Read along below or follow along here: (pt 1: https://otter.ai/u/iI2ZLuJsQsz7FDeL80L3mraBEgk pt 2: https://otter.ai/u/79v7tcKxNUjo938LvI7PwTK-Bj4)
Unknown Speaker 0:00
My name is Dan Malloy, and I live at 365 Papi view lane in Erie, Dr. Dad, Miss siegrist, and members of the board, I appreciate the time to speak tonight. And I appreciate you guys taking the time to go into the effort to get us all here in person. The work that the district has done to increase the level of sanitation distributed iPads around the district, provide food throughout to all of our students and increase the conductivity in the district is amazing. And we all appreciate everything you guys have done on that, or the reallocation of resources was certainly not easy. And we do understand how hard that was and greatly appreciate the work you’ve done. The recent COVID tracker by school is another great step towards transparency that we all have discussed and appreciate. because it lets us see what’s happening school by school with positive positive cases. Now that we’re in hybrid, and we’re experiencing some isolation events, especially the ones that are based on symptoms, as opposed to a positive test, I’m really asking this board and the health board to work together to refine the quarantine and the isolation protocols. We need these to be more targeted so that they can be less disruptive to the overall process of education for our children’s. We do believe that hybrid has been a positive move to get the kids out of the house back with their teachers and socialize with their friends. There are some drawbacks the increased vectors of infection, daycares, running errands during school hours, babysitters tutors, anybody else to interact with would be alleviated by going back to a five day a week model. There is also minimal interaction across the district with many students on the asynchronous days. In particular, my son logs in takes attendance and starts playing games or watching YouTube on the school iPad. Still working on that. There’s over reliance on technology for the testing and teaching that our students are not always prepared for. And further the teachers. They’re having this increased workload where they’re managing multiple modalities, as opposed to dealing with the increased mitigation efforts within the classroom. We think this would be overcome by full day in person help. full day in person schooling. Across the country, everybody is dealing with this reduced incomes, increased work expectations, uncontrollable stressors, and our children are suffering the most and their least equipped to deal with this. Moving back to full time in person has risks. And we understand that. But we think that that would actually solve the true damage that our children are already experiencing. The fact that we can do on site five day a week in person daycare in the schools safely and effectively suggests that we can do the same thing with classrooms and with schooling, saying that some people are more equal than others is a morally questionable decision. And I think that we need to understand that and realize that we have to treat everybody the same. So right now I’d like to ask that we start working on the reality we have and not waiting for the fantasy that we want. So I appreciate the time. Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 2:59
Dan, thank you very much. We appreciate you being here. Thanks. Hi, Kimberly.
Unknown Speaker 3:20
Hi. I’m Joey. It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for being here this evening. While we’re cleaning the podium, I’ll let you know that you’ll have three minutes to make your comments we will time that and before you begin speaking if you could please state your name and your address. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:37
My name is Kimberly millette. My address is 1131 Petra street theory. Thank you for having me. tonight. I am the mother of four boys. Three attends St brane schools to one in middle and two to an elementary one who will be attending preschool soon via IEP. online school was nothing short of a disaster for our family. The teachers are amazing and have tried their hardest to provide our kids with what they can given the circumstances. Often going above and beyond. I had to take the cell phone for my teacher had to give me the cell phone number because my son was struggling so much we had to text constantly during the day. I’m a full time working mother and I have a husband who works full time my children were left at home. They’re old enough, but left at home to do school by themselves. While I paid to put my first grader in daycare at his Elementary School. Our child we have hired tutors for two of our kids to bridge the gaps that have been obtained over this past six months. We’re lucky we can afford to hire tutors and spend hundreds of dollars a week to ensure that our children don’t fall behind. The return to school was a welcomed day in our household. I sent many emails to the board in regard to our fourth grade sign and that the toll that online learning was taking on him. He has ADHD and his gifted child. He suffered greatly. He became he went from an outgoing child to recluse and very depressed to the point where his IEP meeting you could hear concern in the teachers voices and his IEP instructor because he wasn’t the child they had known. We love so much progress with our son over six months. He thrives in being in school and going to school. He’s lucky he gets to go four days a week, because he has an IEP. The day that school started back, he was up brightener and then couldn’t wait to go to school. You see. So these four days have made the world of difference to our child slowly he is returning to the child that we have known and that the school has seen in the past several years. We are working to regain all the progress. While being back in school is great. We have concerns while my son is there four days a week. His brothers are not How do I explain to one child that his brother gets to go four days a week, because he’s more important to the district because he has an IEP, well, I still pay for daycare for my other child. Also, with the return to school, the teachers workload is doubled, which means the GT small groups and like my children should be in are no longer existing. But children are getting the GT instruction that they are promised further Alp it they can’t, they can’t accommodate it anymore. We were almost half of the instruction we had. We were online. And we’re in person. We’re still heavily relying on iPads. For first graders who don’t know how to write. We’re teaching a generation on iPads and they will never know how to write. How are other schools back in progress full time with very little issues. One of my sons is going to charter that’s been in session since August 31 days with no COVID cases. They are full time Elementary, hybrid, middle and high. How can they go back and our district sits here one of the only districts that’s hybrid for elementary now, Boulder Valley is returning in person with what I understood is very little workforce that wants to go back. But suddenly, they can send their K to fifth back to school full time. Well, our children are still suffering at home and we’re still paying the cost of childcare. I think that our children deserve better. It’s time to open our schools. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 7:03
Thank you, Kimberly. Hello.
Unknown Speaker 7:19
Hi, are
Unknown Speaker 7:20
you Brooke, it’s nice to meet you, Brock. I’m Joey. Yes, while we’re getting everything cleaned up, I’ll let you know that you’ll have three minutes to make your public comment we will time that and when you begin if you could please state your name and your address.
Unknown Speaker 7:40
My name is Brooke seller, my address is 17592 Olive street in Brazil.
Unknown Speaker 7:47
And just start whenever absolutely please.
Unknown Speaker 7:51
I’m here today to ask that you please open the schools and allow our children to attend in person school five days a week. I’ve watched my children deal with loneliness and isolation for almost eight months now. I’ve seen them struggle with distance learning. These children’s come these children love their teachers and they come alive when they are allowed to share what they’re learning. Sadly, this is just another thing they’re being robbed of while being forced to participate in distance learning. The distance learning program is a catastrophic failure. Children are exposed to a single method of teaching. They either go through the motions are done by mid morning and then bored for the remainder remainder of the day. Or they spend the entire day fighting with their parents about doing the work. Either way, they’re retaining nothing, which is demonstrated by their failing grades and test scores. I found out that before the alternating schedule was implemented, the school district was offering full time in person CARE for Kids at an additional fee. The same care you were refusing to provide to taxpayers claiming it would be impossible to comply with the state regulations. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s even legal. I also understand that while working parents are expected to work full time and teach their kids. Teachers are being permitted to bring their students to school full time. Because for some reason, you understand that a teacher cannot do their job effectively and teach their own kids via a distance model. But you don’t understand that that is the same story for all working parents. It’s not your job to employ teachers. It’s a wonderful side effect of maintaining a school program but that’s not your charter. You become overly involved in employing teachers and making decisions for parents. And as a result you’d become negligent in performing your charter which is to educate children. You chosen to turn a blind eye to the devastating gaps your distance program learning learning program has. Other companies are doing what you claim is impossible and distance learning camps have popped up everywhere. Distance Learning is even more ineffective under the alternating schedule. Small groups and reading groups have been canceled. So that teachers can focus on the kids in the classroom, leaving the kids at home even more forgotten. The most devastating follow to distance learning is the damage you are causing by ignoring the social and emotional needs of our children. I understand that for every parent who wants you to return to school, there’s another parent who says, our children’s blood is on your hands. These statements are outlandish and are made by people who will never send their kids to an in person classroom, whether it’s one day or five days, they’re not going to participate. And that’s fine. That’s their choice. And that’s their right as a parent. But why are the opinions of the non participants driving the decisions?
Unknown Speaker 10:42
Enough is enough. Allow the parents to decide. We appreciate you making your comments. Thank you. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 10:59
Hello. Oops, if you could just wait one second. So we’re done cleaning. That’d be great. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 11:10
It’s Korean.
Unknown Speaker 11:11
Korean. Hi, Karen. I’m Joey. Thank you for being here this evening. You’ll have three minutes to make your comment we will time your your comments. And when you began, if you could please state your name and your address for the record. Yes, and thank you again for being here. Hello, good
Unknown Speaker 11:31
evening. Thank
Unknown Speaker 11:31
you for this opportunity to speak to all of you tonight. My name is Corinne Renteria I live at 2321 Lynx place in Erie. I have four boys that attend Black Rock Elementary in Erie in the fifth, third and kindergarten grade levels. I am speaking today, as I would like to request transparent and regular communication from the elected public officials to st frame parents, and how we are progressing towards full time school reopening. Although hybrid learning is a great step forward for parents who choose in person learning for their children. It does not replace full time in person learning and the proven educational benefits that provides hybrid learning continues to present challenges to the community. Working Families still need to hire childcare for asynchronous learning days. Teachers now need to navigate both synchronous and asynchronous learning plans. And children with 504 plans only received two days of in person learning. Same brain has done a solid job responding to COVID-19 and the challenges that is presented to our community. iPads have been purchased in distributed dress district wide school facilities have been upgraded to provide a healthier environment, internet hotspots and meal distribution has been allocated for families that cannot afford these expenses, and a 100% Online Learning Module option launch ad has been provided to families at no cost. According to the Colorado hometown weekly, 3200 students are enrolled in the launch Ed online program, which is only 10% of the st green student population. So in turn, 90% of the st frame student population has a parent or guardian that is chosen in person learning and accepts the risks it presents to their children and families during the pandemic. It is imperative that communication is provided to parents on how st rain is progressing towards reopening full time in person learning. school districts surrounding us have already communicated their phased approach and return to full time in person learning. What is st brain’s plan? I can appreciate that st brain leadership has taken a wait and see approach with how other school districts are managing the reopening plans. It has allowed st brain to witness real time experience examples of hybrid and full time learning models and its impact within their specific communities. But the community needs more than wait and see as leaders of the st. Breen school district who pride themselves on developing systems and processes for our students to become the creators, innovators and leaders who will shape the future and drive the success of our communities. I implore you to remain steadfast into this objective. Our children desperately need a return to full time in person learning. Please communicate your full time reopening plan to the st. Brain families who have chosen this pathway and provide us with routine updates towards executing this plan. Our children deserve more than a wait and see approach.
Unknown Speaker 14:29
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 14:30
Thank you very much. Yes. Good evening, Becca. It’s nice to meet you, Becca. I’m Joey. While we clean the podium if you could just wait one second. Thank you. You’ll have three minutes to make your comments those will be timed and if you could please state your name and address for the record before you begin. Great.
Unknown Speaker 15:01
Oh, it’s fine. I’ll hold the papers anyways.
Unknown Speaker 15:04
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 15:05
Yep, my name is Becca Johnston. My address is 1872 Blue Mountain Road in Longmont. Good evening, and thank you for hearing me and others tonight. As you hear from 10 different people, you will probably hear different requests. I’m here tonight as a mom and a representative other parents who share my concerns have similar questions and want answers. As a mom of three kids at three different schools within the district. I have concerns about the communications I have received. First, my kids are happy to be back at school under the hybrid model. My older kids myself have concerns over being quarantined and the impact though to have not only for school, but also for the activities outside of school. We do our best by wearing masks, washing hands, using hand sanitizer and social distancing. I know at school my kids like many others are doing everything they can to protect themselves. During the first week and a half a school I’ve been watching the COVID dashboard that is one of on the district’s website. Why I’m thankful for it that it is available. It does cause confusion because the letters received about exposure don’t completely correlate to the dashboard. This leaves many questions unanswered. Today when I looked I saw an updated dashboard that did provide more information and insight, which again I was very thankful for. However in looking at it, it’s still leaves many questions unanswered. To that end, I am here to ask that more information be shared within the COVID dashboard. This transparency will provide accurate information for the parents to make decisions on whether students need to be in the current hybrid model or launch it. The information needs to include what is being seen today on the dashboard, which is active in resolve cases, plus the number of symptomatic or suspected cases of teachers, staff and students and the number of quarantine teachers, staff and students at any given time. All this information needs to remain by school with district totals at the bottom and be current and cumulative. For those who are symptomatic what triggers the quarantine of others is a quarantine triggered for both major and minor symptoms. What if a person has minor symptoms, goes home and develops major symptoms? This the trigger quarantine? Does this trigger a quarantine? Does the school or district follow up with the parents and students or the teachers and staff to see if the person has gotten better or worse? If a person has major symptoms, does the district require a test to be done by the symptomatic person? The test is done is a new letter sent to the parents of the students at the school if the past test is positive. Then the next question arises is when is the person considered recovered? what has to be done for a person to return to score? More questions as numbers seemingly continue to grow? What constitutes an outbreak at a school? Is it confirmed number of cases among teachers, students and staff over a course of timeframe like two weeks? Does an outbreak trigger another set of protocols for the school? If so what protocols At what point if any? Will at school the swift support landline, back to my personal experience and more questions and wanted today on Tuesday at silvercreek that has a large number of teachers in quarantine at least 19 and not enough substitute teachers. What has been done in classrooms when there is no teacher what safety measures are in place in case of a fire emergency or god forbid an active shooter and there’s not a teacher in that room. Lastly, I want to bring the attention of the board. The decreasing supply of disinfecting wipes for people contacted me today to bring this to your attention. Please let the school’s know what’s going on. Right.
