't think we can I think it's okay for us to to push this forward, and the expectation is this is required just like with that? Right? Like, there I'm sure there have been times where people weren't quite as interested, and
you go, hey. Can you join the deck? We really need you. Right. And someone's kind of maybe slightly reluctantly joining deck, but we need we always have deck because yeah. And I think we can kind of use that same logic with this where, like, no. We will still find people. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. K. I just wanna make sure because, like, if you have I have been committed to two, I just don't know if it's worth having one. You know? Or just I would never have. So we advise add to the membership portion eligibility and term limit or term.
Mhmm. Also part of the operational procedure or an application process will be, you know, letting them know, like, this will be once a month and a couple hours. So this is your commitment level and, there's something else. Ensuring the board retains the ability to select members. Is that what you're looking for? I think that was in, like because always the this VolkerSite Committee will have to
have make recommendations and and can't don't have any authority to act on behalf of the board. They can only make recommendations to the board. Right. So that is where we maintain or the board maintains Was the rub on that earlier, though, that it just because it's in the consent agenda as, like, a I don't know if that I don't know. But you seem to, like, bulk that a little, Keegan, of, like, that's maybe a rubber stamp situation. Like Consent I don't know. I honestly even know how you would, like, start addressing certain consent agenda that you
approve of. But Well, I mean, when you come up to that part in the in the agenda, and it would say, if you have a preferred motion to approve the consent agenda, you some you can say even if it was motion and seconded, at that point, you'd say, hey. I have a problem with this thing, and then it would be a discussion. I I am personally not a huge fan of consent agendas. I don't like block voting on things. Yeah. Like, I I just think things should you know?
If it's important enough for us to vote on it, it should be And how do we handle the deck? That's not a consent agenda item, isn't it? It's a it's a discussion item and an action item. Right? That feels like this feels like significant enough to be worthy of public discussion. I would agree. That would be my meaning as well. And then, again, just double checking what they're responsible for and if you have any other contractual obligations to have people on it. So I just wanna clarify, like, the task force that you've engaged, Carol, is, like,
noting that, Laura mentioned, like, this oversight could be broad. Like, it could involve things like an 09:11 or whatever. But, is it would there, can they coexist, I guess, is my question? Or, like, is this intent as a task force is to be a definitive endpoint. Right? And this is an ongoing effort. This is the endpoint coming up. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. K. Yep. So how should I get the revised version of this? Would it be work session? I think that's the the plan, right, is for us to discuss this in the
next work session because sorry. Whenever we're talking about g p seven, bring a revised thing, we can do further conversation. And then at the board meeting following that, we would vote on it as part of the reviewing of g p seven since this is being added to that. Oh, do we have to read the policy before we can go down it? The whole policy here? Since it's a new one Yeah. We'll have to have two readings of it, I think.
Well, if we're gonna add in this d p seven is already Right. Right. In addition. I mean, like, last time when we made a change, I mean We didn't read it in that code. There was this one? Yeah. Reading in that. Okay. So we could potentially read it in June Mhmm. Meeting as a first, and then it can be approved in the August, which would still be, you know, at start of school year. And then send out applications. Mhmm. Because even you think, like, the deck, assignments that happen, this is usually, like, September.
Yeah. Usually, September. We're trying to work. Sooner. Yeah. We just need more hours with the September, October, so you have to have it in the first quarter. Right. So it's a quick turnaround. It is a quick turnaround. But I think it could work the same way, and we could vote on kind of at the same time when we vote on deck where we have recommendations come forward and so that all of our committees are set September. So then would it not even be in this next work session because we won't have done the reading yet? Could it be in Oh, no.
No. No. The work session is for discussion. So we'll we'll cover, we'll just do g p seven in the next meeting even if it wasn't supposed to. We'll talk about it, kinda go through if there's anything that's in the current form that we need to change. We'll bring this in, do a last revision, and then we'll read it as a draft in June. And we can approve in July assuming if that works out. And then in September, we could start, voting on members k.
Along with our deck. Any more discussion on that one? Alright. Moving on to Thank you for your time. My do not disturb has already turned off to my phone because someone has my bedtime. That was a while ago. Thanks for hanging in there with us, dude. I think I'm sure you've just sent you all before at some point, but I peak at about 7AM. Yes. And it's a trend on trend down. Mhmm. Generally, I'm asleep by this time. I'm I am also usually in bed right now.
Yeah. Alright. If you all have the budget packet and say just a couple of things about that. Obviously, we've got to review the past of balanced budget and that doesn't mean income and expenses, using this year's revenue. We can dip into fund imbalances to do that. So, it's not in here as far as, appropriating whatever unassigned reserves that we have,
but that will be in It's been in every budget, so that will be there. I think I have an example in here of using a fund balance for one of one of the accounts. CDE training. So I went to CDE training probably last summer, and Glenn spoke eloquently. He's like, you work really hard. You spend a month. Your board reviews it. They approve it, and then you throw it out. And what he meant by that is it's just a living absolute living document. So the really important one is that true up, mid year true up, because that's
your last chance to really appropriate the right amount of money. So only say that to what you have in your hands is already outdated. So, the legislature passed the school, as far as I know, so CDE this evening rolled out the newest spreadsheet of school funding. And there's some good news in there. I guess we didn't lose anything if that's good news. Medicare found out today they're cutting some of the funding, so that was bad news. So every day, it's kind of something new.
So, Karen landed a big grant and working on another one, and we might hear about that before the budget gets voted on. So I'll only share all of those things. This is very fluid. And, so I'll just move on. I'm just gonna say this right now because this is so visually wonderful to and I really appreciate that we have actual budget variance and percent change listed out on
here because I can tell you from looking at past year's budgets, I had to go find previous years and sit them next to each other and trying to compare where things went was, absolute nightmare. And so thank you for making this easy to see. And just on that note, I I actually because this year is not finished, I used '25. Also did that. That was two Yeah. I cheated. I have a I have a column that you don't see that actually has this
year forecast because, that addressed one of Laura's questions that she's sent me that I I'll talk about later. But there is a couple different this current fiscal year is kind of an anomaly. It's like BOCES is in our budget. Fiscal year '25, it was not, and our budget next year, it is not. So it's actually a little cleaner comparison side by side. The couple of things that are in there.
So the problem let's see. I have an expanded version of what you have. So I had the cover sheet. I kinda ran down all of the funds at one page. So you can see that at the very bottom, the net change in fund balance is a negative $18.07 $0.02. We may be able to project this. Work again. Yes. Thank you. Sorry. I just look at the people in the audience. I thought it'd be nice if they didn't stare at their phones. I know this, but everything's We've got a big screen. Yeah. Everyone's been looking forward to this.
So Yeah. You can keep that hand aside. It'll come. So, fund 10, basically, running that to a breakeven. So not relying on any reserve funds to operate it. And there's a lot of things that have to happen right to actually make this play out. And I'll get when I go through the other ones, we'll dive deeper into that. So risk management is pretty self explanatory. It's insurances, different policies go into that.
General fund ends up shoring that up. I don't know if we need to talk about that. Sid Sip has been our insurance provider. I've, they told me our rate's gonna go down this year, which is good news. However, I think I used the same number. The shopped it to a couple different places. One of them looked at it and said we can't even we can't touch it. So, the other one's in underwriting, getting close to underwriting with Hub. So we'll see what how that comes back.
But that's risk management. Food service, in essence, runs at breakeven. So we get in some USDA, products. We get bunch, payments from students and teachers, and we get subsidy for the food. And so we really don't put anything into it nor does merit. It's just kind of a wash account. So it's food service grants and special programs, fund 22, and that is also breakeven. So those are the grant monies that we get.
So title one, two, three, all of those funds go in there, and, we basically have to balance them. That's what Chris was talking about at the audit. It's like you gotta tie out your grants. We get a million. We got a to the penny show, we got a million, in expenses. So pretty self explanatory. The student activity fund from '23, This is another question Laura had, which I I can address. So what is going into that is all of the student fees that we're collecting
for classes, for athletics, for activities, just school fees. I think elementary just collects x number of dollars per student, things like that. That all goes into the fund '23, and those funds it's pretty well protected under statute. So what goes in there needs to be spent. All fundraising is going in there. So if someone fundraise, I think they did, like, a golf simulator a couple years
ago. That's where that money has to go. So it's all of those type of dollars. We don't move those. Some people are concerned, hey. You can move those into general. It's like, no. We don't. So, actually, to answer Laura's question that she had sent me, if you look at the fund well, the fund balance beginning, which I guess if we when we turn there anyways, you're gonna see a beginning balance is pretty staggering. And from our work, I went back ten years in bank accounts.
