##VIDEO ID:https://videoplayer.telvue.com/player/P8wyVTR2qr3_LDUHnb_mF4AFW6RckIeS/media/920875?autostart=false## <v Speaker 1>Yeah, I, I know.</v> I think he texted You guys ready? Not coming at all. Let's move these things out of our way. What was the difference of the Oreo? It, was it a knockoff different? It was a little lighter brown. I tasted it and it just didn't taste right. Alright, I'm gonna call you. Wait 10. Yep. Here we go. I'm gonna go ahead and call our December 11th, 2024 meeting to order at 5 32. If we can all rise for the pledge of allegiance all here you go. Pledge allegiance to the flag. The flag of <v Speaker 2>The United States of America</v> and to the republic for widget stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all <v Speaker 1>And for everyone will remain standing</v> for a moment of silence. Thank you very much. Alright. Could I get a motion to approve? Oh, is there any changes to the the agenda? There are none Appear. Okay. Go to Guy, get a motion to approve the December 11th, 2024 agenda. <v Speaker 3>I will make a motion to approve the</v> December 11th, 2024 agenda. <v Speaker 1>Can I get a second please? I second that.</v> Alright, roll call Rachel. Aye. Asco Aye. And Jensen. Aye. Okay. Moving over. Our next item of business is our public audience. I will read some quick welcome notes. The board's meeting time is dedicated to its strategic mission and top priority focus areas. Public participation is an opportunity to present brief comments or close questions to the board for consideration and follow up. Each person is asked for to focus comments. The three minutes. We have our timer right over here. The boundaries are designed to help keep the meeting focused and in no way should limit conversations beyond the board meeting. Please be aware that any individual student or personnel matters are considered confidential under Colorado law. It is outta respect for the individual students and staff that we have for those conversations to be held in the executive session. Insights are needed to, welcome to the board, encouraged you to meet with the most appropriate person among the district's, many leaders. That's out of the way. Our first speaker this evening is going to be Nancy Cot. <v Speaker 4>She's gonna,</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. I'm gonna, no problem. Right there.</v> Is Kelsey available? Kelsey, your last name is Vollmer. Yes. Okay, awesome. Welcome. <v Speaker 4>Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 3>So my name's Kelsey Volmer.</v> I have kiddos at KSC in Newcastle and I am part of the, well, I am one of the co-presidents of KFC's P tac. Love working with that. Thank you guys so much, first of all, just for being on the board and for all that you do for our students and for our district. I'm actually here to piggyback off of what Nancy was going to read. So I'm going to just give you kind of a brief overview of what she was going to say before me. We would love to bring a Spanish language program to our elementary and middle schools. We know these are already offered in the high school. Nancy is going to be speaking about the research and things that she has found on why this would be so appropriate or so important for our students and why we're so passionate about this. Our goal really is to just start a conversation with the district on how we can work together to come up with some creative solutions to meet this, meet these needs. And I want you guys to know that we don't want to just find a curriculum to put in the hands of our classroom teachers. They don't have enough time as it is to teach what they are already required. And we know that ideally this would be, we'd be looking for a way to bring maybe more staffing in for another specials class to add into the specials rotations. That's really our goal. So we're here just to let you guys know that this is something that a lot of parents that we've talked to think is important and we just wanna see if we can come up with creative ideas on how we can make this possible. So that's really all I hope to say. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank <v Speaker 1>You Nancy.</v> Okay. Sorry all I messed you guys up. We could've waited a <v Speaker 3>Shutted away.</v> But anyways. My name is Nancy Coy. I'm a mom of two kids at KSE and I'm also a P Tech mom with Kelsey and Amy. I have a letter here that has multiple signatures of support from other parents in the district that really feel like a Spanish program is in our students' best interest. So I'm just gonna read that letter to you guys. Dear members of the Garfield Re two school board, as part of our ongoing commitment to providing a well-rounded and globally competitive education for our students, we are reaching out to express strong interest in the potential introduction of a Spanish LeGrange program within our school district. Research consistently shows that early language learning has numerous cognitive, academic and social benefits. These benefits are in complete alignment with Garfield re two's strategic plan. Specifically the goals of academic preparedness and community connectedness. According to the American Council on the teaching of foreign languages, students who are exposed to a second language at a young age demonstrate enhanced cognitive abilities, including better problem solving skills, improved memory, and greater overall cognitive flexibility. These skills are vital for academic success in all subject areas, critical thinking skills, and they tie into numerous Colorado academic standards. The Colorado Department of Education website states that in 21st century society, the study of more than one language is not only absolutely essential to the core curriculum, but also imperative to the economic growth and continued prosperity of the United States. Language and communication are essential to the human experience. Our local communi community is increasingly diverse. And providing students with the opportunity to learn Spanish will not only prepare them for future academic and professional success, but also foster a deeper understanding of the different cultures and perspectives that encompass the community. Additionally, implementing such a program would align with our district's commitment to equity and inclusion, ensuring that all students have access to the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in a multicultural society. We understand that the biggest roadblock is most likely funding. We, like Kelsey said, we are wanting to partner with the district to explore all creative options that might provide a much needed solution to this important issue. And thank you for your time and your continued dedication to the success and the wellbeing of our students. <v Speaker 1>Thank you, Nancy. Thank you very much. Thank you.</v> Great stuff. Chair. No one else. No one else. That's it. Okay. Don't have anybody signed up. No one else. Anybody else want to just ask us? Alright. Well thank you very much for bringing that to our attention. You guys. Really good stuff. Okay, moving on. Can I get a motion to approve the November 13th, 2024 draft board minutes? <v Speaker 3>I'll make a motion to approve the</v> November 13th, 2024 draft board minutes. <v Speaker 1>Can I get a second? I second that. Roll call Fletcher.</v> Aye. Aye. Jensen, <v Speaker 3>Aye.</v> Sorry, <v Speaker 1>Was not, was not paying attention.</v> Sorry, Sharon. You're okay? All right. Next thing on our agenda is approval of the November, 2020 fifth. November 25th, 2024 special board meeting. Minutes. <v Speaker 5>I, I make a motion to approve this special board meeting.</v> November 25th. 2024 minutes. Thank <v Speaker 1>You.</v> Can I get a second? I will second. Appreciate that. Can I roll call please, Rachel? Aye. <v Speaker 5>Al Aye. Jensen?</v> <v Speaker 1>Aye. Alright. Now on to the consent agenda.</v> Are there any changes to the consent agenda? There are none. And we'll talk about that. Can I get a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented? <v Speaker 5>I make a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented.</v> <v Speaker 3>I will second Thank</v> <v Speaker 1>You.</v> Roll call. Please let all aye ask. <v Speaker 5>All aye, Jenen.</v> <v Speaker 1>Aye. Alright. A lot of stuff going on in there.</v> Okay. We're gonna move on to Lisa Pierce, our assistant superintendent. We're gonna hear her fantastic report. <v Speaker 3>Absolutely. And the, the theme,</v> I'm gonna keep it short as well. So for student wellness, we'll be discuss discussing that later tonight on the agenda, when we talk about the device restrictions under staff support, we've been working in effort to support our staff. The human resource team has been analyzing district-wide trends to address the ongoing substitute teacher crisis and shortage that we're, that we're facing. We had made progress in hiring additional day-to-day subs, as is as reflected on the consent agenda you just approved. At the same time, we're developing strategies to improve overall coverage and maintain instructional and continuity in classrooms, ensuring minimal disruptions to student learning. When teachers are absent, we hope to bring a plan forward soon on what more we can do. And as far as community partnerships, in November we hosted our first ever joint meeting between district accountability and Latinos and RE two. During the meeting, we had a presenter from the Office of School Safety who facilitate conver facilitated conversation around bullying and defining it. It was very helpful in helping everyone to get on the same page. We will continue that work at our next deck in Latinos meeting, which will also be a joint meeting next Tuesday. We are going to review the bullying policy, discuss the changes that CSB has recommended, and then develop a recommendation to bring to you. So DAK will be bringing that forward. These partnerships between these two groups and between the board have strengthened our commitment to a shared understanding and commitment around fostering a safe and inclusive school environment. And unless you have any questions, that concludes our report. <v Speaker 1>What, what, what requirements does it take</v> to become a, a substitute teacher? Do they need a degree, a four year degree? <v Speaker 3>No. You do not need a four year degree.</v> You have to pass high school diploma, pass a background check and pay the fee to Colorado Department of Education licensing department. So the fee part is kind of what we're looking at. Like, could we get more substitutes if we could take that barrier away? That's one of our thought processes. <v Speaker 1>But there's no way to utilize high school students.</v> And as a substitute teacher is, I mean, because obviously the big restriction is they're not <v Speaker 3>Graduated.</v> Absolutely. Especially to be in charge of a full classroom. Correct. We do have, we've also are exploring the idea of substitutes for our classified staff. So for paraprofessionals, for cooks, custodial, all of these places are experiencing the crisis and they're trying to fill, fulfill for everyone. And I do believe that we could probably use something within there. We do have one elementary school partnering with one high school to provide students experience in how to teach reading to kids. And that's benefiting both groups of people. That's both groups of kids who, <v Speaker 1>What's the elementary,</v> <v Speaker 3>Highland and Rifle High School or PI Partnering. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Oh yeah. We just said, yeah. Okay. Awesome. Good</v> <v Speaker 3>Questions?</v> <v Speaker 1>Anything for I did, I'll come back to one really quick.</v> Dak and Latinos partnering up going over the bullying policy. So they'll have another get together meeting where they'll discuss what we saw the other night. And then in January will they break apart and start doing some work? Yes. And then trying to come back together. <v Speaker 3>So January and February there'll be separate meetings.</v> Again, we'll reflect on how the other meetings went. What, what did we learn from both groups that maybe they can steal from each other? And then, we'll, at the end of the year we'll discuss how many more do we wanna do next year? What were the benefits of being in one room? All of those kinds of things to make recommendations for how to go forward from there. It's a practice. Okay. Another great question. Thank you. Thank you. <v Speaker 1>Anyone else? Questions for, Hey Scott? I don't think so.</v> You missed a heck of a band performance, dude. You'll, you'll see the video. Yep. Okay. Let's move on to our superintendent report with Heather Gruman. <v Speaker 6>Absolutely. So in the realm of academic achievement</v> and student success, our schools are in the thick of it right now, implementing their unified improvement plans, which are closely aligned to the district strategic plan. This work has involved various collaborative initiatives across the district, including instructional walkthroughs through classrooms managed by strengths, which is a communication platform in which people learn how to better communicate with one another. Professional development sessions, staff meetings to analyze their data and where they're at in regards to mid-year and financial discussions to ensure grant allocations align with their building level initiatives with career and College pathways. This week, career presentations were conducted at our up Valley elementary schools as well as our down valley elementary schools, where student council members from both COLERIDGE and Rifle High School visited each one of the elementaries and delivered a thoughtful presentation on different careers and jobs and facilitated an interest survey with all fourth graders across the district. The survey data will be instrumental in preparing for the elementary career fair this spring, where we'll further promote college and career readiness amongst our students <v Speaker 1>For</v> <v Speaker 6>Staff support.</v> Right now we are working very, very closely with our special education staff, the building administrators. We've asked them to address ongoing challenges in our special education programs, a key obstacle remains, and being able to hire highly qualified staff in this area. The increase in complexity of student needs makes this even harder. And to better understand and address these challenges, we have collaborated with school leaders to analyze their current state in each building. This includes rever, reviewing individual staff and student schedules, monitoring the facilitation of parent meetings to ensure that we are in compliance and providing the most effectiveness with our partners. Our shared goal is to align support services and provide targeted training for all existing special ed staff, ensuring that the special education students are receiving the most high quality, consistent and individualized support that they can. And then Thanksgiving lunch, all of you participated in one way or the other? Our annual Thanksgiving lunch was a resounding success across all 10 schools. We served a total of 4,397 meals, including 1,511 meals served to parents, grandparents, and other family members. This event highlights the strong sense of community that we have in our district and we extend our heartfelt congratulations to Mary and our nutrition services team and the many volunteers who made this event so special. <v Speaker 1>Yes. That's awesome. Still here. Yay.</v> Mary, any questions for Heather? Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. You bet. Alright, let's move on to board reports and requests start. <v Speaker 3>I will start. Okay. So board reports, even though it's,</v> seems like it's been a while since we, we met, there's not much to report on. So I was able to attend the deck and the Latinos meeting, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to see the two groups together and I would definitely like to see them collaborate more together as well. 'cause I think they, they all bring good ideas and definitely things that maybe the other group didn't think about. And then R-M-S-P-T-A, it's been fun to see the different creative ways that they're raising money for the school and the different things that they do. So there was a band concert and they provided refreshments after the band and choir concert to all the parents and the attendees, which was, which was fun. And then speaking of band, there was a band concert here last night with all of the, the middle school bands, the sixth, seventh, and eighth. And then the high school band here, the concert band and the jazz band. And it was, it was a lot of fun. There was also a basketball game going on, so it was definitely a packed house and a packed parking lot and straight. I think there was people parked along the side of the football field as well. Oh wow. But it was fun to see the sixth graders start and then where they could end up. And as a senior in a concert in jazz band, it was, it was a lot of fun. And they do great work with, with the band here. So, and then CASB, we just had CASB last week. Always fun. Definitely a lot of people. Good way to network things to learn. Definitely different ideas on what different districts are doing and how they're succeeding and some of the things of what not to do too. So, but that was it. Okay. <v Speaker 7>Good. Board report.</v> <v Speaker 8>Cassie.</v> <v Speaker 5>Yeah. Board report.</v> Latinos and D have been with those meetings. Those have been really good. I've, I've liked seeing the groups come together like everybody else is saying. And it was actually kind of fun. 'cause last night at Coleridge, I did the cell phone initiative meeting at Coleridge High School last night for the cell phone. And some of the parents recognized me from Latinos or Deck and they came up and were talking to me. So that was kind of fun. CASB was great. I am more than excited that St. RA's assistant superintendent is coming over. Is that public? Yes. It's, yeah. Coming over and will be a part of that meeting. I really have connected with that board, those staff members on that. I sat in a lot of sessions with St. Reen on a panel and just hearing what they're doing, how they're engaging with the community, the great successes they've had. And it is just, it kind of casts vision of what we can do, what's out there, what can be done. And we are doing all the right things. Good job. We are doing all the right things. We are headed in the right direction. And it was just fun to hear them speak on things that were like, oh, we're already doing that, but they're doing it at a whole nother level. And just to see that we could go there was really amazing. So I was really excited about that. That was my, probably my biggest takeaway of CASB. 'cause sitting on the, in one of the meetings with the superintendent from St. Brain and then also in a session that they did strictly as board and superintendent and assistant superintendents in a class. So it was really amazing. So how many students are in that district? 38,000 stagger. 14 high schools. And they just passed a $754 million bond. Yeah. They're doing something. They're doing things. They have a innovation center for C in that bus. The cyber bus. Yeah. They have a cyber bus. They have all kinds of cool stuff, but fun stuff Yep. That they're doing. And just planting ideas for us. So it was good. And they start, they started us, I mean you look at their map, they were like rural school districts originally. So it was kind of fun just to hear where they started and how they kept progressing and what they kept coming up against and how they overcame. And it was just good all the way around. So that's it. Okay. That's my board report. I don't really have any requests. Okay. I get it. I guess. <v Speaker 9>Well, I'd like to. I appreciated the opportunity to go</v> to the, excuse my voice, that's why I was late. Not, I had a second wind this afternoon, so I made it. But the casby, Colorado Association of School Board Conference was fantastic. Great number of breakout sessions that were provided and, and on a lot of learning opportunities, especially for first year board member. They had a session on expanding learning opportunities for students through the CDS Colorado. We got digital learning system, fantastic there offer that can't be offered through normal school classrooms either where they, they don't have enough interest or whatever, but one student could go on and, and do something with, with that learning option. So that was really good. The final keynote speaker, amazingly engaging. That was a lot of fun. But what I really liked too is his take on the mental health aspects of student staff, everybody and, and just to be aware of it and, and what to, you know, kind of, kind of talk about it. Don't be ashamed about it. It was really, really good. Really proud of the rifle High school choir kicked off the, the entire conference they auditioned, they, they won the audition and so the choir was there and fantastic. They did three songs. We heard 'em do a song down in the garage parking lot, which I wish they had. Everybody could have heard that because the acoustics were amazing. And that was a lot of fun. Yeah. So they should be very proud of themselves. And then did attend Guys and Dolls the last Night of Guys and Dolls here. And, and that was amazing too. So a lot of talent here. I have no requests either right now. Okay. <v Speaker 1>You know, I I wanted to say, you know, stole my thunder</v> with the RHS choir. I mean, it was awesome seeing our people open up the convention. Thousand people probably sitting in that room easily. And our people shined. The kids were amazing. These guys had 'em all hopped up on candy, but, but they, they were amazing. And even afterwards people came up to us and just said how good they did. So it was really nice that we finally kind of got in there and we shined rifle high school shined. So it was really amazing. So, thanks, Daryl. You know, one of the things with CASB that I took away with St. St Bice also when we were talking about some of their leadership academies, they actually put on academy that they work with that is for potential board members. So a school board member is actually coming in years before our elections and they're getting up to date. And at the time where, you know, 'cause so many maybe board members get in because they have a single cause and your single cause goes away pretty quick when you see how much work you've gotta do. But they've kind of tackled that by getting people involved and really no one's getting on their boards that haven't went through those academies. And I bet it's a great environment for different ideas and different people to talk and communicate. So I, I took that away from St. Francis. They're really an amazing organization over there. Heather and Lisa have had contact with them. So we're, we're kind of right around those guys. And once again, as they talked about how their vision went and mission, it was a guiding light, like a strategic plan. And we have one of those two. So it really told me where we could go. I don't know that we were ready to be a 38,000 students. No, no. But it was pretty amazing how they handled that many schools and did that work. So it was a really neat organization and I'm glad these two have made contact with them and we're gonna rub elbows with those guys. So we're sticking with the winners and we're rubbing elbows with them. So I was really happy for that. Yep. This ensemble we just heard a minute ago, just from, I mean that was awesome. I mean, I love when the students do that. And just once again, the level of talent that we have at our two high schools, and I know those are just kids that are flooding up. We have to find ways to use them in other ways to, to make the whole district better. And I see that so many times. We start talking about some of these areas, we need more people and we just have such high advanced kids, high performers. I just wish we could use that. And I think we're, we're really starting to knock on that door and we'll get, we'll get there with that. So that was awesome. I served Thanksgiving over at Wamsley and that was a blast. Probably one of the best days I've had in a while. Originally they tried to put me at the dish machine. I said no, I'm more of an out front type of guy. So I was really fortunate I got to serve carrots and oranges. Oranges definitely do better on Thanksgiving than carrots and cauliflower did. But large group of people putting on all this food, moving those kids through, dealing with parents. I, I can't even tell you how many volunteers the main cook over there was telling me and how many turkeys that she made herself. But once again, it was just done real classy. No problems. Kids were smiling, parents were enjoying it. And I had a blast doing it. So if you ever get a chance and you can do some volunteer stuff, to me that's just, that's the best. So I, I really enjoyed that. So next time we'll do, I'll do that again for sure. And then I just, you know, I saw Officer Allison a little earlier and I just wanted to say thank you to him as I walked by and I saw his patrol car with the rifle bears logos on either side, that made me proud. But I, you know, when I saw him, I really wanted to say that I appreciate what he does for us at this school and, and all through rifle and you know, that, that means a lot to me. And then really merry Christmas to everybody. We're right into the season. You know, we got an early meeting that we won't see each other again for a little bit. But I, you know, we've had a great first court or first semester. I kind of still think of things first and second quarter or semester, depending on what you're looking at. Been a, a great first part of the year. I'm really excited how we've kept going with the strategic plan. Many people came up to me once again at CASB saying we're doing a great job. Keeping it on the forefront applauded us for making some adjustments to it and keeping going with that. So just, just good stuff happening at the district. I brought this hat in case a public comment got outta control and it didn't, didn't have to use it. So I appreciate that too. So, but you ladies that did bring that up about the Spanish. I said that when I ran for the board, I would love to see that now maybe my second term. We will, we will start focusing on that after we get this strategic plan really going. I want to make sure every kid that leaves our district is set up for as much success as every kid. Yep. And I do believe the dual language kids are, they have an advantage and I'm proud that we get all kids that know Spanish to know English. I'd sure like all those English kids to know Spanish. And I tell you what, our area right here in the Roy Pork Valley will just once again lead the charge in that. So thank you for bringing that. That's never been off our minds. We've talked about it a few times, so thank you for bringing that up though tonight. Yeah, thank you. Gets me pumped up. Just more work for you guys. I know I have a big star bite. They can do it. These guys can do it. I don't even, I don't even doubt they can do it. We just need to work with you guys. We'll figure a plan out. We'll find the money, we can find the people. These guys can do it. And, and we'll, we'll try to make that happen at some point down the road. But that's what I have for board reports requests. I don't have any requests right now. I enjoyed working. This was probably, you know, we had Heather and Lisa at at CS B and it was great to be with you guys once again, Sharon was up there and be able to talk about our goals for the district. We do have continuity through, you know, with the board and our leadership. So that's, that's great. And once again, I think CSB showcased that once again where we can all work together, go to different classes, come back and collaborate. It was good. Yeah. So thank you for you two and Sharon for being there taking us to dinner once or twice. It was really nice to spend some time together when you break bread together. It usually is good. Alright, well let's go to committee reports. You kind of talked about D already or you got some committee stuff. Yeah, <v Speaker 5>Go ahead Kathy.