Unknown Speaker 18:13
Thank you, Becca, we appreciate you being here. Thank
Unknown Speaker 18:15
you.
Unknown Speaker 18:16
Yes. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 18:20
going that way.
Unknown Speaker 18:21
Sorry.
Unknown Speaker 18:23
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 18:25
Hello, Laura. Yes, I’m Joey. It’s nice to meet you. While we’re cleaning the podium. I’m just gonna share with you that you’ll have three minutes to make your comment. We will time those three minutes. And before you begin speaking, could you please state your name and address for the record? Thank you very much. Okay, my
Unknown Speaker 18:47
name is Laura Ruth. I live at 1707 Dorothy circle. I am the parent of a Silver Creek graduate, a Silver Creek senior and the stepmom of a creek sophomore and altona eighth grade twins. I am here as a representative of the SPV SD, parent teachers support network during COVID. We are a group of 590 parents, teachers and staff who came together in August to help navigate the issues with transitioning to learning during the pandemic. There are many confused and frustrated parents in the st. Bryan community right now. And we feel like our voices are not being heard. As a school board, you’re our elected representatives and communication with constituents is important. Are you willing to commit to a two hour virtual Town Hall in the next two weeks to listen to the parents, students and staff you’re representing?
Unknown Speaker 19:45
We it’s our common practice. Laura. I apologize. We don’t respond to public comment, but you’re welcome to keep reading.
Unknown Speaker 19:51
Okay, that’s all I had. We just wanted to and I’ll follow up with you on that.
Unknown Speaker 19:54
Okay. Thank you. Appreciate you being here. Hello, Jen, it’s nice to see you. Yes, I haven’t seen you for quite a while. A lot of us can say that, haven’t we? Well, it’s wonderful to have you here this evening. You’ll have three minutes to make your public comments. We’ll go ahead and time that as soon as we’re done cleaning. When you begin speaking, please state your name and address for the record, and then we’ll start timing you after you do that.
Unknown Speaker 20:34
My name is Jennifer Diggins and my addresses 2845 Hartwick circle and while not so good evening, I am the parent of forskellige children in St. vrain Valley School District. I’d like to thank the board for giving my family the opposite of Washington this year. Three of my children launch Ed and my youngest is in the curriculum only option at apex. I would like the board to address the increase in class sizes for launch Ed and develop a plan. Not just we are hiring in general, but that they know certain class sizes are too big and being addressed. During this time communication is vital. The last time we have received communication from launch ad was on September 11. I chose launch Ed for my family to be able to get a secure and consistent education for the year. After a slow start, my children were at a good pace for learning and settled into their classes. So it’s a hybrid plan was updated and other students were allowed to move into launch it This has changed. My kids now have had to adjust to much larger class sizes, acclimating new students and less interaction with the teachers. My daughter’s third grade class has gone from 24 to 30 students in the last two weeks, and went from a nice size to a very large class. This has been experienced by many families across multiple grades. I’ve been told that online classes can accommodate more students but I disagree. It takes more time and effort for teachers to reach students in an online environment. I also have two children in launch in middle school. My seventh graders classes went from large to in one case huge, has smallest class sizes now 30 students has algebra class has 51 students. This teacher now has over 250 students between all of her classes. My eighth grader had nice sized classes before the announcement to hybrid. And now his classes are quite large, with the exception of his math class at 22 students. My middle schoolers, other classes ranged in size from 34 to 38. Students decided to go with lunch Ed was a difficult choice. Leaving teachers in schools that we have formed relationships with over the past eight years to an online school is hard. Knowing that schools could go back and person to in person learning, we chose to go with launch Ed as suggested if we’re apprehensive about sending our children to school. The established online program from Florida Virtual is a benefit for consistency. But is not the script program for the teachers that they were expecting. Teachers are working extremely hard to enhance it and make it accessible to kids. For class sizes 30 kids and a third grade class is not acceptable. And with the potential increase, it is not setting up these kids or the teacher for successful year. for middle school, I’m concerned that many of their class sizes are going to remain large. The larger the classes become the less interaction students receive the classes become more of a lecture. Tonight, I ask you to make a plan to manage the class sizes at launch it in a way that’s sustainable. However, the current class size is going to be addressed. Are you willing to leave room for classes to grow in case more families decide to switch? How can we get clear communication from lunch? Ed?
Unknown Speaker 23:43
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 23:46
Thank you. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 23:47
Yes, Jen, take care. And thank you for being here.
Unknown Speaker 23:49
Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 23:50
Yes. All right. That
Unknown Speaker 23:54
brings us to agenda item five this evening, which is the superintendent report done.
Unknown Speaker 24:00
Okay, thank you. And if our parents were still in the room, I would thank them for coming and visiting with us. I always appreciate hearing perspectives and requests and stuff. And one thing I will say is our parent community and our teachers and our students continue to be extremely supportive. And I received a lot of feedback, expressing appreciation and suggestions and concerns, and questions all of the things that I would expect during a global pandemic. And that we will continue to work closely with our community as they and our teachers represent and our staff, the heart and soul of our system. So again, I appreciate their feedback quite a bit. Want to give you a little bit of an update on COVID we did launch a dashboard recently. That will include active student and staff positive cases by school, past student and staff positive cases that have run their course, by school, the percentage of cases within that school against the entire student body. And then the percentage of staff by district, not by school, because many of our staff go to various schools. And then the percentage of student cases, district wide. Johnny terell will be sharing with you our quarantining process. I, I appreciated our visitors questions. Those are many of the same questions that we have had around quarantining procedures as they continue to evolve and change. And I think, since this started, I have shared as diligently as we can possibly share the complexity around the quarantining process, it is different with every case. And so there are no answers that are uniform across the board. It is dependent upon whether it’s impacted by a community contact or a cohort contact, or a symptom, or a test, or a major symptom or a minor sentiment. And it just simply is very complicated. And that’s why the epidemiologists have to take the lead on those. And even as recent as this past week, we’ve been in school now for two weeks. We’ve had schools that are impacted, and yet the response is been different. In some cases, an entire classroom has been quarantined. In other cases, a few kids and it’s all dependent upon the investigation, and the contact tracing that takes place with older county health and, and so on, and so forth. So Johnny will share a little bit more about that particular process. The one thing I would want people to know about the quarantining process is something that I’ve said many times, it does not mean that you have COVID, it does not even mean that it is likely that you have COVID it means that you may have been exposed to somebody who has a cough, it means that you may have been exposed to somebody who has a sore throat. And so it’s really important that we don’t make assumptions. And when I say we, me, you as a board, our team, that quarantining is consistent with being infected. And this has been part of the challenge all along with even returning to school. Now, one thing that, you know, I heard tonight, about neighboring school districts all having gone back, you know, some of the things that people hear just are not accurate. And it’s just important to understand that. So we do keep in communication with other school districts, we know what they’re doing. And we have continued to move systematically. At every juncture, I think I’ve stated that our goal is to return to full in person learning. And so we started the process back in the summer looking for those guidelines from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. And they did not come until July 30. Up until that point, we had planned to go with a hybrid, we had to pivot at the last minute, because of the delay and response from that department. We then sent out the letter that said we would revisit that model on September 30, which we did, we had the virtual town hall meeting on the 21st, at which time, we indicated we would be coming back in on the fifth of October for a hybrid model.
Unknown Speaker 28:49
And then have communicated that the next phase that we’re moving towards is an all in person model, whether that happens at one level, meaning elementary first, and then moving to middle. And then the high school. I think there was reference made to our neighboring district, they have k one two in but it’s not a full in person model. As I understand it, it’s people coming to school and some people being in the classroom and some people being in another room, doing distance learning from another room in the building based on availability of staff that may have changed, and if it has, that’s fine. I don’t want to speak on their behalf. But nonetheless, so it’s just not accurate that another district in our neighboring district has everybody back in. And so I just I want to say that only to keep clarity around what we’re doing. And we’re going to continue to try to move to that place. The other thing that I think Jeff Zack did a really nice job of was stating what the metrics are, you know, we’re looking at the two week and I’m going to give you a little update On what those are I just received another report yesterday, you know what the metrics are for two weeks what the trends are for two weeks what the positive activity rates are, what the hospitalization rates are. And so all of those metrics, as people have asked us, what is it that you’re looking at? That’s why we had that town hall and that virtual town hall meeting, to walk everybody through what those metrics are. Now, one of the developments that just took place today is because every county has been doing something different with their metrics. It’s created a lot of chaos and confusion. So we heard from Boulder County Health today that all of the districts, all of the health county areas will be moving under the Colorado Department of Public Health and environments, metrics, which are slightly different than everybody doing their own thing, so to speak. So that should bring a little bit more consistency. We also have a meeting on Monday with Jeff sack and Heather crate. And Dr. Urbina, who is the medical officer for Boulder County and SOTA, who is the epidemiologist to talk about how the first two weeks have gone in terms of quarantining. And looking for There are two ways in which you quarantine one is targeted quarantining, and one is general standard quarantining. And we’re looking at ways that we can become even more targeted with our quarantine process, it will not compromise safety in any way. But it’ll just help us to be more consistent. And this is not just saying brain, this is across the board, people are looking for this consistency, I have a document that I’ve shared with you that I keep track of. And this, this particular document has shared it with the board earlier. But this document started out as a one pager. And what it is, is all of the districts in the metro area, and all of the schools that have been impacted by quarantining. And so just to give you like an example, if you look at, for example, the Cherry Creek School District 1-234-567-8910 1112 1314 1516 1718 1920 2120, to 20 320-425-2627. And it goes on and on and on, probably the 50 Plus, that have been quarantined, there’s over two and a half to three pages worth of schools, Jefferson County’s got four pages worth of schools, Douglas County, all of these schools. And so this is this is what we were trying to communicate early on, when we kept saying that the protocols are so onerous that getting back into school is just the first step, being able to stay in school consistently, is equally as important. So we’re going to try to bring some more consistency to that with our partnership with our county health departments. The other thing that you’re going to hear tonight is kale, Charles will give an update on launch dead. And the points that were made tonight, were valid. And we appreciate that. One of the challenges, you know, it’s
Unknown Speaker 33:21
I mean, what she said is accurate, the class sizes have gone up, we’ve recently hired 17 additional teachers, those teachers are being placed in launch dead, which will bring some of the class sizes back down. And it has been something we encountered at the beginning of launch debt as well. And so it’s a legitimate concern on the part of our parents and our teachers. And we’re working through that. And we’ll continue to work through that. But most recently, we added 17 teachers, communication has gone out prior to this to our teachers, so they’re well aware of it. Our parents in those particular classes had been made aware of it. And my understanding is kale will share with you another communication that has gone out to our launch dead parents, either yesterday or today that will be hitting them. But But I want you to know that the comments that she made were, were legitimate and accurate. And I appreciated that. And that’s been a challenge and a struggle for us. Actually, everything that was has been said here tonight, barring just a few things around what some of the other school districts are doing. They’re all legitimate and they’re valid. And these are the struggles that we’re all experiencing. So it’s just a it’s an ongoing process that we’re going to continue to struggle with and continue to do the very best we can do. So the last thing I want to share with you is well second to last thing, the safety protocols that we continue to put in place. I’ve had some questions about masks. Masks are required. preschool through 12th grade. We have breaks built in This is a state law for cannon up from the governor’s office and then also Boulder County. And they have made the recommendation I think it was three years up three years and older to wear masks. But we have made the decision that masks would be required for all students with brakes built in, that our teachers and I have been to the schools, to all of them have asked the principals, are we getting good compliance, the answers to those things have been Yes, obviously, if you’re in a K 12 system, with children, there are going to be times they had adults who take their mask and move it or take it. But we’re working through that, overwhelmingly, the compliance has been outstanding. And that’s the report that we get back. And that’s also what I and our team have witnessed personally, with students, they understand the gravity of the situation. And they have overall been extremely responsive, as have our adults. We also have our second custodial team that has been doing extra cleaning during the days and in the evenings. And we have been in the buildings multiple times. And they look very, very clean. And they are and that additional staff has been helpful. The hand sanitizing the hand washing the H vac system is something that, you know, it’s important to know that these vents open. And Brian can elaborate before school to flush out everything but also every 15 minutes, the air is recirculated in these classrooms. So it’s not dead air. Is that correct? Brian? Yeah, so every 15 minutes, so there’s that constant steady movement of the air and replenishing. So that’s an important part of the H vac system, the gloves and some of the other protective gear that we’ve purchased, social distancing, I think, you know, the one benefit if, if not others, but you know, one of the benefits of the hybrid model is it enables us to socially distance, you know, when you have 12 kids, maybe in a class, and I don’t want to be, you know, coated on 12, because in some cases is eight in some cases, it’s 17. And, you know, but if you have half the class in there, coupled with another reduction, based on the enrollment in launched Ed, it becomes much easier to socially distance, which makes the quarantining process easier, and limits or reduces the chance of spread. Now, I don’t disagree with anything that any of the parents said tonight, I have said all along, I think in person learning is absolutely the best way to go. And that is what we are hoping to get to, in a safe way, in the safest way possible. So I’m not disagreeing with them. I just, it’s just more challenging than just saying, everybody come back in right now. Now, if the trending which I’m going to share with you with these Boulder County slides continues to work in our favor. That will be a good thing. When we heard from Jeff, on the 21st.