And this the school accounts, student activity accounts have been, like, mushroomed out for oh, I stopped ten years. Okay. I'm not learning anything. The money has been sitting there. So class fees, student fees, whatever donations go in, and they come out every year. But that like a high school quarter million dollars just stays in there year after year. And so we're looking into that. Part of what we have determined, which I can't say it's all of it, but part of it is, some fundraising or something will go into the school accounts, and
then somehow district over the years has been paying for some things. And it's like, okay. No. Money goes in one account for a purpose. Money comes out. So that's the way we're doing things now. There's you know, looking back, it's almost like like forensic accounting, going back and figuring out what should those account balances at that. So that is part of our team as we dug out of fiscal year twenty five. We're now having time to go back and actually look at that. So we should know and, hopefully, we'll know a lot more of the June 10
meeting in that. Transportation fund fund '25, and that one's really in question. So when I talk about things are fluid, I talked to, the CFO over at Merit Academy this morning. So we talk about every two weeks, and I asked to watch transportation. Are you guys in with the district? Are you out? You know, what are you gonna do? And her answer was, they haven't made a decision yet. I feel like they're gonna vote on their budget next week.
Mhmm. It's like I you should know by then and their answer was, well, not necessarily, which is true. I mean, you can always come back and amend, you know, especially if their students are gonna pay for it. So I don't know what to do. That's something I think we'll know at the end. And what I have in this budget is Merit actually participating with the district, and we're doing a cost sharing. Some of the questions were, do, does merit pay more like, do their students pay
more than our students? This year, it's the same pricing. Next year, I mean, they they sent out a survey to their parents and asking, hey. It's $600. What will that do to either your child's attendance at Merritt, or, would you ride your the bus anymore? And, you know, would you if you won't pay 600, what might you pay? So I don't know what any of the answers are. I only read the survey. But somehow we need to hash it out with them, a transportation agreement if they're gonna work with us. I can't imagine that they could do their own thing.
That's one of the options that they talked about. Well, we could do continue with you. We could do something on our own. We might not do transportation. I have no idea which direction they're gonna go. But I do know there's no way that we could have our transportation. They could have their own separate, and it would be less it'd be more cost effective than collaborating and jointly contracting with the company. So I'm not sure transportation's worth talking that much about in this, but there are
increased bus fees at least in this draft that more near where what Merit was sending out. So I just I think it's important that, especially if they don't participate and we wanna keep transportation, the fees are obviously gonna have to go up. So the other part of transportation, and Jason's not here so I'll speak for him happily, is maybe reconfiguring transportation, you know, reducing some routes.
Someone drove behind school bus and said, my gosh. There was, like, 10 stops in a mile. And it's like, can we shorten those, consolidate those? You know, there's some things that we would need to do with Durham. So in this budget was Jason negotiating about a 150,000 reduction out of the 1,100,000 contract with, CIRM. So that's that's in here as well. And that all could go out of the window tomorrow morning when I come in. And then capital projects, fund 43. And you can see there was a negative last year, and that was in Chris's
report. And that should have been in him and I communicated, and it's I don't know. He did not, like, put he he's like, well, we wrote 95 journal, like, you know, adjusting journal entries, some of which we had written. So it was a collaborative effort, but this one did not get in there. And he just really I don't know. It didn't get in there, and I was disappointed. It didn't. No one knew about this until we ended up getting all the data in from Alio and cleaning up bank recs and doing the financials.
So no one knew about this, but it's close to a million dollars that was spent in fiscal year twenty five. Capital account went negative. It should have been shorn up by the Jekyll Fund. That's my point. You know, all these funds should be balanced out at the end of the year. So what that means to us is, you know, our unassigned fund balances that we thought we had over in general just dropped because we need to shore that out. We're gonna do it this year, which means next year is kind of a clean slate, And I've only been a 100,000, so this is I'm sure where my concerns
are. My concerns are this 100,000 because we have a two year history of spending about 300 to $3.50. So this current year, we had two boilers at Summit and that that HVAC unit, over the high school. And so only had I I'm working to comply with the state saying, hey. We're gonna have a balanced budget, and this is one of the items that is cut in this version. So I hope in a month, I come back and present the final version that
that is no longer a 100, that it's up to a more expected number. So but I just wanna share that with you. I'm and just really quick. I'm curious on that, like, is capital expenditures, like, inclusive of all the maintenance type of work that we do, or is it just big like, really big part substantial Something that's big enough we're gonna put on the fixed asset report. Okay. Gotcha. And boiler. Mhmm. Correct. Like a or two. Elevator. Elevator. Yeah. So So the big one is really fund 10.
I thought maybe we'd spend a lot of time on fund 10. And, so what you're seeing is the beginning balance. So in 2025, 8,200,000, and that is gonna come in because we had to do the adjustment for the cap to shore up the capital. And I'm projecting that, this year will end with about 3,000,000 in it. So that's down significantly. I'm projecting at the end of twenty twenty seven that it won't be lowered, that
it's gonna be about the same. So we just can't afford to to deficit spend anymore out of general. We've really hit that limit. Don't wanna violate Taber, and with that 3,000,000 is actually below, like, a ninety day. You know, we need to get it back to almost $6.05 5 plus to get to that ninety day reserve. CDE highly recommends, sixty day reserve, but ninety day increases everyone's comfort level including CDE.
But they're like, boy, if you fall below sixty day, that's not good. And this is below 60 between 30 and 60. So alright. Local revenue actually is going up over 25, which is shocking a little bit because there was some sales tax money in local. But what's happening is there's more property tax being generated two years later. But the state's formula, if you ever looked at those funding sheets, every dollar of
property tax we get in, they cut a dollar out of state shares. So I talk to many people in the community and they're always like oh my gosh my property tax went up, you guys gotta have tons of money. It's like no there's a formula, you can go up and pull our funding sheet out of the CDU website. So every dollar property tax, state ships in one less dollar. So you can see that actually when you look at the state revenue is down. And so those two offset each other, which is unfortunate. So federal let's see.
Federal revenue, I think I'm showing that. Dropping. I'm just looking at state shares. Not a whole lot of change other than the state equals the state shares numbers dropping. On the federal side, so there's some, Medicaid cuts that are already in this budget, but I heard today that there's additional cuts that I need to go back and put into this version in terms of the next month. And then there isn't some BOCES there's some IDEA money from BOCES that will be
flowing through. It flew flowed through in this year, last year, and this coming year. And I tried to be take a conservative approach. I'm working with the BOCES budget too, and I need those two, our budget and their budget, to fit together. So I took a conservative approach on on the flow through of IDEA money and ECEA money as well. Merit Academy, net impact there, And I work with Jennifer, so their number is actually
gonna change to, I think I have, their number, the pass through for merit is gonna go up a little bit. So there it the other good news today is Erica published our student count. So before I've talked about our pie is fixed at our $21,970,005.00
5. That's the pie. And that's because we were held in a hold harmless for this year. Well, our student count here in the district operating schools as well as merit has now grown. We're bucking the long term trend of decline, forecasted to actually grow Awesome. Which is really exciting. So every student that either goes to Meriden or here is adding 13,000 more to the overall district, which is great news.
So so I thought I'd share that as well. So that number will get updated and I think Erica will update it Jesus. Once or twice well, probably one more time before the June meeting. So, so I'll plug in at least That's based on current registration. Correct. Yep. So that was really exciting to see. Yeah. Really happy. So it sounds like families are returning Yeah. To the district. Yeah. Ginger, can you send us more information about that for our future June letter?
Would you like just each school and how many and Yeah. Just an update on an enrollment or what we're forecasting. Yeah. I can do that, please. And compared to, 2025, the, the state funding number has gone up. So this year, it's third or next year, it's gonna be 13,014, I think. That's up from, like, 12,300. So that's good. So I'm excited. I don't know where it'll go, but keep these registrars busy.
