All right. Welcome everybody to the April 18, board pooter School District Board of Education meeting, we are convening our meeting at approximately 6:33pm This evening, if you would, those in the room, welcome. And if you would mute your cell phones, if you haven't already had, we'd all appreciate that. So there's no interruptions to the meeting. I'll also say that, in addition to our normal activities, community comment, address by our superintendent and whatnot, tonight, we're going to be focusing on our strategic plan, which as you'll all recall, has important academic elements in it with regard to literacy, graduation with options, and also a critical section on mental health and belonging. So I hope, I hope you'll all stay for that important information. With that, we'll move on to the approval of the agenda. Would anybody on the board like to make any changes to the agenda? It looks like not, in which case, we have a couple of resolutions in our first section on action items tonight. The first one is a resolution in support of national volunteer Appreciation Week, and we definitely appreciate our volunteers, we wouldn't be able to do the stuff we do in the school district without them. Can I get a motion with respect to that? Go ahead, Nate.
Yes, I move that the Board of Education of the pooter school district approved resolution in support of national volunteer appreciation week, April 17, through the 21st 2023.
Excellent, thank you very much. So I have a second looks like Kristen has a seconder. If we can have somebody read the resolution, then we can go to a presentation I believe in support of the resolution. Who'd like to read it, I can do go ahead and eight.
Whereas pooter school district volunteers contribute unselfishly to the success of our students, teachers and staff. And whereas volunteers contributed to over 64,631 hours thus far in the 2022 to 2023. school year, not sounds like I'm shouting, including programs with our partners such as United Way, Matthews house and others and whereas volunteers support students and staff and buildings and beyond the classroom and a myriad of ways, regardless of the hour and without monetary gain. And whereas volunteers act dependably creatively and collaboratively to accomplish whatever tasks they are assigned, or commit themselves to. And whereas volunteers exhibit care, model the best in community and create a climate that fosters learning and a love of education. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the pooter School District Board of Education declares our everlasting appreciation to public school volunteers of the pooter school district who, regardless of situation age, race, creed, or creed stepped forward to help, thus widening horizons for others as well as themselves and be it further resolved that we the pooter School District Board of Education, do hereby support national volunteer appreciation week, April 17, through 21st 2023. And we urge all community members to join us in recognizing the dedication and hard work of local volunteers and preparing today's students for tomorrow's world. And if we vote yes, approved and adopted this 18th day of April 2023.
Thanks very much, Nate. Bryan, I believe we have someone here to speak in support of this.
Yes, thank you. Good evening, everyone. Joining us this evening to speak to the resolution is our PSD volunteer and partnership coordinator Don fight. Welcome, Don. Thank you.
Perfect, I think it's perfect. Hello, my name is Dawn fight. I'm pooter school district volunteer and partnership coordinator. Tonight I want to say thank you to all of the volunteers and pooter School District. Our volunteers consist of parents grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, friends, numerous folks within the community. Volunteer opportunities consists of certain tasks, such as delivering breakfast to thank our bus drivers Nutri and staff, Paras teachers admin. Pretty much any staff within PSD our volunteers are here to support those who are organizing creative events, possibly someone who had staff a booth a back to school night. Perhaps a volunteer would be giving a child's hair last minute comb before photos. Some participate in screenings, vision and hearing screenings for an example, or the lucky one who has to chaperone late into that Midnight Hour on prom night. Also, it is known that our volunteers raise funds and use them to help improve our schools and provide extra opportunities for those students. Those are just a few examples of what our volunteers do. npsd I am blessed to work with them and honored to have these volunteers in our schools. pooter school district volunteers possess an endless history of taking pride in our schools. And as a PSD employee, I am very thankful for that. Our volunteers provide educational opportunities to enrich our students learning and reinforce lessons taught within the classroom. Our students would not be able to participate in these experiences without the help of the volunteers and pooter School District. I would like for you to join us in thanking those unsung heroes who linger behind the scenes and provide that backbone of support for our students, your children. At this time, I would like to welcome Felicia Klich and Nicole Hurstville to share some inspirational stories of volunteering npsd.
Good evening, my name is Felicia Klich. I'm the mother to Carson clinch a sixth grader at Letcher Middle School and Carly Klich or third grader at riffin Burg Elementary School. Volunteering began for me when Carson started kindergarten at Lincoln Elementary School. I started to dabble in volunteering then by helping it class parties. I was so new to it. I had no clue what I was doing. We left Linton that year as we moved to a different area and our new school with Rittenberg. Being at a new school with all new people, I decided to wait for Carson and I to meet people with a volunteer. I started out by coming in weekly to his first grade class to pass out books to all the kids and really started to get to know them. Second grade I volunteered weekly reading with certain groups and working as a class parent. I kept hearing more info about the PTO but it felt really intimidating to me at the time. Third grade is where it really took off for me as my baby also entered elementary school as a kindergartener. I again volunteered weekly in reading groups, and decided that was the year I was going to join PTO. Little did I know, the position I was nominated for and accepted was the president of the PTO or Finberg. As the rains are being handed to me, the rains were being handed to me the world was entering a territory none of us could have imagined COVID I served as the president of the PTO in the 2020 2021 school year, we had to figure out new ways to bring fun and exciting fundraising opportunities to our school. Even though Rittenberg prides themselves on our annual fund run that year, it wasn't possible. So we did a read a thon knowing if we had to go virtual again, we could do this from home. The fundraiser was a success and we ended up raising close to $30,000. As Carson entered fourth grade and Carly first grade on a screen I wanted any way to help us it had become something that fulfilled me. I not only with helping them do schoolwork, PTO president but I also helped do small groups virtually so the teacher could host her small groups virtually. When we entered Carson's final year at Remember, volunteers were unable to return to classrooms or parties. I wanted to help in any way possible. So I made copies for the fifth grade. Boy was there copies to make. I would spend two to four hours a week making copies to help the team out. I completed my term as president in my son's last year in elementary school. I always say I stepped down because my heart would be in two different schools. Volunteering is so special to me, it has fulfilled the passion in me that I didn't know I wanted or had. I have made many lasting friendships with teachers, parents and even students. As Carson entered sixth grade, I knew I wanted to still be a part of his journey and continue to volunteer. After all, the best way to still be around your kid as they are in school is to volunteer. As you know, middle schoolers typically don't want you around and I was really feeling the push from him. I joined the PTO at leisure as well as staying on as a Member at Large refund Berg. I met a whole new team of passionate like minded people who were eager to have volunteers. I became the main parent contact for the leisure middle school district championship wrestling team and set up snacks and assisted the coach in any way possible. In the midst of being in the office at leisure I heard of a position open and lo and behold, I am now an employee of pooter school district at the attendant secretary for leisure Middle School. What I've learned through my volunteering is that while it can be intimidating to try something new, the opportunity to help others and work with so many great people has been beyond fulfilling. I'm grateful for the privilege to volunteer in pooter school district and encourage anyone considering volunteering in any capacity to do so.
Hi, I'm Nicole hershfield I have been volunteering in the PSD school system for about seven years. I went to college for elementary education but decided when my children were born to stay home with them. I feel very blessed to be able to volunteer at their schools. My favorite thing about volunteering is that it allows me to get to know not only their friends, but their peers and the adults who spend many hours a day with them. I love the sense of belonging that volunteering brings to my life. I feel involved helpful and a sense of fulfillment when volunteering. My children also show a sense of pride when they see me helping out their schools. It has helped and influence them to become leaders and volunteers in the community as well. This school year, I have served on the PTO for both refund Berg and Lesher, as well as the school accountability council for both schools, and the district accountability board for both schools. I also do clerical volunteering and run the snack shack at Lasher Middle School. Volunteering has brought so many great relationships into my life. Not only have I made some great friendships, but riffin Berg Elementary and lesser middle school feel like family to us. And today was my first day as the substitute npsd as well. And I'm exhausted. Thank you
Thank you ladies. I appreciate that. undoubtably, you're going to be hearing from volunteers as they continue their efforts. So when you do whether you're able to chip in on that particular effort or not, please remember to give them a big thank you for being volunteers and pooter School District. Thank you.
Thank you we're gonna Madeline we're gonna do we're gonna
thank you
what's? Up? Okay, JL if we could have a vote on this resolution, I appreciate it. Hold on. Okay, go ahead.
I wanted to thank volunteer coordinator and the two people that spoke and wow, that's quite a place to have a recruiting base is our volunteers for employees. It's also a way that many of us serve on the school board. got engaged in school activities. And so I very much appreciate volunteering it. Harris, bilingual and lesser Middle School. And as far as the wrestling team contact person, I thought it was my spouse thought it was tough watching our son's play football. But then when you go to a wrestling match, it's right in front of your face. So thanks to all the volunteers, we really appreciate them. And I look forward to honoring them. Thank you.
Other comments from the board? Go ahead, DJ.