Unknown Speaker 38:11
The two week lag was in play from Labor Day. And then the beginning of cu and we saw that major spike because of the combination of those two things. But we also knew that what was happening after that was trending back down. And we would know about that in in the two weeks. And so since that time, we’ve moved out of those red zones. And we did so before we started on the fifth. And we anticipated that and that’s what happened. The results that I received today in the report shows the current Boulder County rate for a two week cumulative incident rate is 124.1 per 100,000, which is 0.001 to 4%. And then the two week testing positivity rate in Boulder County is at 2.7, which is significantly lower than it was when we had the town hall meeting the virtual tour. And in weld County, it’s 4.49 both under five. And one of the changes that will be happening based on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment that I heard from Jeff’s act today was that as all districts move under those metrics versus county metrics, the number 5% climbs significantly higher. And so you instead of looking at staying under 5%, they look at staying under a different number and it depends on whether you’re in the red, yellow, or green zone. But so 2.7 and 4.49 are very solid, safer and always being coached by Boulder County. Don’t say safe Safe safer, because nothing is 100% safe, but it is significantly safer. And then the current hospitalizations in the county 11 days of decreasing or stable admissions. Now we are seeing increases in Colorado. And so I think it was Adams County, Denver county and Arapahoe County are the counties that are seeing the spikes right now. And so that’s what’s contributing right now to Colorado’s rising numbers because Colorado is seeing higher rates of cases and higher rates of hospitalizations. What I have shared is what’s happening in in Boulder County. I want to make sure that I don’t leave anything out before we move to the next conversation. Johnny, are you there? is Johnny terell ready for so? Yeah, Johnny terell is our Executive Director of Student Services. And he and his team are working closely with Boulder County, we did just authorize hiring two additional nurses, which gives our contact tracing team a total of four nurses now in the district along with the county support. That way each nurse can take the lead in each of one of our areas. And so Johnny is going to talk a little bit about the complexity of the quarantining process and what we’ve experienced a little bit this week. I think one of the parents mentioned about Silver Creek, we did have it was 240 students, and then another 52, prior to that at Silver Creek that were quarantined, and then approximately 19 staff. And so Johnny will talk a little bit about the letters that go out the steps that we take, and how we communicate around that, and then I’ll come back. Thank you. Hi, Johnny.
Unknown Speaker 42:07
Welcome.
Unknown Speaker 42:09
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, doctor. Hi, Dad. Yes, quarantine our quarantine protocols. First of all, just to give you an overview, are definitely influenced by the Colorado Department of Health and environments guidelines, and then also up by the governments of Boulder County Public Health. And we do that through specifically epi, and epidemiologists and this sort of sanada, who is assigned to us as a school district, along with case investigators, and that her dad is correct. We do anticipate having a team of four that works solely on the staff side of things that will be delineated to all of our four quadrants and all of our feeder schools. However, we do also have 13 additional nurses that we deploy out to the theatre schools to help support and manage the student side of things. So we can visualize this a bit. We have our health coaches coordinator, and also an occupational epi nurse, who met currently who managed the staff isolations and quarantines. Then we have 13 nurses who manage the student isolations and quarantines. Yeah, we were the highlights of cdphp and junction with a Board of County Public Health on a daily basis. It is important to note that notice of isolation, no warrant is made for Pun intended is made in isolation. Okay, that was made in collaboration with Boulder County Public Health, specifically to the epi that lie to us. And any positive or confirmed case must go through our health services coordinator who actually has a background in this area, who works in conjunction with our our Board of County Public Health. And so cases are complicated. No case is the same. We have seen quarantines targeted in general quarantines this past couple of weeks as we anticipated, those numbers did increase. But you have to know that we have personnel and that of our district as literally working around the clock, almost 24 hours around the clock to ultimately maintain the safety and security of all of our of our students and staff in our district. We take that very seriously. We get alerts, I get hourly alerts. I get another alert every morning at 2am 2am that summarizes those hourly alerts. We have that dashboard that we communicate out to, to the public. And we’re in constant communication with one another, and all of the 20 enter maintaining safe and secure environments for our students and our staff. Now, it’s important to note that when there’s a decision to isolate or quarantine a student, we don’t take that lightly. We, every single time want to confirm that either in person and by voice, and, or by text. And we typically will follow or always, excuse me follow their communication up with written communication. And their written communication goes out, not only to the student that is, or the stab moon has been isolated, but that also goes out to all individuals who are quarantined. And also, that communication, a different type of communication, because in Golden, all of this is maintaining the privacy of all of our students and staff members under HIPAA and FERPA, we take that very seriously. And I’m quite sure our board can appreciate that and I district leadership. And so we’re very careful of information that we share, at a broad level or at skill level. And so every student that has been our staff image has been isolated receives communication that identifies the time of isolation and a return date. The same holds true for every student that’s quarantined the song always true in terms of communication, and letting our staff and students know
Unknown Speaker 46:37
who’s been isolated, or excuse me, how many people have been isolated, and how many people who are have been quarantined, we send those letters out also to the staff, and to the community. So given in any given situation, we have an isolation, we have upwards of four to five different communications going out to all the respective groups, so everyone is informed and knows what’s going on. We do not share specific information about who who is quarantine or who is isolated. But we do let our all of our stakeholders know that a student or staff member has in fact been isolated or quarantined inside of the school. And we will follow that verbal communication that within 24 to 48 hours after we’ve confirmed everything, those letters should be going out.
Unknown Speaker 47:40
Thank you, Johnny. Johnny, Are
Unknown Speaker 47:45
you good? Yes, I’m good. And I think it’s important to, to communicate the that all of this is happening in real time. Extremely labor intensive. We’ve had nothing but collaboration and cooperation with our with Boulder County Public Health, and well county and our internal team. And it’s it makes me proud to be a part of it at this automation organization and the team. No one. frowns are no one size. When these cases happen. Everyone rolls up their sleeves. What can we communicate? What are we dealing with and the current moment? And how can we maintain the safety and security of all individuals involved? And how do we communicate properly. So I would be remiss if I didn’t say kudos to our health services team, and to our internal Student Services team. Due to Learning Services, all of our area systems, superintendents, they are part of this process. Also, all of our principals are a part of this process. All of our health clerks at the schools are part of the process staff members. Each school has a team of individuals who literally, for lack of a better term, volunteer their time to make sure that all of our students and staff members are safe. And so we’ve been thoroughly impressed that the response time how we’ve handled each situation, the responsiveness of our epi, although there’s only one of hers, amazing, I’m not sure if this lady sleeps or not. She does a fantastic job of supporting supporting our school district. And so, again, I’m proud of the effort that we put put forth and again, all to an end and maintain a safe and secure environment.
Unknown Speaker 49:43
Johnny, thank you for your report. And more importantly, thank you for your excellent work. Every day I I know that you are working around the clock, and your leadership is outstanding. And I appreciate you and I appreciate everything that you and your team are doing. So thank you very, very much. Thank you The board has any questions that you might want to ask Johnny.
Unknown Speaker 50:04
Questions or comments? Anyone? No, Paula.
Unknown Speaker 50:11
Hi, Johnny, thanks for that report. I just want to maybe repeat back to you kind of what I’m hearing is, you know, there’s, if you’ve seen one trigger for quarantine, you’ve seen one trigger for quarantine, because there’s so many different pathways that could go down. I’m trying to think through like we got some questions tonight about several questions around, you know, how how, what does this decision tree look like? And I don’t really think there’s a way to simplify it for the public, other than to refer them back to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which is what we’re following. Because what I’m hearing is the decision tree is very different depending on strong symptoms, light symptoms, testing positive, how close you are to each other. Have you been in the room? 15 minutes? Have you been in the room? 40 minutes? I mean, I’m sure there’s even more variables than that. But I just it sounds to me like there is not a way a responsible way for us to boil it down to a simple formula, because it’s just not. Am I overstating that
Unknown Speaker 51:26
you’re accurate. Thankfully, we do have that decision tree and a decision tree is public, on the cdph. Cheese website. And so if anyone’s interested in seeing how we make decisions, here in our school district, your look, if you look on their website, you will see exactly how those decisions are made. And they’re made in collaboration again, with the epi that is assigned to us by Boulder County Public Health who follows the same decision tree. And you are accurate in saying that. No cases not. I’ll paraphrase here, no, no two cases are the same. It all depends on where they land on that decision tree. But that decision tree is pretty logical and it takes you through a process and you can pretty much if you follow it, you can pretty much it answers a lot of questions for you can pretty much come to the conclusion of why a person was quarantined and a particular situation if you have all the information. And that’s where our contact tracers and case investigators Come come into play who collaborate with each other on every single last one of these cases.
Unknown Speaker 52:34
One of the things that that our county health department in our state health department are looking at is whether or not there is that spread, in terms of kids who are getting quarantine, are they coming back positive as a result of that exposure, and, you know, right now, they’re not seeing a lot of that, and certainly not consistent with the number of quarantine, the very, very low in terms of those children coming back and testing positive. That doesn’t mean I mean, one kid testing positive is too many. So I’m not in any way, shape or form, trying to minimize, but that’s another factor that they’re looking at, as they balance and weigh the impact of quarantining. And, you know, because the other part of this conversation is the social and the emotional, and the mental health of our children and our teachers and our staff, which is extremely important. And so we’re just trying to balance that, you know, I got an email from a parent who was very helpful, and made some suggestions about the dashboard that prompted us to go back into it, and add the the cases that were not only expired in terms of the student or the teachers back, but to list them by school and percentage. And so that’s what I was saying earlier that, you know, that all the teeth, parents that came up to the podium today, their feedback is helpful. And the phone call and the conversation with another parent, and email causes us to do better. And so we’ll continue to work with those conversations and continue to try to communicate as best we can. But as Johnny said, it’s, you know, it’s a complicated situation. You know, one thing that we talk a lot about is the, the difference between looking at a single situation. And looking at the totality is when you have you know, when you’re focused on one school, then you focus on that school, and sometimes it’s a classroom. But then there’s also the concept and the reality that we’re focused on, you know, 66,000 parents and 33,000 students and 5500 employees, and then the Colorado Department of Education and Boulder, county health and Colorado Department, all of these entities and compliance, it just becomes much more complicated than looking at a single situation. And that’s not to say we can’t, we can’t continue to do better. But it’s the partnership and the suggestions and the support that that we’re receiving that we’re very appreciative of. So kale is going to give a, an overview of launch dead in a little bit. But did you guys have any questions around any of this before, I have a few updates that are not related to COVID. That I want to give in my report. But I wanted to make sure that you had all your questions answered before we move forward.
Unknown Speaker 55:32
Just a very straight forward question. So we have a total of 17 nurses in the district that are following up the four plus the 13, that Johnny mentioned.
Unknown Speaker 55:45
Yeah, well, the four that we just hire Well, not not that we just hired, we had Sophia, and then we hired a second one. And then we just authorize the hiring of two more, so we could break it up into areas. And Johnny, what did you say the number was total.
Unknown Speaker 55:59
So we have 13, nurses. And then we also currently have one Health Services Coordinator, and the occupational epidemiologist nurse that we just hired. So it’s a total of 15. People want to underground that’s supporting this effort. And then some support staff also. So we have, we have a secretary that supports health, health services. And then not only that all of our health clerks at the school, so every one of our school has, has a health clerk. And so that comprise of a district team within each school also stands up a team of elite four people. And some of our schools have upwards of 1011 people who are on this team, just to help monitor all of this. And I would be again, remiss if I didn’t mention that this could really consume us as an organization. And as I intend to not allow that to happen. And to really keep our focus on teaching and learning. as serious as it is the pandemic. We want to be able to do our work and do our jobs so that our schools and our kids can continue to do their job. And that’s, again, maintain that laser like focus on teaching and learning. So it would be quite easy for this to just be all consuming. We could spend our whole day as an organization and institution doing this, and I’m not sure that would be very productive, instead. So So, you know, I didn’t want to get off of here without saying that.
Unknown Speaker 57:26
And Johnny, I think, too, and Dr. Murray. The other thing is, the principals and the administration in the buildings, they are very actively involved in the contact tracing. So they’re also engaged, and then also teachers get involved. And so it’s, we’ve got the health team, but then there are also a lot of other people that have been really, so it’s kind of a growing effort, so to speak.
Unknown Speaker 57:51
Well, I really appreciate hearing, you know, hearing specifically about the size of the health team, in addition to the teachers and administrators that I know are keeping their eye on that ball. So thank you.
Unknown Speaker 58:05
Absolutely. Absolutely. And then, you know, the county health department, literally, we’re on the phone with them, if not every day, every other day, and they have been very supportive as well. So,
Unknown Speaker 58:15
so, so to verify those numbers you, you asked the question, so there are 13 nurses, and one Health Services Coordinator, one occupational epi nurse, and then a support staff member that’s helping them at the at the Student Services level, and then a health clerk and every single one of our schools, who is also a part of that in that student services team.
Unknown Speaker 58:37
And when you say epi nurse, you really mean epidemiologist.
Unknown Speaker 58:41
No, this is a person who has a background in that area. She is not an epidemiologist, an epidemiologist. She has worked in the field and we just recently helped her to help manage this process.