So that's the federal merit. And so at the bottom, I think I've got transferring to fund 18 and which is risk management into, fund 43. So these are are, kind of those year end adjustments we need to make to get all the funds balanced out. So I'm including those in here as well. Lower fund the formula error, so I've gotta fix that one. Thanks for reading. I guess she she did good work. Alright. Any so we went through salary and wages.
So, actually, salaries are actually down pretty significantly. If we add in the benefits compared to two years ago, they're down, you know, 2,600,000. And that's a significant number of people, many of which left the district last year. So When you say salaries are down, you're just saying the total amount that we're paying in salaries is down, not that people's salaries are lower. Correct. Okay. Just wanna make sure. Yeah. I don't know where anyone's staying. I'm like, I don't want anybody here that their salary's down.
You know, same with benefits. It doesn't mean that they're they're picking up more of their benefits or what is that? They well, with fewer people, there's fewer benefits, but there is and I don't the number it's probably about $40 a month for health insurance. Might be a little bit less than that for people participating in that. On top of what they were paying? Correct. Okay. Yeah. So that is there. I don't I think dental, they might be paying, I forgot now, $88.
9. 9. Sorry. That's like someone in the audience probably has these numbers. Alright. David, maybe you can help me and maybe I'm just missing it. I get it if the numbers in parents, that's a negative. What's the green and red? What's the legend for that? Yeah. The green is is a negative number, but green in our in the favor of the district's economic standing. So gotcha. Negative green is good. K. I I was assuming that Negative credit is bad. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure. So So, like You know, we lost money or we less money was put together
for staff development travel. So that's not a good thing. It is a cost savings. So those are the software I used to compile this was driving me crazy in the formatting. So it would fix one thing and do something wrong, And so that's just a best generally, what it was supposed to do was green, even negative was something economically good, but it lost that consistency through it. Okay. Because that's that was tripping me about that.
So in let's see. So we're doing salary wages, professionals. So the actual if we looked at at this current year, salary and wages haven't really changed. So there are number of positions. There were some selective cuts that were done, but we've had to hire the next line down professional technical services. So we were, contracting with, like, Gillum, with Spectrum, with companies that could provide the
technical people that we couldn't find, for different requirements that we have as a school district. So we went through the markups. Like, a pair of markup didn't seem to be marked up, which is kinda surprising. But, you know, if they put in a SPED teacher or it was, like, double. It was extraordinarily high. So we were actually able to recruit people to take those positions and not spend money in the professional side. So that's one of the reasons that our payroll has stayed the same, but in
essence, we've reduced the cost of the first three lines. And, some of the reduction in the professional technical is, we're not hopefully, not gonna do another forensic audit this year, so that came out. And we had some contractors, like Minerva that's out. So we're pairing those expenses back, for this coming year. So that's reduced that number significantly. The next line, utilities. And Laura asked a question.
So if we tag utilities and communications, and then we go down to communications and telephone. So Yeah. Utility communications really shouldn't have been on this line. Just, when it got consolidated, I don't know why it threw that communications tag in there, but, really what that is is like water, sewer, trash is in this line. Is it not Internet? Or Pardon me? Is it Internet? It shouldn't be. I think communications is down midway communications and telephone, and and that truly is what
that line item is reading. But then we go down and there's energy a little bit further down energy, gas, electric, and fuel. So, kinda wish they were all closer together, but the way CDE codes them, this thing consolidated them into, different rows that were not adjacent to one another. And those are hard to cut. I mean, how do you cut water and sewer? How do you cut electricity? You just can't. And, and those fees are, likely to go up.
So it's a little bit of area. If Jason was here, he'd probably say, what did you put in this utility? So, that will likely be an area that gets adjusted. Staff development and travel, kinda had to reduce that a bit to, just to get this budget to break even. The tuition to other districts, that could be a line item that, we don't even know yet because you don't know what students are gonna come here and then need to get placed in another district or another school.
So I put in a fairly sizable number. It's more close to what we're seeing this year, but as you can see, it's significantly larger than two years ago. But the 200 is a safer number. And then we can all celebrate the next one. So we lost it in its flank. So, I'm not aware of any active litigation that we would pay more than a small deductible to sit sit. So I think there's one left hanging out there. But it likely wouldn't land on this line anyway.
So we talked about communication telephone, advertising and printing, a little bump from two years ago, but it's pretty similar to what we're on track for this year. General supplies, a pretty big hit, on that one, so that brings some concern as well. That gas, electric, and fuel we talked about, but the number is closer to this year. I think we're gonna hit 490,000 this year, which is close to the five, but that's up significantly from two years ago.
But maybe if we can get back to drill I forgot what you always said. Drill baby drill. Okay. Hopefully, that energy prices maybe will come back down, but I'm not so not budgeting for it. How much does that fluctuate with the severity of the winter? Like, this was not a particularly cold winter. Correct. And it still went up fairly significantly from what you're saying. So, like, does that does does that this cost correlate directly with the severity of
the winter, or is it just, like, prices are just expensive and so it's Prices have gone up. So I mean, just the rumor, I think, of having a data center in Colorado takes utility rates to go up. So we could pull I mean, I could go back and pull. I was just curious if you need, like, if if this is particularly cold, then this like, if if this estimate is based off of a mild winter and the next year is, like, you know, another bomb cyclone type year, is that going to
kind of throw this whole bit of thought? I guess, was my question. Tech and software. So it looks like a major cut from two years ago, but it's actually pretty close in line with where we're tracking this year. So that was not the question that you had. And then equipment and furniture. So this is going back into another, you know, little bit With that. We do this we're not on track to do the 346,000. It's actually pretty minimal this year. But just with this aging infrastructure, I think we we dodged a bullet.
Jason's a miracle worker, but our kitchen's lock in freezer blew out, I don't know, sixty days ago maybe. And my gosh, he was able to fix that for a very small amount of money, which if he couldn't have tracked down a specific part and got it here, and we had to replace the whole thing, I mean, it would have blown this our whole budget, like, significantly out of the water. So, same with the capital investment of a $100 that's well under what we'll likely
pay because it's a ticking time bomb. Every one of these HVAC units that we've got, dozens of them can just go out any minute. So I know Carol's on run of the task force, so hopefully, we'll have a longer term solution soon, for, to provide funding for that. That that actually might be about it for this document. So news fees and judgments. Judgments was in there, and there is some judgment money, but not in in this
budget. So there was some pay that got coded here. And but the 41,000 is more the dues professional dues that we pay as a district exit. It's our newest, association that we're belonging to, but there's quite a few, professional associations, and that's on this lineup. So Can you clarify? What is what is just judgments? That was that original, judgment that we paid was on this line item. However, the CD codes grabbed it and put it here.
I moved it up to the lawsuit settlements to give it a little bit more transparency. Let me take a look at that. So that's it on Right? Mhmm. It's bounced over to the to '23. Let me just talk a little bit more. I'll finish. I know Karen's I thought I was gonna steal her thunder too much. So I know she's gonna talk about fees there. So just to, I guess, lay the foundation like, I think our budget right now
for athletics and activities cost, I think, is, like, 563,000. It's something like that. And I don't wanna cut anything. I mean, I really want everyone to experience high school and and know the joy of competing in track or football. And, but we just in this budget, we do not have the revenue as we have had in the past, maybe with sales tax money that would help subsidize that. So we're looking at raising fees, and I think here I'll go over that.
But, you know, the the themes that we're saying is we're cutting expenses, we're increasing our, like, volunteerism. Look how much money we just say, Jason. 26,000, I think it was. So we're looking for volunteerism. We're looking for sponsorship. We're looking for donations that can help underwrite our sports program in other areas of of the district. And then the, let's see, my notes is they they need to remain.