</v> Yeah, well I've met with Jacob a couple times on curriculum and Nate did a survey for the IB program and communication. Met with Theresa about cso, the, what are they called? They like a group that would help support us or something like and you guys saw the email with that proposal? So that's like a public relations, the pub, public <v Speaker 1>Community</v> <v Speaker 9>Engagement. Public</v> <v Speaker 5>Community community engagement pub public.</v> Yeah. And they presented to us at communications meeting with Theresa and you guys saw that proposal on their, I think that's about it. I'm trying to think. I mean I've done so much stuff. I don't even know. I know a couple of our curriculum meetings, Jacob, I was coming into the office for a meeting and he is like, we have a meeting, Simone's gone. And I'm like, well I'm here. And he just made the meeting happen. So thank you Jacob. I appreciate that. Just trying to stay on top of those meetings 'cause we're all busy so, <v Speaker 1>And thank you.</v> We hit a lot of them and I appreciate we have a representative there. <v Speaker 5>Oh yeah. I went to HR with Devin</v> and glad them a couple times. Yep. So yeah, just trying to stay on top of stuff. Yep. But there's a lot and a lot's been happening. So coming off of cas. Yeah, I think that's about it. As we get through, <v Speaker 1>As we get January we start getting back to the grind of</v> February will be our tough month. Every staff gets a little more down come February. So, <v Speaker 5>But then it's spring break,</v> <v Speaker 1>But then it's spring.</v> Gosh darn it. So thank you for hitting those. <v Speaker 5>Yeah, of course.</v> <v Speaker 1>Committee or</v> <v Speaker 3>Committee reports.</v> Committee have, I haven't been able to attend a lot. I did attend the HR meeting in October, I think was the last one that we had with the way that the holidays and everything have fallen. But definitely nice to see what they're doing on the district level in HR to follow our strategic plan as well. So <v Speaker 1>Good job over there.</v> <v Speaker 9>Finance, we had a great meeting at the</v> CSB conference with everybody. So that's nothing until we really report and then we'll hear from them tonight. Yep. So we're good. <v Speaker 1>Yep. Scott has definitely taken an interest in finance,</v> so I applaud you for that, man. You stepped into that and you've really just got those guys. They're looking for you to give you answers and that's great. There's nothing to hide. And that's really, when we first met with NUS was up there for St. Var, St. Vr. Their story is they had a terrible financial situation. Terrible. Yeah. And they built it to a $758 million bond that their community passed. So we have a very solid finance team at Garfield RE two. And we're sitting good as far as with what we have, we're managing it properly. We, we could Sure use $758 million though, if only we'll start talking about that in the next year or so one day. So be ready when we have to go talk about that. Okay. So for me, a committee reports was really, my last one was the DAF and Latinos Night, which I enjoy. I I like those two groups regardless. I, I think at some point we have to, you know, DAK is definitely a more of a work oriented group. They walk in with like, you know, tool coolers of food and they're ready to get to work. And whereas Latinos right now, we're still trying to build some relationships and find out where they want to be. I think this bullying policy is a great one due to the interest. And now somehow between leadership, we have to figure out how to get some work done through those two organizations. And it'll be exciting how this next meeting as we start really diving into the policy where, where those those groups go. You know, they definitely can overlap. You know, I don't see why anybody from Latino an RE two couldn't be a part of DAC for sure and DAC visiting with, you know, being involved in the Latinos thing. Just sometimes I wonder if they're at the same level of the work they're ready to do. So that'll be exciting for you guys to figure out. But they're both such great groups, great turnout. If you get a chance to come to a DAC or a Latinos meeting, they are really solid and you meet great people. I like Jacob always does a great job of kind of make making us mingle. And I think that's a win right there for sure. So keep that up. But I really, you know, as we go into 2025, it's somewhere in there finding that Latinos group mission. Like where do they really want to be? And I, you know, that that's for you guys. But through that process, I definitely don't wanna slow D down right. From doing 'cause boy they, they really are skyrocketing it up and you know, just somehow we need to figure that out, I guess is would be my kind of my take on the two groups a little bit. But I enjoy it both and I'll be excited for it. Okay. Everybody still doing okay? Yep. All. I'm having a good time. Let's keep going. Advocacy chairman, anything I <v Speaker 10>Actually, I had left a message for chance.</v> So what came out this week from CASB really was just wanting feedback from the CASB convention. Yeah. So there wasn't really anything on there about advocacy. There was no one there to work with it. <v Speaker 1>You know, I could speak a little to that.</v> I did the delegate assembly and that's most at the big CASB event. You're always gonna bring delegates around where you represent our dis our district in a region and then we vote, you know, CASB is looking at definitely ways to advocate for funds. You know, that's a, an easy way to set it. Some of the challenges is with I'll just, with the new incoming administration, there are some fears at the CASB level that potentially if changes are made to the Federal Department of Education, would that affect our funding? So we did have some conversations on that. Of course, it's all, nobody knows. Nobody knows if that we didn't have the department, we get all the money or you know, who knows? Nobody knows anything. So we did have some conversations for that and in a way I'm thankful because it does start preparing us for what could be the future as long as just talking about the idea. So that was something they were talking about with advocacy at CASB. And a lot of it is just, just, you know, I guess at the same time spending CASB funds to have somebody up there lobbying and lobbying for that stuff. So it was interesting for me to start understanding the lobbying side. There are districts in our state that actually have a lobbyist that just works for the district. I, I didn't know a lot of that stuff. That was pretty eye-opening to me when you start talking about funds and things like that. So, so that, that, that's what I got with advocacy probably some more stuff and I'll think about it maybe later. But that was, that was that for me. Okay, perfect. Alright, now we're gonna get to the good stuff. We're gonna bring a little rifle high school back up and what we decided to do this year is we'll always shine the light on a school. And then realistically one of our, our main pillar is academic achievement. So now we're gonna talk about those numbers. It's, you know, they can be good, they can be bad. It's not about that. It's just about let's get it out there so we know what we're working on and we're true to the, the community knowing where that school is. So come on up, sir. Come on. Welcome up. We have a slide for these guys. I share Chelsea. Oh, there, yeah, in the, <v Speaker 5>It's not in the board packet.</v> Is there a handout for that or? It's not in the board packet. <v Speaker 1>Alright, so No,</v> <v Speaker 10>It's not and I didn't get it.</v> He did do, I was hoping I'm gonna miss I know. Me too. <v Speaker 1>How do you wanna start? I Okay, welcome. Welcome.</v> Welcome's a good one. Glad y'all are glad y'all are here in my building <v Speaker 11>Tonight.</v> I appreciate y'all being here and I look forward to a conversation. Hopefully I can answer your questions. I've got, I, I've twisted some arms of some people to stay with me tonight just in case, but hopefully whatever you are looking for, we can give it to you. <v Speaker 1>It's, I can't hardly, it's a little blurry for me.</v> I guess let me, can you zoom more? Yeah, I can you just a little bit somehow. Okay. That'll work. Let's just start over there. Oh, can we see the whole thing? Yeah. Can you show the whole thing really quick? Ah, okay. Now I definitely can't see it. Okay. But I know, I was wondering if we missed all the other stuff. So if we can, can we just go, let's go to PSAT and SAT. That's always pretty exciting. Sure. And so we were, we were curious about one of the things, we were talking about schools, and we talked about this at CASB was just wondering where you were to where you are now. So, <v Speaker 11>Right.</v> Well, I mean obviously you can see depending on our groups, our, our our freshman group this year or the last couple of years, the, the, the first column in each of those years is your school average. So that's just specifically for rifle high school. And we had a pretty significant jump there with our eighth ninth numbers from 2223 to, to 2324. That's an, that's an overall composite score, obviously not broken down by the, the reading and, and the math components. But, and then the, the 10th was, was pretty steady, a slight drop there. And then the same thing with your actual SAT for our juniors that are taking the actual SATA little bit in no. Or of a number there. So, you know, that's, that's kind of what we're looking at for those, for those last couple of years. We do, that's not our data from the beginning of this year. We've taken the beginning of the year, we took that back in September and we've got that, that horizon data showed roughly about the same. I don't think there was too much change from that 2324 to the, to the fall of 24. Those, those beginning of the year numbers are, are about what we're looking at there. The 8 37, 8 16 and eight 90. And then we will again take that, take those tests again when we come back in January, we'll take, we'll take the, the testing again towards the end of January and then we'll do that again in, in in May. So we do this three times of the year to kind of measure that growth <v Speaker 1>And SAT that's our 11th graders, correct?</v> <v Speaker 11>Correct. Yes sir.</v> <v Speaker 1>That's our 11th graders.</v> And so the 2324 over here with our school average, you know, our eighth and ninth graders were about 8 37. Once again, this was the first time they all took it digitally. Is that correct? We're still on that just to be sure. So it really looked like the eighth and the ninth graders were ready for a digital test. Right. And our 10th graders were like, oh, digital test. You know, I mean, but what would you, could you say maybe is a reason, I mean any ideas why eighth and ninth graders might've did so well, I mean they really, that's a pretty impressive jump that they made right. Coming from set women. <v Speaker 11>Sure. Well those, so, so I guess</v> what you're actually looking at is that 7 83 there for the, for the 2223 school year. Oh yeah. That, that group is now your eight 16, they're moving forward. Right. So, so a little bit of a decrease there. You know, I can, I can ask my, my, you know, Tabitha Harrington is, is is one of our horizon data, horizon data persons. Obviously I was not, I was not here in either one of those school years, so I'm not really, I'm not sure of the, the tracking of those kids. It could be that, you know, your, your, your population size has changed to a certain degree. It could be that, you know, you're looking at a different sample of kids. But for the most part, you know, and, and, and if you look at the Horizon data and SAT data, those, those points that's, you know, roughly, you know, a 30 point that's, you know, could be as small as two or three questions. Right. It's not a, it's not a significant thing. So it's, it's really pretty steady. I I feel like, you know, our goal would be obviously to, to close that gap with where our state averages are. You know, I'm a competitive person and so I'm looking at, you know, other schools in our area that are, that are, you know, kind of the same makeup and the same demographic as what we're looking at and kind of seeing how we compare with those guys. Obviously that data's not shown there, but, but those are kind of some of the things that we look at to try to measure up with who we're, who we're competing against. <v Speaker 1>Any questions on ps?</v> Sap Tabatha the side where she, she's right. <v Speaker 12>Sorry. I was looking</v> <v Speaker 1>For I know.</v> <v Speaker 12>So you guys can have a copy of that.</v> I I do think that was quite a shock room. We saw how our, how well our eight nine did. We have done some different things with our intervention classes, but I do believe they came up with some really good skills. Yeah. You know, again, you do look out from it is the eight nine and then the next year is the 10th. So 7, 8, 3 to that every year. It's, you know what I mean, you look at how it's diagonal. <v Speaker 1>I mess that up sometimes for myself.</v> I'm, I always look across, it's like, no, I need to be going diagonal. Yeah. You know, to where they are. <v Speaker 12>And we do, we have three year snapshots for our SAT</v> all the way back to, I think it was 2019. So we compare 'em and look at those different numbers, those different benchmarks. But the eighth, ninth did do really well comparable this year to the eight nine when they took it last year. So <v Speaker 1>I think those are good numbers.</v> Yes. Thank you Mr. Johnson. I think those are looking good <v Speaker 13>Written.</v> I'll jump in and and reinforce a little bit what, what Steven said. One, with it being the first with the eighth graders, they're these kiddos, ninth grade last year, they were used to taking a digital version of the CMAs text and so they didn't have to transition to the paper pencil test. So that was one advantage. They were already used to that format. A advantage number two, and Tabitha talked about it, the interventions and we've talked about that. Read 180 program last year was the first year that we implemented that read 180 program. And I think it really did yield some good results for us in the ninth grade level in, in the LA test and strengthening that intervention has been something that we've been working on. So just to reinforce what both of them are talking about. I I think those were some major contributing factors that we want to continue to build off of. Yeah, <v Speaker 1>That's good.</v> Can we take a look at the staff success? Can you are making that little, that square over there for us. Perfect. Okay. Tell us about this little area. <v Speaker 11>Yeah, we are, these,</v> these numbers were put together a a little while ago I want to say we're, I, I do believe we counted yesterday, just to confirm, we still are at seven non-certified staff members. Several of those are in our special education department, which we kind of touched on, you know, earlier in the meeting is, is a kind of a, a high needs area for, for staff. I, I currently have three staff members in my special education department that are, that are not certified. You know, you look around the district and I've got bodies, which is good. You know, there's, there's several campuses that don't have bodies. So, so three of those are there. Mr. Schulke, who was with our band earlier tonight is, has been a sub in the district. We've moved him into that position. So he's working on his certification. We've got an ELL teacher that, that is not certified working on certification as well. We have field, we had an open science position since the beginning of the year and we have slated to start in January. So we've filled that position. We're still technically short a ELA teacher. We're operating down, I think one and a half positions in our world language department. We have, we have one full-time Spanish teacher and one part-time Spanish teacher. We did do an interview today with a Spanish teacher that's, that's coming to the area that doesn't live here currently, but will be here by the end of the month. So hopefully we can speed that process through and possibly get her in the classroom. The interview went really well, so we might be able to add some, some stuff there. And then we have technically a math position open and Where else are we short? That's it, you right. Okay. And then 10 paraprofessionals we have in our October job fair that we held at Rifle Middle School, I attended that with Devon and was able to grab four people out of that job fair, which was very, I was real happy and, and and thankful for, for Devon for putting that on because that helped us fill some empty positions there. So from those 10 that are listed there, we're probably down to, I wanna say five now. And so, and, and we've, we've filled one or two after that job fair that weren't a part of the job fair. So we've, we've, it's weird. December is a hiring time, right? I'm not used to that but, but we have been able to do some interviews and find some people here in the last month or so. So we're, we're, we're, and and most of those paraprofessional positions are within the sped department as well. SPED department has, has done a tremendous job with the scheduling and the piecing together to make sure we're still providing the services necessary for our kiddos. But we were joking around the other day, don't ever ask a special ed person if they need more help because they'll always say yes. But I feel like we've done a, a pretty good job of, of making sure we're still providing what the kids need in that area. Turnover rate, we have 13 new teachers in our building. Not new to the profession, but at least new to Rifle high school in the building this year. So that's where that number comes from. The 34% and then the survey data there is from last year's, last Spring's survey data 68% and we just this weekend got the, the, the most recent survey results. So I don't have that information in there at this time, but, <v Speaker 1>Okay, perfect.</v> Well it's your first year so we <v Speaker 11>Dunno, people are leaving because Right.</v> Meet back in May me back in May. We'll we'll have this conversation again in May. Yes, sir. That number student count, that student, that's total student enrollment here at Rifle High. That's still probably within a handful. That's, that's an accurate number. I wanna say we were, we were right about 800 at the beginning of the school year in August. There's always a little bit of flux there, plus or minus our minority numbers are, are, are accurate. And ELL students, our SPED students, we're sitting at about 22. Our average class size. We obviously, I've got some teachers in the room that may scoff at that. We've got a couple of classrooms that are a little bit bigger than that, but, but average size we're, we're right at 22. A lot of that is is is helped by our IB program. Our IB classes are smaller by design. That's part of the program. So, so that helps bring that number down a little bit. But you know, I wanna say probably not any more than 30 31 in a classroom. So we, we try to keep it there. Some of our instructional blocks for ELA are, are double blocked, which is, which is where that higher number comes from. Our class periods are 55 minutes. And so we have some, we have some additional time and a few of our specified ELA programs, our ELL kids get a little bit extra time. Some of our SPED students get a little extra time in that ELA block. And then we offer currently offer 35 electives with, those are within our course selection guy. We don't, I don't think we have 35 running at the moment, but we have potential of right options in our course selection guide of, of, of those electives. Yeah. Quarter one though, you mentioned quarter one, I know we're, we're a few short days away from ending the first semester that quarter one attendance rate nine 3.2, that's, that's a slightly higher, I wanna say the first quarter of the 2324 school year was at 92.8. So about a half a point, a little bit better in attendance. And then total incidents, that is any time that a student has received a referral. So whether it was something that was a warning, a consequence, an actual, you know, processed, anytime a student receives a referral, that's how we count our data here on this campus. And so the 103 is the number of, of referrals that were received in that first quarter. I, I should have, and I'm sorry, maybe if Tabitha has her laptop on her, maybe she can look up toward her two so far to see kind of where that number is. If we're trending one way or the other. I think with the addition of, of Kelly Lau, our dean has, has added a a, an additional set of hands in our administrative department. So that helps a lot with processing our referrals and trying to help kids, you know, you know, proactive behavior management to kind of help, you know, do some, do some positive interventions on the, on the behavior side of things. Does, <v Speaker 1>Would, does, does Rifle</v> High school have a discipline issue? <v Speaker 11>I I come from a building that is about twice this size.</v> I, I honestly, I I I can't without giving you the Sunday school answer, I don't think so. Right. I mean, we have, you know, one physical altercation so far this school year and the vaping is, is a, is a problem with teens across the country. Right. I don't think that, we don't, we don't catch a ton of kids vaping. We have, we have had some vapers, but, but not a, I wouldn't even say rampant. It's not something that we're constantly trying to worry about who's got a vape in the, in the bathroom or who's doing what. A couple of minor drug incident, you know, we've had some THC on campus a couple times, but nothing, you know, for first semester of school year, I feel like it's the, the numbers are low. So now I feel, I feel good about where we are. I think a lot of the stuff that we're doing with our students as far as our expectations being raised to another level with the, the accountability that we're, that we're forcing them to, to hold 'em to, you know, it's, it's, it's taken a lot of notice. I think the attendance numbers are moving in a, in a very positive manner. One of the things that that, that the staff kind of voiced was important to them when I came on board was to, to get kids in classrooms and outta the hallways. And that is a resounding, you know, positive in our building right now, is that kids are not out in the hallways. They're, they're, they're, the quad is clear when the bell rings, the, the, you know, they're in the classrooms and so we don't see a lot of that. So tardy numbers have, have drastically I did, it's not, it wasn't asked far, but first quarter last year, the first quarter this year, I wanna say we dropped almost 2,700, no, 1700, sorry. 