Unknown Speaker 58:55
So it is
Unknown Speaker 58:57
on our county epi to really finalize our isolations and quarantines.
Unknown Speaker 59:03
The lady that you met earlier from Boulder County soda. She is the epidemiologist got it.
Unknown Speaker 59:09
Okay. Good tech. Alright. Johnny, thank you. appreciate everything that you’re doing. In particular, your focus primarily on student safety, staff safety well being Thank you very much. I don’t know if there’s a way for me to adequately voice my appreciation considering the heavy lift that you all have. So please pass along that appreciation and thank you.
Unknown Speaker 59:37
Thank you so honored and privileged stankey.
Unknown Speaker 59:41
Thanks, Johnny, a couple other quick update or any other questions before we move on to another topic. A couple other things, you know, we’re in the process of the October count. And just to clarify for anybody listening the October count, even though people think it happens only on October 1. It’s actually A several month process, kids attendance start getting recorded the first day of school, they go all the way up to the week before October one. And then there’s a two week window one week before October one, one week after October one. If you are here on October one, then you are accounted for fully. If you are not here on October one, if you are in class, anytime within that two week window, and you are accounted for if you are not within that two week window, any time from the beginning of that two week window all the way to the first day of school, if you are in session, and then again in session, after the first week of October all the way up to the end of October, you can be counted. And so that’s something that’s really important when we push the October one date because it shuts that count down right there. But there are still the August, September and October, where you can count kids and verify that they were in attendance and count them for. The other thing that I would want to make clear to everybody is doesn’t matter if you’re in person or online. Some people had asked me the question, you know, where we coming back on October 5, because of the October count, know that the kids would get counted even if they’re online and our attendance levels that with the online were very high as well as in person, we are coming back because again, we want to be back in school in person, that’s our objective to do that, and to do that as safely as we can possibly do that. But that’s the October count, we are now tracking the last 87 students. And so we will continue to track and find 87 students unless they have moved out of the area. And then we won’t be able to, to document that they’re here. But nonetheless, we’ve had a successful count and Amber mujer. and her team has done a great job along with our attendance clerks and our principals and assistant principals and our teachers, and our students and our parents. So we’ll give you a final update and number when that time comes at the end of the month in October as we close it out permanently. The other thing is, is I have had an opportunity to visit all the schools, and most of them two and three times, sometimes more. And I’m just really proud of our, our teachers, proud of our students. I’m proud of our parent, community and grateful and it’s good to see our kids back into school. And we have to keep moving in that direction. We will take to heart what the parents have said here tonight about more communication. And we will communicate as much as we can when we have that definitive information and keep them in the loop. I think that was good feedback for us to hear tonight. Other thing is I spent the day down at Saturday at the Aurora fields with the state softball tournament. I got to see the girls softball team. They won their semifinal match. And they got into the semi final game. And they got into the final game. And they It was a very close game but extremely, extremely competitive. Just a class act of of our students the way they conducted themselves and the coaches. So very successful season, on the heels of our boys tennis teams winning the state. And this weekend, our cross country teams will be down in the Springs, Colorado Springs competing in the state cross country meets. So we’re excited about that. And then obviously the football season got underway. I also want to tell Chase, thank you for the work you’re doing with our music programs. And you know, you want to see a production of protocols were spent a lot of time in our leadership cabinet meeting talking about how we can have band and choir and orchestra performances at some of the stadiums and in some of the auditoriums and be in compliance because we’ve got wonderful music programs, our children are outstanding, our teachers are doing great work. So we want to give them an opportunity and but we have to do that within those parameters. And Chase has been doing great work with that as well as the athletic programs and everything else on that co curricular and what you’ve seen our students do and our teachers and our coaches is just forge ahead in the middle of a global pandemic, and still still perform in an incredible way. So it’s a, you know, keep moving forward. That’s what we’re going to do.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:23
So
Unknown Speaker 1:04:25
that’s it. That’s what I have. I’m going to be giving a report on achievement in the next segment. So I will stop with this. Any any questions about anything that you guys have? Okay. All right.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:39
All right. Thank you don. Appreciate it. You know, as as Johnny was, as Johnny was talking, I was taking some notes and and there really are common themes. And I don’t know if this really necessarily is that significant. Have a comment. But I think back to the very first meetings that we had when we were talking about COVID. And a lot of those points still hold true. You know, the district has been very consistent in its leadership and approach to COVID. And looking at local conditions, collaborating with experts, you know, something Johnny said that no decisions are made in a vacuum. certainly appreciate parent input. As far as that goes, teacher staff, and just really appreciate the hard work of everyone this, this is a tremendously big lift for staff and families, teachers, everyone. So thank you. Don, I think that actually does bring us to agenda item five.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:44
All right,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:45
well, first one is the achievement 5.1 Technically, the achievement, it’s part of me 6.1, I can’t count this evening. 6.1, which is the achievement data update.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:56
Yeah, and one of the things that we’ve talked a lot about as a team, and obviously, our board, and our communities that just said, the comprehensive nature of how we measure student achievement and success. And in an environment where testing has been all consuming, I think sometimes we can limit our perspective on what achievement really means. And so in this instance, we’re going to go through a variety of different slides, and talk about different ways in which our students and our teachers and our community have stepped forward and really done some great work. So, Carrie, if we could start with the preschool and kindergarten. All right, if you look at this slide, you’ll see the trend line for literacy, and then also for mathematics, and this is with our preschool and kindergarten students. And as you know, we’ve had high quality preschool and kindergarten in our schools for many years. Preschool instruction across St. Brain produces reading scores of 95% in literacy, and 87%, in mathematics based on our Ts gold, and then mathematics growth outpaces all the areas. So we’re seeing those trend lines from the beginning in the fall through the spring, that tells us that preschool and kindergarten are critical elements of the system to help prepare our kids for the next level. If you look at the next slide, are you able to put this on?
Unknown Speaker 1:07:25
Based on I was given new information just just recently that they cannot put the slides on there? So I did have printed copies if you need them, but they can only get them on the big screen here.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:35
Okay, no problem. Yep, no problem. That’s that’s not a problem. All right. So we’re looking at reading achievement now. And you’ll see the fifth grade c mass reading continues to increase for all students and outpaced the state, or Hispanic students increase the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations by 11%. Over the past five years, and you can see the district overall, starting from year 1415, to 1819.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:10
You got a math achievement, fifth grade C, math, math continues to outpace the state. Again, here are Hispanic students increase the percentage of meeting or exceeding expectations by 10%, over the past five years. And you can see the color coded graph the bar graphs with your 1415 through 1819. And that consistent, steady movement upward. You know, this is one of the things that I don’t think we ever move up as fast as we would like, but at least we are moving in the right direction, and our students are doing well. So we move to algebra one success. And you see here, this represents the blue graph represents the percentage of our eighth graders who are taking algebra. And then you see the pass rates. So our Hispanic and our black students have 100% pass rate and algebra one taken in the eighth grade, as do our our angle students have 99.8%. Our summer academic programming supports algebra one success that transitions into the ninth grade and that’s one of the programs that we’ve seen some good success with. The strong focus on academic programming across St. Rain, we have 70, high quality rigorous instructional programs. We did share that we’re getting ready to launch a third p tech pathways through technology associate degree program. So we have the computer information systems, the biochemistry, and now we’ll be launching cybersecurity with the support of a close to $500,000 grant that we’ve recently received. And following that, you’ll see the the rigorous instructional programming options that we have with STEM and medical and bio sciences and the energy academies and the P tech program. In the Academies of engineering and aerospace and business and robotics and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, the manufacturing Academy, Academy media productions are gifted and talented our world languages, our core knowledge Leadership Academy, the Excel programs around extracurricular engagement and learning, the pre advanced placement, the cu gold, the CSU online, the Advanced Placement diploma, the rigorous academics enhanced to the arts and the visual and performing arts. And these are some of the instructional focus programs that we’re talking about, that extend beyond the traditional curriculum for our students. You also see the student engagement and this is around co curricular band choir, orchestra, debate, athletics, those kinds of things. And you’ll see here that in the year 15, and 16, we had 56% of our students were engaged in one or more of these activities. And now we are up to 81% of our high school students are engaged. So our engagement has increased by 25% over the last four years, including numerous team and individual conference and state championships, in athletics, in music, and other debate programs and things like that. And this is there’s a real strong tie here between engagement here and the kinds of things you learn around leadership and communication and teamwork, and work ethic and the kinds of things that we know are really important when kids today but also when they leave us and move into the workplace. So outstanding work there by our students and our teachers and our coaches. The next slide looks at Advanced coursework, and you can see that st reign is closing the gap through increasing access to advanced coursework and focus programming. We were one of four Colorado School districts, and 103 173 nationwide to make the college board’s annual AP district honor roll. The AP Honor Roll recognizes school districts committed to increasing access to AP courses for all students. And so you’ll see the district overall. And then the line underneath that. And you see that gap in the percentage of students who are taking these classes is continuing to close. And you see the results with our Hispanic students or black students or white students. And our objective is to get all of our students achieving at the highest levels. Hard to talk with a mask, I have empathy for what our students and our teachers have to go through and all of us that. So I apologize for coughing. The advanced placement exam count, you’ll see this a 62% increase in the number of AP exams taken in five years, while increasing the percentage of students scoring three or higher. And you can see the different numbers back in 2016. The total number of exams in comparison to where we are now I can take you back
Unknown Speaker 1:13:02
to back the time when like 2006 2005. in that range, we were administering about three and 400 exams. And now we’re up into the 4000. So that’s part of a systemic approach with preschool, and then more rigorous coursework throughout the entire system to prepare our students. You see the same thing with AP exams and the populations of our students. And you’ll see that students across the board, a 92% increase of Hispanic students taking AP exams in five years, while increasing the percentage of students scoring three or higher. And then also 52% of our white students taking AP exams increased in five years, and a 50% increase of our black students taking AP exams in five years, all while increasing the percentage of students scoring three or higher, which is the benchmark to get college credit. The IB results. I won’t read those to you. But you can see they continue the number of students passing diplomas and average grades and subject entries. And our IB programs switched recently to where students can take a single or two maybe three IB classes instead of having to commit to the entire diploma. And so we have more kids taking and you’ll see a 46% increase in the number of IB candidates in three years, and a 39% increase in the number of students that passed the diploma from 2019. If you move to the next slide with concurrent enrollment, you’ll see a 201% increase in the number of concurrent enrollment. That means students who are in high school taking college level courses taken in seven years and so you see that back in 2014, it was approximately 500. And now you see it up to 18 125. So Graduation rates, you can continue to see the closing of the gap. If you look at back in 2010, we had a graduation rate of approximately 76.5. And that was at a time when we only require two years of math and two years of science and 23 and a half credits. Since then, we’ve increased the requirements to three years of math and three years of science, and a 24 and a half credits, and you can see now our overall graduation rate is slightly over 90%, tipping up at 90.6. And our Hispanic graduation rate, if you look at that, it was 55.9. And that gap is closing to where it’s at close to 87%. And so you see that, and traditionally, our our black population has graduated, add among the highest rates across the board. It’s a smaller number. And so you can see a greater fluctuation based on a few kids. And so this year, the graduation rate had dropped slightly, but it represents a much smaller number. But traditionally, our black students have graduated in the low 90s to mid 90s, in terms of the percentage rate. So all of our students are doing extremely well. From that perspective.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:23
If you look at the next slide, and you look at dropout rates, again, you can see back in 2009, can you look at the the dropout rate at that point for the district was at that 2.3, then it jumped to 2.9. And since then it’s been on a steady decline. And it’s now less than 1%. It’s at a point eight, zero. And if you look at our Hispanic dropout rate back then it was at 4.8%. And it is down in that range now, closer to 1.4%. So you see a significant drop for both. But the gap closing which is what we’re trying to do is make sure that every one of our children ends up graduating and, and we’re seeing that continuous improvement take place. The next one is practice sh T and the SH T. And the cohort comparisons you can see and we look at the same group of students, and that’s where we call them the cohort from one year to the next. So when you look at the PSAT that this cohort took, the group took the 958 and then the same group of students as they moved to the SA T the next year. You see them jump to 1015. We outscore the state the national scores on the LSAT the PSAT can and the PSAT nine St. Moraine Valley students improve total scores and cohorts from the PSAT eight to 10. And from 10, to the LSAT, which is taken in the 11th grade. And students in the cohort from PSAT 10 to sh T, improved more than the state in total score and bout math readiness benchmarks. And the majority of our students meet the readiness benchmarks on all three of the tests, so that’s an area that continues to require close attention because the tie in to qualifying into you know, different colleges and universities. So and then if you turn to the last page, the expulsion rates, if you look at the number of expulsions, and this goes back to 2009 10. And what’s significant is we had a lot fewer students, we had a lot fewer students, and I can take you back to I’ve told this story many times when I became the executive director of secondary schools, back in 2005, you know, actually 2004, we were averaging about 80 expulsions a year, give or take. And the majority of our students who were expelled were minority students. And we had many, many, many fewer kids back then, obviously, you’re talking about 15 years ago, so our enrollment was much lower, but our expulsion rate was much higher. And now you can see, we track from 2009 10 around that 3940. And you see the steady decline. And the last two years we’ve had zero and 1000s of more students. So it’s it’s a testament to our teachers and our students and our parents because what I attribute it to is not lessening the expectations I attributed to the quality of the facilities, the quality of the instruction, the quality of the program opportunities that are available for children, the way in which our children are engaging, you know, when you go back to and how it all ties together. When you go back to that engagement level of having moved from 60 plus all the way to 80. there’s a there’s a Nexus there, they’re participating more there
Unknown Speaker 0:00
being disciplined, less all of those kinds of things. And I think the whole system starting with preschool and working all the way to P tech in grades 14, when you offer a no cost for the student associate degree program, it gives students that, that hope that there’s a next level here for me. And so they they double down and they refocus. And I think all of these things that we just talked about, come together. So there’s no one silver bullet. It’s a comprehensive, systematic approach. And it all comes back to great teachers, great staff, great kids, great parents who have supported the school district in an unprecedented way with two mill levy overrides, and two bonds, and everybody working together. Our kids are doing well. And what I want to just reiterate to our community is our commitment to keep moving forward to get us to the other side of this COVID pandemic. And I appreciate it again, the parents coming in tonight and sharing those concerns and encourage any parent to call or email me at any time. And we’ll we’ll talk through the concerns. And we are moving towards as safely as we possibly can, getting our students back in full time. So I will stop there and see if you have any questions or comments. Thank you
Unknown Speaker 1:21
done. BOARD MEMBER questions, comments? We’ll start on this side this time, Dick.