So reduce expensive volunteerism and increasing fees, and then sponsorship fundraising. So those are the themes. There isn't one solution unless somebody wrote us a big check. So we are taking ideas and initiatives, cutting, raising, trying to put them all together to get to a budget where this district is on a sustainable path, not wanting to really burn any more research at all. How how does this relate, David, to, like, the school level fundraising that that gets
done. Is that like, it's not reflected in this budget at all, or is it what what school Like, school like like, if, like, at Columbine, they're doing a readathon. Right? And they're raising and, like, at some of they raise money for, you know, subscription trips or whatever. Like, is that only reflected in, like, a school level budget or is this is compared to? Good question. So the Fund twenty three is really aggregating all of schools. Third funds, which is fundraising and fees. Okay. Go there. Most of them are earmarked for some purpose. So if they're fund like I mentioned, the golf equipment.
Yeah. So it goes to your strat fund and out of that fund. Yes. Okay. Yep. So is there an aggregate fund then at the account level then for fundraising across the board? I'm not. We had a little bit of fun. And Is it I'm assuming the contributions and donations is the general the general contributions and donations to the district. If you're saying that it's generally an in and out at the fund level type of fundraising that's happening for, like, specific activities. Right? So Yep. That's what I'm wondering is if there's, like in addition to, like, the top level
contributions and donations, like, do we know how many funds have been raised for athletics versus whatever else? We do. Yeah. And, you know, if you're talking about history or talking about next year's budget, so we can't. So we've been working and with Brad kind of on a little ad hoc committee, developing strategies, how do we cover athletics. And so we're not far enough down the road because we wanna sell sponsorships, advertise
I mean, there's, you know, panther cards and donations. So what's that mix gonna be? I don't think we'll know until it's over a year from now how successful donations versus selling the advertisements is gonna be. But it's a a mixture that will help carry the athletic connectivity program. Yeah. And part of the reason I ask is just because I'm curious, like, how are we doing right now, and how can we meaningfully increase that if it's not all represented in just that line item? You know what I mean? Maybe. Till seven in the morning, I might Alright.
Well, we can go back to that. I thought it was super pressing, but I'd be curious to know the breakdown. Breakdown. Yeah. Yeah. Like, how much of this individual school needs are already being met? High fundraising. Fundraising. Yeah. Yeah. All I can say is that And how does that vary across activities? Yeah. Yeah. And then you can all focus corporate sponsorship where you need it. Mhmm. Where the gaps are. I think the goals for the schools, like the elementary, is to be able to operate with their funds and fees.
So they do, like, field trips, art supply, you know, those type of things within elementary. I I think their I think their fees are $99,000 maybe a year is what they're gonna be collecting. So if they spend within that budget, All I can say is, I guess, historically, when I'm looking at their accounts, what goes in is coming out, and they're operating
pretty effectively staying within what they have Yeah. I'm just curious about what's going in right now. So yeah. We don't have to answer this right now. Good. Because I yeah. Let's come back to this. I think I think it's a good data point for us as a point to know, but also for the community to know. Right? Like, how much of an impact are their donations already having so that they get that sense? And then what more can we do? And and anecdotally, I've heard that years ago, our fundraising was much more significant. And I don't know why. Like, I think I've heard that, like, readathons of the past raised many, like, many
more dollars. So I think that's also too a signal, like, maybe there are fundraisers that we're doing that we could look at, like, with fresh eyes and, like, try to come back to the community with different ideas. So yeah. I think that might nod her head, but when we started this, it was I think we're all concerned. And the more we worked on it, the more we thought about how we could do this, I think our comfort level has really increased, significantly. I think to speak to your point about what had happened in the past, David
and I talked about this. Like, in the world of athletics, everybody typically ran a camp or things that like, we host a tournaments, all of those types of things that brought in a lot of money. We haven't been having those things happen. So that's a big thing that we've been talking about. Like, okay. Can volleyball host a camp? Can they host a tournament? Can like, those types of things because those did bring in a lot of money. Yeah. And it helped bridge that parks and rec community and aspects as well. Mhmm. So that would be one of the things we're seeing early.
Yeah. Yeah. I know. Preempt a question that I know Kat was asked and she forwarded it to me, but all the money that's coming in for sports and activities, those are earmarked for sports and activities. So there was a question about, well, are you guys gonna move this money off to to the general funds? Like, absolutely not. That money is in that account earmarked for it. I don't look good in orange, so I'm not gonna be transferring money that shouldn't be transferred. What about general, facility rentals? Where does that fall?
Where does that revenue fall? It could be Yeah. I think that goes into Jason into the facility maintenance. Rentals? Yeah. And so well, wait a minute. Just to make sure we're talking about the rate. What funders then? I'm not. I'm asking where do facility rentals where does facilities rentals revenue go? Could you find? I bet it may go into it might go into fund 10 for over the maintenance. Mhmm. I don't know if you've looked at that at all, but I think the last time that the facility fee schedule was updated was in 2018.
Okay. And I don't know if it represents market rates of where of what facility rentals look like. So I think that could be worth revisiting too. You might be able to fix it properly. I know there's another rental of gymnasiums that I think is higher than ours. So David, other than salaries and wages, where would I find the security line for expenditures for security? But do we have one?
I don't have one extra detail out, but I I can look at that and be prepared at the Okay. Yeah. I'll get it from you later. Okay. Alright. Any questions? That's my email here. I think I know this rep represents a lot of hard work. Thanks, David. Yeah. It's, it's not just a big budget, but it is complex. So yeah. But, I would keep all the stakeholders involved, which is important. And I get out the butcher cutting knife.
Hopefully, we can add some things in. Our enrollments goes up, so I'm gonna be interested to reforecast some of that. As long as that knife is is a scalpel and not a machete, you should do that very alright. Done. I wholeheartedly hear. Thank you, David. It's been part of answering my many questions. Social study standards. Can I reverse order on agenda items or not? Do I have to just flow? Because here we just did all this quick budgeting, and I've got more. You you've got the network or the engine, so you can adjust.
Yeah. What you want. Yeah. You're you're talking in a b three g. So Yeah. Okay. That's okay? Yeah? Okay. Yeah. I'm just gonna keep the flow going here. Alright. We're gonna jump down to items. It's, like, two down student fees. Yes. Yes. Okay. Perfect. I know David did a nice introduction there. Student fees is definitely very much on our mind. As we look at all these budgets, elements, we recognize there's we need to take
a look at, like, how we're comparing to, other areas. Excuse me. Launch the slideshow here. The other districts in the area. And, we have remarkably low fees. We have not raised fees in a long time, and, it's time we need to raise fees. And so you'll notice we're down other than, just to get out of this Alida, that pay all of the student fees. We are the lowest there. So, anyway, just time to do a cost adjustment.
Candace, we can pass out the the spreadsheet there. We've been hard at work on these numbers. Even today, we were trying to figure out, all the different aspects that go into a sports program or activity program. We've definitely recognized that some of our programs don't track money, in a way that was very useful to us. So when you see you'll see some TBDs, in the spreadsheet, and that means we're just not tracking accurately. So for, an art club for instance, they're not collecting a fee and they're just
using supplies in the arbor. So which is nice, but it's not accurately reflected here in what a fee should actually be. So there's a little bit of, I guess, wiggle room and adjustment that we've been making, as we try to figure these things out. You'll notice the high school activity what I just talked about art club there. If you jump down to sports excuse me. High school athletics like baseball there. As you go across the spreadsheet, there's what we're charging currently, which is $75.
And we're saying we're we would like to increase that to $200 for an in district student and 300 for an out of or student. Not. Attending. It's a not attending. It is late. Wow. I don't mix my terms here. And then there's the number of attending students. We have 12 students on our baseball team that are district run schools and 14 that are not. So for clarification Yep. Attending and non attending. Attending is they have to attend William Park junior senior high. Yep. Non attending is any other school. So a married student is a non attending.
Yep. So just so it gives people confuse the district versus Yeah. It's the building that's hosting this this board. Yeah. So the total expense on that program is 20 almost 23,000. And so notice, 16,000, like, where what we run an operating loss. If you go down to the second page, the spreadsheet, David mentioned that number. Our total expense for sports and activities, $545,000, and we're operating a loss of 362,000.
So pretty significant. And that's when we talk about the district subsidizing our sports and activities. This is it. And so we really have to make some adjustments in all the things. Tonight, we're just talking about the fees, but David did mention, other other plans to move forward. Any questions about this spreadsheet specifically? Karen, I just wanted to clarify if, family is free and reduced lunch, these fees are changed for them. Is that correct? Yes. Okay.