1700 tardies less this year than where we were at the same point in time last year. Well, it's <v Speaker 1>Gotta make a huge difference for class to be,</v> to start on time, but Right. Yes. Sirion Wow. <v Speaker 11>Sure. So we've, we've focused, we focused our mo majority</v> of our attention in a couple of areas, you know, but, but overall discipline problem. I, I mean we've got great kids in this building. You, you saw a lot of 'em here, but even the ones that aren't active and stuff like that, that's, you know, just a given. They're gonna be great kids. We've got a lot of kids that, that aren't really active in a lot of stuff, but they're just still good kids. They're, they're we're good <v Speaker 1>Kids.</v> Can I ask just along those lines? Sure. 'cause we were talking about discipline, we count those numbers. What about, sorry, what about your cell phone policy? What's, what's the cell phone policy here at Rifle High School? <v Speaker 11>Our current cell phone policy right now is</v> that they are not allowed during class time. So bell to bell cell phones need to be up. We have some classrooms that, that utilize a caddy system, kinda like the old calculator caddies where they have number on 'em so the kids know which one theirs is going into. We have some classrooms that operate outta sight outta mind kind of a thing. You know, we, we, we kind of balance where we want to, you know, what hill we're gonna, we're going to stay on. Right. I think the, the, the gist is to, or the point, the main, the main factor of that is to not be distracted by it. So if, if your cell phone's in your backpack or in your pocket, I, I, it doesn't matter to me if it's in the caddy or if it's in your pocket. Right. As long as it's not out in your hands, it's not as long as it's causing a distraction. I I think that, you know, that has been a far less of an issue than this guy right here. You know, we, we've, we've, we struggle with this. I had a conversation with, with, with Ms. Grimley this morning, you know, about projecting forward, Where are we gonna go? Right. So, so, so, so in, in that realm. But yeah, the cell phones have not been a tremendous issue. Now am I, am I looking forward to having the, the pouches? Sure. I'm glad that Coal Ridge is leading that charge and I, you know, appreciate Jackie taking, taking the heat for that and I'm gonna see how that goes. But I'm all in and, and, and I'm looking forward to that, seeing how that plays out. I think it's a great thing. But, but yeah, I mean, one of the big things with, like I said a while ago, we got great kids here. If, if you, if you place the expectations on them, they're gonna meet 'em, they're gonna meet 'em. You're always gonna have a small number that are gonna, they're gonna buck a little bit. But the, the vast majority of our kids are gonna do what we ask 'em to do because they know it's the right thing to do. And, and so yeah, we haven't seen a ton of issues with our cell phones here and there, but we, we take care of it <v Speaker 1>Good here.</v> <v Speaker 12>And I just wanted to circle back about a couple of things.</v> One, the attendance probably, or excuse me, the discipline does look a little bit more, I I would suspect from last quarter or you know, quarter one last year to quarter one. This year we have taken a big stand on tardies. And so under Ms. Lau, a lot of students are having consequences for those, whereas in the past we didn't identify those the same way. We didn't put 'em in the system the same way. So that probably looks a little bit larger. And quarter two actually has 10 less incidences than quarter one. So we are, the students are getting the message and taking care of business and understanding what the expectation is and like Mr. Johnson said, rising to that. Good to hear. <v Speaker 1>Alright, last little section over here. What do</v> <v Speaker 11>We got?</v> Yeah, looking forward to this. You know, Jacob Pingle and I have done some legwork, you know, looking forward to some CTE that we're, that we're getting ready to, to try to find some pathways and implement. I think this is, I obviously the 89.4 is, that's, that's not a great number. And, and my goal for as long as I'm here at Rifle High School would be to try to get that up, you know, as high as I can, right? I wanna see our kids graduating, I wanna see 'em moving on and being ready for whatever comes next in life. I think the more certificates, CMC classes, the CTE thing, I'm, I'm a, I'm a big, I came from a, came from a previous space with a very robust CTE department and program. And, and I'm really looking forward to some of the things that we've we're planting the seeds for in the last, last few weeks and moving forward into the spring of how we're gonna get those things rolling. Looking forward to next year, I think the more ways that we can get our kids involved and engaged with something that they see meaningful and pur purposeful about what they're gonna do with their life. Like the, the FFA kids we're talking about how we're doing this because it means something of what we can do later. IB student sat here and talked about going into radiology and being able to have those hands-on experiences like that. The more opportunities we give our kids to be involved in something that means something to them, I think is, is gonna be majorly beneficial. So looking forward to, you know, continuing our partnership with CMC and offering those concurrent enrollment classes, getting those college credits, a lot of the CTE things that we're gonna look at and provide will, will, at a minimum give them licensure ready to move on to the next stage of life and work and, and, and vocational things, but also provide some college credits to move on the IB program. Obviously big proponent of that, but, but yeah, so, so, so these things, we're just trying to make sure we've got a, we've got a, a, a large chunk of our students that are already looking forward to moving on and making money. I mean, if you talk to a lot of 'em, you know, when we sit with them, when we talk about goals and what are you trying to get out of this and where do you wanna go next, you know, if a kid is struggling and, and, and probably got some low grades and maybe not be doing as well as they could be in class. Like when you talk about like, what are we trying to do? What do you want to do? I wanna make money, right? Well, you, you can't make money without a high school education brother, so this is, you know, these things. So if we give them opportunities to go hands on and, and have those real world experiences, I'm, I'm looking forward to, to, to pushing that to, to see where we can take those kids. Awesome. <v Speaker 4>Questions.</v> <v Speaker 5>Briton asked one</v> of my questions about the cell phone job. You just kind of took a hold of that first stay right out of the gate, I mean, on your own. So Sure, congrats on that and tell all your staff that bought into that and helped see that through. Are you utilizing BO Cs to help with that special, special <v Speaker 11>Education?</v> Yeah. Yes ma'am. Yeah, I have, I've met with Julie Goldberg several times here recently. Obviously Amanda Bingman, our director is, is on campus. Aaron Bette is, is here quite a bit. I I've got a couple of people in the department that have a few years of experience that are, that are mentoring and, and trying to help along. But yes, BOCES has been helpful and, and obviously willing to help as much as we'll allow them to come in and I'm good. I'm, I'm on board with that. My, my background has always been special education if you didn't know that, but, but my whole teaching career and, and, and when I was in the classroom was all special education. So I've been a big, you know, like how do we work together? What do we need to do? Like how do we, how do we fix these things that we're having issues with? So, so yeah. So we do have some help that we're, that we're trying to wrap around. <v Speaker 5>Good. I just wanted to make sure we're utilizing that.</v> <v Speaker 11>Yes ma'am. Julie Goldberg's been great.</v> She's, she's, she's ready. So Awesome. <v Speaker 5>Good. That's awesome.</v> <v Speaker 3>I'm really excited</v> to see those numbers with the CTE courses taken. Yes. Or classes taken. That's yeah, that's awesome, right? <v Speaker 11>I mean, yeah, the, the, the goal and the,</v> and the, the things, and I don't want to speak, try to tell me to gimme a signal, Jacob, if I need to stop, but at any rate, you know, we were, we were tasked with a minimum of two and and we've met with, we, we kind of set as an administrative team and with Jacob's guidance, we kind of looked at what we're already doing that could already kind of take that, take us on that path, right? And, and we came up with seven that we could potentially start moving towards. I told him the other day, I, I don't want to take, I don't wanna bite off more than I can chew and I don't want to do all the things just to say we're doing all the things right. I want to, I want make sure we pinpoint some things that we can do with Fidelity and, and, and do them the right way. So we've kind of narrowed down where we've, we've spoken to three staff members this week that have, we've kind of, Jacob made a great pitch to, to them about where we were trying to go and what this is gonna look like. And we had three people jump right on board. And so, and these are courses that they involve, some courses that we're already offering. Our next stage would obviously to be, to look and see what other coursework would be involved in that, that level one to four to get these people, you know, ready for, for full, you know, licensure and, and so we're gonna, we're ready to embark on that journey, but I feel like we've got three programs pinpointed right now that are probably gonna be a big hit and, and make an impact on our kids. So I'm really looking forward to that. <v Speaker 5>That's awesome. You're with the last column,</v> the CMC courses taken. Yes. It's really high compared to coleridge's. Not that I'm comparing, so Sure. Just wanna verify that. And I know you're about 200 students more than coleridge, but what kind of percentage of kids here are taking those courses? Is it a 50% of the students that are taking those? <v Speaker 11>It's a great question. I</v> <v Speaker 5>Don't really know. Say</v> <v Speaker 12>50. I don't</v> <v Speaker 11>Know that we have that.</v> Right. Well, and I have Michelle Zener here, my counselor, she might know that number. <v Speaker 5>No pressure. Gosh,</v> <v Speaker 12>I'm gonna say,</v> <v Speaker 5>I mean</v> <v Speaker 12>30%, I would just say 25</v> to 30% of our kids take and this year's I, I suspect it's gonna be higher. Yeah. <v Speaker 13>We're not comparing</v> <v Speaker 12>That many</v> of our students do like the opportunity and maybe because we're closer. I know, you know, I worked at Cohort for many years so I know in their environment they have a lot of teachers that teach CMC in their building. Yep. We don't have quite that, but we do have some partnerships in like, we have a CMC cohort English class that is just made up of our students. I guess they put a few others, but we send that. So it's pretty high. I, yeah. Yeah. And just to add onto to that, because we do have our iiv, I'm just gonna have Nate really quick tell you about last year's diploma candidates and also we have AP just as, as a course and we had 93 students, which is a bit down. So we not only have the CNC classes, we have ap and then Nate, do you wanna, <v Speaker 5>Is that include, is that included in that number?</v> <v Speaker 12>No, that's solely CMC.</v> <v Speaker 5>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 13>Yeah. And I think, I think, you know, we don't, the number</v> of students who are participating in IB courses, whether they're what we call certificate candidates or taking, you know, one or more courses or diploma candidates is smaller than the number taken CMC courses. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that those CMC courses a lot of times are driven toward like a professional certificate of some kind. And I think that's really engaging for kids. But, and so I can't tell you, you know, the number of credits because those credits transfer differently depending on how you score on your exam or where you're taking that credit and so forth. But they are, you know, they are beneficial. So if we were gonna go track down all those numbers and say that, you know, students who are earning, earning college credit here at Rifle High School, well that number's gonna go up. I, I think Right? Significantly so. And it, and it's, they're, they're different. The courses are, are structured differently than a CMC class as opposed to being a semester long. They're, they're two year course and there's, there's a lot of opportunity for depth, a lot of opportunity to build critical thinking skills, writing skills and so forth so that they're really truly ready to go to college, whether they're gonna go get a two year degree or a four year degree or whatever else. Yep. <v Speaker 5>Awesome.</v> <v Speaker 13>What do you think is the biggest</v> opportunity for Medical high school? <v Speaker 11>It's a broad, broad statement.</v> What, what's the one wish you wish you had? Right. One wish proverbial blank check. You know, I would say, I would say to see our IB numbers, diploma numbers go back to where they were probably pre covid. I mean, I wanna say Nate can correct me, but I wanna say we were teens to twenties if not more each year. Those numbers have, those numbers have dropped. So I would like to see our IB program pick back up and we are exploring Nate and I and, and Mr. Grebe is one of our IB math teachers. The three of us were just in Florida last week for an IB conference. So that was beneficial for me to be able to get in and dig in with other campus leaders and district leaders about how they're running their programs to see what we could do to get our, our, you know, program back up to, to, to prominence. I, I feel like I mentioned a while ago with, with the projection of where we're going with the CTE programs, I would love to see that just blow the roof off this place and, and get our kids that are all going to be you. You'll see that 89.4 go up real quick when you've got kids that are involved in those types of, of activities and programs. So, you know, I mean, I can, I got a long list, but, but, but those are probably the two of the bigger ones, you know, we're working real close with, with Jacob right now to rebuild that band program and get that thing back up and running and be a true marching band. I wanna see him go out and, and march and kill that kind of stuff, you know, that's gonna be great. So, so yeah. So just, I mean, I just wanna keep getting our kids involved. You know, I want our kids in our building to, to be proud. We've talked about that with, with the culture in our building, with our students. I want there to be some pride in Rifle High School to be proud of being in Rifle Colorado, to be proud of being a rifle bear at Rifle High School. For us to be able to create some systems and structures in place to build that, that culture back up. You know, that's, that's what I'm, that's our goal. And, and you know, chunk by chunk, little by little we're, we're trying to chip away at it. <v Speaker 5>Great. Those are doing good.</v> <v Speaker 13>Thank you very</v> <v Speaker 11>Much.</v> Appreciate y'all. Yeah, thank you. Being here tonight. Thank you. Yep. Go Bears. Go Bears. Bears <v Speaker 5>Go bears.</v> Did you guys hear from the choir team what Britain had to do? He stood up after they performed and yelled Go Bears and they all just like stood there. I mean they had a standing ovation, the choir. So <v Speaker 3>Britain just stayed standing</v> 'cause they had a standing ovation from from the, the audience and it wasn't even us that started it. So it was pretty cool to see. Yeah, <v Speaker 5>So and so then Bri yells Go bears and it's like silent.</v> So then we gotta train the kids. So then not only that, Brit goes out and he sees that they're getting on the bus. He, and he goes out on the bus and no teacher's out there and he gets on the bus and he's like, so you guys did a great job. Next time I yell, go Bears, you need to yell, go bears back. I said, <v Speaker 1>What do you say?</v> And they go, thank you. <v Speaker 5>At least they've got manners.</v> But, but then he goes, okay, we're gonna try. And he says, go bears. They all yell back at him, go bears. So that's awesome. They got it. It was, it was just kind of funny. I'm glad they got to perform. Yeah, you have to set prep Prep assemblies. We'll we'll get 'em. We'll get them. They <v Speaker 1>Did great.</v> They did great And like Scott said, well we, when they went down into the parking garage and they circled up and the clock's ticking when they had to be on stage for a thousand people anyway and they started jamming down there and the kids sitting in the middle of the circle with the bongo drums and I don't even know what that, I don't even know what that song was. Some African song, I don't know. But it was awesome. It was awesome. It was awesome. So it was super cool. So really? <v Speaker 5>Yeah. Thank</v> <v Speaker 1>You.</v> Should we take five or is everybody good? Let's take a quick five and then we're already come back with collaborative solutions and dealing with their scope of work. Excited. You ready <v Speaker 5>List all of them?</v> Yes. Okay. I feel that perfect favorite. <v Speaker 1>Are you guys we're gonna, we're gonna head,</v> we're gonna come on back now and Collaborative Solutions is coming around to give us their scope of work and take it away guys. Thank you. <v Speaker 14>Alright, well thank you for having us back.</v> As you all know, I'm Devon's volume director of Human Resources. I am just here to support my teammates collaborative solutions and just bring back together some education. Scott, this is your first year with us and so we do a little bit of education as well when we come forward. You're going to see us a couple times throughout the year, always fun times. So this is a bit, little bit later than we usually come. We have come in years past, a little earlier in the year, but we chose to push it off a little bit just due to what the scope of work is and just the different cadence. So we always propose the scope of work in which things that we are going to work on. And then you also can give us your input if there's something passionately that you believe that the committee can work on. Just to give you a summary, our committee does or is comprised of our classified certified staff across the district. So in, in various disciplines. So facilities, nutrition, teachers, paraprofessionals, so on, so forth so that we get a round well-rounded representation. And for the first time in a really long time we were almost fully staffed on collaborative solutions. Mr An Ortel is the WGEA president and he wasn't able to be with us tonight. So that is why I am giving the speech to you and he is not. And so after this I'm going to let them speak and I just want to kind of reiterate that this committee is trying to bring perspective for all employees, not just for themselves or their positions. They're there to represent their school, their discipline and give the real life story. The boots on the ground story because I'm not in Catherine Senior, I'm not in our nutrition facilities department every day. I don't get to see the real life experiences and hear the stories. And so that's really what this committee does. So while bringing the scope of work, what we're always focused on is around support for staff success. And so that's really the, the big mission around what we are doing. And that is so that if we support staff success, we get a support student achievement and they all get to go around. And so today they're gonna talk about pieces of our scope of work and where they are tied to. And specifically this is all going to be around staff success. So you guys don't have to repeat that but just so you know, these are all of our different scope and areas. So, and we'll probably repeat it like five more time. So yeah, I am Jess Wilson, I'm the sixth grade dean and athletic director at Rifle Middle School and I'll let you introduce. <v Speaker 15>I am Tabitha Mills, I am the department chair</v> of the math department at Coleridge High School. <v Speaker 14>So usually a little bit more history</v> of like CS is for the scope of work. Sometimes we come with a giant list of things of, because it's kind of like a wishlist of here are all the things that we want to do. And this committee has really worked really hard on kind of ironing some things down. And last year a lot of it was focused on that strategic plan and how can we bring those things in and really make sure that that is our focus too. So when you look at our scope of work this year, you'll see there really are two big rocks that we used to call them of like what are we wanting to really focus on? So our big one is wages. I mean when we think about like staff success, what is it that is going to keep our staff? What is it? How are we gonna be able to recruit more staff? And so our kind of, our big focus is that first one is gonna be the step increase for all staff. And last year we proposed our, what was it? The philosophy, compensation. Philosophy compensation, yeah, compensation philosophy. And that's kind of like our, if anything can we do that each year? Like if we can always tell people like there will be the next bit of money, that's kind of our ultimate goal. So that is kind of our starting point there. And that's what Ja, Jason and Jeff did is you know, starting with the projections and that's something that we kind of worked on together is can part of their projections and when they do that can they plan out those 2% step increases and now our step increases are 2% across the board and they used to be different but they're the same now. So sorry. No, you're fine. That's why. And then our next one that we want to kind of focus on is increasing the honoring years of experience. This is kind of something that when people are coming into jobs, if they've been doing like jobs, we wanna make sure that we're kind of paying them. We did move last year classified staff to five years experience. We're hoping this year we can increase that up to 10 just because there are a lot of people out outside of like the school that are doing jobs with a lot of experience and if we can get them here. But that's kind of one of the big things is they have a lot of experience otherwise and we want to try to see if we can increase that. And then for our certified staff they're at, we bring in 10 years of experience and can we maybe move it up to 20 just because if we can get again, some more highly qualified staff moving in with people, can we honor that and try to bring in some more people as well when they're looking for jobs. And then our next one was the tiered system for our classified staff to honor their professional development. So these are like our paraprofessionals and stuff that they are going and doing trainings and can we help them kind of build up their own skillset and then kind of work towards their next steps and wanting to kind of build up our own people and do that kind of stuff and keep people. So again, that's kind of what our goal is and what could that look like. And then the district, one of the things that we've been talking about too is trying to renew your license. Yeah, it's every couple of years, three to five years or like your first year. The license fees are kind of expensive, especially when you're first year teachers and kind of on your first little bit of a paycheck. And then like if you're taking the praxis for anybody that's getting their different certificates for anything, the test kind of range anywhere between $150 to, I think you said one was like $380. So if there's a way that we can try to help out with that as well. Just because again we wanna have highly qualified certified staff in things, but if those are the fees that are kind of keeping people out, what are some ways that we can help support that? And then our next one is the benefits. And this really kind of comes down to the, the insurance. We all kind of know usually what comes out with insurance that they may or may not be an increase. And then, so keeping in mind that we, the district does put in a little bit towards everybody's insurance and so how if we're able to do that, depending on what we find out in usually February from our insurance company, but always keeping in mind too and meeting with Jeff and Jason, a lot of maintaining our, our budget but can we, can we do these things to support our staff are really our big, our big two rocks. And then again this committee I feel like has worked really hard over the years to really try to build a solid relationship with the school board and we wanna make sure that we're maintaining that with you guys and having open com communication as much as we can when we have stuff bringing it to you guys. And then same for you guys, if there's questions or concerns or something that you guys want to know that we can have that open dialogue so that there's never anything that's like hidden and we're just kind of all being transparent with each other. So that's really our presentation. Do you guys have any questions or anything that you wanna add? And for communication, do you wanna go over communication? So that's just the third one. The third pillar is around communications and that is always something that we always have a committee on and we always split it up. It is around communications and organizing all of that with the board of education. I think just mentioning that just for the record with wages benefits and then the communication committee. And so that is a sub committee that we do split off on and we are going to employ these people to help us share the information about our benefits. The, you know, the reality of where we're at with our claims data. You probably know a whole lot about that recently 'cause you've been going in open enrollment season. But we are really gonna employ that committee to help us and be kind of our volunteer army to help spread the word of where we're at, where we're moving forward to, what our goals are with benefits and wages and how we can control that cost and make sure that we are paying our staff a living wage to be able to stay here. So I think that's the only thing I would add with our communications committee. I think previously we've seen it do a little bit different things, whether that is breaking off into our calendar committees, things like that. And so not to downgrade them at all because some of the stuff that they do and even having to take minutes during the meetings and recap our common message, it is a bunch of work. So that's how we're kind of bringing both of these subcommittees strong committees, if you will together. <v Speaker 1>So yeah, you know,</v> you know when I look down there at the communications when I was going through this, you know, I, I'm wondering as we look at and we talk about, you know, the 2% increase, you know, or, and now, you know, and, and just, you know, and obviously money's not, we all don't have this money everywhere. The benefits, you know, we're curious, gosh how much is that gonna go up this year? We don't have 'em all happening at the same time, you know, we're kind of doing, we do benefits first, right? And then all of a sudden here comes wages. So with the communications, what kind ideas do you have to, to get that information out as we're talking those numbers? Like how, how is that getting filtered out to the whole staff to understand that, you know, if we see we have a 14 whatever reserve, it's not really, how are you guys conveying that to people to understand? <v Speaker 14>Yeah, so I'll actually take this one</v> and just looking over at Heather looking, so I'm just looking over at Heather to say, you know, it was, it was Jason's turn last month to talk about where we're at with our finances and soon it's going to be my staff's turn. Kristin and I, we just recently met with Heather and Lisa about a possible benefit campaign around getting that message out. So the heavy lifting is going to fall on our department's shoulders and with a volunteer army. And so we just kind of planned out this large campaign over the next year. And so the sharing the reality whether in, I think we listed about 15 different platforms in which we can share the information and that's where I kind of talked about, this is gonna be one cog in the volunteer army. So you know, just if you're okay with me just sharing a little bit more of what came out of this meeting, it was just Tuesday, I'm a very visual planner, so is Heather, so is Kristen. It was really great. We're both greens in the MBS world. And so we got to kind of put on a dream board around, we have a bunch of data. We did ask CBT for a ton of data, but how do we share that? How do we make it so that when I, we present to all of you and we present to our staff, they don't glaze over and don't listen right? Or they don't care. 