Unknown Speaker 1:28
All right. Thank you, Don, thank you for an excellent report. I really appreciate the longitudinal look at our progress over time. And I think what that shows us is that although in some cases, there are variations year to year that the system we have in place provides an overall context within which the progress is evident when you look at it over a period of time, and that’s very encouraging. Just a couple of it was encouraging not only in terms of the overall progress, but also your report on the disaggregated results and the performance of our various populations, Hispanic and white and black populations separately, and that they too, are not only progressing, but with regard certainly to the graduation rates, that those gaps are narrowing in a systematic way, it’s not a year to year fluctuation that we’re seeing instead. So thank you so much for this data, I would love to have had the data ahead of time to be able to look at it and have some more informed comments or questions. But, and I hope that I’ll be able to see it afterwards. I assume that I will. But I really do appreciate this presentation. In particular, I think it is substantially more informative than some of the ones that discussions we’ve been able to have in the past. So thank you. Last question or comment? The line that we saw on the graphs to show us the trends, I assume that that is a the square fit best, best fit line?
Unknown Speaker 3:19
have to talk to somebody else about the lines and square? Yeah, because you can do that a number of different you can draw that line, according to a number of different approaches. And, and read actually put together the graphs. We talked about it as I said to you last time in terms of numbers. Yep. And, you know, I like for me, I like it. Okay, 90 is higher than 80. So we’re improving, but all of the different idols of the not lines, I’m not, that’s Anne’s deal.
Unknown Speaker 3:54
Yeah, you’re doing much more better than just, we as a district are doing much better than just improving year to year. We’re improving on the important categories as well. And the degree to which we can track our disaggregated data within the context of the overall improvements that we’re making is very encouraging. So I’ll check with that about the line.
Unknown Speaker 4:21
Yeah, thank you. No, and I appreciate that, that, you know, the, the truth of matter is, it’s really it, you know, you watch our kids and know the work they’re doing and you watch our teachers in the extra mile that they’re always excited about going to even just this, you know, this most recent effort around adding a third associate degree program with cybersecurity. And that’s just gonna open up a whole new opportunity for a whole new group of students and, and you see that I also want to you know, thank you know, there’s a lot of people to thank Dr. cushions here and, you know, the the systematic leadership that she has demonstrated and Learning Services along with her team of Diane Lauer and Dina perfetti, Denny and Mark mills and Brian Kraus. And, you know, all of and Chase is sitting back there who’s been outstanding with all of the CO curricular and the things that you see. And I mentioned Ann and her team in the curriculum department, and Greg, and Brian, sitting Brian’s here, but Greg with the finance team, and Tony and the human resources department, hiring people, and, you know, the Nutrition Services Department and everybody working together. And, you know, I always am reluctant to, to start naming because inevitably, you will leave somebody out. But if you can see the way the technology department interfaces with all of these, you know, with Michelle bourgeois and her team, everybody working together, and then you begin to see our parents engagement, our students engagement, our teachers, our staff, our classified staff, this, it’s, it’s really, it’s really uplifting to see, and it’s inspiring. And you know, I don’t want to rehash old ground, but just going to the softball tournament, this spent, you know, like five hours at the tournament. And it was just an amazingly uplifting experience watching our high school students compete and show leadership and teamwork. And you know, the whole drive home, you’re just excited about, you know, what our kids are doing. So, anyways, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 6:24
Thank you, Dick. Paul, I think you had a comment.
Unknown Speaker 6:29
Dan, thank you for that report, you’ve been doing a lot of talking tonight with that mask, need to take a breath, I just want to thank you. Because it’s, it’s just such a pleasure to see those results and to look back over 10 years and those upward trending lines where we need them and the downward trending lines where we need them. And I think that just speaks to an organization, you know, a thesis that we live by where we set higher standards, and we get higher results, those two things correlate. And we don’t do it by mandate, we do it by providing the resources, providing the options, providing the support to teachers, students, and families, by providing all the bedrock that needs to be there, so that everybody, everybody can rise. So that’s my very high level takeaway from that. And I, you know, I appreciate we disaggregate the data and absolutely need to be looking down at the roots of it as well. But overall, this is an organization that doesn’t spin its wheels. And that data shows over a decade of the level of improvement that’s been made. So when we are sitting in a crisis, like we’re sitting in now, I have confidence that that kind of work is going to be pivoted, and is going to now be directed towards managing us through this COVID crisis, without really sacrificing or improvements, or we’re going to learn from it. But we are always going to be trending, trending forward. And I just have such confidence that and I really want to thank you, and thank Dr. capetian. And everybody else for that kind of demonstrated success year over year over year over year over year over year. And I want to thank our community for the resources to provide that. But it’s it’s incredible. Thank you, thank you for the positive results. It’s It’s wonderful to see the hard work of all of our students. But in a bigger context, it’s it’s who we are. That’s That’s who we are. So thank you.
Unknown Speaker 8:29
Anyone else? All right, you know, Donna’s as dick Impala, we’re talking and pretty much clicked off all of the notes that I had made. So I won’t add, I won’t repeat what’s already been said, beyond really connecting the dots. And you mentioned, this is hard work by everybody, every single corner of the district, the entire district is moving forward in the same direction. Everyone from you know, nutrition services to everybody who may who makes p tech possible, right? p teach all of these programs, I do just want to once again, recognize our community, because I really do see this as an investment by our community, they value public education. And they’ve shown us that in so demonstrated that in so many different ways, that I hope they’re able to look at this data and the trends and understand that that investment is absolutely paying off.
Unknown Speaker 9:30
You know, Joe, it’s I could not agree with you more. I there is not a day that goes by when community members don’t reach out and say, you know, Thank you How can we help we’re here. You know, it’s it’s a really it’s a it’s an incredible community and I think about you know, our finances, and mean we’ve got really strong finances right now in the midst of just having massive cuts being imposed on us from the state. I mean, massive cuts and yet we are still in a very strong place, finance Actually, and that just would not have happened. But for the fact that our parents and our community have passed two mill levy overrides and pass two bonds, and have been here for us every step of the way. That’s why, as I said earlier, I appreciate the parents who came in tonight. I want to just encourage them to keep communicating and we will do the same. And we’ll work through this together. So thanks. Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 10:21
It’s their schools. I appreciate that. So great. All right. I’m done. I I owe you an apology. I completely forgot about kale speaking doing during your superintendents report. So if it’s okay with the board, I would I would like to move back to agenda item five, and welcome. Welcome kale to the meeting. And then Greg will jump back to 5.2. First Quarter gifts to schools, as soon as we’re done there, my apologies, son. Al, are
Unknown Speaker 10:57
you with us?
Unknown Speaker 10:58
I am. Thank you Donna and getting into the members of the Board of Education. Just a quick update on our launch dad Virtual Academy. Since October 5, when we went district went to the hybrid situation, we’ve been at an enrollment increase of 854 students. And that brings our enrollment now to 30 401. Students for launch dead. Our goal was to get those students right into classes. So they could start to climatized themselves to the systems that are in place in launch dead, which temporarily brought up the class sizes. And since then, as Don mentioned earlier in the meeting, we’ve added 17 teachers to launch dead and we’ve strategically are placing those teachers into positions where we’ve identified hot spots to bring the class sizes down. A little bit about the curriculum floor, we use the Florida Virtual curriculum, and that is approved it meets the Colorado academic standards. And also it meets the International Association for K 12 Online Learning Standards. In addition, the NCAA Clearinghouse approves the courses as that the AP college board approves all the AP college boards, it’s fully accredited. Now Ours is a bit different than what we’re used to in terms of the curriculum. We have a content hosted model it’s called. So that allows us to use our teachers, which I think is very important. And also our learning management system Schoology. So this, this means that we can customize the courses as we go through them. And we’re starting to see some additions of supplemental materials that we’re going to start adding in. And also we can add district and state mandated classes, for example, fourth grade, has called our history, our personal financial literacy class, we built that class out for our launch day, students. Also, for example, in our American government class, by state statute, we have to have Colorado government in there that was not available and before virtual, so we added out that component as well. So it really offers us a lot of customization. And also what we really wanted to have our teachers in the course so they can get to know their students and start to really build relationships through this. A couple of things about this. And while we’re still I’m we’re still admitting new students to the program, every day, and we also are having a small number of students that want to exit because we went to district went to a hybrid model. And we’re really pushing that this happens at the trimester and elementary or at the semester for secondary students for various reasons. The first is academic. We want for consistency sake, we don’t want students leaving in the middle of a grading period. Also, many of those teachers that are in launch came from our brick and mortar schools. So if we had students going back that way, it has the potential to overload our brick and mortar schools, and also rates raise those numbers of those cohort groups up as well, which could have the potential of increasing social distancing with that, of course, we look at individual requests, if there’s a hardship or something we absolutely have discussions about that. And we are starting the process of moving 50 Elementary students back into the brick and mortar where it’s appropriate, where it doesn’t raise class size where it doesn’t give a work load issue to our teachers, because we don’t want to also have overload our teachers, they’re back in those primary schools of enrollment with this professional development has been out A main focus of us we’ve had 10, virtual, synchronous PD opportunities for our lunch teachers that are specific to them. And we also have three asynchronous opportunities. So teachers can go in at any time 24. Seven to get training for that. In terms of parent communication and orientation, we’ve had 19, separate orientation virtual orientations for our parents, we provide one to one support, we have our own Help Desk, and something that’s really unique. And I really got to think Patti can yonis for partnering with this. We also have a Student Help Desk that’s on call, it’s a class, the students actually get credit for it. And they help out with any type of technical issues. It’s just a really cool, amazing opportunity for the students at the Innovation Center to do that.
Unknown Speaker 16:00
We all the all this transitional period has been communicated to teachers, it’s been communicate the new families, and an email was sent out to the entire community at large today about what we’re doing with the increased enrollment into launch dead. In Progress. Well, we’re working with communications, to have a greater web presence, and also to get out regular communications verse via newsletter. So that in a nutshell, real quickly is just a status update for our launch dead Academy.
Unknown Speaker 16:40
Thank you, kale. board members have any comments or questions for kale? No. Okay. Don, did you have a comment before I make a couple.
Unknown Speaker 16:55
The only thing I would say is, again, thank you, kale, Connie, and Julie and your entire team around launch data and, and appreciate the feedback that we get from our community to continue to do better. And so right now we’re, again, adding more resources to continue to lower the class sizes, as kale said, and to keep the quality high. So thank you, kale, for everything. And for your report tonight.
Unknown Speaker 17:17
Thank you for your support. I appreciate it.
Unknown Speaker 17:20
Kale, Paula has a comment. And then I have a couple as well.
Unknown Speaker 17:23
You bet.
Unknown Speaker 17:24
Did you change your mind?
Unknown Speaker 17:25
Thanks. Thanks, kill. Thanks for the report, I did not realize that the curriculum that we had acquired through Florida Virtual was customizable, I think that’s really great to know that, you know, kids going and going into this online program are still going to be getting what is mandated through through Colorado in the timeframe that they need it. And then also the fact that we have responded to, we’ve been so flexible when we opened up into the hybrid model, because it could have been an option to just say, look, everybody, we’re gonna stay in the lanes we’re in, and then come next semester, we can, we can mix it all up again. But I really appreciate the district being flexible by allowing people to move into over 3000 did you say over 3000 students moving into launch dead, and then even allowing some to move out, because that’s a lot of work, like in a while, while the we’re still moving forward in all of our instruction, that’s a lot of work to reposition all those kids and to ask all the teachers to accommodate that. So I appreciate the flexibility I appreciate. It’s good quickly as possible, adjusting to that by looking at what’s when the dust settles who’s in place, and what are the class sizes and how we get the teachers in place and trained to step into those roles. So I, you know, I just really appreciate the flexibility while we’re moving ahead at 1000 miles an hour. And accommodating families as best we can. And also to the teachers who are just keep taking it, you know, they keep taking these responsibilities, and they keep learning how to manage and hybrid models and new students. And, you know, I think marsta has also been a great opportunity to keep our keep our teachers those that don’t or can’t be in the classroom or potentially compromised. It’s been a great spot, it’s been a great option to keep our teachers employed and keep them safe. So I don’t think we want to overlook that point, either. So it’s kind of it’s been a win win. And then the flexibility is adding another winning piece to it. So thank you for that.