Yeah. I also kind of wanted to warn him that that's how I got started too. And I really remember very clearly 17 ish years ago, I can't believe it's that long ago, getting in the helping out Miss Clark, first grade. And I said, What do you want me to do? And she goes here, I need you to cut these out. I said, I don't know if you want to see how I cut first. But she's Oh no, you'll do fine. So I cut a bunch of stuff out of a laminate that was laminated and said, Okay, we'll give you a different task next time. But it is a great opportunity and it is so fulfilling to be around those kids that if you have a chance to step up and do it because it is it is just great. So thank you all volunteers. Any
other comments from the board? Yeah, I'll I'll detail that's how I started 22 years ago, something like that. So I I'll say again, what I said at the beginning that we couldn't have the district that we have without the volunteer base, and we really appreciate it. And our students, more importantly, our students do. So that's that's a big thank you, Jill, if you would give us a vote on this, please.
DJ Anderson. Hi, Jim Rakesh. Hi, Nate Donovan. Hi. Kristin Draper. I, Rob Patterson. Hi. Carolyn Reed. I, Jessica Zamora aye. Motion passes seven zero. Excellent. Thank
you very much. Thanks, Joe. We have another resolution this time in support of autism acceptance month, can I get a motion in support of this resolution? Go ahead date.
I move that the Board of Education approved a resolution in support of autism acceptance month, April 2023, and requested someone else read it.
Do I have a second to the first part of that and Anyway, go ahead. Jim is a second on that who would like to read the resolution? Jim would like to read
all right resolution in support of autism acceptance month, April 2023. Whereas autism spectrum disorder is a complex lifelong development disorder that can impact an individual's social skills, communications and relationships, and can vary in severity based on the individual. And whereas autism is the fastest growing developmental disorder in the United States, with one in 44 children being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. And whereas there are over 5 million people in the United States with autism. And as of 2019, over 100,000 Coloradans have been identified with autism. And whereas, autism disorders can affect all persons regardless of race, religion, socioeconomic status, or geography. And whereas there's a continued need for acceptance and awareness of those with autism through improving support, and opportunities and education, employment, housing, health care, and long term services. And whereas April is now recognized as autism acceptance month to promote, not just education about the differences of people with autism, but understanding and respecting those differences. Whereas during the month of April, the aim of autism acceptance month is to emphasize the need for public awareness to promote acceptance, celebrate the differences and be more inclusive towards individuals with autism around us. Now, therefore, be it resolved. We the pooter School District Board of Education do hereby support April 2023 as autism acceptance month.
Thank you, Jim. Bryan, I believe we have someone to speak in support of this as well.
Yes. Joining us this evening to speak to the resolution is our district's behavioral behavioral analyst and autism coach Miss Lisa Hernandez. Welcome, Lisa.
Good evening, can you hear us? Can you hear me okay. My name is Nora love. I'm the Assistant Director of integrated services. And I work with all of the schools in the Rocky Mountain feeder zone. I am very honored this evening to introduce Lisa Hernandez. Lisa is our lead BCBA and she works with all of our autism programming with our schools in the district. Lisa began working with PTSD 25 years ago, as a speech language pathologist at Eau de Elementary. She says that her favorite thing about about our job is working with our students and seeing them progress along their path. So thank you very much, Lisa, for all of your work. I'm very happy to be able to introduce you.
Thank you for having me here tonight. I'm really excited because we have moved away from just autism awareness and we are moving into autism acceptance, which I think is a huge movement and one that the autism community has been pushing for for the last few years. So I'm so grateful that we are passing this resolution and accepted in honor of autism acceptance. And because of that, I just wanted to share a few examples of what I see on a daily basis for autism access acceptance in pooter School District. As Nora mentioned, my primary work is with our center based autism probe. I'm so I get to spend most of my time with these individuals that have autism that I have come to love and adore. And so I'm just going to share a few of them, I have to put on my old lady glasses because otherwise I can't see anything. So I just want to say that in pooter school district acceptance is seen in our unified sports teams at our secondary schools, which are the highest attended sports events in pooter. School District. It's seen in our third grade period partners at one of my schools, and social studies and science, where our students with autism are treated with true dignity and respect by what I'm considering the future special education teachers of the world, and it would probably, you're going to need to be paid pretty soon, because they're doing a lot of work. It is seen when a school recognizes that not everybody can be quiet in an assembly or in the lunchroom, or even walking down the hall. And that's okay. acceptances is seen at the snap card at bolts where there are long lines to purchase treats while our students in the autism program practice their money and their social skills. And there's acceptance seen when people recognize that sometimes new and different places are really difficult to go into. And so our staff members hold little special reinforcers and treats for those baby steps into the classroom that they've never been before to the office or to the nurse's office. But I think sometimes the most important thing that I can share is a story. And so I'm going to share a story of one of my students that joined us in our autism program in November. He school has not always been easy for him, he struggles. Behaviorally, he struggles emotionally, he struggles academically. I think because of that he didn't get a lot of the educational components that he should have been able to have. Were the third school that he has been at and his educational career. And he's coming along way he's learning things. Recently, he was in his general education classroom where his teacher was reading a story and the main character had autism. And so they were discussing that and he bravely raised his hand. And he said, Guess what, everyone, I have autism. And they all kind of shook their head and nodded yes. But then somebody else raised their hand and they said, You know what, my brother has autism. And somebody else raised their hand and they said, You know what, my cousin has autism. And somebody else raised their hand and said, I don't know if you know this, but this famous person has autism. And it became a cohesive and authentic conversation in the classroom, about the strengths of individuals with autism, and the contributions that they make, to our world into our society. The best part about this story is is as he was walking back to our special education classroom, in this building, there's a bulletin board that has everybody's picture on it, all the students pictures are on it in his picture, we didn't start out being on the bulletin board because he joined us late. So we didn't have on that piece. But a picture was taken of him. And the paraprofessional pointed out to him, Look, you're on the bulletin board. And he goes, You know what, none of my other schools could handle me, but I fit here. And to me, that is the epitome of autism acceptance. So thank you for passing this resolution. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. Thank you for my 25 years at PSD. Thank you. Appreciate the time tonight.
Thank you very much. Madeline matal will do the picture. But I wanted to have the conversation and the vote first. I think that makes more sense. So does anybody else would like to speak to anybody from the board. Go ahead and eight.
Thanks, Lisa. Lisa, for that powerful story. And we really appreciate being able to help all of our students succeed. And it's particularly important highlight this cadre of students so thank you.
Other comments from the board? Go ahead, Kristen.
Yeah, Lisa, thank you so much. That was just a powerful story. And it just it really shows the power of accepting everyone as they are. So thank you.
Other comments? Well, Gil, let's have a vote. And then we'll have a picture.
DJ Anderson. Hi, Jim Brogan. Hi, Nate Donovan. Hi. Kristen Draper. I rob Pettersen. Hi, Carolyn Reid. i Jessica Zamora. Hi. Motion passes seven zero. Thanks, Joe.
That was really inspired. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Yeah, for sure. It's like you
know in the middle of
a cigarette
All right, that concludes this section of action items. Our next item on the agenda is a report from the superintendent, Superintendent Kinsley will make remarks to the Board of Education and to the community.