And that would just be for attending students. That's a great question. I don't know. So yes. However, I I do believe we had one family that came from a non attending and provided the paperwork that says they are free and reduced. And therefore, that one was reduced. It was 50% of the non attending fee. The only other one we've had is and I don't know what paperwork is, but if you have a foster child or that one becomes waived for McKinney Vento check.
McKinney Vento. Yeah. Different Can I interject a little bit? Yes, please. You know, obviously, you know, with with the once you're assuming that that's a requirement, but free and reduced, it's an excellent observation. I'm not sure we can effectively answer that completely today because to keep the programs going doesn't include markdowns for free and reduced. Our answer to that would be to create a scholarship fund for free and reduced
to cover the cost. So and I think we're 40%, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. We're 40%. Mhmm. So Right. That's a massive impact economically. We have to solve I hate to say, you know, the free and reduced is the same deal for athletics until we get to the senior numbers because you have that. So maybe you can answer that next of the tenth. K. Definitively answer it. I think it is worth note noting on the spreadsheet as well the cost per
participant. You really see it there with, like, basketball. It's really about $1,200 per student per athlete, And we are asking families to pay $200 a day. So it seems like a lot, but we are still subs so, improve things that we need to work with is increasing student fees, definitely. We're also taking a look at our staff stipends and the number of coaches within a program and making some adjustments there.
That'll be doing a meeting in a little bit in the next two weeks. Yeah. Twenty ninth? Twenty ninth. Yep. Twentieth. Twentieth. Something like that. Twenty ninth. To bring coaches in and talk with them about about changes. And, you know, we have to go after that sponsorship and fundraising and becoming more frugal. We talked about, you know, soccer teams that have six pairs of socks, for instance, and we're we might need to do some more longer. And, just to bring cost down, silly enough, we were eating tonight and just like
these little scales, it's like $2. Right? Like, time to start being frugal and really save, save our pennies wherever we can and reuse things and not have the fanciest gear, which a lot of fundraising does go towards really great backpacks that can cool warm ups and things like that. And, yeah, those have a two good space. That's athletics and activities. Any questions? I just wanted to clarify if, the cost per student is also inclusive of the I'm assuming the transportation for the programs.
Because I know that's a big component, and it's always a struggle to, like, get bus drivers and, like, the right vehicles and or have coaches be transporting kids or that kind of thing. And what is there any are there any changes being contemplated on transportation for athletics right now? This is really what we did with this, oops, sorry, this last spreadsheet, that's where we're at this year. Yeah. So we we're not projecting in the future where David's budget that he just shared with me is projecting in the future. This is not. This is the actual cost right now. And keep in mind, we're still in season for several of these sports, so it's
not complete. But we're we're getting there. You get the idea. It's expensive and so valuable and so good for our kids. So And I think the thing to remember with transportation is our league is the TriBeaks League. So we travel from Lamar to Alamosa. Yep. We're in the Highway 50 Corridor. We do not like, we don't have more of a trip just being able to say, let's schedule call our Springs teams. Yeah. Yeah. So that causes our expectation. And coming from Alaska, we have it good. Because if you're a bush village in Alaska, you you you're over a million dollars
just to be able to travel and play. Yeah. Because every everything's applied. So Well, perspective. Class fees for the junior and senior high. Most of these are junior and senior high. Elementary did increase their fees as well. So these are just proposed. We have a lot of cost of just cost of supplies. We have not made adjustments for several years, and we've had a lot of we have a lot of extra money back filling some of these accounts for years. And, district money that was, you know, from sales tax, for instance, was supporting all
of these programs. I know very heavily, like, the steam, STEM programs were very heavily supported, I mean, almost completely, by by our sales tax money. And now that that's gone, that is all on us and our families is the reality. And so for students to participate in hands on learning activities that use materials, there are going to be increased fees for them. So this is not four it is four pages. I know, I sent it to you in the board packet. There are some changes for sure as we've we're digging into things just like with
our act the phonics and activities. We're trying to balance accounts to figure out exactly where we're at. But this is what we expect. There are some things like APPs and the branding lab that we don't have control over. They are what they have. So and, there's a question about yearbook. I know that elementary yearbooks are $15, but they make it on the list. So lots of them. It is worth noting that they're categorized by semester. And so for a student to participate in the culinary class, for instance, will be a $100 for the year. So a big decrease.
Questions on this concern in And with do I send I was gonna say that, you know, even with some of the increases that were proposed here, most of them weren't a a a very large increase. There were a couple, and I think that's probably related. You know, they that seem to be some of the Yeah. Like, welding is Right. The welding or yeah. Or the Yeah. That's very expensive. Yes. There was another, like, wood shop where it like, there was a a significant increase
there, but those materials are more expensive. That's why you have to rate inflation is impacting us. It's true. But it but it seems like a lot of it was, you know, from 15 to $20. And and so and I said, no one ever wants to pay more. Right. But I I felt like it was a reasonable increase in most places. We try to be careful with and then it's worth noting that this is there's so many classes students take for free that they can take for free. And so it is very much possible to go through the system and earn your
the credits that you need toward graduation with very few of these classes. But if you want the hands on activities where you're, you know, using materials, it does take approximately. Is there and, if we have free and reduced lunch, does that impact the fees for students at all? We're right now, we're increasing the fees with the knowledge that 30 to 40% of them will be waived. Okay. Alright. For those I just opportunities for every kid is so important to me. Yeah. Well, and for along that line is maybe with more coordination with coaches and sports
programs to have their own fundraising through camps and such that they can maybe take on that scholarship fit for the reintroduced families. I don't know. I know there's some questions. Yeah. Karen, we can Yeah. That one. What's the process for ensuring fees are payments? We can increase it, but how do we make sure that all of the students are paying their fair share? Yeah. In the past, we've, we used to go to a dance.
For instance, they've we've tried to collect fees before they can purchase dance tickets. More recently, we've been doing collections, actually helping with parents with outside organization. So both and is the answer to that is moving forward. We know, there is a house bill, house bill 17 13 o one that does not allow us to hold a transcript from a student if they have not paid their fees. So that we have to follow that that guideline. But we can do other things that we're not taking advantage of.
I mean, for some of the classes, like, if you're if you're wanting to do the welding class, so I mean, it seems logical, but correct me here. Mhmm. That we would say you can't participate in the class until you've paid the fee. We have not done that historically, and we have large fees, that have not been paid. And so that's where holding money for for dances or things like that, elective opportunities, was helpful was helpful. So we're gonna check-in the legality of all that.
Like, all those pieces, like, lots of layers. Yeah. In some classes, it might be you just do the online work. You don't get to do the hands on work if you don't pay the fee or until you pay the fee. Or if it's in athletics, you it's I don't know. Yeah. It's all so tricky, and these are the conversations that we need to have as a district. So in athletics, they they aren't able to participate until the fee is paid. Okay. So that that is That is privacy. As long as it's not breaking the law, I think it might be a good
idea to consider the same for the rest. Yeah. Some of it's not breaking up. We need a review of these policies and, yeah, how we manage this. So so, let me jump back, to with which one is it? Can I succeed? Yes. Freak owners as well? Yep. Yeah. Alright. Hundreds. Perfect. So I just put the board policy up here real quick. I'm not gonna read it. I know it's late. It's just policy IG.
And I just really wanna highlight the board shall be informed of all new programs and courses of study as well as elimination and extensive alteration of the content of current programs and courses. And that is why we are talking about this today. The first thing is to talk about social studies. And I would like to request like, moving back to following the state standards for social studies. Currently, we're following the American Birthright Standards. And, it is time for us to to go back to state standards for a couple of reasons. One, for all of our other courses, we're following state standards.
So just that consistency of that is the one place, the guiding, those guiding documents that we go to as we make instructional decisions. State assessment alignment. Now Ginger talked about this couple months ago. The CMASS social studies has not been taken away yet. So for grades four and seven, to follow the state standards is very different from American Birthright. Like, actually, American Birthright would not prepare our students for state for the test for grades four and seven if we should be chosen to take it, which didn't happen this year for free.