Unknown Speaker 19:37
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 19:41
deck, I think you had a comment also.
Unknown Speaker 19:43
Thank you joy. Kill. I wanted to add my appreciation to the comments that Paulo expressed. This is a it’s a moving target and one that requires us to be responsive and adaptive and it looks to me like I Well, I really appreciate the approach that you, you and your staff have taken there. My question is very simple. Do we have a sense of projection for the ultimate size of number and ultimate number of students we expect? My understanding is you said there were 3400 students, at this time enrolled? Do we expect that number to continue to rise? Or to flatten out?
Unknown Speaker 20:35
You know, dig right now it has flattened out? No, we don’t, we didn’t see the great numbers, you know, on a daily basis that we saw initially, starting in October 5. But you know, I think he could a lot, lots of factors could influence that, that we can’t predict. Like, if there is a rise in COVID outbreaks, we could see a potential and this is just my opinion, an increase of students wanting to come over to launch date for the through their families. So it that is, like you said, it’s a moving target. I agree with you completely. What about right now we’re starting to see a level out at that 3400 number, we’ll see a little bit of trickling in and out. But right now we feel fairly stable, we feel real good about where we’re going. And I can’t give the teaching staff enough credit for what they’re doing. They’re just doing an amazing job as is. and regionally reading Connie ciphered. They’re just amazing individuals who they just are able to pivot and keep going all the time with this.
Unknown Speaker 21:38
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 21:40
Anyone else?
Unknown Speaker 21:41
All right, Carol, thank
Unknown Speaker 21:42
you so much. And I apologize for not getting to you sooner in the meeting. And you just had to wait in your office a little bit longer. Sorry about that. Yeah, I do want to express my my appreciation as well. And, you know, you said you shared that there was a great number of students that came over to the probe program during that October 5 timeframe. You know, in Don, you’ve acknowledged the class sizes. And we had a parent here this evening. And I appreciate the parent feedback and the desire for the district to respond and always, always listen and do better. But I also appreciate parents patience, and would ask them to understand that you’re really trying to respond thoughtfully to ensure that that quality is maintained in the program. And you’re also talking about a school that that really didn’t exist a few months ago. Is that fair enough to say? Am I miss speaking when I say that? I mean, we have Sainte Marie, an online global, but launched Ed, is the result of the pandemic, correct? That’s,
Unknown Speaker 22:42
that’s absolutely correct. statement. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 22:44
we’ve had, we’ve had the program for seven years, with our online through the program that that he’s describing. But this K through 12 School has been a new school, that’s as a result of the pandemic.
Unknown Speaker 22:58
Right, so so brand new school that that really has already ran, you know, ran up to 3400 students in a very short, short timeframe. I think that’s a pretty remarkable achievement, quite honestly. So thank you.
Unknown Speaker 23:13
Thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker 23:14
Appreciate that. Appreciate it. And thank you for hanging around go home.
Unknown Speaker 23:19
Well, we got a couple more things, but I appreciate this. Oh, no.
Unknown Speaker 23:23
Oh, you have to do accreditation. You had to wait. Anyway, I take my apology back on having you wait in your office. And how’s that?
Unknown Speaker 23:30
junk? Good. Thank you. Thank
Unknown Speaker 23:31
you, kale. Appreciate it. Alright. 6.2 is the first quarter gifts to schools for the 2020 2021 school year. Hi, Greg.
Unknown Speaker 23:42
Hi, good evening board members. board policy kcd requires us to notify you on a quarterly basis of donations and public gets to schools. And so this year, if you remember at the end of last year, with the pandemic, we saw a pretty significant drop in how many donations were in gifts were were processed. This quarter, first quarter of this year $153,000 was received compared to $167,000. The same quarter last year, so not as high as we were a year ago. But But people are are certainly contributing to the school district. I’d like to bring up three of them. One is $65,000 donation from staff Toyota, and it’s an unrestricted donation. So we have discretion in how we use that. We had a $15,000 anonymous donation for classroom support. And we had a $5,000 donation from bi incorporated for our manufacturing Academy. So at this point, I’d be happy to answer any questions.
Unknown Speaker 24:58
Any questions?
Unknown Speaker 25:06
Hey, Greg, I just have one question. In fact, it’s on the line beneath the $65,000 donation from step Toyota, I see that we have included the $7,120. donation. And I guess the question that it was raised in my mind is, is this a gift? Or is it earned income?
Unknown Speaker 25:32
And it’s, it’s probably an advertising sponsorship. So probably not a gift it, it would not meet taxable purposes for the donor Dhoni, but it’s definitely a support of the district.
Unknown Speaker 25:52
And so is that what this report is total support for the district rather than contributions?
Unknown Speaker 25:58
Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s where it gets borderline, I would say. And so I think what we do is kind of err on the side of making sure that the board sees some of these things. So we could definitely split it out or pull it out. But we just feel like it is a contribution to the school district even though it is part of a scoreboard sponsorship. And, and maybe some recognition to the board, so they know what’s going on.
Unknown Speaker 26:30
Yeah, I think more classically, that would be looked at as earned income.
Unknown Speaker 26:34
Yeah. I would tend to agree with you. And we can pull those out in the future.
Unknown Speaker 26:45
Well, yeah, just I don’t know that I want to ask you to do that more, do any more work. But just to be clear about what, what we have there? I mean, I think if you said to us that this is contributions and turn and, you know, advertising or sponsorships and things. Okay. But looking at it as a nonprofit board, we would typically look at the gifts and contributions in a category different from advertising revenue.
Unknown Speaker 27:21
would agree, and we do that on the accounting side, it’s, so we can definitely do that. Or just modify the report and the and the verbiage of the report so that it reflects that it also includes income from advertising.
Unknown Speaker 27:36
Thanks, I leave that entirely to you, of course.
Unknown Speaker 27:39
Great, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 27:41
Thank you, Greg. Appreciate it. Yep. All right. That brings us to agenda item seven, which our consent items, just want to confirm that board members did not want to pull any of our consent items this evening. Is that correct? All right. Then I would entertain a motion for approval of agenda item 7.1 staff termination then leaves 7.2 staff appointments 7.3 approval of minutes for the September 9 2020 and the September 23 2020. regular meetings 7.4 second reading adoption board policies be EDH public participation at school board meetings and b e d H dash our public participation at school board meetings 7.5 approval of easement agreement greement for Alliance middle senior auditorium addition and renovation 7.6 approval of change order six to control construction manager general contractor cmgc contract for Longmont High School addition and renovation project 7.7 approval of change order three two cmgc contract for elementary number 28 Project 7.8 approval of change order three to design build contract for field biting project at Silver Creek High School.
Unknown Speaker 29:02
so moved
Unknown Speaker 29:03
by gem and a second. Second by Karen.
Unknown Speaker 29:09
Mr. Arens Aye Mr. Bercow? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Dr. Marvin? Yes. Miss Pierce. Hi, Mrs. Raglan. Yes, I miss siegrist.
Unknown Speaker 29:19
I thank you, Barb. This brings us to our action items this evening. We have I believe three of them. I am going to note that it is almost 8pm at 8pm. We do have to vote to extend the meeting by 15 minute increments. action item. Point 8.1 is the recommendation for approval of accreditation recommendations for district schools. I believe we have kailyn and back for this one.
Unknown Speaker 29:47
Thank you. And I’m going to get introduce Dr. And read our executive director of assessment to make the recommendation.
Unknown Speaker 29:55
Oh, thank you. Good evening, President siegrist and the Board of Education. It’s a Pleasure to participate this evening. In response to COVID-19, the Colorado Department of Education paused the state and federal accountability system in the school year 2020 2021. district and school plans, types will continue, schools will continue to implement their rating from 2019. And as a result safer in Valley schools, all schools will maintain their ratings from 2019 for the 2020 2021 school year.
Unknown Speaker 30:33
Great, thanks. And this is pretty straightforward, in my opinion. Would you agree? Okay. board members, comments or questions for an Derek and Paula. Okay. Go ahead. Paula. We’ll just alternate Paula.
Unknown Speaker 30:54
Hi, Diane. Thank you for the memo. I just wanted to point out for the public that what you had outlined in the memo was that we we do obviously know all the schools as they were identified last year, and we’re going to be continuing to work with those that are accredited with priority improvement plans, as well as accredited with improvement plans. So we’ll keep keep doing the work, that there’s just no new labels coming. But we’re still going to be doing the work on the on all of our schools, but particularly those that were that were rated in those categories is that that’s true.
Unknown Speaker 31:26
That is correct in the in the current planning continues. up process continues and really focusing on current instructional and remote instruction as applicable and still setting goals going forward short term and long term. That is correct.
Unknown Speaker 31:43
Thank you and Deke.
Unknown Speaker 31:46
Thank you, joy. thank thank you for the report. I appreciate I appreciate the fact that we are merely moving forward the recommendations that we had, or the classification that we had for these schools from last year. Just as the report on student achievement that we heard earlier, was significantly more informative. From my perspective, by looking at the launch attitudinal path for our overall district wide improvement. It would be very helpful to when we receive reports, particularly for those schools that are on priority improvement, or improvement, to see a longitudinal presentation, so that we can understand from a strategic perspective whether how those two schools at students at those schools are performing over time. It’s very, the sport is is largely a strategic board. So we look at the status and trends. And this report, I think, would be much more informative to me. But I think perhaps also to the board, and help us identify those areas that are steadily improving, but still maybe not meeting the goal or those that are not steadily improving that need perhaps a different a closer look, or re a relook. So I do know that we have data that would be available to us with regard to the framework scores, perhaps over the last 10 years. Plotting framework scores versus school year with your least squares fit analysis would be very helpful.
Unknown Speaker 33:59
Absolutely, thank you for that feedback. And we look forward to working with the schools and other movement doing presentations.
Unknown Speaker 34:06
Thank you. So
Unknown Speaker 34:09
Alright, if there are no other Boardman, board comments, board member comments or questions, I would entertain a motion for approval of action item 8.1. Did so move. Some motion by Karen and a second by john BB. Mr. Arens
Unknown Speaker 34:30
Aye Mr. Bercow?
Unknown Speaker 34:31
Yes, Mr. Garcia? Yes. Dr. martyr? Yes. Miss Pierce. Aye, Mrs. Raglan. Yes, Miss Seacrest?
Unknown Speaker 34:38
Yes. Thank you. 8.2 is a recommendation for adoption of resolution approving 2020 2021 district employee membership in Colorado high school activities Association. Hello, Chase. Welcome. Thank you for all your hard work to make fine arts and athletics possible. It’s during this this pandemic.
Unknown Speaker 34:59
It’s certainly been a journey, there’s, there’s no doubt about it. But you know, I will in a couple of weeks here, it’s it’s, it’s, we’ve talked before, it’s one of our favorite nights to be able to bring some of our students who who have achieved so much to come and meet you guys and hopefully, following this Saturday, we’ll we’ll be able to add to that list. You know, just just to talk a little bit, and you know, and Dr. Dad mentioned this earlier, but you know, it’s been a long start to this going back to June, Brian and Richard and I, we, we made grids of each high school and to figure out where we can have kids work out and have kids perform, have kids sing and this and that and, and then we are told that they can meet in groups of four. So then, you know, we did all that work for hours and hours and hours and get get the answer for and then it goes to 10. And then it goes to 20. And it just continued to go and, you know, it so much of it fell on the backs of our of our athletic directors that are at our buildings and I was talking with with Dr. Dad earlier this week, they they have shown so much leadership in their and their buildings and in their communities and in their communities will will never actually know the amount of work that they have put in this summer. And this year, specifically. I mean, I get I get text messages from them from four in the morning to eight at night at night at night. You know, they’re just always working and always trying to provide opportunities for our kids. You know, so when you when you see them, please, please express that because they’ve certainly done their due diligence. You know, we finished with our four sports and we’ll, we’ll talk about that next week. But we started in football and this week, and that’s been fun and challenging in itself, we we get 175 spectator capacity, which you know, 28 cheerleaders, 28 dancers, 50 football players on each team. one parent per each kid that 175 gets sucked up pretty quick. So it, it adds its own challenges, but we’re working through it. And you know, we’re just really happy that we’ve been given the opportunity to to participate in here. Most recently, we’ve been granted the opportunity to have our music groups, and our drama groups participate in in the same fashion that it most of it will be outside for right now. But they’ll use our stadiums with the 175 capacity and you know, Janae bird, our fine arts coordinator. She’s She’s done a nice job too, and helping us get that organized. So we just rolled that out today to high school principals and middle school principals. So hopefully, hopefully though, they’ll get their opportunity here soon too as well. So I asked for the I’m here tonight to ask for the adoption of the resolution of additional cesa. obligations from from our high school athletic directors myself, starts with the chess equity committee cesa handbook committee, state softball director, state tournament director and on the Justin Carpenter from Erie High School. He’s a member of the class classification and league organization committee. And kheda member ty Gordon at Frederick Kato member and chess the seating committee member Pete check on my high school. Katie member Jessa basketball committee member chess of basketball and volleyball seating committee member and northern conference. Vice President Coleen Ford Katie member, Chad eisenerz jogger meet High School Kate a board member golf committee chair Joe Brown nyuad high school coaches Education Board of Directors kheda Board of Directors Long’s peak vice president Paddy Camilla Silver Creek High School Qaeda member state wrestling tournament committee chair migraine Qaeda member Cameron right Twin Peaks Katie member justice sportsmanship committee and long Mile High league president so without without any further additions, I asked for the the adoption of the resolution to their their chess obligations.