Thank you, President Patterson, I really appreciate that I am so inspired by our people, right. I mean, just think about the lessons that Nora and Lisa just talked about moving from awareness to acceptance. I just think that's so cool. And then you know, having students articulate firsthand that one place couldn't handle me but here but I'm I fit in. That's really what belonging is about I just really motivated by that. And I think as Nicole and Felicia talked about their opportunities as volunteers, they talked about volunteerism, cultivating a sense of belonging and pride in the broader district and the broader community, which led to employment opportunity. So I just I continue to be inspired by the great things that are happening in the district. I want to thank all of the volunteers who are essential to making our everyday business better and more efficient and more joyful and taking things off the plate for other employees and members of our team and also for the joyful experiences that they create. For our students. Like many of you, I've had the opportunity over the last couple of weeks to spend time visiting various school events last week. I think it was Thursday evening and spent time at Fort Collins High School, engaged in their community engagement session focused on safety, I had an opportunity to go see their theater production SpongeBob SquarePants, which was a lot of fun and had a beautiful storyline. I have to be honest with you. I wasn't sure what I was going to get out of that. But it was so great. The students in the evening, I really had a chance to now visit every one of the theater productions since I've been here at all of our comprehensive high schools and continue to be inspired by all the great work as Nora excuse me, Nicole and Felicia were talking about their experiences volunteering at leisure, had an opportunity to visit last year middle school last week, you know, all 55 schools that make up this district are special. There's a lot of incredible things that are happening at leisure. They are very committed to their athletic program. I met a lot of championship wrestlers. Nate, you talked about your experiences as a parent about that and not just what it meant to be a good wrestler, but to have good character. Their PE teacher who's their coach who's actually retiring at the end of this year not of teaching, but of coaching has really left an incredible legacy of developing young people who are high character people who know how to outwork their opponents if they were talking about their character. They also talked about their stamina, and their hard work and their effort and their resilience is what really made them be able to overcome obstacles and not quit in the face of adversity. I had an opportunity to meet three of their middle school thespians. I haven't been to a middle school play yet, but that's going to be on my list as we go into the next year. But they had an anti production, I met with some other teachers who were committed to moving high dosage, tutoring and PBIS systems in place. And if you remember, way back when in the very first day of school, last year, middle school was a place where I started my day. And I talked in my video to the community that night of a student named Parker who was his first day of school, not just that lecture, but in the district. Then he came up to me and he said Mr. Kingsley, I don't know unless you're very well, but I want you to know you give me a couple of months. And I'm gonna tell you all about it. I had a chance to visit Parker last week. And Parker talked to me about the significance of last year middle school being how cooperative it is. The collaboration and the spirit of collaboration runs through the veins of that school community. And he talked about what was overwhelming is there so many opportunities for students to get connected and engaged in extracurricular clubs. And Parker's doing a great job in the rock climbing club over at Leicester Middle School. So he's a true leader, not just on day one. But as we think about where we are in April. He's doing incredible work in partnership with the school and I want to think print on my thank principle caught Nick and the leadership team and the various faculty members for doing incredible work over there. You know, I'm a big believer as a superintendent that the persona and the culture of a leader kind of transcends the culture of a school and I had an opportunity later that same day to visit Bennett elementary school and Amy Smith is an Not just an incredible instructional leader, but she's just got a joyful spirit about her. And she is the first principal that I've ever met, that shares an office with Angie, her assistant principal. They are in one office, they can finish each other sentences. They're on the same page. And the joyful spirit that they have with each other transcends into all of their classrooms, had a chance to visit a first grade class, Mrs. Holcomb wholetones classroom and their kids were her students were learning about phonemic awareness. And I asked one of our first grade students, can you please tell me what phonemic awareness is? This is six year olds, six, six years old. And why is it important? Well, he said yes, it's about learning how to make words and make sounds. And it's really important, because if you don't know this, you're gonna get fired someday. So it was a high stakes environment. But there was a lot of joy at the center of it. And we all laugh, but it was really, really great. And those types of experiences exists in every one of our schools. I was at Iris elementary school on Friday meeting with principal Moser, and about four or five instructional leaders, which also included one of their counselors, the culture of care, that exudes that building and the wraparound services, many of their teachers are volunteering on weekends, and coaching, youth soccer and doing different types of clubs. And as I had an opportunity to just geek out around how they're engaging the community, I can't tell you, they're several of their teachers. And I'm not asking any teacher to do this. But several of their teachers couldn't stop ideating around ways to partner with this district to engage their community in thoughtful ways. And we're just emailing me all weekend. And again, I'm not asking any teacher to do that. But just the motivation and the spirit that existed amongst them, just to continue to take that school to the next level was quite great. And I'll share one last example of just greatness I went to Timnath elementary school yesterday morning, and Jill Burrell is that a great leader. And I saw one of the most I'm a former math teacher. So I'm biased here. But one of the most amazing math lessons that I've seen ever in the history of my career by Mrs. Magna, who is an interventionist working with students who are trying to get to grade level. And her ability, I've seen multi sensory instruction through literacy, her ability to use multi sensory instruction to help with mathematics and create joy, her level of questioning and orientation to get students to get to that next level and build their confidence and be hopeful, knowing that they were being challenged, was just incredible. That's what this district is about. That's what our district strategic plan that we're going to be talking about tonight, is about and it's really about staying connected to our work and staying connected to each other as people, people and processes lead to performance. If we prioritize people, and we prioritize our processes, and improving them, performance will continue to improve in this district. And I want to thank all of the people who are part of this system have been working tirelessly over the past year, in developing a strategic plan that is thoughtful, that is purposeful and intentional and taking this district to new levels based upon what our data is telling us. We want to continue to be even more thoughtful about this plan and members of the board, I want to share with you that we want to be more aligned. And we're also in the charge that we collectively as a leadership team. And I know you share this school of thought as a governance team. It's really better to be simple and go deep than shallow and complex. And so the conversation that we'll have a little bit later tonight is how best to do that. What's the right timeline, what's the best strategic priorities to be able to get there, and I'm really grateful for the team's work in setting up not just a great presentation tonight, but I think we're gonna have a very fruitful conversation. These conversations in the various priorities, whether it's literacy, mental health and belonging, graduation with options in school safety continue to reverberate in all spaces in the system. Last night at Rocky Mountain High School, they had the Mental Health Matters Conference, which I heard was well attended. They had parent workshops, they had a keynote that was inspiring to all of their families and staff members that assigned and it was a resource fair to allow families to get connected to resources that exist in our community, and allowed people to be curious around what can we be doing as leaders to connect more people with those resources. We're going to continue to do that throughout the course of the time of our strategic plan and continue to make sure that we're putting a significant dent into that data, while also making quality improvements on the academic side of the house. I want to close this evening by talking a little bit about graduation with options. You know, it's one thing to talk about our desire for every student to have options when they accept their high school diploma, whether that's attempting a two or four year university going directly into the workforce, enlisting into the armed forces, or taking a fifth year of high school for college credit through our ascent program. But it's another thing to show you what we mean. And that's what we're here tonight through the power of student voice and storytelling. With that I'd like to turn it over to our chief information officer Madeline Knobloch. In Video Production Manager Matt goal to take you behind the scenes of this year's grads at a glance series. Thank you to the entire communications department with the support from the career and innovation team, for showing our entire community what it means to graduate with options, Madeline and Matt, take it away.
All right, thank you, Superintendent Kingsley and everyone here this evening, as Brian said, what we want to do is really be able to show you what it means to graduate with options. You know, we talk a lot as a team here and out in our system, about the many, many options that are available to our students. But we've also talked about how our community, including our students, and our parents may not be aware of everything that is there. And so this series centers around that idea of making explicit and has for many years through Matt and the team's leadership, making explicit what the student experiences here leading up to graduation and celebrating really what it is we do here as a system. So I'll be brief, I just want to say how proud I am of the team. And you know, Matt and the group aligning to this strategic priority and really bringing it to life, I think I've been amazed at some of the connections that they have been able to make for students, with members of our business community. And so we want to be able to bring you along on the series and some of the incredible experiences that they've been able to cultivate. So thank you,
everybody. So that's what this feels like. I'm here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Matt Gould. I'm the Video Production Manager for the school district. And Phil is behind the scenes tonight running the cameras for live broadcast. But I told him to take a few minutes off and come here and join me. So what we're going to do is we just kind of wanted to give you guys a little bit like Like Brian said, like COVID, behind the scenes look of grads at a glance and just kind of the why behind it. And then share with you our approach this year, and hopefully get you guys a little bit excited about what what what's been coming out. So just a little bit of history. What you see right here on this PowerPoint is a couple of black and white images. One image has text on it that says grads at a glance, and this is from back in 2015. This is kind of when we first really started this series as a consistent way to shine a light on our seniors. There's another picture on this slide of a black and white picture of a student hand drawing something. So went from kind of this like black and white, very artsy, I was younger man then I thought I was like this like super artist, right? And then Phil came along. And we started to get stuff like this. And we let him talk about kind of his wine, maybe his kind of favorite part of this series. But a distinct crew member. So Phil joined me in like late February 2018. And we usually start this series right around then. And I told him like, buckle up, because it's it's busy time. And he's like, he just jumped right in. But I remember we were talking about these these students. And this particular year, we had a state level swimmer who was going to Stanford, from fossil Ridge High School. And I was like, yeah, like, like, where, what kind of footage that we get of a swimmer at school? And feels like, Well, why don't we just go to the pool? And I was like, oh, okay, because because remember this was and so um, let him kind of talk about this, this approach this kind of like phase two of grads at a glance, and then his kind of why.