The critical thinking aspects, in our mission. And I actually just put it up there as you talked about tonight. It's, like, perfect. We've grounded and excuse me. Love of learning, cultivates critical thinkers. That's really so important, so near and dear to my heart. Our state standards really do allow for a depth of learning as opposed to just a breadth of learning, very shallow. The American birthright standards are they don't allow for deep critical thinking. There it's a lot of material. It's memorizing facts. It's you memorize facts and you move on.
It's not depth. And so we really wanna go after that critical thinking again. And just the global perspective, living in this global economy that we're in, just studying United States history and how things impact us only is not enough. We really need to understand the world that our students and, that that all of us inhabit. So those are the four reasons to go back to go back to six tangents. I don't know that you need to vote on it in any way. I just want to get it out there, that we would like to because it was a resolution before, I believe.
Do we need to take action to dissolve resolutions? Or I don't think so. I think yeah. I don't think so. But I don't know. I think one factor, as I definitely agree. Like, standards should should be held to the state level because that's where we have the accountability at. And there was really no accountability to the American birthright speakers. But there were aspects of it that community members appreciated.
And where I think we can still serve that because we don't have issues with our constitution and Right. Certain things that they that our community really values. And so ways that we can, assure that we're not veering away from the American birthright to go opposite of our, you know To be anti American. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That we we have we still value our country and and our constitution.
So just wanted to note that. And our state standards are not anti American. They are very there's so much, United States history and constitution civics. It's actually the only required course that students take for graduation until the financial orders. But yes. I think it's important that this that we identify that we are pro America. We want American values. We wanna present that to our students. We want them to be critical thinkers about our history not just memorizing dates and facts. They need to know the good, the bad, the ugly, the whole picture so you
learn from the past. You don't just learn the dates from the past. So I think it's important if we incorporate this that that critical thinking piece is what we all need to strive for. Excellent. Strive is one of those. Next. That's so important because as we move into choosing different curricular resources, we need to know we need to know what we're what standards we're following to pick resources well. And so this is another one of our board policies, I j.
This one actually the middle of the paragraph on paragraph two there, all instructional resources and materials shall be assigned aligned with the district's academic standards and support the district's educational objectives. That's what we're talking about right now. And the final decision on selection of purchase shall rest with the superintendent or designee. That's our current policy. In schools around the region, that's not sufficient. They bring in curriculum committees. They have teachers that help choose the curriculum. They bring in community members. They get other voices in the room. And so it's with with this process, I went above the board policy and formed
committees and, have done that to a higher standard. Yes. But we're also ins putting them on display for inspection by by parents and the community members as well. So this is what a typical curriculum review should look like, and I think you have a little infographic there. It's a multi stage process. It's not just the superintendent or designee, just picking something. And so, we really have done this identifying the scope of our work. We've looked at all of our standards. We've been aligning, figuring out what we need, looking for gaps, looking at some data,
and make and now we're doing it with the stakeholder review piece. It's important to know with all of these resources now, they're no longer textbook resources. Even if you go to college, all of the resources are online. You actually have to search for and pay separately if you want or additionally, if you want a paper copy as well. And so things have just changed. Vendors make these resources to follow all the different state standards, and so they're huge resources that could never be taught in one year. And so our job as teachers is now to go in and choose the resources
that we want to use. So even if there's a story or something like that that our community doesn't want to be taught, we don't have to push that out to students. We've got freedom to say, no. We're not gonna actually use that, that one tool. So just that customized piece that has not yet happened. But what we are doing is we're bringing resources in front of the community and the board, and our staff just to get opinions and see if there's any red flags, with them. So let's see. Anyway, there's this the slideshow, people have been coming in and looking at the resources,
and they're able to link out to different things because, again, so many resources are not in print version anymore. They're online. And our policy is there to reference. So the first one is seventh and eighth grade English. We are already using BL education, but only two of the two of the units were approved. And so we would like we are seeking approval for all four so that our teachers can access any of the resources within that those tools to be able to pull in what they need for their class. Odell education is our ninth and twelfth grade English curriculum.
Same thing. Only two are approved for the six for each grade level. And so we would like to be able to use more of the resources. Right now, teachers are supplementing with, all kinds of things, and there's not a lot of alignment, with within that. And so if a student is a ninth grade student and one teacher and a ninth grade student and another teacher, it's not they might not be getting the same curriculum. And we don't want that. We want guaranteed and viable, meaning that everybody gets the same exposure to the same type of learning, and it can be taught in that in that year.
We got some new programs. Yeah. Very excited about Junior ROTC. We just got approved last week. This is so this is a whole curriculum and it's a whole program. So it's a big shift. Candace, we do pass those down. There's just a little misbusters prior there because there's a lot of you know, does that mean my kids automatically enrolled in military? No. It does not. And there's a lot of misinformation out there. And so as we seek to bring this program, it would actually be for next year. And so, like, it's so robust.
It's amazing program. Students can start in eighth grade all the way through twelfth grade, and they take it every year. It counts towards credits can count towards graduation or PE. We have some alignment work to do to make sure, like PE, for instance, if they have a different schedule, they work out, once a week. And so it's not like a traditional PE credit. So we've got some alignment work to do, but lot of, potential for the future with this program. Heavy emphasis on leadership, which we love, and character developing character traits, really building a
community. So very excited about the mental management skills, perseverance, almost resilience. Here are the courses. There's an aerospace heavy aerospace connection because it's Air Force Junior ROTC specifically. And, the leadership education is the other side. And so lots of classes will be on students' transcripts in the future. So this is actually, I don't know, 15 courses or so that we'll be adding to our course catalog. Yeah. It's huge. Karen, I'm curious, like, because why is it why Air Force and not another branch?
Just out of curiosity. Loaded. I have to do a tire and come to the army tomorrow morning. So This is it's all. I'm just curious. Yeah. Back three years ago, actually, mister Burr, what Kevin Burr was the principal of the high school at the time, and he's the one who did all the the it's a pretty extensive application on the front end. And it takes about three three years is what they said, and here we are three years later. And they gave us a, mister Richie a call, this I don't know, a couple months ago and said, you are still interested? And said, yes. We are. A lot of the Air Force push was we're so close to the Air Force
Academy here. There's a lot of connection to it. So it's no offense to any other branch of the military service. We can add Space Force. Yeah. I know. But a lot of kids. Space simulation, that'd be pretty sweet. And pull some kids in. I will also say this year, we did launch an aerospace engineering course at our high school. The juniors well, the high school students take it. And, it's been very well received. Lot of excitement there with that engineering program. So Also, I'm gonna speak here there. Quick. I'm and I don't know if you can answer this, but I'm really curious because I know that Merit Academy offers a similar approach is different.
It is. Is there do we have do we know that I mean, is that something we could look at later? Just curious about the differences. Do you have any information? There are two different programs. I mean, there's some there's a strand of connection, if you will. This is a a very much this is a very robust program Mhmm. That's really meant to be a three, four year commitment as opposed to exploratory. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Oh, let me jump back here real quick and say this we would like to open this course, to homeschooled students Yeah.
And, students outside of the community or that are not at mister Friend's school. We're not at the place where we have we can bring in a student under that's a homeschool student and how you can take two classes. For instance, maybe he wants to take madrigals in junior ROTC or welding in junior ROTC, And then he'd be a half time student. And so that's what we're planning on offering this year, and we would really like to work in market, to that end. Students from other schools, that's gonna take some more coordination, and that would be on the Like, the plan for the following school year, trying to figure that out.
But you have to align school schedules. It's it's very complicated. And so and there's MOUs that have to be created with each school. Anyway but we'd like to start and just be able to eventually offer this to students in the park area. Sorry. And I know it's late and we all know it's gone, but I do despite that, I have a question. So, like, you mentioned that this is more of, like, a full program. So you'd have to enroll in this as a freshman and then continue through or how does that work? Not necessarily, but it is designed to do that.
Okay. And so with a student who's a senior next year would still benefit from having one year of the program. But you don't get the certificate. Unless the completion of the program hits three. Three. Okay. Yeah. It's staying in the program for three years. Okay. And you will see these students in the junior ROTC program out at parades and, community events serving and doing all kinds of you'll see them drilling in the front wherever direction it is. Gateway oh, that way. Gateway, on the astroturf out there, like, we expect them to. So yeah. Exciting.