Unknown Speaker 39:20
Thanks, Chase.
Unknown Speaker 39:21
Appreciate it. I don’t think board members will have any questions or comments other than we appreciate everybody’s hard work when it comes to Chiesa and Fine Arts and athletics right now, and I know that these this is above and beyond what everyone wants typically does. Yeah, in the school day, Chase, we typically don’t read this resolution. We certainly can if you’d like us to
Unknown Speaker 39:48
know it’s it’s great.
Unknown Speaker 39:49
All right. Then I would entertain a motion for approval of agenda item 8.2 please. Motion by Chico so kept by john.
Unknown Speaker 40:02
Mr. Aaron’s All right, Mr. Bercow? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Dr. Martin? Yes. Miss Pierce. Hi, Mrs. Raglan. Yes. Ms. secret.
Unknown Speaker 40:12
Hi. Thank you, Barb. Thanks, Chase. Appreciate it. And we’re looking forward to seeing those students we’ll
Unknown Speaker 40:17
see in a couple of weeks. And you know, just lastly, before we leave the football games, I’ve been asked a number of times about capacity issue or limitations. And so tickets are hard to come by, but every high school has has now jumped into the world of streaming. So all every high school that has football is streaming their games live for, for your viewing pleasure.
Unknown Speaker 40:38
Okay. We’ll have to watch that. We’ll see in a couple of weeks. Sounds great Chase. Thank you. Take care. All right. Before we move on to 8.3 I would I’d like to ask for a motion to extend the meeting to 815. Please, some. so moved by Karen and a second second by Jim.
Unknown Speaker 41:00
Mr. Aaron’s vote, aye. Mr. Berthold? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Dr. martyr. Yes, Pierce. Hi, Mrs. Raglan. Yes, I’m a secret.
Unknown Speaker 41:13
I thank you, bb 8.3 is the recommendation for adoption of resolution proclaiming classified school employees week, October 19 through 23 of 2020. This is an exciting resolution to introduce and I believe we either have Todd or Kate, on WebEx. You have
Unknown Speaker 41:35
TAs on the line.
Unknown Speaker 41:36
Hi, Todd. It’s great to see you. Welcome home.
Unknown Speaker 41:39
Thank you. Good evening, President seagrass members. The board and Superintendent had that it’s my pleasure to bring forward the recommendations for the approval of the proclamation from the governor’s office that October 19 through 23rd 2020 be proclaimed classified school employees week. st Grand Valley Schools has approximately 1356 classified employees. Many of our classified staff work in the schools as pair educators, Community School workers, secretaries, food and nutrition workers, campus supervisors and custodians just to name a few. We also have a number of support staff such as bus drivers, technicians, carpenters, groundskeepers, plumbers, and other roles that help support the schools and departments, as much as any other group of employees classified employees are a valued an integral part of our school system, and their work is vital to the success of our students.
Unknown Speaker 42:42
Thank you, Todd. Chico, would you be willing to read the resolution please?
Unknown Speaker 42:53
resolution classified school employees week October 19 to the 23rd 2020 whereas classified school employees are a central part of the St. rannvijay School District’s education system. And whereas classified employees are dedicated to assisting in the provisions of Safe Schools for students for the students of the district, and whereas the classified employees of our school district perform the daily cleaning, maintenance and delivery of school property, safely transport students prepare and serve nourishing meals, maintain records and reports provide maintenance and support in the field of technology, assisting classrooms and school playgrounds and perform a variety of other tasks on behalf of our students. And whereas we recognize the important role of classified school employees and invaluable services they provide to students. Now therefore, it be resolved that the same revised School District Board of Education proclaims October 29 through the 23rd of 2020 as classified school employee week in the school district, and it urges all parents, students and staff to join in saluting these dedicated men and women. I want
Unknown Speaker 44:10
to add to that as well, thank you, Chico for reading that. And, you know, our classified staff and Brian oversees a number of them. But truly the system that operates from our bus drivers, to our nutrition services and our grounds and our maintenance and everybody that’s involved, our campus supervisors, secretaries, clerks, everything that you’ve heard about, they are, they are such a vital, vital part of this team. And without them, the system stops just like that. And they’ve done incredible work through you know, all the time. And over and above through this pandemic. I want I just reiterate that and and say thank you to all of them.
Unknown Speaker 44:54
Thank you, Don. I want to piggyback on that when we were we were talking about that your achievement day. to that report a little bit earlier, all of these employees are absolutely a piece of the students and and that their achievement that we’ve seen over these past years. So thank you. Any other comments or questions this evening? All right. Then I would entertain a motion for approval of action item 8.3.
Unknown Speaker 45:21
Please. so moved
Unknown Speaker 45:23
by Jim. Second, and a second by Karen.
Unknown Speaker 45:27
Mr. Arens? Mr. Berthold? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Dr. martyr? Yes. Miss Pierce. Hi, Mrs. Raglan. Yes, I must be dressed. I.
Unknown Speaker 45:39
Alright, this brings us to our final agenda item of the evening, which is a just a discussion item 9.1. The future district financial implications due to covid 19 pandemic. I’m going to take a wild stab and guess that this will take more than seven minutes of our agenda time. Barb, is there a problem if we just go ahead and vote now to extend until 830? So we don’t have to interrupt the not a problem. Okay. Then I would, once again I should we should have just extended it for 30 minutes. I apologize to the board would entertain a motion to for approval of extending the meeting until 830. Please. so moved by Jim. Second, and a second by john. Mr. Arens
Unknown Speaker 46:23
Hi, Mr. Bercow? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Dr. martyr. Yes, Pierce. Hi, Mrs. Raglan. Yes, I’m a secret spy.
Unknown Speaker 46:31
Thank you, Barbara. Paul, I believe you were going to introduce this agenda item, please.
Unknown Speaker 46:37
Yes, thank you that we put this on as a discussion item, essentially, as a follow up to the recent September Finance and Audit Committee meeting that Karen and I were at, with Greg and Tony and the financial staff, that the bulk of that meeting was talking about the work being done for the Kaffir, which we’re going to be looking at next week, or in our next meeting in two weeks. But there was a piece of that discussion relative to the impact of COVID on the Kaffir. And it kind of moved into a discussion around the longer range impact of COVID. Because we’re going to be looking at the ripple effects of this for years, years to come financially. So I had just asked Greg to speak to that, because while it’s nothing that we can quantify right now, it’s there, there’s definitely a horizon that we need to be looking at. There’s definitely things happening that as a board and the public, we need to be made aware of, because there will be future conversations around budgeting and the the longer term impacts of this, so I thought we would ask Greg to just kind of share what he sees on the horizon. And really just a heads up on on what we’re going to be talking about in the future. Sound good, Greg. Great. Thank
Unknown Speaker 47:55
you.
Unknown Speaker 47:57
Yeah, so I just kind of want to start about talking about how everything happened since March 13 of 2020. Things that we’ve seen, again, like Paula said, We are still working on our Kaffir or consultant, annual financial report. And we will be visiting that with revisiting that with you in two weeks. So I’m probably not going to get into numbers at this point, but just at where we’re looking at and, and, and what we’re seeing when we when we started out, and we went into distance learning. We were not transporting students, we were not providing near as many meals as we were. So when we looked at the when we’re looking at the expenditure side of the budget, what we’re seeing is some outperformance there in terms of not providing some of those services, not running our our school buildings to the degree in terms of utility costs. We also saw so we saw some outperformance in terms of our supplies and our materials. As we were not buying some of those things that we needed. In addition, we went to a hiring freeze, where we weren’t hiring for positions when people would leave if if it wasn’t critical to the performance of the district. So if a bus driver left and we weren’t providing bus driving services, we didn’t go actively go hire that person. So we had savings in both salaries and benefits. And so we’re seeing savings more than usual on the expenditure side in that case, and so we do expect to outperform the budget. One of the areas that we were concerned about was the property tax receivable and I’d like to give you an update on that, when we got to June 30, and then we’re allowed to, we’re allowed to count 60 days after that towards the revenue. So any property tax revenue received through August 30, we can claim back into the fy 20 school year, what we saw was that the legislature put in place where local county treasurer’s have the option to waive the late interest fees all the way through October 1. And what that did for us was it slowed down property tax collections, considerably in in primarily in weld County. So when we got to the end of August and looked at it, we were we were down quite quite a bit of money in terms of that property tax receivable. Once, at one point, we were down about $29 million. Once we got to October 1, when people had to pay their taxes, or they would start incurring those late interest fees, again, we received about $26 million dollars. So that took a big load a big concern off of our hands in terms of how long some of this would be delayed, we’re looking at about $3 million, that could still be delayed over a couple of years. We still collect all that money, but it’s it was a it’s a cash flow slash timing issue. And we were fearful that with bankruptcies and some of those types of things that that might push those things out two years. So the good news is that we’ve received those taxes in other part of that is that because the legislature did what they did in expanded the and expanded that waiver period to October 1, there’s a Gatsby pronouncement that says that due to extenuating circumstances, such as that we can count all revenue up until that point, so we are going to be able to book that money back into the FYI 20. Fiscal Year and and in the Kaffir. And so what that’s going to mean is we will see an outperformance of our budget where before we weren’t sure we were going to look like we were going to show a planned spin down because of that large property tax receivable. So I’m going to stop there and see if anybody has any questions about kind of where we are right now.
Unknown Speaker 52:40
doesn’t appear to be any Greg.
Unknown Speaker 52:42
Okay, great. So then I’d like to go into our expectations for the for the FBI 21. school year, so July 120 20, through June 30 2021. assessed valuation, we typically get that preliminary assessed valuation from each of our four counties by August 25. That’s what that’s what statute requires. Well, again, they waive that and said they had until October 13. So we did get in from our two largest districts a preliminary Av. We are down slightly. I would say not as significantly as what we we might have contemplated. But those numbers are going to change until we get to the final assess for valuation certification from the counties in December. So the good news is it looks like well, bad news. Good news is bad news is we’re down slightly good news is we’re not, you know, based on preliminary numbers, we’re not down to the extent that we that we thought we might be. In terms of funded pupil count, Dr. Haddad spoke to that earlier. So I’m not going to go into that a lot other than to say we have started the process of reviewing school information. we finalize that in November. And we’ll be back in December to present to the Board of Education. So just kind of giving you the timeline for that. But again, when we talk about funded pupil count, that’s one of those aspects of total program that we have to do we have to monitor. If you remember, the, we saw a 5% decrease in per pupil revenue from last year to this year based off of the state economy and some of the, you know, the CRF, the Cronus relief funds that we received. So we saw about a 5% reduction in that. We were we’re keeping our eyes on that for a mid year rescission. We believe it’s unlikely based on the most recent forecast that we received from the Office of State planning and budget at the state at the state of Colorado. So we don’t necessarily know anticipate a major recession. But we did see that 5% decrease per student. The other thing that we’re looking at this year is the election and the the vote on the gala, the repealing of the Gallagher Act. The Gallagher act, again, is what keeps residential and commercial assessed valuation statewide at a certain level. The the repeal of it would would cause a rebalancing of the tax impact on residential and small business owners. So depending on the results of that election, that will impact us either positively or negatively, depending on whether the assessed valuation rate decreases or whether it remains stable. So those are kind of the expectations for the current year that we’re in. Are there any questions about that?
Unknown Speaker 56:04
Greg, just a question. So you don’t expect or we’re not expecting a rescission in January?
Unknown Speaker 56:17
Yeah, I would say probably not, when we look at it, and the state’s economic forecast came out. So again, if we talk about a recession, and what that looks like, when we’re in the spring of the year, and they’re determining the finance act for the following year, they appropriate total program across the entire state. And that’s how much they budget. That’s how then they budget based off of how many students they think there’s going to be, what the how many at risk students there’s going to be, and then what the assessed valuation amount is, so what the property tax levy across the state is, and so they appropriate that money, then we find out in October, well, it’s in November, but we have the October count in December, and we tied to the October count is the determination of at risk students. And then in December, all the state all the counties certify their their mill Levy, or their assessed valuations and we certify our mill levies. So when we get to that point, and we start getting into January, what happens is, you look at how much the legislature appropriated versus how much we actually need to expend based off of total program, how many students there are how many at risk students there are, what happens to base funding, and then again, what the overall property tax revenue is statewide. So that’s, that’s what happens, what we’re seeing if we’re similar to other parts of the state with assessed valuation, we’re seeing it down slightly. So there’s not a lot of change there, we will see at risk funding up because because of the economy, but the student count, the overall student count statewide will more than likely decrease quite a bit due to due to the pandemic, again, we were we weren’t sure about a recession. But with the state’s forecast most recent forecast, I’m, I’m feeling more comfortable that we won’t see that rescission. So the rescission would be if there’s not enough money, the legislature would come back and they would say we’re taking money away from it, we’re reducing your per pupil revenue so that we can hit the actual appropriation or they can or they can leave the appropriation where it is, and then have to find funding for it. Right. Does that make sense? Dr. Martin, one
Unknown Speaker 59:02
thing too, I want to Greg, you make maybe you could speak to this. They were anticipating earlier, I think it was something like a 3 billion billion with a be shortfall. And then what Greg’s talking about was the revenue coming in a little stronger, it reduced the deficit to about 1 billion. And so while he’s talking about maybe not a rescission, that cut could come in the spring in PPR. And so it’s it could be a timing thing. But what they have said to us is you probably not going to walk away without a reduction. It’s just whether it’s going to happen in mid year, or whether it’s going to happen when you get your normal funding. And the only reason I share that, and Greg, you might want to elaborate on that a little bit is I don’t want people to get the sense that you know, we’re out of the woods with the COVID impact on our budgets.