'cause the reality is is that most people don't engage with their benefits, what they're spending until it becomes their issue. Right? Until they have to use that benefit doesn't become that. Well we want it to be in the forefront of, you know, having healthy benefits and knowing what their benefits are. Preventative care, what utilization means. You know, if I choose to go to the ER instead of using Teladoc, which is a free service, you know, what does that mean in the long run, right? It's actually gonna impact me. And so it's behavior changing. So you know, we're not gonna be able to affect our rate increase for this coming year, you know, in the next six months. It's not like we can correct the pave here in the six next six months and it's gonna get us back on the right track. And so I will take a little bit on my shoulders that, you know, I haven't, we haven't gone like full bore trying to get in front of that. And that's part of why turnover is such a big deal is, you know, when we have turnover like that in my, in my team specifically or others we're, we're catching up, right? And so now we are on our year three, I think you guys have heard we talk about that is we now finally get to take some of that movement and that momentum around okay, how can we improve things? And one of those is, is if we can get control of our benefit costs then we can put more money into our salaries in our pockets. And so I am going to be really excited to bring Kristen and I back here to launch our benefit campaign around communications healthy, habit changing. And so he will be seeing me in a short couple of weeks to present on that. Well and the other thing we talked about at CS was that committee, that that group actually really going out and putting out the information, helping support HR like we talked about, of probably having more meetings or not necessarily meetings, but we talked about with CBT of like can you guys provide the information that is a little bit more in lay terms for people to understand earlier on and having information out of like what does this stuff mean? And so we kind of talked of like it's our committee's job to really make sure that communication is clear to all staff. And so like when you have people from each building on the committee, it is your job when you're in that group to be sharing what the group has decided needs to be shared out and make sure that it's getting out in multiple platforms. If that means posting something in the staff bathroom or you know, putting it out on email, whatever it is. And trying, and like Devon said, having multiple platforms that we are trying and we tried to make a list of as many that we could have. Like how could you possibly just share the information and not just relying on Devon's team because they're already overwhelmed as it is. And we, we brought that up with CEBT when we met with them of like, what can you guys offer to us as well to help support all of this educational piece? 'cause it kind of falls on them as well and not just our staff. And we kind of brought that up with them, <v Speaker 1>You know, that's the thing as we look at benefits,</v> you know, and it's like if we don't get ahead of it, we're, we're behind. And I'm, what I'm thinking of is usage, right? If, if we can't get, you know, I want the staff to use their benefits. I mean that's why we want them, but there's a reality check that's gotta happen that if we use it too much it costs you more money. And I think what we're gonna see this year is, I don't know, I don't know, but you know, Scott's in the, the insurance world and he's, every time we talk about it, you can see his eyes and he's like, oh man, <v Speaker 14>You</v> <v Speaker 1>Know, it's going up</v> and I, you know, I'm I'm just concerned, you know, that this year we're gonna come and, you know, Glenwood Springs insurance is gonna present and I, I'm afraid, I hope not that they're gonna need a lot more money to cover us for 'cause we're using heck out of it. And then I'm curious are what is our healthy, how are we getting our staff to think you better, we better get healthy guys or understand the programs because eventually it's, there's something's not gonna work out. And I'm wondering it just kind of feels like even from CASB and they talked about some of that stuff, gosh, it's just right there. So, you know, IIII appreciate the communication side and I, I I, I see the value in it. It just feels like we're a little behind it almost needed to happen when we were doing this last year. So everybody know, hey man, we use it, but you know, we need to understand how to use it. You know, my wife and I, we just recently talked about that, how people will, you know, some people, if you're really not spending the money on your insurance, how quickly you might go to the emergency room and how expensive that is. Whereas in our world, my wife and I world, we're not going in an emergency room. Somebody's leg better been chopped off before we would ever even due to what that runs us cost. So I'm really curious as we look at benefits and talk about that, you know, we gotta get everybody to see that same thing. I mean, if we all could just write the check and everybody's covered, we'd love that. That's just not happening. And I'm kind of feeling as, as I've progressed on the board for this many years, you know, we've, we did the big benefits package. We, we, we paid everybody a lot. I haven't seen our, our cash flow change ton. Nobody's given us a bunch more money to cover that stuff. So now it's gotta come down to what are we gonna do to try to get it in check. So I like that idea. I hope that as you think about it, that eventually CS has gotta kind of put a, a line out there in their future to go if we don't do it by here, you're not, I just don't see how whatever board is sitting up here, you're gonna be able to come and go, you know, step in. Exactly. And we do a comp, oh man, we're at 40% now. We've used 150% of our, our benefits and Glenwood insurance is like, we, we don't wanna play in that game no more. Yeah. So I know that's a little tangent, but it's really something as I was going through this, I just kept thinking of it's like, man, we gotta get on the same page from the first year teacher to the person that's been here 30 plus Yep. To understand what are we gonna do? <v Speaker 14>And and you're absolutely right is it needed</v> to happen a little while ago. And I think that's where I say, you know, I say I, I take this a little bit personally, I think any leader does when that's part of your department. And that's why it's like we, we really need a strong plan moving forward, not just from CS because they're this much of, of the plan, but as, as an entire department. And so I, I think that is where we are needing to be heading and really helping people understand that of, you know, what it means. And I think that's why if you read in here is the contribution that, you know, Garfield RA two contributes to the benefits because you know there is a certain percentage in dollar amount for an employee that we have to contribute due to the affordable care, right? That it has to be an affordable plan. However, you know, we wanna still make sure that our benefit package is affordable enough in order because that's what attracts people from not going to Glenwood if we're being 100% honest. Now they're also gonna be looking at climate culture and their benefit changes and all those other things, right? And they're gonna take those into consideration. So we have a little bit of time, right? Maybe because there are other things going on in this valley, but this is where it's our time to shine. And so really to kick into gear. But I was very proud of this committee that everybody was sitting around there. Even the new people in that committee said, well if our insurance is gonna increase, how are we gonna expect to be able to give any more increases in salary? And that was huge. You know, I think everybody is on that same forefront of like, there's not just this magical pot of money sitting out there somewhere that we can tap into. And I think that's the really great progress that I've seen with this committee is understanding our finances. Jeff and Jason have done a really great job of educating this committee coming back and reeducating and putting it in front of their faces of like, this is the budget there is, there is no hidden money. And when you say benefits come first, that's why we do wanna have this conversation early on. Typically we don't come with a recommendation until much later. And especially with those salaries, what we, what we know is, is a worst case scenario of an increase. We do know those numbers based on our utilization. 'cause it's December, right? We have a trend, we have those projections, we kind of know what to expect for. And so we are able to do projections on, okay, this is, if we get a 15% increase, this is how much the benefit premium's going to be, which means we can only cover this much of the premium, right? And that percentage goes down or stays the same wherever you, you know, where the employee has to kick in a little bit more into their premium. And so those are the conversations that we're starting to have actually this Friday and going into January so that we can get a little bit ahead of the game so that when it does come around to salaries we say Okay, we know we're gonna spend, we, this is what we've been spending in premium, this is how many lives we've been covering over the last couple of years. This is the overall benefit bill that we're looking at. Worst case scenario, pretty good scenario, really great scenario. And so that we can plan for that salary because it is a partnership with finance and with this team in order to understand what budget we're working this. That was a lot. Sorry. <v Speaker 1>No, no, it's, I mean that's</v> where the conversation kind of is. Yeah. To me it's like, does everybody understand? And I, I don't know, you know, I think, yeah, I know I, <v Speaker 14>I really, I really just don't,</v> and when we even talk about like benefits and like when people are talking about, well I, you know, going, I can have this job where I can do this and like I don't think people truly understand like we have benefits and the like the things that are there, the retirement, all of those things. And so we've talked about like just really trying to educate people on that too. I mean when you're bringing in 20 some odd year olds out of college and they just, they're not thinking long term and how can we help them really do that? And so that's kind of been our big task of like instead of bringing all the 800 different wonderful ideas too, of how can we dial in on these things and really make our group actually focus on some stuff and try to actually make some different changes in our district as well. So that's kind of our ultimate goal I think. <v Speaker 1>Yeah, I like that.</v> <v Speaker 14>Any other questions?</v> So you were talking about what we've been doing on the HR committee, Cassie and the market be very busy in the next couple of months. So yeah, <v Speaker 1>This is, you guys really get</v> <v Speaker 14>Here and then maybe we get a guest joining us</v> with Scott 'cause he has expertise. So <v Speaker 1>How many, how many people are showing up</v> to the collaborative solutions <v Speaker 14>Roughly?</v> About 20. Between 2025. <v Speaker 1>And that's once a month? Twice a month.</v> <v Speaker 14>Typically about once a month.</v> <v Speaker 1>So it's once a month on a Friday. Yep. It's extra pay.</v> Everybody's getting compensated. Whereas before it was not. Is that right? <v Speaker 14>Right. It wasn't. We</v> <v Speaker 1>Fixed that. Yep.</v> So we're obviously incentivizing staff to be a part of it. You said it's full, it's like the full group now. So can you tell me what the makeup of collaborative solution is again? Like what does it mean that when you guys, like we have all the positions filled, you said something like that you're fully staffed. Well <v Speaker 14>Yeah.</v> Yeah. I mean it's made up of certified classified and administrative staff. And Devin can talk a little bit more as far as like the specifics, but yeah. <v Speaker 1>Is is it people from each school? Is it,</v> <v Speaker 14>We try to have people from each school</v> and that's where we've got a couple spots still open and from a few schools. But yeah, ideally we want to have somebody from each building so that at least there's representation from each building. Even if it's not every department, but, <v Speaker 1>Okay.</v> Yeah, I just, I was, I was, I just think I forgot what the makeup of the <v Speaker 14>Group was again.</v> Well 'cause then it's nice, it's a little bit more perspective of, you know, we have our kitchen staff bringing something that other people aren't gonna think about and, and they're not all senior staff. So we have a mix of senior staff and newly hired staff, which is really cool because some of 'em have just gotten our new experience. You know, our huge success with strategic plan was our orientations for everyone across the district. And so we've had a couple that just went through that. We have a couple that are teacher mentors and, and our district. And so they're doing those other duties. We have newer teachers and then some more senior staff and admin. And so I think that is what's really cool is to see the diverse populations that are bringing those different aspects and people that aren't from here. Some that are from here and it's well-rounded. And Anthony is doing a great job. You know, this is his first year and he's doing a great job of fully taking everything in, asking the right questions, really understanding the budgeting aspect, salaries, benefits, all of that. <v Speaker 1>I remember last year when you,</v> when Collabor solution brought the calendar forward, there was conversation, just conversation. Nothing crazy inquiring about what, what does a five day school week look like or what does it look like if we had Mondays off instead of Fridays of the four. And it's just conversation. Nobody's done. Yeah. We're just talking. Is that, are we at a spot now where we should be like I mean I don't wanna put I mean you were gonna be the ones that do that work right? At some point. I mean, I don't know. Not to say we've even talked about that by any means, but there was conversation about it and I think we had some talk about that at casby, didn't we? Oh, because we were with this guy. Yeah. And he brought it or something like that and came up. So I guess when are we thinking we would start just talking? <v Speaker 14>Well we remember that conversation.</v> <v Speaker 1>I</v> <v Speaker 14>Just, because I was Right, right.</v> And I remember that conversation. It is something that we do have a straw committee set up for calendar and it is something that we've started looking into. We've just started just finding like research of like how many schools are five days versus four days. We are planning on meeting with Jason and Jeff of like, okay, what would the finances look like? And just kind of having like the ideas and putting everything as much as we can together with, without just flat out saying like, Hey, we're going into a five day school week. 'cause we don't want to cause you know, panic in the district. But <v Speaker 1>We kind of</v> <v Speaker 14>Smart knew that</v> that conversation was out there and so we were, we have it as like what we're gonna be working on on the side. Especially when, you know, we might be in a holding pattern with the the benefit stuff of like, okay, the insurance we're waiting on, so what is something that we can still still be productive and proactive on? What is it gonna cost us? What are those things? And that's proactive. That's great. And so we, we already have those things kind of going, the committee's already started working on some of the research to figure out how many schools, hopefully we'll get on Jason's calendar too, just to say like, okay, what would this look like financially if we went to a five day <v Speaker 1>And just, just, it's just research that's being proactive.</v> I, I got a survey, you know, I take a lot of surveys, I enjoy taking surveys and one of 'em was really around childcare and trying to find funding for, for those types of things from the state and things like that. And it is, it is a real concern for a parent. You and I had that conversation the other day actually on that. Not to say that's a reason to do anything by any means, but it is a reality. You know, we want young families in our, we we need 'em. You know, we're growing whereas others are, are not. You know, we, you know, is the four day school week enticing to young families? You know, and some of those challenges. So I appreciate that you guys are, didn't quite forget it. Yeah. But it's in there and I, I know that one of the board members chance, you know, he, he was really curious about, so it'll be exciting when we can kind of throw that back up on there and you guys just give us an update, you know, nothing, nothing too crazy. But it would be neat to see what you guys come up. <v Speaker 14>Well and next year it'll be another calendar year. Yeah.</v> And so we're like trying to decide are we going to a one year, a two year? Yeah. And then yeah, do we put out the survey of looking at a five day? 'cause I mean that's probably information we might want. Yeah. Sooner rather than later of if parents are interested and staff are interested. 'cause I think that would kind of lead that calendar talk for next, next time. So, <v Speaker 1>Because I have heard, you know, rumors, I don't know</v> how true they are that some parents take their kids to re one for the five day school week and you know, just once again about enrollment, things like that. So thank you. And I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I, it would be interesting to hear. Yeah. Anybody else? Anything with clever solutions? You got more work for 'em? You want? <v Speaker 3>You asked all the questions. I had</v> <v Speaker 1>It.</v> Yep. I get, sorry about that. I should have. It's all right. Tell me to stop. You <v Speaker 3>Did great.</v> <v Speaker 1>Well thank you very much. Thank</v> <v Speaker 3>You.</v> Thank you. Thank you guys. You guys appreciate it. I love these. I know. Oh, okay. I know. <v Speaker 1>Question. All right, thank you very much. That was good.</v> That was good information. So I mean are we agreeing on their scope of work? I mean, do you guys think that's pretty much what they should stay focused as far as the main group? I do. I don't think there's <v Speaker 3>Anything.</v> I think so <v Speaker 1>Because I mean that's their question to us.</v> Is this what you want us to do? Yep. And I think we're all saying Okey <v Speaker 3>Dokey.</v> Well I think it's good that they narrowed it down stuff that's not even on here. Yep. Yeah. Agree. Being proactive and finding things to stay busy in a little time waiting for, <v Speaker 1>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 3>Benefits.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. So this goes right into our,</v> after that scope of work there with collaborative solutions, we're gonna go into our next discussion item. It's staff success surveys for Aspen Business Group. Did anybody wanna do a lead in on that one? Did she get online? Yeah. Are you guys you ready to hear them? I think so, <v Speaker 6>Yeah.</v> Yeah. We'll just we can introduce, I don't know if Kelsey and Russell are both with us tonight. <v Speaker 1>Yeah,</v> <v Speaker 16>We are.