Lots of flight ceremonies. We're gonna expand our basics writing. Well, either expand it or choose a new one. There's two choices for writing curriculum, and we did this because we these are the top two choices that the writing committee. So we look dug into eight different programs. These two emerged as top, and then we spent time in them. We're gonna spend more time in them, but we're not just seeking approval right now because approval you won't it won't be on the approval list until June. And we need to get ready for next year.
And so if it's approved in June, then we can do that work in July and be ready for the school year. If we put forth only one and it wasn't approved, then it's almost like a start over. Like, we wouldn't be able to have a curriculum for next year. Our current literacy curriculum does not have writing strong writing. It has prompts, but it doesn't teach it doesn't have information for a teacher. Like, what do you do when a student cannot write a five paragraph essay? Or what actually for elementary, it's a little bit smaller. But, even write a high quality paragraph.
There's not the tools there. And so we're seeking tools to help us teach students how to do the things that they cannot Use, secondary social studies curriculum. When American Bird Project brought in, those were just standards. There was not a curriculum to go with them. And so there were no resources. And so our teachers have been operating without resources for several years now, and they've been doing the hard work, Kim, those in the back there, doing the massive, like, hard work of finding resources to bring in to be able to use in the
classroom. We would like to alleviate some of that lift and bring in, a curriculum that has tools and resources so they're not out searching on the web trying to find something. They actually have a place to go. Two again, two different programs there, we're seeking approval on. They have so much more so many more resources than could ever be taught in a year. But the idea is that teachers would curate from the massive menu of options there to build something great for our students.
With that, would it still be, like, the department curating the time materials that each teacher is using the same as opposed to each teacher going out and finding their correct resources from this massive library. Correct. Yeah. And so we do that work usually during the summer. So we have a lot of work at us again. But would be great to have some resources all in one place. That'd be incredible. Preschool. Hi there. Hey, Steve. I didn't take a nap. Here we go. Time to say. Alright. So, for preschool, we are kinda just more expanding upon the curriculum that we currently
have. One of the things that we're kinda hearing feedback from, like, our kindergarten teachers is, that the kids aren't quite ready for those, you know, really demonstrating that they are ready for those pre reading skills and the sounds of their letters and things. So, I've been looking into, curriculum, that's of what we're currently using with teaching strategies. I presented this to, our staff, and so we've we've talked about all this and received a lot of feedback, and, they're really feeling really positive about the direction in utilizing this.
Our the kick start literacy is the first one. This one's actually new. It's still the same research based approach, that we're using with the teaching strategies. It's still, aligning with our preschool, philosophies of play. So it is a play based explicit instruction. So we're not they it they're, like, fifteen minute, lessons per day, but it's, like, kinda broken into, like, five minute lessons. Something that they could even do while they're walking down the hall to the bathroom. So it's really incorporated into it's not sitting out for fifteen minutes and doing a
literacy lesson. This really does align with, the CKLA curriculum that the kindergarten is using. It's not CKLA, CKLA, but it is, similar approach in that, we are gonna be focusing on the letter sounds and then the letter. So, we might have a letter t, but, this spells t. So we're not actually saying that, like, this is the letter t. So it's really focusing on those sounds. Looking at, our differentiated learners, like, we have a lot of English language learners in
the preschool, with us following the universal preschool. It kind of helps we get funding in in a by incorporating our multi language learners earlier. And so a lot of the curriculum, like the picture that I'll show you here, are actually, like, real proofs. They're not animated pictures. So it kinda takes that barrier away of, like, oh, we're talking about an apple, and it's a a character apple with a worm coming out of it. And if you don't have that context to relate it to where these are more
these are these are children that they've put a lot of effort into, and, you know, if it's a a mop, it's an actual just a picture of a mop. And so, that's one of the the ways that they're really helping, with the multilanguage learners. It also is really good because it's aligning with our children who have, like, IEPs that might have articulation, errors that they're working on, with the speech language pathologists because it does focus, the children on where they're making those sounds and how they're making those sounds.
You know, is it a, you know, puff sound? Where is our tongue? Where is our teeth? And so it it it's really aligned with, what the speech language pathologists are working with as well. So, so that all encompassing, you know, is really hoping to help, you know, that kindergarten readiness or the the reading pre reading skills. And that's where I'm using my my screen as well. But the early literacy, really helping build confident readers, which, you know, we we all know produces academic success. So that's the first one that we're looking at.
And like I said, that one is a new one, and, we actually have, we partner a lot with, the Tyler Park Early Childhood Council. And so the council, is paying for our training, for this because they're also trying to get it into, the other, centers in the area. So, we're really fortunate because that's, you know, a couple thousand dollars savings, for them to be paying for that. So, that's our first one. Then the second one is, an assessment tool that we are wanting to, add to
what we are currently using, which is the TS Gold. This is not replacing that. It's in addition to, one of many of the other states are, are going to dyslexia screeners and Colorado is actually moving into that direction. So this Goldfinch assessment, does have that, dyslexia screen art. It's not 11:30 at night. I was like articulate better than this. But it it is a screener for that. So we have, a screener piece of the the teachers will do with the students
and sitting down, and then they have formative games. It's five minutes per week that the the children are on iPads, which really, again, aligns with our preschool. Like, we were really play based. We don't want them on iPads. We don't want that technology piece. And so in in we as staff talked about that, like, does this fit into, you know, what we want in our classroom to work for students? So, five minutes per week. But what that does is it's assessing them and then Ashley plugs it into that TS gold. So it's providing very objective data. You know, we have very subjective data.
You know? Unfortunately, that just happens, with different teachers. This is very objective. It just it, assesses them when they're playing their little games, and it plugs those data points into the TS Gold, which then helps our teachers to, plan their instructional lessons quicker, because we do have those three checkpoints per year that we're doing. And what I'm seeing is that my teachers are putting those in a week or two before the checkpoints. And so then my concern is, like, oh, have you been looking at that all year long?
Do we know that they have the letter a? You know, do we need to reteach that? You know, what does that look like? This is going to provide that information for us a lot quicker. It's also gonna help us, identify if we have any, intervention needs that we need to provide, whether that's, you know, just at a a more general, you know, more, explicit small group, you know, regrouping, or do we need to look into, evaluations, potentially for, developmental delays? And then our third one, is what we're currently using as our creative curriculum.
And so, we have 11 studies that we have, and we've been using that for the last three years. And now they've added new studies, and they have nine new studies, that they've added. They're really exciting. The teachers are super excited about it. They've got some little previews on there, and so they've been playing around with it a little bit, for the last couple months even with the students. One of the things that's really great about it is that we have three and four year olds. And so, you know, sometimes we see and sometimes even, like, our children's have these and they might start like, if they have an October 15 birthday, they just turned
three. So we'll have them for that whole year. And then we have them for their three year old year, and then we have them for their four year old year. And so they've been with us for three years. And so in that third year, we're seeing, you know, some behaviors popping up and, you know, trying to figure out is that because they're bored. So this actually gives the teachers some flexibility to, reach out to different, you know, curriculum we've talked about or different studies. I apologize. And then aligning those and, like, taking, you know, even recycle, reuse, reduce, and, pairing
that with water and then pairing that with trees. Like, so they can actually take three to three or four different studies and put them into a longer study, a more comprehensive study, I should say. So, we're looking at, adding that as well to what we currently have. Trying to make that really quick. Any questions? It's supposed to be not very fun to work. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Heather. Thank you.
Yes. Thanks for holding out. Thanks for helping out. Too. I know. Everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Look. Just so you all know, the state we have a criminal justice CTE pathway. Mister Merson teaches several classes. The state is realigning them to make them guaranteed transfer classes. So the course names, the numbers are gonna change, the materials are gonna change. But they're all with Pikes Peak State College. I don't have all that information for you because they're still negotiating at the state. So but there's gonna be some changes there. And then upcoming for next next school year, we're really looking at secondary science, elementary
social studies to continue that, and math interventions for k 12. So those are three things we'll be digging into. We did get some feedback, not a lot, from the community that's come in. So far as of this afternoon, it was seven people that have responded. And so, mostly staff members, because we did push this out to staff members so they could use the links to things. And I just thought it was interesting with their what's most Or in the curriculum adoption, focus on critical thinking is what's popping to the top and so, just good.