Unknown Speaker 59:54
Yeah, my impression was at least the people that I’ve talked with and listened to Was that there would be reduction in per pupil revenue, whether it came in the form of a precision or in next year’s budget? was, was the question. It was a question of, not AF. But But when we would be dealing with that.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:19
That’s right. That’s right.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:20
Yep. I would agree. And that’s, so that’s why, you know, this is taking us through the end of this year. Now, if we, if you’re, if there’s no more questions on this year, I’ll talk about next year.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:35
Sounds good. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:36
Okay, great. So next year, one of the questions is just what you talked about, what are the purpure per pupil revenue expectations? And again, we won’t know that until the spring of 2021. I agree with you, it’s is looking at inevitable that we will see another further reduction in our per pupil revenue. The question is going to be what happens to inflation? and How high do they have to raise the base in order to accommodate that, because the base in those people that are at the bottom of the per pupil stuff is is getting closer and closer. So but again, we won’t know until the spring when we get better economic detail, like Dr. Had dad talked about was, you know, being a billion dollars off instead of I think, the 3 billion number went to 1.9. And now it’s down to one about a million a billion dollars. And so, you know, what does that look like based off of everything else that’s going on? And then what do we expect in assessed valuation, all of that stuff’s going to be put together by the Joint Budget Committee, the Office of the State planning and budget, they’ll get together. That’s what the legislation will use in order to determine what our per pupil revenue will be for fiscal year 2022. The other things that we’re looking at in terms of that is, again, you’ve got funded pupil count, we will see where we end up this year, we’ll see where we are in terms of the pandemic in terms of where we end up next year. With that, I would not expect it. So I wouldn’t expect it to be any lower than it is then. I would expect us to grow in enrollment next year. I wouldn’t expect us to decrease in enrollment next year, but we don’t know what’s going to happen. So that’s not as big of a concern. Probably the biggest concern is the assessed valuation, primarily because of oil and gas. We are with weld county in our district, we we have received significant oil and gas revenues, especially through our mill levy overrides through the years. With the oil and gas war that occurred in the spring of 2020, we’re expecting the oil and gas assessed valuation will decline fairly sharply in the fy 22. year. And the reason that is is because assessed valuation on oil and gas lags production, which is what it’s based off of by 18 months. So that’s why it’s not going to impact us this year. But when we get into the following year, and they certify the December numbers, that’s going to include that declined in in in assessed valuation because a good portion of weld county shut down all of their production, because of the cost of a barrel of gas, because of Russia and Saudi Arabia. We’ve seen some oil and gas companies that have filed bankruptcy, I think that are going to come back out of it, but they had to had to file to get to get to that point. So again, as we talked about this, it’s going to depend it when we’re talking about the district where we’re going to see that is in mill levy override dollars, right. So that’s if we see a reduction in our overall assessed valuation district wide, then we’re gonna see a reduction in our mill levy override. If if it was just our district that was seeing as a reduction in oil and gas then statewide, we would be backfield for for most of that through total program through state equalization. But I have a feeling that this is going to hit all of Colorado fairly hard in terms of oil and gas. So we’re going to take a hit and total program even though we’re getting backfield. And then the last thing to kind of talk about which is Brandon talked about it two weeks ago and that’s the potential legislative changes and so he covered that at the last board meeting. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna get into those details, but that’s what we’re expecting. For the follow up for not for this year, but for next year. So we’re looking at least two years out in terms of where we what we need to monitor and what we what we see as potential issues. Thank you, Greg.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:16
BOARD MEMBER comments, questions for Greg on everything, and I can’t talk. No deck palette you guys choose?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:29
Thanks, Greg. Yeah, thanks that it’s it’s, it’s a mouthful, like, it’s, that’s why we pay you to track all this. But it’s, if there’s a lot of balls in the air, there’s a lot of variables. But essentially, what I what I heard you say was for fiscal year 20, which just ended June June 30. And is what we’re going to see the Kaffir on at our next meeting. It’s actually better news than I thought it was gonna be, because I know what are our last Finance and Audit meeting that $29 million lag and collection, we didn’t know what that was going to end up looking like. So reasonably good news that we think we’re only down $3 million. So that’s, that’s pretty good. But for fiscal year 2121, we already know we’re going to be living with a 5% cut in our PPR. And I guess quaza good news that we don’t think there’ll be a rescission on that in fiscal year 21. But our enrollment is down somewhat just you know, because of COVID. Because, you know, kids have left or they’re not in the school. So that’s going to be that combination is going to be a driver of lesser funding. Also, what comes out of the election that Brandon talked about, that could have a pretty significant impact as well. And then in fiscal year 22, that’s when we think the longer term assessed valuation impacts on inflation are really going to hit us. Is isn’t is 21 an evaluation year? They’re done in the odd years. Right, the when the actual assessment is done?
Unknown Speaker 1:07:07
Um, no, I think this is a non assessment year. Okay. I’d have to work. I’d have to look that up. But I, I, I don’t believe it is. I think it’s a I can’t tell you for sure. Well, I’d have to look that up.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:21
But it’s every other year. Right. And then we lose, we live with those numbers for two years. Yeah. So if they were assessed in the spring, then then it would just be delayed a little bit, but either way we think it’s going down. It’s just a matter of time is when it’s going to going to hit us. Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:39
Yeah. and and the the most significant part of it is the oil and gas and that that gets assessed on a yearly basis based off of production. So with your residential and commercial, it’s an every two year thing. But with oil and gas, it’s a it’s an every year, review and reassessment based off of production from the previous 18 months.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:01
Oh, okay. That’s done annually.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:03
All I one other thing, Greg, I know, there’s an opportunity to use a five year average when a district declines in enrollment, to see which is at 54321 would be more favorable. I think one of the challenges this year is going to be that I think every district is going to see a drop in enrollment. And so there’s been some talk about holding districts harmless in terms of the number of students the count. But that would be the count, but not the funding for the count, because there’s no way they could hold every district harmless in light of a billion dollar shortfall, and then everybody’s enrollment declining. So we may see something pretty significant this spring, more so than what we would normally expect even though last year was a big hit with around what it was 13 or 14 million. But anyways, that’s just something even if our enrollment doesn’t drop, the funding may drop significantly.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:56
Okay, so I just have one last question for you, Greg. On the I know, we got money from the Coronavirus relief fund in the spring that will that will be part of the Kaffir or any of the subsequent stimulus packages. Do we anticipate getting any more federal money? Or do we not just don’t know?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:13
I don’t think we know at this time. I mean, there was discussion about it. And if you’ve read what the President said, he said, No, we’re not doing and then and then it was back on the table. So we’ll see kind of where that goes. What I would say is that I can tell you that we spent just under $2 million of the corona relief fund dollars in FYI. 20. So you’ll see that in the Kaffir. It’s It’s not $2 million. It’s it’s about $1.7 million. And so that’s out of the you know, whatever. 15.7 5 million that’s part of this, this CRF funds. We haven’t spent any out of the s refund at this point that extra funds are about $2.5 million. And then there’s something that went into the school finance act, that was $37 million. And it was supposed to be for at risk funding of students because they anticipated more at risk students. But there’s that discussion is coming back around because they can’t it’s, I guess it’s kind of open to interpretation in terms of whether that was to offset our total program. So it didn’t really add any funding to us. All it did was make us have to spend that by December 30. And so they’re reviewing that, that’s, that’s about $760,000 to the district. So we, we could spend it if we needed to, but it when it was first brought out, it was portrayed as additional funding to districts, and now it’s looking like they’re revisiting that. So,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:02
Greg, the other thing, too, is, you know, and I want to just always clarify this, not for anybody in this room, but for anybody listening, when people hear that we receive these stimulus dollars, it’s just really important to remember, we lost ongoing money to the tune of 14 15 million. And then we got one time money that we had to spend by December. And while Greg was talking about some of the expenditures with, you know, gasoline for the buses and things like that, there were still large amounts of dollars spent on additional custodial staff, additional technology. Did you know a lot of those things, and many of the expenses are ongoing, and yet this Relief Fund, and it’s a one time thing, it’s I just I want to make sure that people don’t think that the federal government or the state came through and held us harmless. You know, it’s really important, because these are massive, these contacts, I know, they’re, they’re not their budget cuts that will break, you know, when I think about, you know, other school districts and their reporting $80 million deficits and $60 million deficits. And this gets back to what I was saying about how our community has really supported us to protect us from those kinds of, you know, dramatic cuts. And it’s really important that as we talk about these things, everybody has their eyes wide open as to the the significance of the dollars that are being cut from public education. There is no stimulus that’s protecting us, and there is no relief fund that’s protecting us. It’s all you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:12:43
it’s money going out.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:44
Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, Don, and and the other thing is it, it can only be spent in certain ways, and that’s with stuff that’s related to the pandemic itself. And so you’re absolutely right, is that we’re very limited in terms of how we can use it. We have to track and report on stuff that we wouldn’t normally have to report on. We have to, you know, we know it’s not if we get audited, it’s when we’re going to get audited for those CRF funds and those extra funds. And so it also puts a large onus on the district to track all of this stuff. Thanks. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:27
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:29
Oh, shoot deck. I’m sorry. We have to extend the meeting. Again, my apologies. And we’ll start right with you. Maybe you could make you could make a motion to send to me. I
Unknown Speaker 1:13:38
move that we extend the meeting by 15 minutes. Second.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:44
Mr. Arens? Mr. Bertha? Yes. Mr. Garcia? Yes. Dr. martyr? Yes, Pierce. Hi, Mrs. Raglan. Yes, I’m a secret spy. Thanks, sir.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:54
Thank you. I really appreciated Paul’s comments, putting it in, and and Greg, putting this in perspective and helping us look forward over the next, not only the year, just finished, but the next two years, as we’re doing that. And I don’t really have anything more to add other than in that regard. But I do want to highlight the opportunity we have, by virtue of the kind of prudent care of our finances that we’ve taken over the last number of years. You know, I would say it goes back at least five years and beyond to too slowly and prudently build a reserve so that we as a district are prepared to move through the transitions that financial contraction in terms of revenues might require over time. So I guess my my hope is that, as we are we don’t know what the impacts are going to be. But we have built the institutional capacity, including our financial capacity to spread out the impacts of whatever that whatever the future reality with regard to finances is, so that we can experience that impact as an organization, not in one year, not in six months, but over possibly two or three years supplemented by impart some of the reserve funds that we’ve carefully prudently built up over the last year in anticipation of something like this coming. So just to comment that I think is helpful for us to be careful as we’re looking forward. But also understand that because of the way in which we’ve gone about our business, that we have additional flexibility in responding and can smooth out the impacts that might otherwise disrupt a fundamental important programs in our, in our teaching staff and administrative staff.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:11
It’s a it’s a great point, because you know, a lot of districts in the spring last year, were laying off all of the employees, because, you know, buses weren’t moving. And a lot of custodial, when we were off out of the building all spring, there were a lot of that we made that decision to not experience mass layoffs, because we had that buffer. And the same thing with this this fall, you know, and so, those are some of the latitudes that and back to what you were saying, you know, to build a school of 3400 kids, we were able to do those kinds of things. And then to add nurses and things to kind of be responsive to this crisis, and other things. But, you know, one of the things that, that I’m really grateful for when we talk about the community support is, given the cuts that we experienced last year, we could have seen mass layoffs, but for the fact that our community has put us in a place to be able to weather this storm, so to speak. And those are real jobs, and real livelihoods and real people. And I watched across the district jobs getting cut pretty significant across the state, in different districts. So you’re you’re absolutely right,
Unknown Speaker 1:17:23
really the difference between reacting and responding
Unknown Speaker 1:17:26
which
Unknown Speaker 1:17:27
significant difference when you’re talking about public education and funding? Karen? No. All right. Any other comments or questions before we think Greg? Oh, go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:39
Thank you. Hi, great. I just want to thank you for pulling this together. Because it really was, as I mentioned, we kind of pulled it out of the Finance and Audit Committee meeting and elevated it to a board discussion. Because it’s complicated, and we’re all kind of living day to day right now. We’re really stuck in the moment because we have to be, but thank you for being out there with the financial staff and looking at the horizon as well. Because this is going to have long term impacts to to the district. So thank you for thank you for that.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:10
Thank you,
Unknown Speaker 1:18:12
Greg, thank you. appreciate all of your work pass along our appreciation to the rest of your department. And we’ll look forward to seeing you for the Kaffir here in a couple weeks. Sounds great. Great. Take care. Thanks. Thank you. All right, we are ready to adjourn the meeting. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, October 28 5:30pm. With the Kaffir and then 6pm will be the beginning of our regular meeting. I have to think about what I’m going to say I would entertain a motion for adjournment please. so moved by Karen and a second. by john All in favor. Aye. Good night, everyone. Thank you and thank you for staying late. These were important topics