Yeah, so I came on board, and I kind of push some buttons, you know, ask some questions about the series and what we could do to evolve it and change it. And like Matt said, I kind of asked, like, let's meet the students where they're at. And we're like, we're, they do their thing that they're passionate about. And so that year, we met our student who was the Olympic swimmer at the pool. And we didn't know that when you take cold camera gear and you bring it inside a warm pool, it fogs over. So everything looked like this dreamy scape. And so we learned tensional for that very intentional. But we learned a lot that year, we learned a lot from the different students. And I think we recovered a lot of subjects that we never thought we would be able to cover. And so we had an LGBT QI plus student, and we had a student that went through depression, but came out of it. And so just a great way to elevate our students and tell their stories in a visual form. And so that you're we hit hit the ground running hard, and we captured great stories of all these different students in various different backgrounds. So the next year after that, this one the laptop year was that was after COVID Well, it was it was during it was like the half year after COVID. And then then Next year, the start of the next year. And so we were like, how can we encapsulate what's going on with them with COVID, but then also being out of it. And so what we did was we filmed the students in their home space, they all describe, hey, my home space is the art lab, my home space is the music hallway. And we had them on the laptop saying their intro in their home space. So it was kind of this, you know, kind of inception kind of look of, hey, I'm at home working remotely, but I'm also in my, I also love my home space. And so the next year after that, we were like, COVID, over sweet, let's celebrate, let's, let's have these kids have a celebration. So we coordinated with these students, their support group, and we actually had surprise parties for them, where we filmed their support people gushing about them. And then we showed them the video, and then they were around the corner with balloons and poppers, and they got to celebrate their graduation. So it's, it's definitely changed throughout the years as from the black and white, you know, very artsy look to now. And this year, we're definitely on the next step of our evolution. So I'm not
sure. And so I'm just gonna go back here for a second. So on this slide here, when I switched from the black and white to the, to the next slide, there's they're very colorful images. One is of a, of a student walking down a trail that's full of beautiful green. And then another is a student who's just smiling in the camera with a with a kind of Maroon dress on. And then the pictures that Phil was just describing one is of a laptop, basically in a this was in like the dean's office at pooter High School, shell nose show knows this place. Then the next one, just a huge group of people surrounding a graduate and everybody's smiling and there's balloons and confetti. So that's what's been going on on the slides. This next slide here says grads at a glance future connections, and it has these two chairs in it. Is this mysterious? Is this artsy? So basically, as we were as we're talking about the the idea for this year, it's like one of the things that we missed, we felt like we missed last year with the celebration was like, What are these students doing next year? Everybody wants to know, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? million dollar question, right? And so we're like, well, let's, let's take that. But let's let's kind of let's put a twist on it. So we brainstormed and came up with the concept of let's find a student find out what they're passionate about whether they have like a solid plan for their life after graduation or not. Whatever that is, let's find somebody in the community who's doing that thing at a high level. And let's sit them down and have a conversation. What advice do you have for me? What would you tell your younger self? What was your path? And so we've gotten so many rich conversations out of this. I'd like to say that this is the time of year where we really do have some of the best jobs in the in the districts. It just really brings us back to why we're here. Remember, I met with Bryn our student from Fort Collins high school, she was the first student that I connected with. And like, I started like just getting emotional because she was just sharing her heart and who she was as a student. And it's so easy to forget. And once we start connecting with these students and start telling these stories, it changes us fill in our softies. We cried a lot of things. But we get to know these students really, really well too. And then we get to share their stories with our community. And President Patterson and vice president Draper Superman Kingsley, thank you for letting us elevate this series in this very public forum. I also want to shout out obviously, matalin chief information officer. And you guys should know this is a full multimedia communications team effort. Phil and I just we just do the video piece. There's a web piece there's a whole like microsite, which I'll show here in a second. There's a district web presence. There's portraits of a whole separate set of students. There's graphic design, obviously. So literally everyone in the communications department touches this project. And so I just want to elevate all of their work as well. So we cut together something a little special for just for you guys tonight. So this is just a quick little kind of teaser of what this series is about this year.
Just because we can
Keep your passion, keep it dry. Don't want anything, get in your way. Just keep following your passion and taking advantage of all those opportunities like you have been. And you're gonna do awesome.
Don't let anybody tell you that you can't do it. Make sure that you show them that you're here to be here. And don't let anybody tell you different
so like, comment, subscribe to our YouTube channel. And that's what everybody says, right? Yeah. Let's see. So I did just want to show you guys this is accessible from the school district website. This is the the microsite that we have for the campaign this year. So this is our trailer that we released. And then these are this is a student from fossil. This is his portrait. And we did a q&a with him as well. And then here's our video student from fossil Ridge High School for Collins High School. And that's all we have out right now. But this week, we have PST global Academy coming out. And then pooter High School is going to be next week. And Phil, where we go in tomorrow, where are we filming tomorrow.
So we we have a student from Rocky Mountain High School. And his passion is that he wants to be an athletic trainer. And he plays baseball. And so we actually were able to get in contact with the communications department at Rocky's stadium. And they allowed us to come out there. And so we're going to film his interview on Rocky's field. So pretty excited about that experience. So you guys kind
of get the concept, right. It's the same furniture, but the background changes, right. And so anyway, we really appreciate the time. And yeah, we'd love your help and sharing this campaign and celebrating these amazing students, too. So thank you, everybody.
Anything else, Brian?
I just couldn't be prouder of that effort. So thank you for allowing me to speak tonight.
Absolutely. And I'll just say that all of the time that I've been involved in the district and been aware of the work that Matt and Phil have done, it's been just outstanding. They do great work. And we're very lucky to have them. So thank you to both of them, and the team that works with them. So thanks. Now we have our time for community comments. I want to remind us all of our hopes for this section of the agenda. The board desires to hear the viewpoints of all stakeholders including students, employees, parents and guardians and community members. input that is most helpful to the Board of Education and district staff is that which celebrates successes that support the educational and social emotional experiences of students, or which identifies a problem and proposes a solution for us to consider that ultimately improves the educational or social emotional experiences of the students. Public comment is designed to address issues, not personalities or personnel matters. Please keep your concerns and comments focused upon the district. It is important to note that the board does not generally respond to remarks made during community comment, our lack of response should not be construed to mean that we agree or disagree with what is said, or with a description or interpretation of events as presented by any speaker. Although we may disagree on some things, I know that we all want the best educational experience for our students. And as we participate together in this community comments session, we should model for our students how to listen, how to interact respectfully, even with those with whom we disagree, and generally, how to show up each day. With that, I'll just remind everybody that this opportunity for public comment is for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called upon to make remarks in the order that they signed up. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board. And I will remind you to wrap up as soon as the red light starts blinking. So with that we will have our first speaker on the list is Ryan Kelly. Nope. Second person on the list is Lauren Farley. Excellent. Welcome
Yeah, often that usually, PSD students outgrow me about fifth grade. So we'll adjust that one down. Hello, my name is Lauren Farley and I am the parent of a fourth grader and a sixth grader in PSD schools. And I also work as a religious educator at foothills Unitarian Church here, right here in Fort Collins. And I'm here tonight because my faith calls me to joyously affirm the worth and dignity of all people. And so for this for me, this means that queer, trans non binary and gender expansive kids, like all kids deserve to be loved and celebrated everywhere they are, which is everywhere, including PSD. So tonight, I'm here to thank PSD for all of your hard work, and policies that create safety, welcome and inclusion for LGBTQ students and their families. I know firsthand that this is exhausting work, especially in the face of hate, anger and misinformation sweeping the nation and Fort Collins. I have the privilege of CO leading a group for trans and non binary kids and their families in our congregation, and in our spaces full of trust, care and fun. They share their stories honestly with us. So we hear about it when they feel safe at school. And we also hear about it when they don't. I see my most deeply held values in action. When I see PSD protecting the rights and the privacy of its students. Using students chosen names and pronouns at school makes a huge impact on how safe they feel, how ready to learn and thrive they are, especially if that student is coming from a home or a family where their chosen name or pronouns aren't safe to use. LGBTQ students and their families are sacred and belong in Fort Collins and in PTSD, safe, welcome and loved. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Eleanor Van Dusen. I hope I got the name pronunciation right. Excellent. Welcome.
Good evening.
I'm Eleanor Van Dusen. And I'm a parent of three young adult children who all attended PSD schools. And I am the Director of Family ministry at the foothills Unitarian Church here in Fort Collins, where I've served for the past 23 years. And I'm also here to speak in support a PTSD school board policies that ensure that transgender and non binary students are supported in an environment at school that's free from discrimination and harassment, based on their gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation. It's been my life's work to work with children and youth and I love kids. And I've had the great pleasure of serving in the church setting and also with several local arts organizations since the mid 80s, here in Fort Collins. And in those settings, I've had the great privilege of knowing many, many children in youth who are queer, non binary, and transgender. And I've witnessed the very real suffering that young people experience when they're unable to express their chosen gender identity, or they're harassed or bullied for expressing their gender identity or sexual orientation. And I've also seen kids flourish and succeed when they feel accepted. And when they're allowed to express their own inner knowledge of who they are. Many times I've seen the relief that a triad child feels when they discover that a space is safe for them, and they can be themselves. I've seen them thrive and succeed when their identity is affirmed and honored. And I want to voice my support for the school board for your policies that protect and support these students and allow them to learn and thrive. Thank you for supporting all of our children and youth here in pooter schools.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Jeff after Heidi. Jeff here. Okay, welcome.
Hi, my name is Jeff after Heidi from Arlington, Colorado. I'm here to follow up on my previous comments regarding the potential conflict of interest in pooter school district's mental health services and to raise additional concerns about the transparency of research studies conducted within the district. It is disappointing that I have not received the meaningful response to my concerns despite repeatedly raising them in public forums. The lack of communication and transparency from the board is alarming and continues to erode public trust and the district's leadership. As I mentioned before, Director Carolyn reads can According to some stone Health Partners, and the grant award of over $1.5 million for addressing mental health services within the district wants immediate attention. The board's silence on this matter is deeply troubling and calls into question the integrity of the decision making process within district. I'm also concerned about the lack of transparency regarding research studies conducted within the district including an undisclosed study funded through a grant. The district district has replied There are five studies. They couldn't disclose to me because due to Colorado State revised debt are revised statute. But I believe there might be more based on my research. This further erodes public trust and raises questions about accountability. I urged the Board to take the following actions one, provide a detailed and timely public response to the concerns raised regarding the potential conflict of interest involving director Kailyn Reed and Sumit stone partners to ensure that conflict of interest statements, grant information and research studies are made publicly available on your website for inspection. Three, establish a regular reporting mechanism that details the progress of the implementation of the mental health programs and research studies including the disclosure of any grant funded projects and the impact on our student outcomes. The failure to address these issues not only undermines public trust in the board, but also puts the well being of our students at risk. We must prioritize the mental health of our children and ensure that the services provided to them are of the highest quality and free from potential conflicts of interest. I respectfully request that the board treats this matter with the urgency it deserves, and take immediate action to address the concerns I've raised the further the future of our students and our integrity of our district depend on it. Thank you for your attention. And I look forward to receiving response from the board. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Andy Brunson. Williams. Not here. Our next speaker then is Jim wind Brenner. Welcome.