</v> <v Speaker 6>Oh yay. Hi. Okay,</v> well your introduction is gonna be short. I hereby give you Russell Berger and Kelsey Couture to talk about our staff success initiative and our fall survey staff survey. <v Speaker 16>That's right. And we're gonna incorporate a little bit</v> more than just the, the fall survey. We're gonna kind of explain to you a little bit more of our expanded scope and hit on a few other bits of the survey. And Kelsey, I'll let you kind of explain that on the next slide here. <v Speaker 17>Absolutely. So as Russell mentioned,</v> we're gonna be talking about the staff success initiative today, which is really a comprehensive strategy that's aimed at retaining, engaging, and growing the district's talent. So it's everything that the collaborative solutions committee was just talking about. New employees are more likely to turn over and a lot of districts, but also here at re two and turnover costs the district valuable money. And we know that RE two is committed to being a great place to work. And so the staff success initiative is really what's going to be able to provide the tools to enhance the employee experience at Garfield RE two. And so when you look at the way that this works from like a cascading gold standpoint, you have everything stemming from wanting better outcomes for students. And so then from there you have your focus area and then that leads into your strategic priorities and the support for staff success. Strategic priority is to maintain high job satisfaction, a productive workplace, and a positive district climate and culture. And so what our, where we really come in is the actionable insights of how can we gather the data and get the information that's going to be driving the specific goals and tactics that principals leadership are gonna be putting into action on in their organization or in their departments and in their schools. <v Speaker 16>So what we did is to try to understand what is the cancer</v> or the cost of turnover to an organization. And I looked up what I could online and I determined that we had roughly 350 certified employees. And for the state, the annual turnover rate over the last decade, the average is about 14 to 18%. The numbers that I believe we got from Devin said that LA or a couple years ago we were at 30% turnover and it's now dropped. So a significant improvement almost the, you know, the bottom number of the state's average over the last 10 decades or the last 10 years to 15%. And it looks like I have my turnover cost numbers turned around here. So the 1.3 million is what it would be for a turnover cost for 15% and it would be 2.6 million for the 30%. And so that's a significant number. And again this is just certified staff. So if you consider the actual cost of turnover to the entire school district for all of your 800 plus employees, it's quite substantial. So these initiatives of the surveys and what collaborative solutions doing, what Devon's doing through HR and what we're doing with Theresa and analyzing all this is kind of what we're trying to focus on. <v Speaker 17>And so this really is aimed at giving the data</v> that we're gathering in isolation continuity so that we can look at the entire employee life cycle and be able to take that employee data, turn it into actionable insights, and then let there be a continuous improvement district-wide for each and every leader in the organization. And so I'm gonna go ahead and just walk you through the data points that are tapping into the employee life cycle. So first there's the new employee surveys. This is going to consist of an initial check-in, a midpoint check-in and an end of year check-in. We're just rolling this out right now. Basically this whole entire survey is aimed at understanding if they have what they need to succeed with regards to knowledge, resources, support. And then this information then provides actionable data that can hopefully help leaders to head off turnover. Then we have our full and our pulse surveys, which you guys are a lot more familiar with. This is that deep dive that's measuring all the different drivers of employee engagement in the organization. That then helps to identify the areas of strength and improvement. As I will mention in a little bit, our survey dives into the district level, the school and department level and the job level. So we're looking at every single layer layer that could be impacting an employee's experience. And this really gives employees a voice, lets them talk about what needs to be improved and creates that feedback loop that's so crucial for continuous improvement. And we wanna keep employees in that loop in that feedback cycle for as long as possible until they inevitably end up leaving the organization whether they are putting in a resignation or they're retiring. Gathering data on exit surveys is very important because it gives us really great insight into what those main drivers of turnover are and which of those are actually something that's in the district's control so that they can be working on that to be able to mitigate and keep employees for as long as possible. And so I think that based on that we'll dive into the report results here for the new employee check-in data collection is ongoing right now and that's wrapping up very soon. So stay tuned for an update on this next time. Our midpoint check-in is going to be the beginning of spring 2025 and then our end of year check-in will be at the end of that semester. And so we'll be able to have a full cycle of data that we can start really digging into and looking at the ripple effects across the organization. We're very excited about it. <v Speaker 16>And now we get to dive into the district wide survey</v> that we just completed back in November. And like a lot of you that have heard this before, data, any sort of survey is not good news or bad news. It just tells you roughly where we are and it gives you insights to what potentially might be going on through the strategic plan and a lot of other initiatives that the school district is working on. You can see through the report as we move forward is making an impact. There's nothing that's trending down. Everything is either flat or improving, which is to be applauded for everything. So we're trying to leverage the information and what we're looking for is to make sure that when we dive into the data, I want to see typically four to 5% data points or a change in the positive segment before I really celebrate it. So seeing a one, two or even a 3% change statistically is not that significant. There's a lot of what you would call norming variables that we would have to take a look at. So we're looking at kind of the bigger swings to see if we're heading in the right direction. So we have a, a tool that is the employee engagement and that employee engagement element. We take a look at those that are actively engaged, those that are nearly engaged, those are disengaged and those that are actively disengaged. So what we want to try to do is understand that those that are actively engaged typically give 110% of their, their discretionary time. People that are what we call nearly engaged are giving you a hundred percent of what would be expected. And then those that are disengaged give 80% and then those that are actively disengaged roughly are giving you 60%. And a couple years ago you guys asked, well how can someone give you 110%? But it's what is anticipated from it. So they're giving additional discretionary effort to do that. So our number in general is at 44%, which is a very good number for positive engagement engagement <v Speaker 17>And 80 if you're including the nearly engaged</v> and the actively that's engaged, which is great to see. <v Speaker 16>So then we have what we call another net promoter score</v> tool where we're asking the questions, what's the likelihood you would recommend Garfield School District RE two as to a qualified friend is a great place to work. So from an employee's perspective, are they recommending individuals to work here? Ideally you want the the green people saying yes without a doubt, and those are those that will score a nine or a 10. And then you have those that are indifferent, which will give you the scores of seven or eight. And then those that are actively saying no, don't work here. And those would give you a score from zero to six. So if you can go back as a slide, you take your green minus your orange and that gives you your score. Net promoter score can be a 200 point variation to a negative a hundred, to a positive a hundred. Ideally we want to be in the positive ranks and right now we're just slightly below zero with our number. Any questions thus far? <v Speaker 1>Did you say that our net promoter score did it,</v> did it go up or down from last? Last survey. <v Speaker 17>So if you look here at this slide,</v> we were just about ready to okay to talk about that. You beat us to it just by a little bit. So you can see here that back in January, 2024, that was your guys' lowest net promoter score. We started to see an increase in April, 2024. And then for the September pulse survey, that got to be up above zero, which is fantastic. I would not be disheartened about the fact that it dropped down to negative 0.18 because that's a very small difference. It's not gonna be actually a significant difference from that 0.73. So celebrate the fact that you guys are not in the negatives to the extent that you were. And we are excited to watch this trend back upwards because this is great evidence that you guys are putting the work in and it takes time, but it is paying off. <v Speaker 4>Okay,</v> <v Speaker 17>Any other questions before we go in and go on?</v> <v Speaker 1>No, I think we're all right.</v> <v Speaker 17>Okay.</v> So this here is a snapshot of the highest rated statements. These are going to be the key areas of strength, celebrate and leverage. And they are all across the board. They're at the district level, they're at the department level, and they're at the job level. So you're seeing a variety of the different levels of the organization in these highest trade statements. And you'll see them in in isolation here in a moment as well. And then these are the lowest rated statements. These are the areas that are going to be the lowest hanging fruit for areas of improvement and growth. They can also be some of the hardest ones to move. That's why they are the lowest rated statements. And so you can see that some of them are resource based, like hey, but a lot of them are in our control with regards to the culture of the department or the district, district level and how well people are working together and are is there follow through. So it's good to see things that are under your guys' influence here that you can put effort into and be able to drive progress for. <v Speaker 16>So what we have here is taking a look at</v> the traditional report now and we're gonna dive into the district level questions and, and all of these, what I want to try to see is that the green, I'd like to see the green and the blue to be about 70. And ideally if I can get that to 80%, that would be, that would be wonderful. I don't want to ever see yellow really get bigger than 20% when it gets more than 20% that it's typically a sign of a communication issue and then you have the red or the orange. I never like to see that grow beyond 10%. And so I've ideally the more green and blue you can get, the better off we are. The way that this survey is set up and most of our surveys are set up, we use what we call a positive level in which we want to aspire to. And then we're measuring to what degree most people agree to it. So I understand, let's say the district's student achievement goals, which is obviously one that we would hope everyone to understand. And you can see that that is up, which means that it had a solid four to a 5% increase or better. And you can see the overall trend over the course of the last few surveys, which were, we had a fairly significant jump, especially in the blue area. You can see how that blossomed to 39%. The trust and respect to the superintendent also jumped up, which was really good to see. And then if you dive down to trust and respect to school board, that also improved. And you can see from a school board standpoint, you've been at, at some points in the past, not the most celebrated, but you're making inroads. So good for you school board on going out and reaching out to the public and helping them or at least the employees so that they understand kind of your role and what you're trying to do. So then on this next set of questions is the same thing. We're just gonna review each one. The district level leadership is committed to improving the organization and you can see the yellow arrow that we published to the right. That means it's pretty much not enough. We have a little green outline on that yellow arrow, which means that it's improving but it's somewhat flat. It's not statistically enough for us to consider it as a solid thumbs up. The next one is the leadership actions are consistent with their words and that deserves a good solid green. And then we derive down to understanding the district student achievement goals as it relates to their job. And that also was a fairly good jump. So you can see kind of a a general trend that we have here as positive moving forward. Next we dive into the school district is the best that I've ever worked for. That's a fairly strong statement. Yeah, and you can see that it did get a green outline on that yellow statement. So there was some improvement district's mission and vision that was a solid yellow, which means that we're pretty much staying status quo. But you can see that we did have a little bit of a drop on the, to agree completely where it goes from 47 down to 41. But the overall positive element was almost exactly the same. So ideally we want to make sure everyone understands their strategic direction, what we're doing and keep pounding that drum. And I have heard throughout this board meeting tonight that that's clearly something you're trying to do, but you can measure it here if it's moving up or down, how effective our communication is actually being. And then lastly on this page, people when possible throughout the school district cooperate effectively with one another. And again, that's also flat. Any questions thus far? No. <v Speaker 5>Are there any responses like,</v> I mean I look at the respect and trust school board and I see we're moving in the right direction there. Any specific responses to that that they're saying like that we could have as insight of what to do? What they're expecting of us differently? <v Speaker 17>Yeah, we we, I'll be able to go over that.</v> Near the end of the survey results we ask a direct question about what could be the three easiest things that could improve their job and school board is one of the topics and I've been able to summarize their comments and I can give you some tangible data there. <v Speaker 5>Okay, thank you.</v> <v Speaker 17>Yeah.</v> Anybody else before we proceed here? <v Speaker 16>All right, so the dis Go ahead.</v> No, I was just saying go move forward. Okay. The district provides a safe and secure work environment that is flat as well. The district has a good reputation throughout the local community. So this is a bit of pride that is also flat. You can see that we had some improvement there but it's not enough to make it significant. And then of course we have an extreme or I am extremely proud and you can see the level of a bar we've established here. Extremely proud to tell people that I work for the school district. And again, that did show signs of improvement but it wasn't enough to warrant the solid green or the green arrow. <v Speaker 17>Next we're gonna dive down into the next layer,</v> which is my school or department. So for my immediate supervisor and principal communicates openly, we're looking very steady. Same with respecting and trusting my immediate supervisor, which I have to say if you're adding up these blue and greens and you're saying that these are well above 70%, these are all areas that we really applaud you guys on regarding leadership and then feeling everybody within my building is on the same team that again held steady. When we look at the question, my fellow team members are committed to delivering quality instruction and service. We are trending upwards but not quite enough of an improvement to warrant that stamp of true increase leadership actions with my supervisor and principal are consistent with their words that held steady. And this question about recognition is holding steady but showing great signs of improvement. And I know you guys are working on a lot of different recognition initiatives and so I'm excited to see this increase as we just have a little bit more time. Things like this take time. All of the relational things take time. And so it's great to be able to start seeing these really improve. This question here, there's a strong spirit of teamwork and cooperation in my school or department held steady, my school or department is moving in the right direction, is showing some slight improvement. And my fellow team members are fully committed to improving our school is again showing some slight improvement as well. Now if we look at my job, so going down a level to where you're really on the base level, boots on the ground with the employee, my work environment within my department and school is positive. That held steady, my supervisor or principal or someone at work seems to care about me as a person that held steady as well. And my supervisor or principal provides clear and consistent direction and priorities also help study when we look at immediate supervisor and principals and if they're engaging employees in the process of goal setting that is showing some good improvement. I have substantial control over my work that's holding steady and I'm passionate about. My job is also holding steady, <v Speaker 4>Okay,</v> <v Speaker 17>Regarding criticism</v> and if they're perceiving it as fair and constructive, that is also holding steady. We do have a slight bit of improvement but holding steady mainly people are feeling like they know where they stand in their work, in their work performance, which is also holding steady and people are feeling like they have a best or close friend at work about the same level as previous. But we are seeing a little bit of a decline in the number of people who are agreeing completely. And then there's this lovely pay question that we always see at the top of our lowest rated statements and I'm so happy to report that you guys have made an impact on that. On this one, keep in mind that it's the opposite. So if they're agreeing completely, actually no, that's the turnover question. So Russell will mention that in a second. But so the percent of people that are agreeing completely with them thinking that their position is fair almost doubled, which is incredible. And as you can see here, we're having a lot of people that are, are many fewer people that are disagreeing completely. And so this is showing that the efforts that you guys are putting in are paying off. And we know that there's a lot of other factors that are coming down the pipeline that can impact the the linear progress on this. But it's <v Speaker 16>Worth, I I, I will point out</v> that the question does say fair. So it's not like I'm overpaid or I'm paid very well, it says I'm paid fair so that the bar is not the highest. But what we're trying to do is make sure it's fair from that their perspective, <v Speaker 17>Right?</v> When we look at some characteristics that are tapping into engagement, like how absorbed someone is in their job, you can see that these three questions are holding steady. Are they immersed in their work? Are they enthusiastic about their job And do they feel like they have enough energy at work to actually do their jobs? <v Speaker 16>So then we have, do I receive regular</v> positive coaching for my job? And you can see that had a good jump up, which was great. I know what's expected of me at work. So managing expectations, that was just a little improvement, 2% improvement there. And then we had, I've been trained well for my job and that stayed flat. However, you can see the grain improved or agree completely, which is good and I'm very satisfied with my job and that is just slightly improved. Again, you can see we don't have a single arrow pointing down thus far. So these are, these are all good things. The training and information I need are readily available and you can see that is also flat. My performance and performance appraisal is a fair representation of my work and that was a big jump. My ideas and opinions matter and are listened to by my direct supervisor that was flat. And then I take or I take the initiative to improve the work relationships with my leaders. This is one of the few questions that we ask to say, Hey, I'm stepping up to do something. Because what we're trying to do is it's not what the school district's doing but also gives the chance for the employee to say, Hey, I'm going over and beyond. And you can see that question there is flat. The next thing that we have here is the processes and procedures are clear for my job and that was flat. You can see some improvement there on the green. In the past week I've received meaningful feedback and that had a fairly good jump, which was very nice to see. I had a meaningful performance review in the last 12 months and that was flat. And I can disagree with my supervisor without fear of getting in trouble or retaliation. And you can see that had a green outline around our yellow arrow, which was good. The next four questions here. My job does not cause unnecessary stress and and this is a key term this this question we've altered over the years, but we've been consistent the last three or four years. 'cause there was always question about what does it mean? And so you can see though that we've been making inroads and Kelsey will go over a little bit later when we dive into the burnout factor and some of the stress and some of the things I think Scott, that you talked about with mental health and your presentation of one of the breakouts that you had. You can see how some of the data that we're collecting can help you. In the past week I've received recognition for praise for doing good work. And you can see that was yellow. So that's flat and I have the opportunity to use my job skills every day that was also flat. And then I have the opportunity to grow and develop within the school district. Otherwise is their training, is their development? Can I learn? And you can see we've been fairly consistent over the course of the last two years. The next thing that we have here is resources and opportunities to allocate fair fairly based on my employee needs, merits, et cetera. It was flat. I have the services and the resources I need for my job. And you can see that was flat. I have the materials and the equipment for my job flat and then again I have or I am actively seeking a job outside of the school district. And this is the one that Kelsey was trying to tell you about. The red in this case is good. What we don't want to see is a lot of green because the green says that I am indeed looking for a new job. And so if we improve the culture and we talked about the cost of turnover, this is kind of a leading indicator where someone is self acknowledging, hey, I'm departing. And so the green is that I am definitely outta here the blues that they're most, most likely going to leave and the yellows that they're indifferent. So this is a very good indicator on how we're doing and you can see we've got a little bit of a trend going and we'd like to continue to move in that direction to avoid that cancer or that turnover cost. Then we have how long have you worked here? And this is kind of a nice visual to see that we have more and more people that have stayed with us long term. You can see our red growing, which is good. This is your preferred place to work. And again, this is another pride in work question and you can see that was a solid green arrow going up, which was good. Very good to see. I'm very confident with my confident that our school district will meet the student achievement and department goals and that had the green outline on our yellow arrow. So there's signs of improvement and again, I'm sure the strategic plan is helping there, but you can see that yellow area there is over 22%. And so with it being that high, that means it's probably a communication issue. And so again, it's going about pounding that drum again, communicating with the staff what we're doing, how we're trying to achieve it so everyone continually knows the the direction we're headed. <v Speaker 17>In addition to the other stress questions</v> that you've seen in the report so far, we also ask about burnout. They're asked to classify their level of burnout over the last 30 days using these options provided they range from, I love my work and I have no symptoms of burnout. All the way to feeling completely burned out and like they really need a change and probably some help to be able to enact that change. And so if you look here, you can look at the percent of people that are experiencing burnout over time. We're trending about the same as in our pulse survey for September of 2024. But we are starting to decline particularly from May, 2023. And so it's great to see these trending downwards and this is just one of those factors that is going to be impacted by a variety of different things throughout the school year depending on the timeframe that you are gathering the data point. It's one of the reasons why we included in the poll surveys. And so it's nice to see some progress. You guys are doing well. And then before we ask you guys if you have any questions, this is a great quantitative exam representation of the comment summaries. Employees are asked what three things would help you do your job better and why? And then they're also asked to categorize those comments or those sorry improvements. And then I go in here and develop this lovely data for us based on all of their responses. And so if we look here, you can see that we have two main areas that have decreased. So these are notable improvements you could consider looking at pain benefits. This decreased by about 6%. It's great progress. It is still our largest area of improvement that people are endorsing. Obviously this is an area that is important to continue to emphasize to address the growing compensation gaps with neighboring districts and to improve retention. And key recommendations included reviewing the salary schedule to better align with the cost of living increases, creating additional advancement opportunities tied to professional development and special ed skills and addressing healthcare costs that offset recent salary adjustments as well as partial bene as well as partial benefits access for part-time employees. Many also suggested developing more competitive total compensation packages to reduce reliance on second jobs and improved recruitment of new staff and healthcare benefit recommendations included more flexible spending options and adjustments to deductible structures, particularly for staff and families. When we look at the school board, we are seeing some really fantastic improvement. It decreased by 8% and it was 16% in the spring. So you guys have had the number of times that you guys were brought up as a means of improvement to help everybody do their job better. And so recommendations centered around creating more direct communication channels between teachers and board members to share classroom level perspectives. They also suggested establishing regular opportunities for educators to provide input on policy decisions before implementation. And they emphasized the importance of board members to get an understanding of what the day-to-day school operations in the classroom and what those realities look like when they're making decisions. When we look at your biggest areas that have improvement, also known as the areas that we saw a larger jump in for the number of people who are endorsing the events, the main areas that would improve their job, we do see budget and funding popping up. It increased from 17 to 17% from 10% in the spring. Comments were focused on the need for increasing classroom supply budgets and more transparent communication about funding priorities. Recommendations also included reviewing allocation of reserve funds, creating flexible spending for departmental budgets for unique program needs and identifying preventative maintenance projects. And many also suggested that developing clear processes for requesting and accessing funds for specialized programs and materials would be helpful as well. When we look at staffing concerns, this rose to 24% from 21 and 18 in the fall. A key recommendations really centered on addressing those critical shortages that you guys have mentioned already during this school board meeting. Like special education paraprofessional positions and substitute teaching, they have suggested developing grow your own kinds of programs that are going to be maybe useful for harder to fill positions as well as creating partnerships with local universities for recruitment and implementing more competitive compensation packages to attract qualified candidates. Last, they emphasized the need for better coverage systems as ways to reduce the impact of unfiled physicians on existing staff. And I'm happy to be hearing you guys talk about that during the school board meeting and seeing that you guys are working on these problems and you're aware of them and you're taking the data and you're really aiming to improve the jobs for your employees. So that's very refreshing. So I know we just hit you with a lot, but what questions do you have for us about the full survey data? <v Speaker 9>I don't really have a question right now,</v> but I really like the fact that the people, like the people, supervisors, everybody respects 'em, they like the information they get from 'em and and that's a very high number in the green, especially for staff and supervisors and their relationships I think. I think that's fantastic. <v Speaker 17>It is fantastic and you guys</v> should definitely celebrate it. <v Speaker 16>And, and and Scott, one thing that people should know</v> that typically when you're in a department, individuals have more pride about the people that they work with and you, if you compare the department to the district wide perspective on the numbers, you'll notice that the department or their school will be a lot more favorably viewed than the district wide. And that's typically any organization that we survey, you'll see that the further they're away from it, it's kind of like this is my team versus you know, the bigger picture. Yeah. And so it's, it is a, just something to acknowledge. <v Speaker 1>I'm struggling to understand a little bit when we see</v> where people are confused what we're trying to accomplish with, as much as we meet and work the strategic plan, we talk about mission and then we're still flat on those areas and then it's coming up where the communication is the problem. I feel like we've had plenty of round tables or group discussions or Friday work sessions, sessions around the strategic plan. I just, so where are we? Where are we losing a at? Where we talking too fast? Are we, I mean, I mean I just, I guess 'cause I, I feel like that's come up. I mean it was flat but we got communication seems to be always what, you know when they're adding those <v Speaker 16>Numbers up.