Yeah. Nicely aligned there. Any questions on the curriculum adoption process or anything that we talked about tonight? Not a question. Just feedback from the community connection sessions that we had. Some of the folks went into your room. Sure. I did. Who knows to setting up that room, and they walked in, were impressed, and spent some time and came out and were was pleased and made positive comments. Oh, great. Cool. So they may not have responded to the survey, but they were they were pleased in what they'd see. Wonderful.
Thank you. Yeah. So far, there's been no red flags in content of content, but people do have a lot of feedback about why they like a certain program better than another. Mhmm. So And we have, a lot of people come in. I know only sent the responses, but there are more people coming in than took the survey. They kind of trickle in, but it's it's available for two weeks. And so it's just a matter of, yeah. Yeah. I was curious if we were tracking like how many people have Only really with the survey. Yeah.
Yeah. And some people have come back for two days to to be in there and so it's really they've really taken their time with it. That's right. Yeah. Will you come back and let us know on the ones especially that were two the The two yeah. The two that yeah. And then do we vote that no. At with our board policy right now, the board doesn't even need it's just I'm informing you. Yeah. But most other districts do have the board voting on curriculum. So and that's one of those policies that CASB will ensure it's be reviewing.
Okay. I think that has changed relatively recently. Correct. That's the policy. It was changed in 2023. Yep. Yeah. So it's a new policy. So the last is oh, it's not the last thing. It's the last thing I get to talk about. For our title grants, we need an assurances form signed by Keegan. And this is basically 29, different points of basically law, federal or state law that we are going to follow if we accept title money. And so there are things like, protect the protected classes, use educational research, use funds
as intended, protect students, follow the proper authority and accounting procedures, and maintain records. And, as far as far as assurances go, within with the grant funds, we also have to write specifically how we're going to use them. The state kicks back to us if we do not if we say we wanna buy computers, for instance, with title one funding, we can't do that. So they'll kick back to us that we'll have to change that. And so there are some protections within the system. Rob asked a couple of questions of me specifically, like, how do we know that
these things are being done? And, a very legitimate question. When I read through the 29, two flagged for me as right away, like, are we doing these things? And so I actually checked into I've got the answer for one, the guns if we're following the gun free act. And, yes, we are. And that's if a student brings a handgun that he's expelled for a year. And so, but there are some provisions in there, but we do have those systems set up. The other question I had was on sharing student names with recruiter recruiters and colleges
that I don't have an answer for you today, but I will certainly dig into that. As as far as assurances go, like, these are laws. Right? And so things are changing constantly just like with the budget. And so we are constantly updating. For instance, we met with our teacher advisory council this week and are reviewing our employment handbook. We've flagged already about six different things that we need to seek legal counsel on because we're not sure if the handbook that was written in 2023 is following laws
because there's some questionable things, quite frankly. And so we're gonna seek legal counsel and be ready for next year. So constantly updating, constantly working through this process to, make sure we're I mean, our intent is to follow the laws of our land. And so we want to keep moving in that direction knowing that sometimes there are some changes made along the way. Another question that came up, that I heard was, does merit receive some of these funds? And they do not qualify for title one, so they do not receive title one
funds. But they do receive some title two. We have a I have behind me here, which is the train like, teacher training professional development, that piece. They receive some for an instructional coach, and then they receive title four funds as well, for a music teacher. So Now is that through our like, do you write do you write pass money to them, or do they have to make their own? We write the grant, and then they submit evidence of how they've paid the person, and then we reimburse them.
And so for us as well, it's a reimbursement grant. Yeah. So we do the same thing. Oh, if you like, write one grant application for the whole district and and they're included in it. Yes. So Merit will not sign this as scheduled page. It's it's weird that, the local education the LEA, the local education agency work there. You know, if there are measures in place to make sure that they're following the assurances too because With merit? Be liable if they're not, you know, kind of lose control.
If they're not following the gun free, for example. For instance. Yes. For instance. Yes. That is probably something that we need to start working into our contract. Or another Or another or another Yeah. Or some layer there. Mhmm. Yeah. As we work to align some of these programs with their you know? I just have in general, like, Karen, I can't find a definition anywhere for this acronym of ESEA. Oh, for how I reach out. Yes. The brain question. That's not it. I I can't buy it anymore. You can't pull it off the top of your head.
Yes. Your brain is not working. I think my brain is not 30 and I am. Are there any other questions about this assurance as well? No. I had the same question as Rob. We just are, like, okay. I'll sign this. But yeah. Are we It is yeah. It's really not saying we're doing everything perfectly. It's saying we are moving toward that, and that is our intent. Yeah. And what what you're verbally assuring us is that you either haven't completed or worth the process of reviewing it and completing. So it's we need to do that time to review, like, every change that comes.
Yeah. We we need to adjust. Absolutely. What do you think your Laura's idea of, hey. Who's overseeing merit to make sure that their business is running? So that's that's something I think that's an area we can improve on. We can do it all the way around here. Okay. Where are we in this? We're on the action. We are on the action. Thank you. We're back on the strategic plan. We are back on the strategic plan. So at this time, I'll ask if we have a motion.
Do we want to make a motion to prove that we did that? Part one. Did we wanna take a listen? If a motion is made, does it have to be as it's written? Or You can verbalize any motion you would like. And then someone has the opportunity to second. So someone, hypothetically, could make a motion to just approve the mission or just to make put the mission in the motion. Or we cannot, and we can just say we have a consensus to post it to the website. All of those are options. I would like to make a motion to approve the mission, vision, values, and pillars
that we have outlined in strategic plan and advance the draft goals to our staff. I'll second that. Is there any discussion further? That's my talking time. Oh, great. I'm like, it's like We need a full time. Barkley? Aye. Davidson? Aye. Gilgenes? Aye. Ordon? Aye. Green Street? Aye. Honey, look at that. We did it. Right there. There you go. Yeah. Action number two is ESEA General Assurances. It stands for Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Thank you. That's okay. Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Okay. So we'll look for a motion to approve that. The signing of that. I move to approve the PSEA general assurances. Do you have a second? Second. I will call, please. Alright. Well, I'm sorry. Is there any discussion on that? Okay. Hardly. Aye. Lee Vinson. Aye. Loganess. Aye. Ordon. Aye. Green Street. Aye. Yeah. I understand that I'm listening this a lot now. And then that brings us to graduation graduation requirements, adding the financial literacy piece in
there. I don't think we had anyone talk about that this apologize if you Yeah. Alright. So looking for our motion then to approve the graduation department, adding financial literacy. I know that we approve the graduation requirement of adding financial literacy to our our, yeah, student requirements. Second. Before we before I ask for that. But that is a hard sentence to say right now. Yeah. My tongue is getting very tied up. Yeah. And that Okay.
Any other, discussion there? I I have one quick question for Kieran. Yes. Will the financial literacy standards be taught within a single course? There's actually six different courses that students could choose from. Where would going to be The States. Some of them were in history, some social studies, and math. Yeah. Yeah. So let's take one. Any of the six would qualify for the one course that they need? Correct. Perfect. So we're above and beyond. Above and beyond. Yes. Alright. Dean? Hi. Davidson? Hi. Dougness? Hi. Gordon? Hi. Green Street? Hi. Okay. So let me add the information reports, which are just reports that are in your
packet. Those are not delivered. That brings us to adjourning the meeting. Do I have a motion to do so? Oh my gosh. Oh. I just wanna say real quick, like, everything presented to us was done with such care and such detail, and I just really appreciate it. So thank you. Yeah. I will second that and also the fact that you all have been with us because, it is quarter to midnight almost. Longest ever. Oh, man. Is that right? It's a record for me.
It's a record for me. It's a record. Alright. Good day. We're done. Yep. And you're gonna lose. Thank you. Pardon me? Hi. Davidson. Hi. Yes. Hi. Absolutely. A boy. Go for this long without people after