Mr. Peterson, you sent me an email suggesting that if I had attended the PSD community engagement session on mental health, I would have had the opportunity to ask questions directly to board members and staff. You indicated there was an honest back and forth discussion. I beg to differ. The mental health session was limited to 30 registrations. That's one slot for every 1000 students in PSD. Those 30 slots were filled in three hours and 15 minutes, and only seven people actually attended the session. My observations first, only the few who found out about the session early had a chance to sign up before it was closed. Public interest was substantial, and the district's response was minimal. Second, 2030 minutes was wasted at the start of the session to teach this the seven people how to speak respectfully. Next, there was a staff presentation about mental health health issues and BSD. After the staff presentation and seven people play pass the seashell if you hold the C shell you're permitted to speak. Otherwise you listen. You were expected to respond to questions such as What was the most helpful Mental Health Insight you gain tonight? Questions were structured to elicit compliments that made PSD look good. Was there an opportunity to ask questions directly on the board members? No. Any questions that evening are rhetorical. Like the questions I'm asking today. Questions for which no response is expected. And no response is given. Mr. Peterson, you promised back and forth discussion about the difficult LGBTQ issues and how the district was approaching them. critical issues because 8000 PTSD students identify as queer and non Barrett binary plus 5000 they're considering hurting themselves or committing suicide, or contemplating suicide. Mr. Peterson, it's been 11 months since your promise. When are we going to have a back and forth dialogue? Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jamie Gilmore. Welcome.
As a PSD parent of an LGBTQIA plus student I'm here to commend PSD on their efforts and policies which affirm LGBTQIA plus identifying students and staff In the District, my family moved to Colorado several years ago specifically so my student could attend a school in an affirming and safe environment. All children deserve to be seen and acknowledged for who they are at their core. Some people may not agree with this statement, but their opposition have policies which allow LGBTQIA plus students to be open and affirmed in their identities is harmful. Research shows that LGBTQIA plus youth are at a higher risk of suicide when they are not supported at home in school when these students are supported their risk of suicide drops to that of non LGBTQIA plus youth. Thank you to the PSD, school board and administration for enacting policies to educate teachers and staff about the importance of using chosen naming names and pronouns. Thank you sub for supporting GSA GSA clubs which are entirely voluntarily to drop. Let me back that up. Thank you for supporting GSA clubs which are entirely voluntary to attend and important to those that do. Thank you for creating and enforcing policies of non discrimination for these students. And thank you for taking harassment based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression seriously. These policies and practices keep students safe and help teach all students tolerance of those that may be different than themselves. LGBTQIA plus people exist everywhere, so children may as well learn to to learn tolerance and acceptance now. continued support from PSD PSD is vital to families like mine, in my family is just like your family. We're working hard to provide and care for our children. We have hobbies, which include all the usual Colorado outdoor activities. We have good days and we have bad days and we keep moving forward and my child deserves what all children deserve a safe and accepting environment in which to learn. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Jessica O'Brien. Welcome.
Good evening my name is Jessica have one child and PSD. I appreciate your time this evening. I would like to start off by saying a big thank you to the teachers and administration janitors and all of the adults working for PSD. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication to the children of Fort Collins. Also a thank you to the students of PST for all of their hard work and dedication to becoming amazing successful young adults. I am here tonight to call on the board to increase the number of SROs and PSD schools. Specifically I am requesting for there to be an officer for every school in the district. When I drop off my child at school and the SRO is present I breathe a little bit easier knowing that my there's a little bit of extra security that morning. The school that my child attends follows all these security processes that they and they do the very best to protect our children during school hours. But more security is needed at every school, and it needs to be an armed officer. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The second tier and foundation of individual's basic needs indicates that they need to feel safe and secure in order to achieve self actualization. Our children understand that if drills and locked doors are necessary, then there must be a threat and the back of their minds. They worry. So do the children and staff feel safer today and PTSD. I know that the members of the board also deal with a number of mean and threatening messages for the community at times, and you don't have an easy job. And what have you done to ensure your safety. There's an armed officer here tonight and thank God he's here. I have many concerns about relying on drills and locked doors to protect our children. Although I understand they're necessary, but my child does not come home feeling safer after these intruder drills. My child has more anxiety and questions than I can give answers to. These drills are only a band aid to a much larger issue. And I understand that their resources are finite. But you need to know that a lot more parents feel the same way that I do. Please consider the request I am making today. Any deterrent to keep our children safer is a good idea. I would also like to call on every parent listening tonight who agrees with me to send a message or let the board know that you feel the same. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Aaron Patchett. Welcome
Okay, thanks everyone. My name is EP she her pronouns. I'm a parent of an elementary school child in the pooter school district and I have a lot to say in three minutes is tough, but I'm a rule follower. So here I am with written notes. Here's my message as I've distilled it down LGBTQ kids and staff exist. There is no room for debate on this topic and no more than US debating the world physically here. are in this room right now they are here. And as other people come into tonight, they're part of our community. They are wonderful. They are real. They deserve support and access to resources. And unfortunately, folks across the country and now in this state, which is honestly devastating to hear, these folks are starting to take actions against LGBTQ youth debating their existence, changing inclusive policies, restricting health care, and so on. And those folks have been pretty vocal about their attempts. So despite showing up to a school board meeting be the last thing I really want to do. And it'd been well outside of my comfort zone. I'm here to be vocal in the opposite direction. So that you know, there are lots of parents and lots of families and lots of caregivers, and lots of kids who believe that you all should continue to support the LGBTQ kids in our school district. I am grateful. So let me be clear, I'm grateful for the work that's already been done in serving and sentry and queer and trans and non binary students. And if anything, because of who I am, I also respectfully and constructively challenge this district to keep going right, I think we can be doing some of this work deeper and more consistently across our schools, across teachers, et cetera. But my slight constructive criticism doesn't stop me from being so incredibly thankful for the work that's already being done in this school district and encourage momentum in that direction so that queer youth get the respect support enjoyed that they deserve without question. Serving and centering LGBTQ kids helps them It helps them live and become LGBTQ adults, and it hurts nobody else in the process. So PTSD, I honestly think you would struggle to continue to live by your principles if you weren't actively supporting and honoring LGBTQ youth. As a parent, I'd like to ask you to continue to be advocates for them in times like now when the world is actively seeking to harm them. Um, harming kids should not be the business of any school district in particular, not the school district. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next speaker is Cherylin comer.
She's coming welcome.
Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. I'm here because I'm concerned about what I see and hear is going on in our pooter school systems and across the United States school systems. It has come to my attention that some of the people who are in the school systems are pushing an agenda rather than teaching basics. People who are supposed to be working for us for whose salaries we are paying people who are supposed to care about children and their welfare people we are supposed to be able to trust. Trust is built on truth and honesty. I've become aware that children are as young as kindergarten are being asked if they're comfortable with their birth sex. If the answer in the negative they are encouraged to explore other options for their gender, and as they are moved into their higher grade levels, they're encouraged to change their names and pronouns to the opposite sex, even though the parents have jacked. There are more pornographic now pornographic books in grade schools and up through high school. This sexualization of our schoolchildren is very disconcerning to me. Our kids are being told to attend after school meetings where they're being indoctrinated with sex change material, being told it's okay to lie to parents and such things. Deception never builds trust. Our schools are allowed to give them puberty blockers. A child going through puberty is already facing changes and emotional change, body changes and emotional changes and trying to fit in with their peers. They are told that they can change their gender by having surgery. All of these mentioned is very overwhelming to young people. Add to that, that surgery. Can you imagine as a teen looking in the mirror after the first time after your body has been changed, knowing they can never go back to the original self to a person who is already self conscious. This is overwhelming. Children are not old enough to realize what they're doing to themselves until it is too late. They will either lash out at themselves in suicide or at others. No school no adult school official parent or anyone else has the right to push anyone into an unnecessary surgery or life change in their body. This is child abuse. I give you a Chloe's story. I don't know if you've heard of her, but she did the whole nine yards the change in her identity, or sex and, and getting the surgery. And when she was 18 she realized what she'd done and she couldn't go back. She's going across the United States speaking and asking you not to allow this surgery in the schools. I feel like it's, our children are being robbed of their innocence when these things are brought to the desk, so
I'm sorry. And he asked me to finish it's three minutes. Okay.
That's, that's basically it. I am here to fight for the innocence of children. Thank you.
Thank you. Our final speaker this evening is Danny Lawrence. Welcome.
Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. Tonight, I wanted to come here and comment on the lack of interaction you all give the community and how that affects the culture in our district. For two years, I've been making public comments in this boardroom and I've attended many of your community chats, a countless number of times, I've watched different individuals in our community ask you all for a conversation in a town hall format, something with dialogue and back and forth opportunities, and I've never seen you give it. Instead, you allow the narrative to be established by your staff who controls the question topics and format. The community chats where you all play the past the shell game while PSD staff dictates the positive focus questions the public can answer is just a meaning for adults. And I feel like you're leading in ignorance because you're unwilling to listen to those who elected you. So I'm here tonight to ask how can you possibly represent my children, our family and their needs as students? If the only way I can communicate with you is through one sided three minute public comments? How can I convey what we are experiencing in terms of civil rights abuses or possible solutions? If this is the only format I've been given for communication, you are not solution focused, you'd have to give people the respect of a conversation to which you have to achieve problem solving. A couple of years ago, I voted for four of you. And I'll never make the mistake of choosing representation again from people unwilling to interact. Recently, Mr. Kingsley was generous enough to finally give me 30 minutes of his time after to open investigations with Civil Rights states complaint finding, and several asks that were rejected that 30 minutes was spent trying to get him partially up to speed. There was no opportunity to get my questions asked or answered. But thank you for your time, Mr. Kingsley. In February, I was asked to participate in a restorative process and conversation with a district administrator. It was a traumatic and painful experience. And I'm here to ask that you make this treatment for the parents trying to advocate for disabled children stop. Imagine a marriage counseling scenario where your spouse hurls accusations at you giving you almost no opportunity to speak or ask questions for clarification or to seek understanding. It's inappropriate to have district led dialogue for two hours and a one sided attack from your staff. There was nothing restorative of or remotely kind about that process. There was no check in or follow up afterward. It lacked professionalism, and it was grossly unfair. Please stop this practice for integrated services families who are just trying to enforce federal laws that PSD has to abide by anyway. No parent needs to make your staff feel anyway to get their children's needs met. And I'll end tonight with a great quote from one of my favorite internet yellow, yellers e Joma Allahu, quote, to refuse to listen to someone's cries for justice and equality, until that request comes in a language that you feel comfortable with is a way of asserting asserting your dominance over them in the situation and quote, you all play a part in the oppression and staff led dominance over community stakeholders because you allow it. And I would ask that you do some deep soul searching on why you were serving and whether the narrative established by staff allows you to best serve the folks who elected you. Thank you for allowing me three minutes of your time.
Thank you. Sorry. And that concludes community comment for this evening. Next we have a board committee reports Would anybody like to take a moment to speak? Go ahead and eight sorry.
That's okay. I just wanted to highlight a given factor. We read the autism acceptance resolution. I wanted to take some of us have been on the board long enough to remember a student who was in elementary school and has a developmental disability and wanted to go to the feeder Middle School. But the initial direction that the district was giving was to have that student go to a different school. But he brought his friends here to the board meeting to advocate that he be allowed to stay with his friends and go to Blevins Middle School, and he's going to graduate next month. And so He's had a great experience being mainstreamed, and not taken away from his friends and the academic situation that he felt comfortable in. And I just want to highlight that to make sure that we're being sensitive to the individual needs of students when we decide what their particular plan is for their education. And so I congratulate him and his family, and just want to hold that up as an example, where pooter school district served this student and family well, so thank you.
Thanks, Nate. Other comments or, or reports? Go ahead, Kristen.
I just want to say that, Jim, and I lose it last night. That was the mental health Oh, my gosh, feels like I was a week ago, were able to go to the Rocky Mountain National, that not national sorry, let me start over Rocky Mountain High Schools mental health program. And although I didn't get a chance to go and listen to the individual speakers, because I was so engaged with the resources that were provided there. It was truly an amazing and wonderful event. And I was able to talk to you just about everybody who was there and meet everybody. And one of the questions that I asked to everybody when I went through is how can we PSD be even more engaged? And how can we how can as a board, how can we help and and I would just wanted to report back that most of the people said, We're doing really, really well. We're doing really well, as far as the engagement piece, that partnership piece. So I think things are changing. And I just I felt like I needed to share that with you all of yes, we have, we have work to do, and we have ways to go. But from the people that I talked to last night at the resource fair. It's there's a different perspective. And I think people are willing to engage in wanting to engage and see an opportunity, which is different than it used to be. So thank you for that. Go ahead, Jim.
Just want to just want to second like Kristin said, I spent most of my time also at the resource fair. And I was asking similar questions. How can we do better? Where does your funding come from a lot of different questions about the different groups and and we just were doing really well. I felt like from this group. That was the feedback that I took away. So yeah, it was great night.
Excellent. Other comments or reports from the board? All right, I'd like to take a moment here to acknowledge that April is National Deaf History Month. I'm sure I speak for all my colleagues on the board when I say that we honor and celebrate the contributions of deaf and hearing impaired persons to our planet, our nation, our state and our region. Next April, I fully expect that the board will put forward and pass a resolution proclaiming support for National Deaf History Month. This year. I want to share that we are working on a plan to make our board meetings more accessible to our deaf and hearing impaired constituents. The details will be announced as they are worked out. And we intend to have this support in place on or before the start of next school year. Anything else? All right. Our next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. Would somebody like to make them? Oh, would anybody like to pull anything from the consent agenda? All right, seeing none. Would somebody like to make a motion? Nate?
I move that the Board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the Consent Agenda.
Second, somewhere, Kristin, could we have a vote on the consent agenda, please? JL
DJ Anderson I Jim Rakesh. Hi, Nate Donovan. I Kristen Draper I, Rob Patterson. Hi. Carolyn Reed. Hi. Jessica Zamora aye. Motion passes seven zero.
Excellent. Thank you, Jill. And then we're on to the strategic plan work that both superintendent Kingsley and I have referenced already this evening. So Brian, if you'd like to go ahead with that?
Yeah, thank you. Really looking forward. I'm really looking forward to this conversation as a governance team, and we have several members of our cabinet that are here to join me. As I shared earlier and everybody in the community, we've been talking about our strategic plan for several months, there's been a lot of really good work that is going to continue to go on post this evening. As I shared with you my opening remarks, I think this is an opportunity for us to not just reevaluate our strategy, but think about the pace, our capacity to do whatever we're setting forth to do well, I've heard from many members of the board that you know, when we launched this plan, we should expect that it needs to be met with enthusiasm Azzam joy and excitement. And there's a lot of pressures and stressors in the system in the community that compete with that every single day. But I really feel as the team has listened to many community stakeholders, there has been so many system, faculty members, school leaders, district leaders who have been a part of put really hundreds of hours into development of this and have continued to go back and forth around what's the right tone, what's the right pace? And so that's the spirit of the conversation we're having this evening. Can you go the next slide, please. So we're, as we're committed to ensuring that we're focusing our approach to the, to the strategic plan, we want to make sure that we're engaging in our highest leverage opportunities to support our students, and achieve our district goals. Again, just challenge us to say and feel and think about and push the work to be simple, but deep, rather than shallow and complex. So we're therefore gonna suggest tonight that we're going to narrow our focus for the strategic plan to three priority areas literacy, mental health and belonging and graduation with options. Now you remember, that's where we started right? In previous versions of our district strategic plan, safety and security appeared as one of those four focus areas. That's one of those things that we've gone back and forth. But you know, safety and security can't be an initiative. As we've continued to grapple with our team. It's not that we're D prioritizing safety and security, but it's something that needs to happen every day and everything that we do, similar to our approach to long range planning, and thinking about how we provide the right mindsets, values and beliefs and push up their mindsets, values and beliefs don't value and honor diversity, equity and inclusion. So we're not just reshuffling words, we're trying to level set around where we're prioritizing our resources where we're prioritizing our time. And can we explicitly name what this means for students and stakeholders in the year ahead, this is going to be a part of our ongoing work. And if you can go to the next slide, please, there's a visual, that is streamlining our work for year one, and the team is going to talk to you about these box by box and take you a little bit deeper. But here you'll see that there are three desired outcomes for each of the three priority areas and literacy, mental health and belonging and graduation with options. I'm not going to read that to you. But we'll have an opportunity to go through that a little bit more deeply. It's really important as we're setting out a course for this plan. We don't believe we're positioned for a formal launch between now and the end of this year. Right. There's not space and capacity in our opinions. And we want to have a conversation about that. For this plan in this moment in time to be reached with joy and enthusiasm. We don't want this to be one more thing. This is initiative overload. We want to simplify in each of those three priority areas, not just what we expect the outcomes to be in the next year for students. But explicitly what are those strategies that have implications on our faculty, on our school and district leaders? And how do we partner with our parents and our families to make those particular things happen. And as you see on the book ends on the top and the bottom of this particular visual, and again, this is just a visual, but it sets a tone that safety and security is ongoing work that we need to be intentional about every single day, regardless of the existence of district Dziedzic plan. 10 years from now, if the system hopefully has different priorities, based upon new data and our monitoring report, safety and security is still going to be a day to day operation and function of this district. And we wanted to make sure that our new representation outlines that similar to our ability to be very fiscally responsible, and using our stewardship around our facilities and our long term planning, long range planning and a similar mindset. And again, everything that we do in this system, we have to provide a not just a lens that honors diversity, equity inclusion, but we got to identify and understand where it exists, and where it doesn't. We can't go disrupting things that we don't identify first as being an area for disruption. So I'm really excited about the team walking us through each of these particular areas, but we're expecting there to be some push and pull tonight. So I really want to invite you as a board not just to accept what we're sharing as this is what we're doing moving forward. But to invite you into a conversation around where we have agreements, where you'd like for us to think a little bit differently and for us to have on the back end of tonight's presentation, a robust conversation that you feel comfortable with the direction of the system and not just staff. So we know this conversation should be a partnership. And I really want to invite you to push our thinking in the way that you feel best. Theresa turned over to you to outline kind of our way of work. And what we're thinking is our best thinking right now around the role of literacy being a priority. Thanks, Tracy.