</v> And I, I will say that in almost every organization that has a strategic plan, 70% do not follow through and a lot of times people weigh you out so they don't know because they don't know how serious you are until you keep pounding that drum. So if you're doing the communication and you're moving forward, I'd say just keep doing it. But don't, don't let up be relentless. <v Speaker 5>But they felt like, I mean this is a pillar</v> of our strategic plan is the parents and it's up to 8% we, you know, from two to eight so up 6%, sorry. And of parent engagement. So maybe we're, we're trending in the right direction. We can be hopeful that it's still working. Yeah, like <v Speaker 1>Well yeah it's definitely nice when they put the little</v> arrows out there and they're showing us that we're flat and we're not losing ground. Definitely like to see some green arrows where we were gaining some ground, but yeah, it's just, man, that's tough man. Where are we losing 'em? So those should be the easy ones we should be gaining some ground on as like what are we trying to do in there? Well, golly, I don't know. <v Speaker 17>Keep being resilient. Keep trying. It'll take time. Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 3>Well and I wonder, it's</v> <v Speaker 17>Good to hear</v> that you're already doing so much though. What were you gonna <v Speaker 3>Say?</v> I, I, I wonder with that communication piece, if it also ties into the engagement piece. So how many of the employees that feel that we're giving 'em the communication are actually the ones that are engaged in their current positions? <v Speaker 16>You know the, we, we have the ability to sort individuals</v> by engagement we could actually do deeper dive analysis if you would like to unearth if the disengaged or nearly disengaged individuals are the ones that are having the communication issue and it may help us identify. Typically what we've been hired to do is to give you the data, give you some analysis, but we have the ability, especially now that we're doing the full life cycle of an employee to we'll be able to give you so much more data as the time goes on is we're from a higher to their termination basically. We'll be collecting data and we'll be able to string it all together to help you guys. Yeah, <v Speaker 1>Well yeah we would probably take that.</v> <v Speaker 3>Yeah, I think that'd be beneficial</v> 'cause yeah, I mean from an employee standpoint you don't know what you don't know, but you also don't know if you're not willing to look for the answers. So <v Speaker 17>Right.</v> Communication takes 100% from both parties. Yep. Anything else before I move on? Heather, Lisa, we just have a little bit more to cover here. If you have additional questions about the full survey data that pop up when we're done, we can also cover those stuff. Okay, <v Speaker 4>We're good.</v> <v Speaker 17>Alright, we're gonna take a glimpse at the first report</v> for the exit survey. This data was gathered at at the end of spring 2024 and so it's our, our first data point for that last, I guess it's kind of the last data point for the employee lifecycle. Our first data point is it's the first time that we're gathering it. And so same kind of disclaimer that Russell provided earlier regarding the fact that this survey is not necessarily good or bad news, it is purely informational that then helps you base your decisions on where you should be putting your effort to get the most out of that effort. We had a 38% response rate for our first go, which is much lower than our full employee survey, but still really great for the first time that you're kicking off a survey. And we're working on a variety of different communication tactics to increase the ability to gather this data point from employees who will be departing from the organization. <v Speaker 16>And from what we</v> <v Speaker 17>See that we,</v> <v Speaker 16>From what we were told, this is a tremendous</v> jump in response rate from when, when it was done in house. And I think it's just knowing that it's an outside anonymous third party company that will protect their data is helping. <v Speaker 17>So we have mainly certified staff</v> who were filling out the survey and you can see that we had lost quite a few upper level greater tenure employees in just this little snapshot here. I do wanna also mention that since our sample size is so small, it really limits the amount that we're able to extrapolate and predict across the entire organization. And so as we gather and get, as we gather and get better response rates, we'll be able to make better generalizations to the entire district from this data. We ask them what factors influenced their decision to leave Garfield re two. You can see here that the red is going to be representing a major factor. Orange is a significant factor all the way down to green being not a factor at all. And you can see that the main driver that we're showing here is compensation and benefits. Employee wellbeing is up there regarding being a more of a significant factor instead of a major factor along with work life balance. And then the, some of the things that were in the other category were pretty random. We had some people that were talking about retirement or daycare or maybe it just being the right time to move on or the schedule just being incompatible with their lives. And so this is starting to give us that richer data that gives us insight into why are actually people leaving the organization. <v Speaker 16>We also asked them what they felt they would consider</v> to be a livable wage <v Speaker 17>As, lemme clarify something really quick here, Russell.</v> Okay, so if the employee or the the exiting employee selects either compensation or benefits compensation and benefits or employee support as one of their main factors, so either a significant factor or a major factor, then they get additional follow-up questions so that we can then further dive into that. And so Russell's gonna talk about what the, that deep dive looks like next. <v Speaker 16>So you can see how the end</v> of the previous slide was 23 people that took it and we only had 13 people that were, that took this particular question and we were asked all employees what they felt a livable wage would be annual to their job. And you can see that it is widespread but from the low of being 40 to 45,000 to the high being 85,000. So it kind of gives you an idea of the spread, but you can see the sweet spot between 65 to 75,000 and you could go down to as low as 60,000. But that would be a majority of what you see here. But again, as we get more information we can slice and dice this by category to understand what a fair livable wage is. But you can see just in general asking someone that question that lives here that that is a huge variable. In addition, we had them take a look at how much of a percent of annual pay increase would they need to keep you in the job. And so some of the individuals only needed a little bit, you can see 1%, 6%, 8%, 9%. But the biggest numbers were in a sense that talked about it as being money that that 10% adjustment but no amount when someone selects that it could be that it's related to maybe more of a leadership issue or something else because you couldn't pay me enough to stay is typically what I would read into that statement. Hmm. <v Speaker 17>And I've noticed that I've messed up the accesses on this</v> chart and so please swap them in your mind. The percent increase in annual pay is on the horizontal access and the percent of people is on the Y axi. <v Speaker 16>That's good to know.</v> <v Speaker 17>Yes, it's,</v> it's a very important information. This is representing the support follow up question. Basically it's asking them what kind of support did you feel like was lacking in your job? And you can see here they mentioned direct supervisor support the most, which is a very tangible area of improvement. If we ident identify this as a key driver of turnover along with other aspects like building administrative support and instructional coach or department head or team leadership support. Those were the ones that were brought up the most. And so we're excited to get more data about this so that this also then provides a very tangible means of improving jobs for people, their job experience. We also ask about job level factors and also ask them about if they would consider returning to the district to work in the future. You can see that a decent number of people are agreeing or strongly agreeing with the fact that they would come back. A lot of them are unsure. That means that it's probably dependent upon which school or which department or a variety of other qualifiers to that statement. Then we look at some questions like if they're feeling valued and recognized for their contributions, if they've been satisfied with their job over the last few months, you can see that a majority of them haven't. Surprisingly a lot of people feel like they were a really great fit for the job, which sometimes we would anticipate that maybe if they were turning over they're a bad fit for the job in the first place. So that was some good data for us to know that they are feeling like they're qualified and a good fit for the job. And then you can see that the expectations of the job align with the reality of it is pretty spread but more more agreement leaning so people aren't necessarily being sold one thing and then receiving another, which is good but it's still an important factor to be paying attention to. Then we also ask an exit net promoter score as well. And with this it's negative 13.7. Keep in mind our sample size is quite small for this and this is very expected. You don't expect people who are leaving your organization to necessarily be your rah rah cheerleaders. But it's still great to see that you have 31% of people who are willing to recommend even though they are leaving the organization. So this will be an interesting metric to keep track of as we continue on. <v Speaker 16>Then we have mentoring and induction</v> and so my assigned mentor was helpful and again you can take a look at the green and the blue is areas that we'd want to have to be 70 to 80% and clearly you can see the red being 20%. No. So I don't know, at least these departing individuals did not feel that their mentorship provided probably enough value because there was a lot of negative there. The induction helped me be successful. Again, you can see the onboarding, at least at the time that these individuals were hired was not the most positive. And I heard Devin talk about some of the changes that they've done. So that won't be reflected here 'cause a lot of this was with individuals that have departed and it was how they were treated maybe 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, even 10 years ago. <v Speaker 17>And then last, this is just a snapshot, more</v> of a demographic snapshot here, asking about how long they've been a certified employee within Garfield Arts School District. And so you can see here that a majority, vast majority have been a certified employee for four or more years. So that gives us some more insight into the rest of the data that we are gathering throughout the rest of the survey. And so this is really our end data point to capture the employee lifecycle. We're really excited to be able to talk about the new employee check-ins coming up in the future and hopefully this gives you a great insight into the comprehensive strategy that your district is really working hard on to retain, engage and grow the district talent. So what questions do you have for us now? <v Speaker 5>I don't, we didn't have those slides so it was hard</v> to kind of see but I don't think I have anything on that <v Speaker 12>If you're okay with that.</v> I was just gonna talk Kelsey. So part of our strategic plan <v Speaker 14>Was to change how we're gathering data</v> because it was, we kind of talked about it was a manual process around sending out emails. And a lot of times we get resignations not knowing that the people are already gone or they leave abruptly. And so it's really hard to get this data back because people just don't wanna respond to them. And so Kelsey and Russell have been really helping redesign the intake process for those that we have a little bit of a heads up on. So we are changing our exit kind of ticket process within the school. So if we know where they're leaving and one of those is, is getting these little badges that we just spent money on for our emergency protocols. So we're gonna be gathering these, we're gonna have, try to have a QR code so they can scan that and then giving 'em a heads up of if you choose not to take that right now, we are also gonna be sending these to your personal emails in order for you to leave. Now as far as our state interviews, that's something that we're also really trying to encourage at our new employee orientations 'cause everybody has to go through those and encouraging them to answer their emails. A lot of our classified staff don't have computers if you don't know that. So our certified staff have computers but our classified don't. They can check out a Chromebook from our libraries but they don't have a computer with them all the time. So they were talking about, you know, we don't check our professional email all the time. So that is something in order to get more data so that we can show a little bit more is we're trying to improve our intake process because that is a little bit difficult. And what I thought was really great of a question that we did add was okay if you're saying it's salary I, I was kind of sick of hearing, okay it's salary, well what would it take in order to keep you here? And I thought that was really important data that I'm excited about seeing more of. And so I think that that is gonna be a, a large component in which we can actually use and do something with the data because I don't love collecting all this data, spending their time, our time collecting it if we're not gonna do anything with it. And so I think that is the big piece of how we're tying all three of them together to say okay, our engagement survey is saying this, our exit survey is saying this and our stay interviews and this. So the people that we can really impact are these people in the stay interviews side of things. And then our engagement survey. So does that help kind of, because I think there's probably a lot of things that you wanted to say and I had questions that I wanted to interject while they were saying that. So anything else? How, how many employees are we at right now? Like oh that would've taken or had the opportunity to take this? Our engagement survey? Yeah. Oh gosh, I don't know how many we set up because we don't do coaches that are only coaches. We don't do day-to-day substitutes because they don't have a district in email. We don't allow that right now. So I would have to get that data from you 'cause they know. I'm just curious what the percentage of people that actually do you know Kelsey, how many you actually sent it to? <v Speaker 17>I think that it was either right.</v> Have this within like 30 seconds here. <v Speaker 14>Sorry. No it that's a really great question to ask. Great.</v> And just so you know, I do partner really well with Theresa too 'cause we're kind of trying to help is feel like, 'cause she kind of gets the data over to them and then comes back and forth. So, sorry I don't have it in front of me. It says, well the number of participants I see is 567. I'm just wondering how many had the opportunity to take the survey. Yeah. And what percentage we're at there <v Speaker 17>And we had a 70% response rate.</v> I'm just trying to find that, that final number for you really quick over how many people received the actual survey <v Speaker 14>And while she's looking, one really interesting data point</v> that we're trying to figure out how we represent the amount of staff who have left and have now come back for possibly the second or third time. So, oh wow. Kelsey, I've been recording and we have spreadsheets that I send to them every month to gather, gather this data. And I've been marking, this person has now returned for the first time for the second time, the third time. Wow. Because we see this quite often actually people leave and they're like, yeah, I don't really necessarily wanna be here. I wanna leave education for more money. And then even within a couple of months, six months, even a year, we're seeing these people come back. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. And so I it when we can figure out how to actually gather the data and share it, it'll be kind of fun. So <v Speaker 17>We're very excited about it.</v> So for fall 2024 we sent out the survey to 787 employees. <v Speaker 1>About 200 do it.</v> <v Speaker 14>Don't get it. Yeah. So we have,</v> so once again no coaches extracurricular activities or substitutes so. Okay. Okay. Anything else? 69. <v Speaker 17>Any questions for us? Just</v> <v Speaker 14>Curious.</v> They probably fall under the, <v Speaker 1>I don't think so.</v> Not likely doing, I don't think so. We appreciate you doing what you do and give us that information and yeah, <v Speaker 14>Hopefully</v> <v Speaker 1>We'll do something with it. That's really,</v> <v Speaker 17>We're glad to be a part of it. Thank you for having us.</v> <v Speaker 14>Thank you guys.</v> Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you Russell. <v Speaker 17>Thank you. Bye-bye.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. Alright, moving on to our next discussion item.</v> It's just a quick update on our superintendent search update and what we've got here is a little bit of a timeline that hopefully we can throw up there on the board. We'll just breeze through it really quick. It's not written in stone by any means, but I figured we'd go through it really quickly. So we did, we did give McPherson and Jacobson some information, kind of our expectations for the search, some of our search criteria, we discussed the compensation, kind of some contact information, some confidentiality. One of our big goals coming back from after, after Christmas break is to start doing stakeholder meetings. We're hoping those start on January the seventh. Hopefully we're gonna be able to coordinate where that'll be a full day of representatives from from McPherson and Jacobson meeting with staff. And then eventually at the end of the night ending with a community, a couple different community meetings where we're gonna work out those details. We did speak a little bit more and I kind of visited with some other board members. One of our other goals is to have an additional stakeholder meeting somewhere else in there also. So the people that might not be able to hit us for two, you know, even though we're offering 'EM two opportunities to the public to either be at rifle high school or Coal Ridge depending on football games, we might move those to libraries. But we're gonna try to spread 'em out on both sides of our district to give opportunities for people to come in. But then maybe look at another date. We did identify as DAC and our Latinos in RE two as to key groups that we want to feedback from. So I know Ken is now working a little bit more on whether that might need to be one meeting or if they're gonna split it up and try to take 30 or 40 minutes of dac, 30 or 40 minutes of Latinos and RE two if once again a lot of these people aren't able to get to our January 7th meeting. So I think we're really working with McPherson and Jacobson really wanting to get input from the community and our staff. We also did talk with Ken later about one of the believe meetings that are always on there and how important it's going to be to hear from our administrators as we go and look for this our next, our next leader. But part of what they do is the stakeholder meetings where they're gonna do face to face. They're gonna have opportunities for some all night surveys. So if anybody can't make it any of those, you'll have an opportunity to give us your feedback there. And then really we're hoping towards late January, early February, we'll start some of the interview question surveys. And what was that was designed around just, was it designed around coming up with questions for <v Speaker 5>We Yeah, we go through some of those questions.</v> Yeah. Because then the application is due by right then and then they answer the interview questions. <v Speaker 1>And part of the big thing from the stakeholder meetings</v> will be the characteristics of our next leader is trying to get from some of the input we've given them to what the community and staff say are we who, what, what kind of characteristic are we missing and where can we try to come to conclusion when we can find that that next, that next leader part of it will be. We also discussed no different than we met Mr. Johnson at a, there'll be an opportunity when we start bringing these people into our community, they'll have two full days of meetings where they'll meet staff, they'll meet, see the schools, do different tours, have some community engagement meetings at night and then start working around. He even said maybe even some one-on-one type stuff for some interviews and things like that. But I wouldn't mind somehow wouldn't mind getting this on the website or if, you know, just so people can kind of keep track even though it might change. I don't know. <v Speaker 5>Well they did talk about putting</v> an actual superintendent search tab on our website and they were gonna get ahold of Theresa. Yeah. Yeah. And so everything that we're doing for that with dates, any information regarding this would be under that tab on the website so it wouldn't be hard for people to find. Yep. It's easily accessed. One click you're there, you can see all the information and what we're going through. <v Speaker 6>Can I just ask you one question around logistics</v> for internal, so like our operations teams Yep. And we talked a little bit at CS B to talk to the directors of, you know, Mary Kenny, John obviously of being the three, those teams are hard to get or what are those timeframes is, is there any way that I can work either with Christie or Ken to kind of just at least put on calendars and start to put those together so I can get the staff is Yeah. So can I work with you, Bri, on getting that part done? Yep. You know, just when they wanna touch like the believe meeting, I can tell 'em Yep. You know, we look at the calendar, those are set, but some of these other teams are gonna have to ask for staff meetings. Yep. And, but I mean they're very interested in making that happen. So. Well and <v Speaker 1>As you progress, if you think there's another group,</v> you know, that we need to be shown, we don't wanna leave anybody out. Right. So we want to think about it and then think about it again. So yes, please go ahead with that. I did shoot him over some dates that I knew we had. I kind of hit Lisa up on some of the dates for Dak and stuff and he had kind of responded but it, you know, maybe it'd be easier if they skipped us to, you guys just set the stakeholders <v Speaker 6>Just for the internal just</v> to get the logistics pieces to the staff. Yep. 'cause I think that's where we know what the, what the schedules are. Yep. Okay. <v Speaker 1>And I think no matter we were pretty,</v> we were fairly flexible when we were talking about dates. Okay. So I think as you guys progress and you start nailing it down of the five of us, well a lot of us weren't supposed to be involved and a lot of their older other searches, board members, existing admin we're not involved. <v Speaker 6>I, I know. I just wanna set up</v> logistics and then stuff out. Well <v Speaker 1>That's what he told us too.</v> We were all like, oh we'll be there. He's like, you know, normally don't do it. The board is not there to influence it in any way, shape or form. So, okay. So I forgot about that. So yeah. <v Speaker 6>Okay. Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 1>Whatever works for you all</v> and that could work with them. Just know that we, we really want to encourage as many as possible to happen. <v Speaker 6>Absolutely. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Yep.</v> You know, and then of course that's kind of how that's gonna work. It's gonna go by fast. Yep. We're on a good timeline. I felt really good meeting with McPherson and Jacobson the other night and just giving them a little bit more of what they do and how they're gonna do it. I think, I think we're in good hands. So that's all we really wanted to talk about a little bit with the, the update really. I think it's gonna be fast and furious starting January the seventh. Yep. <v Speaker 6>Yep,</v> <v Speaker 1>Yep. It's gonna, it's gonna move fast.</v> We're gonna move through it really quick. So that'll be there. Everybody good to go? We're still moving forward. Alright, moving on to our next discussion item. We're gonna have the old finance update and we're gonna talk about, there's certification of the mills. <v Speaker 18>One of the most important things you all do</v> <v Speaker 5>Other than hiring a new superintendent.</v> <v Speaker 6>You got that on your plate too. Now</v> <v Speaker 18>Follow, we'll need some</v> mills if we want to pay 'em though. <v Speaker 6>Yes. Yes.</v> <v Speaker 18>Thank you for having us.</v> You know, December is probably my favorite season. It's kind of a magical time. You walk around, it doesn't matter what part of the country you're in, people are hanging up lights, exchanging gifts, dressing up, throwing office parties. It just never ceases to amaze me how much people celebrate Mill levy season. You know, that reminds me, captain Egg Allen Poe has a story called three Sundays in a week since I've started working for a district, it's like three Christmases in a year. We get to certify mills, then we adjust our budgets in January and then you all approve the budget in June. It's like, it's like the holidays until, at any rate, go ahead. It drives that satisfaction survey. I'll tell you, it's just as much of a treat for us. Glad to be here. Tonight we're gonna talk about the, the board voting and the certification process for Mill levees. We're gonna show you kind of the changes from the mill levees last year to this year. And then take questions. Mill levees are complicated. It's, it's, it's great that you guys had a chance to sit with Jeff and hash some of this out. We certainly wanna present it as clear as we can for the community. 'cause people, this is people's taxes and property taxes, we want 'em to try to understand. But I do understand it's complicated. So if we say something too fast or unclear, slow us down. 'cause to be fair, it's, it's, it's not an easy topic. And we do understand how to input the numbers into the spreadsheet to get our mills, but I have no idea how they come up with this. This has to be some sort of ritualistic magical process to get everybody's mills nailed down every year. It is complicated. However, we've come full circle this year. I don't know if you all recalled, but last year we had until January 10th to certify the mills. 'cause they had made some changes in the legislature. I guess they decided they liked December 15th better 'cause that's the date we're back to now. Some people were asking about that. I do think the counties had had a scramble to get everything in they needed to, to the state. So they've pushed it back to the December deadline. You all will be certifying mills this evening. And then we'll need to get that to the Colorado Department of Education and Garfield County by Sunday. We're planning on doing that tomorrow. After you all take your vote, there's three types of mills that you're gonna certify. The first is the local share. That's gonna be about 8.3 million this year. You might remember, or Jeff May have told you last year that was about $2 million higher with our assessed values. Thank you. Thank you. Also our voter approved overrides, which about 9.2 million. You'll see that here in a second. And then finally our bond redemption mills, which are about 8.4 million. We'll show you later on page 10 how those mills have changed. What, what, what changes you can see, and we'll get to that here in just second. And some of the numbers pages, they're all important, don't get me wrong. But a lot of what we put in here was more informational for your interest. You don't need to understand or analyze each one of these numbers pages, but they, they present the information a little different way. That's kind of why we threw 'em in there. Even though, like Jason said, it can get a little confusing. We talked last week that our assessed value interesting also kind of came full circle like the date of the mill levy certification, since it went up to 1.3 billion for 23 collected this year in 24. And now it's back down to 957 million for 24 that will be collected in 25. And it's not exact, but that change of about 400 million is, is very close between how much it increased and how much it went down. That'll be interesting to see how that impacts the legislative session. And we can't be the only district in that boat. It had to affect everybody. So it's gonna be interesting to see how the legislature shores that up because they not only, I don't know how they assess values, but those decreased in addition to, they decreased all of the tax rates. So that's, you're really seeing that on the numbers pages. We're about to, to go through the, the number of mills you, you need to get your, whether it's your overrides or your debt is it increases as your assessed value goes down. And I was looking across the state, it looked to me like assessed values across the state had gone down. And I'm probably rounding, but it, it's right around a billion dollars. How is that possible? Prices are ours. Ours is odd to, to see the jump in the, and then the, almost the correction to the year before. But when you Yeah, a wash, like that's weird. When you take that across the state, there's gonna have to be a lot of backfill as, as comm as local communities have a, have a lower input into the total fund or total program for each school. So I wanna start here with the local shares. This, this mill moves up by one every year. We're moving towards a more equitable balance between local and state. So our mill last year, you can see at the bottom there, and the column on the left was 7.7 is now moving to 8.7. We don't have any control over that. That's what that mill becomes that is multiplied by basically our assessed value divided by a thousand. And so that's why you see this year's, you know, mills collected at about 8.3 million and last year was at 10.3 was because that assessed value was so much higher, 7.7 mills was worth more than 8.7 mills this year. So we have a a $2 million difference this year in what the local share portion of the total program will be. And that's, that's where that's held. Well and just to clarify, based on the special legislative session as well as the governor's published budget, these are our collections. But, but in addition to the mills on on local share, if you recall, the mills are the fixed item, whereas the dollars are the fixed item for the debt and the mill levy overrides. But that $2 million based on the special legislative session and everything, the governor and the legislature have put out, we're not going to see that decrease. They will be backfilling that difference because in addition to mills being, I guess, worth less, don't take that wrong, but they're, they take more to get to the same dollar amount. Again, the interest or the tax rates went down. We were at 7.15% for residential property last year in 24. That's been reduced to 6.95%. And part of the bills they passed for the new school financing, the changes to property tax were to backfill counties for those reductions in tax rates. So even though the mills appear to be reducing our, our collections, the state I believe has a mechanism in place barring any changes during this coming session that should backfill what we're seeing. 'cause you see the state share change, just like the local share. Just to clarify, and I'll stop there 'cause I just said a lot that probably didn't make any sense. I didn't understand it. So, okay. This page, I think last year we presented these in total, and I know I get a lot of questions about when we've issued or when we got mill levy's over overrides approved. And this page gives you a nice summary of what that is. If you go over to the left, the first one we had was in oh four. And just so you know, the mills caused the rounding in those hundreds. The 2.699 should have been 2.7 mil or 7 million, but the mills and the rounding bring it up or down each year, depending on that third decimal place. But that was our first override in oh four, was about 2.7. Then in oh six, that would've been about 1.6 million. And the last one was in 2018 for 4.9. Those all come combine to get us to our 6.8 mils that we charged last year. And because of the changes in tax rates and assessed values, we're up to 9.6 mils for that 9.2 million we're collecting this year. The next page talks about the debt service mills. These are our bond. We, we assess a mill to service the debt that we have. And so we collect exactly as much as we need to service that debt. Last year, you can see it's, it's 8.4 million last year. We could do that with 6.2 mills this year. It takes 8.7 mills to do the same because the mills are worth less, not worth less, but worth less than last year. So that's our debt service mills that will be on the sheet. And then this next page, the summary of the mills is better on the, the pages that are following your resolution, it'll show you the breakdown of the mills. This is really just the summary of the local share and the bond fund. Well, it's, it's the summary, but it doesn't give you a breakdown. The reason I included this was the specific ownership tax. We have about 1.6 million budgeted, and it's about halfway down there. It's 1,572,000 for last year. But when you're looking at total program or per pupil funding, they only take about 58%. It's just a little over half. So in our calculation for PPR, they use 827,000 rather than that 1.5 million. And I've gotten questions about that, so I just, I threw that in there. If there are any other questions on that page, let us know. Otherwise, this is what everybody cares about. Yeah. And, and Jeff, and I'll probably tag team this, but on the, on the left, you can see what the mill levy, what it cost, what the cost per $100,000 in a home would've been. That's up in your top left quadrant. The bottom left would be the cost for a a hundred thousand dollars business. And then the right column would be this year based on HB 1440. You can see that the mark, the assessment rate has dropped from that 7.15 down to the 6.95. And so we're only taxing 69 50 as opposed to 71 50 last year. So the, the, the homeowners got a break. And then if you take that down and look at the, the actual annual tax rates last year would've been $198 per, per a hundred thousand. This year it's $188. So that incredibly confusing production we gave you about a month ago about how this new law was gonna affect all these rates and cap, all this stuff came down to roughly $10 per a hundred thousand. So if that ain't tax relief, I don't know what is, we use a lot of words to say 10 bucks. So, and then down at the bottom is the example you would have for a business. A business has a slightly different tax rate. Did if I, if I missed anything, I'm gonna let Jeff take. No, that's absolutely right. I would just clarify that's for every a hundred thousand dollars of assessed value. So if your property's worth more or less, these numbers would change based on that. Then this next page actually just shows you the changes in assessed value that we talked about. We've, we've been through the rest of the figures, although if I could bring your attention to, it says fixed for FY 24, both August and December, that 16.8, sorry, that 16.282 mills is our target mills that we have to, as Jason mentioned, we have to adjust our local share of mills by one each year. And that's until we get to the 16.282. So based on the fact we bumped it up to 8.7 this year, that 7.582 is what we have remaining in adjustments one each year. So we've got eight years left because that 0.582 will be our last adjustment. We won't have a whole mill that last year. It'll be that fraction of a mill, just so you know. And that's actually, other than to show you the changes of assessed value, the only reason I included that slide in there. Yeah. So if you wanna walk 'em through the resolution, we'll stop for questions, but then Jason was gonna walk you through the numbers. You'll be certifying night and we'll be out at your hair. <v Speaker 5>Maybe somebody that's watching that says,</v> why don't they go for more mills so we can pay our teacher more. Could you maybe explain that a little bit on this, because we have that, that gap between the 8.7 to the 16.282. Why would, why would you not go up so we could get more revenue to pay teachers more or whatnot? Can you elaborate on that a little bit? <v Speaker 18>Oh, I don't mind that that piece, as that piece starts</v> to grow, which by law has to grow at 1% a year, that that is prescribed to us. So, but as that grows the part of the state that that funds us goes down. So it would be a break even move. It will be a break even move other than the growth we get every year. That would be a break, even move over time. So that mechanism in and of itself wouldn't provide more. <v Speaker 5>Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 18>Yep. We allowed that.</v> No, that was a great question. Good answer. You did perfect. I <v Speaker 5>Think just, I think I wanted that just communicated</v> because we might understand that from sitting in classes or one-on-ones with you guys. And it's hard for us to convey that there, you know, it's the same either way. If we go state or local, it's probably, and this is local share that we're discussing right now. Yes. This, this level of funding. So yes. <v Speaker 18>And it's probably worth mentioning that there,</v> there are no decisions to be made here or recommendations to be made that would in increase our total program. We are certifying the tax rates prescribed by the state. If you wanted to increase that total program, you would have to run a bill levy override. That would be the only, we need voter approval. Yeah. With voter approval. That would be the only mechanism for that. <v Speaker 1>Okay. Thank you. Sure.</v> <v Speaker 18>Question. Do you guys have a copy of the resolution?</v> <v Speaker 1>Yes. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 18>We're gonna be asking you to, to</v> certify these mills. The, the values on the left were the values that we just presented. And you can see the associated mills on the right. 8.796130 point, or sorry, 0.027. We didn't talk about the abatements. It's about $25,000 in abatements across our, our assessed values. And then of course the bond redemption, the 8.776. When you add those up, we're asking you to certify the 27.116 mills. And the total for that is 25 th million, excuse me, $954,498. That's what the board would be approving tonight. And when that is approved, we will submit it to the state, both the, well, the county and the, the Colorado Department of Education. Okay. Good crowd. <v Speaker 1>Thank you.</v> <v Speaker 18>Thank you. Good to see y'all.</v> Good evening. Thanks <v Speaker 1>Guys.</v> They've all got it. Yeah. We have to read this, right? I don't do we read it now? It's until we get to action. Okay. Thank you. You bet. All right. Next on our discussion items, personal technology, device restrictions. <v Speaker 3>Yes. So in your packets, you have a copy of</v> what we sent out to the high school parents and what we sent out to the elementary parents, Coleridge High School. And all elementaries are adopting this process on January 6th. They have all, all the elementaries have met with their PTs, their parent groups as well as we had a parent meeting last night at Coleridge. It feels like it is going well so far. All of our yonder pouches have come in. We have identifications for, in the bags for them so that they won't be able to lose or, you know, manipulate their, their wander wander pouch or yonder pouch for others. The, the committee worked really hard to outline all the procedures and processes. We Googled what questions might someone ask, included those in our frequently asked questions, addressed the question of safety with an in depth conversation with the committee about how that might look and how we might answer to those who say, my kid is safer with a cell phone and being able to get ahold of me than without. So we addressed those. We talked about it at the parent meeting last night. We went through, we've addressed all the procedures, all of the consequences, how we are not going to, like if, if a kid breaks the rule come January and then breaks the rule again in May, accidentally, whatever, however that might work. Those are two big, that's a gap in behaviors. They did a good job in the in between. They wouldn't move to step two on the consequences 'cause of that gap. But there's a step one and step two. And by step three, if you're caught with your cell phone the third time around, you are trying to be defiant. Just like if you choose to break your yonder pack, leave it at home, any of the other things, put a burner phone in it. That's one of the things we found out from other schools, that they'll put the fake phone in the yonder pouch and and carry the other one around with him. You're trying to trick us, you. That is an active defiance. And so that goes completely different types of consequences that goes into our discipline matrix and we follow through that way. Or you refuse to give your phone to a teacher again that keep it simple as for, for the students. Like we, you know, the rules, we're sorry you broke 'em. Follow, get your consequence, but don't dig your hole any deeper and, and make that make that worse. So all of those things have been worked out with all of the administrations. The middles or the middle school also will have one of these because they already have something going on. They didn't wanna start something new now. Same with Rifle High, they didn't wanna roll out now because they are implementing it and looking at the new rule already and they didn't wanna change it on kids halfway through, made a lot of sense. Coleridge is in a place where we need some help to make the cell phone restrictions that we've had in place real, and that teachers can follow through and have support from administrators and the whole works. So they wanted, wanted to get started, started on that. So I believe it's, it's been well received. The elementary schools, the parents are very like, thank you for doing this. There were a few parents last night that had some of the other concerns and we're like, we will watch it. If it's not working, we will come up with another solution because this is what we believe is very important to both student wellness and academic achievement. Yeah. And teachers. And teachers. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. And that was one of the very first things on our is to ensure a focused and respectful learning environment for everyone. It's one of our main reasons for doing that. And that means the teachers as well as the students, we're all in this together. We all need to have a, a learning mindset. And the cell phones are being disruptive because they all day long. What questions? <v Speaker 1>Well, last night at the,</v> <v Speaker 3>I thought so.</v> Yeah. Yeah. I mean they had good questions. We we answered them. Go <v Speaker 5>For it.</v> Yeah. I think the biggest, I mean, as a parent and as a board member sitting there, I was just a little like, wow. Shocked that the lack of parent participation in the meeting. There was about 10 of us would you say? Yeah, 10. 10 parents. Oh, <v Speaker 1>10 parents. Well maybe</v> <v Speaker 5>The, maybe the other one.</v> We were like, wow. Yeah, either that or, or they're gonna find out. We'll find out I guess. But great job. You know, there was only one or was there two that were questioning why we were doing it? Mainly one, <v Speaker 3>They had other ideas.</v> Yeah. And most didn't really understand that. We've been trying with the, the, the caddies that you put your phones in and, I mean, and it's not getting us the outcome that we need and so therefore we have to think about what's next then. <v Speaker 5>Yep. I think Coleridge did a great job answering</v> questions, going over how it was going to work, what was to be expected. They've informed students before they even had the parent meeting. So the students aren't totally blindsided when they come back from break. Yeah, that's <v Speaker 3>Awesome. They,</v> <v Speaker 5>They do get to keep with</v> <v Speaker 3>Staff.</v> <v Speaker 5>Yeah. Yep. And the staff is all on board.</v> So I felt like it, it went really well. You guys all did a good job. The committee did a great job putting in, you know, a lot of thought and research into it, providing the material that you did just so parents could know what that looked like. <v Speaker 3>So they had one staff meeting they</v> where they rolled it out. They'll have another one next Tuesday for any last minute questions or things that we have thought of or heard from the children about what they might try to do to work around it. I really don't think it's going to be that hard of a switch for them. I think they're gonna be okay. <v Speaker 5>Right. So</v> <v Speaker 3>Other questions?</v> I'm excited. Yeah. Okay. <v Speaker 5>Take too. A lot of the parents were, a lot</v> of the parents were like, when are you doing computers? Yeah. Like, do you have wired headphones for everyone? 'cause AirPods. <v Speaker 3>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 1>Alright. Tiny. Perfect.</v> Thank you very much for that. <v Speaker 5>They're, they're ready. They have,</v> they have wired Airbus for everybody. <v Speaker 3>Yeah, actually, yeah. 'cause</v> <v Speaker 5>Gunner told me that he needed to get a new pair,</v> so Yeah, that makes sense now. Now <v Speaker 3>You know why.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay, so now we have a governance action item.</v> It'll be this the 2025 mill levy. Can I read it Sharon or do I have to have someone else read it or does someone else wanna <v Speaker 10>Read?</v> I think you can read it as you know, as long as when you say at the end who makes a motion? <v Speaker 1>What'd you say? I'm sorry.</v> <v Speaker 10>Who makes a motion?</v> Makes the motion. Yeah. Read it and then say who makes a motion. What I've seen in it. You can make it. You can do, I'll read it. You read it. Go for it. Read as well. <v Speaker 1>Read. Okay.</v> So Garfield R two property tax mill Levy in compliance with Colorado revised statute 22 41 0 2 6. This is to certify that the Garfield R two board of education met in a business session on December 11th, 2024 and took action recorded on the official minutes thereof to establish the total Garfield RE two mill levy for property tax year 2024 to be collected in 2025 at the millage. Total is based on a net assessed value of nine 957,165,450. Oh, I messed up. So I'm gonna back up a little bit. Mill levy for property tax year 2024 to be collected in 2025 at 27.116. The mill is total is based on a net assessed value of 957,165,450. And is comprised of the following general fund total program, 8,327,339 with the mill total of 8.700. The voter approved mill levy overrides will be 9,201,231 at 9.613. The abatement at 25,843 and the mill total of 0.027 for a total general fund of $17,554,414 with a mill total of 18.340. The bond redemption fund $8,400,084 at 8.776 mills. And then I'll skip down to the total non general fund of $8,400,084 at 8.776, meaning the Garfield RE two total of 25,954,498 to get our 27.116 mill total. The estimated full funding mill levy is 34.317 for projected growth funding from the state of 36,460,432. Could I get a motion to approve the 2025 mil levy <v Speaker 10>I make? So,</v> <v Speaker 9>Well I move to approve the 2020 5 million. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Second.</v> <v Speaker 10>I second that.</v> <v Speaker 1>Awesome. Did we get roll</v> <v Speaker 10>Call Eli?</v> Aye. Petro Aye. Asco Aye. Jensen. <v Speaker 4>Aye.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay, moving on</v> to some policy focus school closing and cancellations. EBC cce. This is our first reading of these, I think all of them. Yeah, <v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah.</v> <v Speaker 1>But we're all in our first readings.</v> <v Speaker 4>Go ahead. Read it out loud. Yeah,</v> <v Speaker 1>We got, we're we're good.</v> Okay. So it looks like we've got some changes here. This is from CS B, correct? <v Speaker 3>No,</v> <v Speaker 4>They were on</v> <v Speaker 6>The, they were all on cas.</v> These are, these ones are not. This one we needed to bring up to date. Yep. With, because some of the radio stations that had currently been, that we had utilized and some of the communication is no longer valid. Yeah. So, so when, especially when you get into the EBCE dash R, you're gonna see some red lining of just things that are no longer relevant to the district's pro practice. Okay. <v Speaker 1>Should I, we do I need to read it?</v> <v Speaker 4>Read it out loud?</v> <v Speaker 6>I don't think so.</v> <v Speaker 4>I don't think you have to. They didn't In the past,</v> <v Speaker 3>On the EBCE, we had done, when there were school closings</v> for our staff needed to still report and that was not a practice that we were doing. So we revised it in the red writing in order to include what we do now as well as those that do have to work like snow removal and how they get paid kind of thing. And so it matches our leave policy as well. <v Speaker 1>So that was the big change on it was.</v> So even on the snow day, everybody still has to, <v Speaker 3>I mean they did.</v> They did at some point, but we haven't been following that in the per years. Yeah, I've been here since 99 and we never did. So it was time. <v Speaker 4>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. Anybody have any questions, comments?</v> Not at this time. Okay, perfect. That was the, that was EBCE. So let's move over to EBCE dash R. Closing and cancellations. <v Speaker 4>This is just the, yeah,</v> what is it? R <v Speaker 1>That's the</v> <v Speaker 6>A regulation practice Regulation.</v> The practices we use. Yeah. <v Speaker 4>Not revised.</v> <v Speaker 6>So</v> these are some of the things that we've changed. We don't do auto dialers. We call those auto messaging. Now we utilize the newspaper, but some of the radio stations are no longer viable. So we brought those all <v Speaker 5>Up</v> <v Speaker 6>To date, up to date.</v> <v Speaker 5>Who all looks at these to help go through these</v> to make sure communications and HR <v Speaker 1>Is our,</v> <v Speaker 4>And many times our legal team as</v> <v Speaker 6>Well.</v> Absolutely. In this particular case, since this is a communications, Theresa is the one who typically when we work in the morning, you know, to decide if we're canceling or not, then it's typically operations directors that are out on the roads and then myself as superintendent and then Theresa as the communications director, as to where it goes next. So they've all looked at this, <v Speaker 1>We don't need by name our,</v> our new platform we're getting ready to use in a year, you know, by next year, should that name of that platform be on here? You got the word Facebook, what was that one called? Parent. Parent Square. Parent square. Should it be in there? <v Speaker 13>I wouldn't recommend it just in policy</v> because we'd have to change it if we ever change the platform. Not that I anticipate <v Speaker 1>That.</v> Okay. I think as long as you guys think we're covered by it, <v Speaker 6>As long as it says district approved auto messaging</v> system, which that would be the, the how. That's where Parent Square would apply. But not specific to that. <v Speaker 5>Okay. Okay. Good catch.</v> <v Speaker 4>Okay, good.</v> <v Speaker 1>Lost some radio stations it looks like.</v> <v Speaker 6>Yep.</v> <v Speaker 4>Radio.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. Perfect. Okay, let's move on to JAH.</v> J-A-I-H-H <v Speaker 6>Is</v> <v Speaker 4>That interrogation?</v> <v Speaker 1>That's right behind it. Interrogation of students,</v> student interviews. <v Speaker 6>This one is off of the CS B list for this year.</v> And as you can see, they've made very minimal changes to the actual policy. <v Speaker 1>That doesn't get us any, any issues with</v> parents within this? Is there, I mean, is there avenues through this where a parent could be concerned that we're searching without a parent or any, you see guys getting issues <v Speaker 6>There?</v> I think you have to have reasonable cause before you search any, any child. And so that would really come through off of threat assessments or safe to tells or that's not a practice that happens on a regular basis without everyone knowing what they're, what they're doing. So yeah, <v Speaker 1>We're gonna follow these steps anyway</v> before we ever got to Right. We need to look in that locker. We need to look at that back. Yeah, <v Speaker 6>Absolutely.</v> <v Speaker 4>Okay. Yep.</v> <v Speaker 1>See we got rid of some shells and put some wills.</v> <v Speaker 6>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 5>They</v> <v Speaker 1>Even know.</v> That'll make all of us feel more comfortable. <v Speaker 5>Always. They did add like out.</v> I like that in the private area. Out sight of other students. That's good. Like I'm not embarrassed or, yeah. <v Speaker 4>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 1>You guys okay with that one?</v> Okay, let's move on to JJH Student travel. We talked a little bit about that one. <v Speaker 6>This actually came to light.</v> So again, this is district policy and this came to light when our choir kids were getting ready to go on the field trip over to Colorado Springs and they were, were out of alignment with the actual fee structures that are out there. And so we brought those into up to date and that actually you'll see more not in the policy itself, but we wanted you to see the policy but in the regulation. And that's where the prices you'll see are red lined. <v Speaker 1>1150 Mark can eat for 1150.</v> <v Speaker 5>Yeah, seriously.</v> <v Speaker 1>So,</v> <v Speaker 5>And where did we get that dollar amount?</v> <v Speaker 4>IT</v> <v Speaker 3>Finance brought this to us</v> and they had done the increases as far as like cost of living and figured the percentages increases that our policy need to be able to match. <v Speaker 4>Pretty</v> <v Speaker 1>Interesting.</v> <v Speaker 3>They use numbers,</v> <v Speaker 1>How much we spend on, you know, food</v> for trips and stuff like that. But, so really what we're saying ultimately is we're gonna cover the majority of a meal, but the kids all have to have, they're gonna have to have some money to go on anything. But do you guys think that might ever prevent kids from being able to go do those things or limit them? <v Speaker 6>You know, I think that's where the sponsorships,</v> where you'll hear from the boosters and you'll hear like even today you heard from the FFA, there's a lot of work that they do so that their trips are supported, you know, and the work on the cowboy craft fair and things like that. So I <v Speaker 1>Like, I like that aspect</v> because I like that they're bought into it. Yes. I mean these kids put on some, put in some work for the cowboy event. I mean they put in some work. So I, I like that aspect of it. I just would hate that it's only relying on the, the money we're covering. But you're true, you know, with the boosters and you know, the fundraising and things like that. <v Speaker 6>Yeah, I think if it's an issue, I think we'd hear about it</v> or somehow within the schools. I mean it really hasn't been brought to our attention. We didn't even know that we were outta compliance until we were brought this, you know, by our finance team. And so I, I would say that somehow there is a system, internal system that they're taking care of the kids, making sure they're okay. Okay. <v Speaker 1>Don't want a kid to not get to eat</v> or, you know, that that's just my concern. Yes. Yeah, for sure. It's definitely not enough to eat on anymore. I don't, you can't, well, can't even eat <v Speaker 5>For three hours is just for like travel.</v> Like not for sports though. This is just for events. <v Speaker 6>If they were to travel out of district</v> and they were to spend a day at an event. So that's where, like I said, it came to our attention when the kiddos were getting ready to go over to Colorado Springs. So if they stopped at Wendy's on the way to the actual event over, you know, at CASB Yeah. That's what they would be allotted as. <v Speaker 5>It's just not noted in the original travel policy,</v> the student travel that it's an event out of district. I don't know if we need to add that into the main policy. It, it doesn't really say specifically. Like it just says activity trips. So when I looked at this originally I was thinking, oh, like all the high school students that travel for a basketball game, oh, get this much money. That's what I was thinking when I read it. 'cause it just says that they're gonna travel, it's not travel to an event. I'm wondering if we need to reword the original policy that says we'll look <v Speaker 6>Into it. You bet.</v> <v Speaker 1>But it does say that all overnight trips. Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 5>On the policy. Yeah.</v> Well we have trips that go overnight. Yeah, all <v Speaker 1>Overnight</v> <v Speaker 5>Trips.</v> You have those basketball tournaments or state wrestling that's three days long or <v Speaker 1>But they stay down there, don't they?</v> Yeah. But then in that case, I, I guess I'm concerned if they go to basalt and play football or basketball and on the way home they stop at McDonald's, we're not covering that. Right. This would just be if they're like, Hey, we're going down to Pueblo and we're gonna play in a two day tournament. We're feeding them or those, all those times. Is <v Speaker 5>That what it's more for? I</v> <v Speaker 6>Believe so, but we'll get some clarification.</v> You bet. I don't wanna, I I, we still have few more readings but I think that we'll get some clarification <v Speaker 5>For this.</v> Okay. Thank you. You <v Speaker 6>Bet.</v> <v Speaker 1>Good one. Good looking at it.</v> <v Speaker 5>Student use of cell phone and other personal technology.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. So that was good. A little bit of discussion.</v> JICJ cell phones, which is spelled a little weird and pagers just on this sheet I think. <v Speaker 3>Okay. Where's that</v> <v Speaker 1>Cell phone?</v> <v Speaker 3>So this one is, has been sent to Brent case</v> to review because we're making some significant changes. The policy used to state states that the board believes that devices can play a vital communication role in emergency situations as Bill is be a useful tool for ED in the educational environment. And so the idea is that the board believes that cell phones, personal technology devices can be detrimental to the learning environment. <v Speaker 1>Yep.</v> I I, I'm looking down here at this one line. Personal devices cannot be used by students during the school day, but here at Rifle High they just can't be used during class. So is that <v Speaker 5>Okay Or they're gonna switch it the</v> beginning of next school year. <v Speaker 1>Oh, that's</v> <v Speaker 5>True. So yeah.</v> <v Speaker 6>So we'll have it in policy by then. Okay.</v> And everybody is kind of soft peddling or rifle high school is getting <v Speaker 5>Prepared. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. That's good.</v> Good stuff. Okay. <v Speaker 5>Is it noted somewhere in here, I was trying to look</v> and remember if I read it, but during learn, should we put like something about learning hours? Because after school activities and before school activities, they can have their cell phones. It's just during learning hours of a school day or something. I mean <v Speaker 3>We can add that into that first line that</v> personal technology advices cannot be used by students during <v Speaker 5>Learning hours or</v> <v Speaker 3>Learning hours</v> instead of the school day. <v Speaker 5>Yeah. Because the school day, to me,</v> when I look at the school day, it's like you all go for the morning, you have to do something and then you have all day school and then you have volleyball, basketball practice afterwards. That's a school day. And <v Speaker 3>Our high schools have an open camp,</v> open campus lunch, right? <v Speaker 5>Yes.</v> <v Speaker 3>So students are allowed</v> to take their phones when they go off campus. Yep. Yep. And <v Speaker 5>They can, they always have those pouches with them. Okay.</v> <v Speaker 3>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 5>Like that they keep the pouch,</v> they can unlock it when they go to leave the building. <v Speaker 4>Hmm.</v> <v Speaker 5>Not the magnet thing.</v> <v Speaker 4>Nice.</v> <v Speaker 5>And it,</v> and like they were worried about like kids going to CNC classes and stuff. They just go by the office and unlock it and leave. They can get their phone out even if they're going to like a college class or something like that. So it's not like they totally don't have access to get their phone out. <v Speaker 4>Okay. Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. That's good. First reading of those.</v> So really the only thing I guess we're curious about is the learning. The learning day. Yeah. No on that. That's a good point. <v Speaker 3>Yeah. Especially 'cause then, I mean if they have open,</v> if we have open campus lunches, you know, that's not a learning time but it's part of the school day. Yep. <v Speaker 5>So makes sense. Yep. Yep.</v> <v Speaker 1>Perfect. Okay, so next time we'll come back</v> and we'll start talking second readings of those. So if you, if anybody thinks of anything kind of camera <v Speaker 5>Goes down. Yes.</v> <v Speaker 1>Next thing on our agenda is</v> future agenda items. <v Speaker 6>Yes.</v> Okay. <v Speaker 1>Is there a lot?</v> <v Speaker 6>Nope,</v> <v Speaker 1>We have nothing.</v> <v Speaker 6>So we are,</v> <v Speaker 5>There's</v> <v Speaker 1>Still some stuff off. The last</v> <v Speaker 6>One that we didn't off the, that we didn't get to,</v> so let me go backwards, but we do have, we'll be at Riverside at night so of course we'll hear from Riverside. It is supposed to be a work session basically with the strategic plan on student success. So that'll be some collaboration with Jacob and Simone as to what they wanna cover Around that. We'll have all that mid-year data should be flowing in by then with the iReady pieces and some of those mid-year progress reports. And so that is something I'm sure they'll want to share with you. Then this last time we had talked about safety update. I know that the safety committee has continued to meet, I know that capital projects and some of that work that in tandem with not only Roger's department but also John's department and the safety committee itself. So I guess it's, it's worthy of checking in with them of where they're at. And I do know Roger helped me, since you're in the room tonight, the acceptable use policy are You'all coming too <v Speaker 5>In January?</v> <v Speaker 6>In January</v> <v Speaker 1>And</v> AI in January. <v Speaker 4>Yeah. That'll be part of</v> <v Speaker 1>It. Okay. Same thing.</v> <v Speaker 5>Our meeting's on the eighth.</v> <v Speaker 6>Our meeting is on the eighth so we can, you know,</v> we can kind of divide up the two meetings. <v Speaker 5>We will have that stakeholders meeting the night before.</v> Oh yep. On the seventh. So I don't know if we want them to stick around for anything. <v Speaker 1>Pearson,</v> <v Speaker 5>Jacobson Pearson</v> <v Speaker 1>For the next day.</v> <v Speaker 5>Yeah. Or</v> <v Speaker 1>Maybe at some point that'd be a great idea. Maybe</v> <v Speaker 5>We could have some sort of community.</v> The <v Speaker 6>Maybe at the end people</v> <v Speaker 5>Come or something.</v> <v Speaker 6>If you're doing the meetings on the seventh,</v> then they would maybe have some feedback for you by the 22nd, which is the second board <v Speaker 1>Meeting.</v> Who? McPherson. Jacobson. Yeah. To maybe give like us an update. Yeah, maybe. Wow. <v Speaker 5>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 6>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 5>Well I'm saying like on the eighth though,</v> like we might have some public comment input from that seventh meeting. Okay. Or something. Yeah. <v Speaker 1>We can encourage it even.</v> <v Speaker 3>Yeah, encourage it. Or</v> <v Speaker 6>Even staff.</v> Roger, would you guys be prepared to talk AI and that acceptable use on the 8th of January? Or would you like that to be <v Speaker 1>The eighth?</v> Be perfect. Sweet. Okay. <v Speaker 6>Is that good?</v> So I mean that's a student success. Riverside ai acceptable use policy. <v Speaker 3>Second reading of</v> <v Speaker 1>Oh we got a lot of policies to read.</v> Second reading of these. Yeah. Second policies, something's gonna pop up. We <v Speaker 10>Have a couple we could put on for first.</v> 'cause C we just put out too on this last thing that came out that there's a whole bunch more coming and we still have a couple on the other one to clean up. <v Speaker 1>So yeah, she actually, the president</v> of CASB really spoke up multiple times about the fact that they did all the policies. They made that commitment and they did it. Way to go. <v Speaker 3>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 1>If we need to. For sure.</v> These, these policies that we just read through seems pretty straight. So I don't know if they're not seem to be. So when are we gonna bring back parent engagement? That was a big one. That <v Speaker 3>Was a big one.</v> It's one that I would like to see D and Latinos and re two really dive into. Yeah. But every time we take for something else, then we get, we get postponed. Yeah. <v Speaker 1>Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 3>But I do think that they would be really</v> key stakeholders in developing. Yeah. But their needs maybe in the February meeting since January's no <v Speaker 1>Bullied.</v> They got bullied. Yeah. They almost had two months worth of bullying if we're gonna let them do that. So now we're, <v Speaker 6>They're probably just doing one meeting in March.</v> <v Speaker 3>I I'm think yeah, they'll,</v> there's one meeting in March for both together. I think bullying can get done because there's minimal changes and minimals that changes that can be made. 'cause it's, the bullying policy is based in law. So I, I think that they can get it done in one. It's basically ask answering questions about some of the things that are changed. <v Speaker 1>So March, potentially March realistically start talking</v> about parenting, engage <v Speaker 3>January 1st, superintendent search.</v> And then I think February we could probably do start, start on on parent engagement. I'd like to bring in a speaker again like we did leading and learning. So if we have like, if we could learn about like what does community parent engagement look like in the Latinos group in February? And then move right into deck about how we might incorporate what we've learned into the policy. <v Speaker 1>That's the only one we've had kind</v> of sitting out there, isn't it? Yeah. <v Speaker 6>It's the only policy that's been tabled.</v> There are some though that are on Cas B'S list, like Sharon said, that we should probably look at to bring forward just so that we stay. There was <v Speaker 10>Just, there's like three or four</v> and they're all ready to go. So. <v Speaker 1>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 6>Are are they from the original list?</v> <v Speaker 1>Are they pretty, they're they're low key ones</v> <v Speaker 10>Policies.</v> Some of them. I think there was one or so that it would be a little bit of a subject matter but always changed on, it was very simple. It was not anything. It's one that's already in our policies and it's simple that was changes on it. And I'll make sure that when you meet with Heather on the agenda that you get a copy. Okay. Okay. That way you know whether you want it on there or <v Speaker 1>Not.</v> If, if we don't have a lot of discussion or governance stuff, then we could go a little heavier on policy. On <v Speaker 6>Policy.</v> <v Speaker 3>Okay. And just do a first reading</v> and then, you know, kind of keep the slate clean when we wanna do the KB policy. Oh, <v Speaker 1>That wasn't KB</v> <v Speaker 3>One. Yeah.</v> <v Speaker 1>Yep. Yeah, that sounds pretty good.</v> And I'm sure something might pop up since we've got really three or four weeks. <v Speaker 6>Okay. So Sharon,</v> I'm just gonna make a note in our draft is if you share with whatever you've already prepared on those CS B policies and then I can share with <v Speaker 10>You, you can share with Brittany. Yes, I will do that.</v> <v Speaker 6>Okay.</v> <v Speaker 1>Okay. That's pretty good.</v> For our next meeting debrief, I did wanna bring something up that I saw from ECE and they lost one of their people. Enis, NCIO Guzman and I, I ipol, I wanted to bring it up earlier, but that I had that note in there concerning her and the, you know, my prayers and thoughts are with their family. Yeah. Yes. I had seen that they were doing some fundraisers for her and everything and I'm sad to say she lost her, her fight with cancer. And so I just wanted them to know that, you know, I was personally thinking of 'em and I'm sure you <v Speaker 3>Guys, she was a member of Latinos and Re too.</v> Yep. I don't dunno if you're planning on being at the next Latinos, but would you be willing to say Oh yeah. Just like what you just did. Yeah, <v Speaker 1>Yeah.</v> Just, yeah. I, it's in my book. I mean I hate that I missed it. So much stuff in there. And then another shout out to you, both of you guys on the commissioner's chat. I thought you did great. I really enjoyed listening to it. You know, the attendance structure, 86% to a 94, you know, the pillars, the student success, staff success, community success, intentionality, ownership. And at the end you finish it up with just don't give up. And that was awesome. So I really appreciated that. <v Speaker 5>Yeah, that was good. Yeah,</v> <v Speaker 1>Real good.</v> <v Speaker 5>The other thing we totally forgot is Coleridge</v> and Rifle are going to state this weekend. Yep. So shout out <v Speaker 3>Cheer, shout out and dance.</v> Cheer and dance. Cheers on Friday and dance is on Saturday. Awesome. <v Speaker 1>Good</v> <v Speaker 3>For them. So that'll be exciting, especially</v> for dance, this being their first year. Yeah. Being able to compete at a Chasa. Yeah. At a CHASA event. So that's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. <v Speaker 1>Also, they got great kids,</v> <v Speaker 3>Lots of talent.</v> <v Speaker 1>CASB. They were, they did not fill one speed, one spot</v> for a Chasa position. And I know that'll be open now to anyone. So I know Chance might have had some interest. If he doesn't, I think I might try to at least apply for that. It's just a one year seat. Okay. So, you know, I think we need to be on, we're not on enough committees, we're not on enough of these boards. Yeah. So I hope as we progress, once somebody from our board can start getting on the Cs B board also for District 10. And then I think that Chasa just seems like nobody's stepping up into the roles. So, you know, I think now we're getting a little more experience when you get in there. So that's all I got. Anybody else? Anything? We're a little meeting debrief. You guys got anything over there? No, <v Speaker 3>I, I, I did appreciate Kelsey</v> and Nancy coming in with KSE to talk about getting the Spanish program in the elementaries and I, I don't know what that would look like, but I think that's definitely something to explore. To explore. <v Speaker 1>I'm telling you what if every one of our kids graduated</v> with two languages, we'd be, <v Speaker 3>Every other country does</v> <v Speaker 1>It.</v> We'd be so far, we'd be so far ahead and we put it as a priority start to beyond. It'll work. But it's, it's another, it's another big heavy limb for sure. You know? But that's a great idea and it makes such sense. It just like, like one of those no-brainers. <v Speaker 3>Well, and I wonder if there would be a grant available</v> to help get that started implemented. Staffing training. <v Speaker 1>My nephew went to a school Montessori and,</v> and that was in Monument, Colorado. And they were taught how to speak Mandarin Chinese and there wasn't any word written hardly anywhere that didn't have the Mandarin under. And it was pretty wild when he'd come home. He was a young kid at the time and try to speak Mandarin. It was pretty amazing. I don't know that he can still do it. It was pretty cool that they were at least making that attempt Yeah. To do it. Okay. Well thank you very much for a good meeting. I'm gonna go ahead and call this done at nine 17. Thank you. <v Speaker 3>Woohoo.</v> <v Speaker 1>Very good.</v> <v Speaker 3>Yeah, that wasn't bad at all.</v>