So good evening, President Pettersen superintendent Kimberly Kingsley, members of the board. It's my pleasure to talk to you about the strategy under literacy. So I'm working with the team leads and literacy. We have elevated this particular strategy as a year one priority. Deep. And this will be a very familiar strategy you recently heard about the literacy adoption from Director of Curriculum. John pasand. Tino, this strategy is more all encompassing than just the K five literacy adoption. This is a strategy that ensures that we implement really high quality instruction materials across our system, and that we have a process that can be replicated. So that we do that with assurances every time that we have a standards aligned curriculum that really meets the needs of our students, our staff, and is very inclusive of our students so that they see themselves in the curriculum that has a universal design at its base. So in thinking about this strategy, the objective is that you would see the result of this strategy that in all of our classrooms, we would have high quality standards aligned materials, including complex texts that represent multiple cultures, identities and abilities, leading to all students being college and career ready, feeling seen, heard, validated and connected to others, while learning about multiple perspectives of the world. And when we talk about all classes, this is a particular strategy that applies to all subject areas language arts, math, science, and the arts. And so through that process of having a rigorous evaluation tools, we will ensure that students have an equity of experience in their classes across all of our buildings, that we have a strong robust implementation plan, so that students experience a similar level of rigorous education and access. Also, inherent in this strategy is that equity and access for all students and all learners, that universal design component really forces us to look at our curriculum through the lens of learner diversity. And looking at curriculum that starts at that level, rather than looking at it through something that's an add on or an accommodation later on. So part of this process is really being very thorough and vetting the curriculum that we're using in our classrooms. So what you can expect next year that we will do, the actions that will occur is we will go through the simultaneous process of both adopting and implementing, so you're aware that we will be implementing a K five literacy curriculum, we will also be in the process of adopting materials at ninth and 10th grade in English and language arts that uses a standardized process that's built into the strategy where we use the I met rubric as well as culturally responsive, and this evaluation tools to vet those materials. Through that implementation process next year, for particularly the K five elementary literacy materials, we're really going to support our system to make the shift to a fidelity of use of implementation, that we've looked at our resources as being available and useful to teachers. But we've never really given them the tools and steps to monitor fidelity of implementation. So we're defining and being more explicit about what we mean by implementation, and what that looks like. So alongside of the implementation of the materials, there's also some explicit steps around D implementing different core materials and practices that are no longer aligned to how we've evaluated what is needed in our classrooms, what our data is telling us our students need, as well as what we know the science of reading is telling us about the best practices. The other part of that implementation plan is the ongoing support for teachers that we can't just do a one time professional development where we've helped them learn to use the materials, there has to be an ongoing, ongoing and sustained approach to the professional development and implementation practices for our teaching staff. So that's part of the implementation plan that's embedded within the strategy is to do a very robust approach to that. And then additionally, we want to add something that we really haven't had as part of a curriculum approach, which is to monitor how students see themselves in the curriculum, that this is particularly important, as we adopt high quality materials that students need to feel seen, heard and represented in the materials that they are exposed to in their classrooms. And so seeking their feedback seeking engagement from our families about how their students are experiencing the curriculum is a part of this ongoing strategy for implementation as well within literacy. And additionally, I want to speak to a little bit of the fidelity monitoring that will go into the implementation. So the fidelity of monitoring, it's a it's a really important part of the process of not just adopting and selecting the materials, but also naming the behaviors that will go along with the implementation, and explicitly be able to describe here are the practices and approaches that will lead to the best results for our students. If we do them in this way, and so that fidelity of use the first bullet talks about the implementation, and D implementation of different practices and curriculum, so part of that strategy is to pay attention and name explicitly like, here are the practices that we're going to develop that will be consistently across our classrooms. And then here are the practices that we will start to D implement that if you don't do both simultaneously, what tends to happen is that it feels like it's more and more, and we just layer on more and more, if we haven't explicitly identified, here's the things that we're going to stop doing and not engage in any further. That second bullet is the fidelity of use. And that's the support for staff. And so the other aspect of this is we want to ensure that all instructional staff participate in comprehensive curriculum based professional development. And so it's your learning to use the curriculum, from job embedded experts to have those experiences in collaboration with their colleagues. But to really make sure that our support is there is explicit as planned, and that it's provided for staff so that they feel successful with the curriculum. And then additionally, that fidelity of use and fidelity for implementation and support will be monitored regularly throughout the year and updates provided to the board, as well as information and stakeholder feedback collected so that we can reflect on and continue to refine those implementation processes. So that it's not a one year implementation. It's an ongoing cycle of revisiting, what data are we getting? What feedback are we getting from staff? How can we further improve and refine our processes. When we do these things successfully, the results that we're going after with this particular strategy is in literacy, we want to be able to reach that monitoring report target of 85%, or greater of our K through three students are at grade level benchmark. And that if we do have high quality materials that if we have provided staff with the support that they need to implement those materials and those best practices, that we would be able to achieve that target. We also have monitoring report targets for achievement and growth for all students, K through 12. We also have targets for additional support students, so students scoring below the 35th percentile, that we have growth metrics that we want students to achieve there. We believe that if we implement this strategy with the fidelity that it's intended to be implemented with that we would reach those targets. The other part that we will monitor is within the Student Connections survey data. And so our Student Connections Composite Score target is that 90% or greater composite score. Specifically, we're looking at the student connection survey because of that belief that if we have materials that have representative identities, and that students have experiences, where they're looking at texts through the eyes of a character that, um, shares their identity, that they're learning about experiences, that their feelings of connectedness and engagement to their curriculum to their teacher, to their classmates and to their education, and will be a component that will support our student connection state as well. And now I'd like to pass it to Liz Davis, who will talk us through mental health and belonging.
Thank you, can you hear me okay. So thank you, Superintendent Kingsley, Representative Pettersen and the board for being here. So when we talk about mental health and belonging and our work next year together, mental health and belonging, the mental health and belonging strategy really emerges with a focus of increasing student access to mental health providers both inside and outside of the school district. And, you know, we're really grateful for the time and effort and energy from our staff that all the time they put in to considering all these options, so we're excited to talk about that. So what does this mean for us next year a PSD? So our strategy has two parts looking at our work next year. One is around refining and continuing to implement a comprehensive partnership strategy around mental health. Part of that is hiring and training additional mental health staff and trainees to support our students.
So when we execute this strategy for mental health, we know that our community partners and our PSD community will understand and use processes on how to become a partner with the school district around mental health and by hiring and training additional mental health professionals and trainees are, our students will see and be able to access an increased number of mental health professionals in schools. So, in in 2023 24, PSD will refine and continue implementing community partnership community partnership process specific to mental health. This process will be transparent and include procedures, implementation guidelines and agreements for partnership. And while hire and train will recruit and train additional mental health professionals in partnership with the PST human resources, Talent Team, and truly with a focus on diversifying our mental health workforce. So PST will will have a structured opportunity to increase student access to mental health supports, alongside community partners, and within our hiring and training of new mental health employees and trainees. So it's important to note here that we are engaging, we hope to engage in this hiring and training process with multiple sources of funding next year yet, some of that funding is often not sustainable. And we'll need to continually continuously monitor some of that funding that's not sustainable. So as we talk about fidelity monitoring, we think about our touch points with students and monitoring, we wonder and we think about things like how many referrals inside and outside our system, students might be engaging in and have they been able to effectively access services outside PSD and inside our schools. That's something we can monitor and track, and even have systems already doing some of that. We can also monitor our diverse hiring practices along with HR and help support training and retaining new and future mental health employees. So we look at that we look at our Healthy Kids Colorado survey data every two years, and we'll continue to review our connection survey data annually.
And finally, as we review results, we can come back to our monitoring report targets of attendance, and we hope to see that increase in attendance. And with discipline, we would hope to see that decrease in those discipline rates. We continuously look at our social emotional learning composite scores, our connection scores, and our Healthy Kids Colorado subscale scores and monitor those results. You saw that presentation recently from Dwayne. We know that our mental health and wellness and feeling we know that our mental health and wellness and feelings of belonging needs have increased in our schools, we know that we know that from students, staff and families, we have multiple measures and surveys to continue to review and monitor those results over time.
Skipping ahead, here we go. So when we execute the strategy for mental health, we know that our community partners and our well there we go. Okay, so let me see where I'm at here. Yes, I'm done. One more thing, one more thing. So we know that from our data, then academic excellence is connected with our mental health and belonging. And this, this too, will be an area to monitor closely and we're grateful that we're committed to this strategic priority area. Okay, there we go.
Thanks, Liz. Thanks, President Patterson, board members, Superintendent Kingsley for giving us an opportunity to talk about this tonight. As we think about graduation with options. The strategy we believe, is the right one to focus on for 2324 is the updating of high school graduation requirements. And we believe that because it lays the foundations for some of the other work that's going to follow in the graduation with options as we think about this strategy and honoring students individual path building a pathway that fits inside of our 240 credit container, but the builds in flexibility to center student needs to center students individual pathways or individual desires to center learners with diverse needs and enroll is critical if we want to continue to build on some of the successes we saw this year with closing some of our gaps. When we execute on this strategy, our graduation rates will increase. And we believe that will happen among our historically marginalized students. In addition to the whole group, we will see increased access to certifications, apprenticeships, internships, other work based learning experiences, we believe that we will see students reporting self reporting, that they're leaving PSD with options, which is ultimately what we're after.
As we look forward to 2023 24, what you can expect to see this is what we'll do currently, as we think about this as a strategy that makes sense. To look forward to next year, we have a team, a cross functional team, representing integrated services, English language learners, the rest of our students, services team, individuals from buildings, working on a proposal for the board, and cabinet to take a look at for us to get feedback on in the fall. We'll gather stakeholder feedback, that team that's putting that together as we speak the rest of spring will bring forward that proposal to cabinet early in the fall. That will include the proposal for graduation requirements, but it will also include the pathway or the process, to crosswalk credits, both for high school and college level courses, but also the crosswalk that we'd like to do in a more robust fashion for CTE slash core credits, but so that we can do it not just at futures labs, but it's available, the processes available for teachers across the district to look at how they crosswalk standards to make sure that as we go after that flexibility and credit, it still meets the standards that we're asking for in both courses that it's looking for. As we gather feedback, the team leaders will come forward to cabinet to share that in fall, they will also share with the board members. Right now targeting your retreat in September would be the opportunity to gather feedback from board members around that initial proposal. That team would then take the feedback from cabinet and the board members, update the proposal and go out to many community engagement go on and find feedback from a broader set of stakeholders. All of that would happen early fall of 2023. As we have gathered the feedback board cabinet, and then ultimately from the larger stakeholders, the proposals or the proposal would be revised using utilizing the layers of feedback with a goal of having that done by the end of October, so that the initial proposal could come in front of the board for that first meeting in November for reading number one, and followed up shortly. A month or so later, for reading. Number two, the desire would be from that team to have the proposal taken care of board approving it at your December meeting, which then gives that team and the district the second semester, December through early, potentially late April to communicate with the community, the stakeholders, but also the to talk with and train staff members that it's going to impact how they talk to students. As we think about the proposal. There are some questions yet to be determined. Which grade level are we thinking about this impacting that team right now is leaning toward the the requirements staying consistent enough so that you could be approving graduation requirements in December, that would impact a class of 2425. So not the group that's sitting seniors next year. But the next year, seniors could be impacted by this. Depending on the proposal and the feedback from this group and the broader stakeholders. Maybe the proposal is a little bit more drastic than that and the conversation might need to be we're not starting that until a later class so that we have time for that transition to happen. But right now that team that's been working through the entire process is leaning toward utilizing the container we have now, but reorganizing it, which allows us to have a more flexible rollout time periods. So that's the that will be part of the feedback that you receive from that group, as you see it, both in early fall, but also when we come in front of you, in November and December. As we think about the monitoring of the graduation, or the updating of the graduation requirements, there are some things that we have begun to monitor that will help us to understand how this is rolling out. One of the things that's critical when we think about a student's individual interests and passions, helping to drive the courses they take. The Korean academic plan continues to be important that gives us that information. So we'll continue to monitor the completion of the Korean academic plan. We will monitor participation and completion and things like courses that that offer certifications and completers of certifications, the number of apprenticeships we have in the district, the number of internships in the district, all of those we monitor today will continue to monitor. And we would expect that we would see as we continue to pay more attention, that those numbers would increase, we will also monitor the number of courses that count in multiple areas. You heard me reference high school college, where we're monitoring that today. But we also want to monitor the growth of those courses, you have asked us for a number of years to think about just at the high school level, that count for potentially CTE and English credit or CTE and science. All of that will monitor and as we talk about on this slide, we will continue to monitor that as we walked through the year. So our schools can modify pay attention to that as we go not it's not just an autopsy at the end of the year. As we think about graduation rates, the results we're looking for, obviously, when we talk about graduating with options, the overall graduation rates are the end goal. That's the end goal for all that we do here in PSD. We believe we'll see increased of students on track as they move through our 912 system. Again, systems we monitor today. But we can continue to monitor and see growth of that as we move through the graduation rates above 85%, not just for our whole group. But as we look at subgroups, that we will see an increase in the percentage of students reporting graduation with options on their senior exit surveys, I think it's important for the board to know that we are receiving our first baseline for that information this spring, because we're asking seniors that question to spring. So we'll have our first baseline set of data this spring, that we'll be able to measure against going forward, what percentage this year is going to be good for us to see. And then we also believe as we do this, that we'll see an increase in the percentage of students that are identifying or indicating connections to their interests and passions have increased over what we see today, as we continue to pay attention and utilize their interests and passions to help drive their pathway through their time and PSD.
Thank you, Scott. So I'm going to talk as we already clicked it, good job. I'm going to talk through a little bit of the timeline and next steps. Before I go there, I want to say so my three colleagues just gave some pretty specific information around three strategies aligned to three priority areas. And so you know, what's our timeline. And before we jump into this, I want to say thanks to any PSD staff that might be listening, we have had, I want to say hundreds, it feels like hundreds, it's a lot of people that have been involved for months and months getting us to this point. And so I just want to publicly say thank you to them for that their work. So we're going to talk about now how we're going to move forward these three districts with these three district priorities. And what we're really focused on is alignment and sustain sustaining efforts, right so that we actually improve system outcomes over time, measurably. We're going to talk about three stages. We have a planning stage that's kind of encapsulated over the next seven months. So we have three stages over the next seven months. We're still in the planning stage through April and May and into June, which includes tonight. We have an action team meeting on the 25th of April. We have a cabinet retreat to retreat on June 6. And then we have we're back with the Board of Education for more input on June 12. And we consider all of those points, those touch points, you know, planning that we're still refining and planning. Then we move into the next stage which is launching the strategic plan, which is going to happen over a period of a couple months really maybe feels more like a few weeks, but there's steps to that right so we have an admin retreat that we usually do like a welcome back At the end of the summer, toward the end of the summer, and we're going to launch with our admin group, the strategic plan at that point, then we have an opportunity on August 10, and 11th, with some PD days, some professional development days with all of our staff. And so our staff are going to get, we can consider that a launch with our staff. And then with the board of education would be back together on August 22, which is kind of launching it for the public as well as the board. So that would be the launching component of this. And then we move into implementation. So now we're in the fall semester, and all the great detail that my colleagues just provide it, you know, we're going to put that into action, our teams are going to be putting those things into place, you should be able to as board members, while you're out in schools, physically and visually see what is happening in each of these different areas. And that works going to continue through the school year. While that works going on, the strategic plan itself has more components to it, as you know, because it's really a five year plan. And there's other components to the work that our teams put together. What we're talking about tonight is what we're you know, facing in year one. So some of those, there's going to be work going on behind the scenes next year, where we're kind of getting on Deck, the next set of things. And so we're not going into depth on that tonight, just to mention that that works going on as well. And then when we see the monitoring report in around January, February, we'll be reporting out in that process, and some of these fidelity measurements and any outcome measurements we have. But what I want to say is obviously we're not expecting the needles to peg 100 miles an hour, you know, three months into implementation. So the first mind report, but what we will see is we'll have some fidelity measures. And then having that monitoring report cycle over time, we'll see the impact of all this effort, surely, on some of those big metrics that we've tied in, and my colleagues did a great job of specifically naming as they went through their sections. Okay. So the next steps, you know, this is all about alignment system alignment is we believe how you get things done, going narrow and deep, instead of broad is another strategy that we were believing in a theory of action. And we were believing in sustained focus. So and I'm so happy that the board is driving in this direction that we're going to get sustained on a few things. And we're going to do a deep and we're going to do it well. That's how we're going to see improvement. So the next steps really involve communicating to the action teams. Like I said, we have a lot of staff that have put a lot of time and energy and getting us to where we are, those teams still exist. Obviously, as we go through this process, they are not disbanded or anything, we're really just getting going. So there'll be this continuous cycle of meeting with those teams getting feedback, getting input, refining things, and so on. So like I had mentioned a moment ago, April 25th, is our next meeting for one of those touch points. Then we move into like we're re envisioning our approach to this work, where we're strategically focusing on these high leverage opportunities. What does that kind of mean? These strategies are all aligned to priorities that we've identified and been talking about for a while, right. So there's like improvement cycles to this kind of work, where we're doing work, we're gathering information. It's formative in nature, because we're going to adjust our work based on what we're learning. And we're going to keep on getting smarter and better as an organization, but staying focused on these particular things. And that's kind of a different cycle than I feel like PSD is honestly lived through in the past. And so I'm excited about that. And then we'll hit those cycles of the monitoring report and other metrics along the way in all of our dashboards, systems. So we can kind of track in that way to how we're doing. I just mentioned a moment ago that that ongoing planning is going to be happening. So it's not tonight, we're really focused on the year one implementation, because that's right in front of us. But just to rest assured, there's other work going on, and that continues in the background, getting the next pieces on deck. And all of that's kind of fluid as we see how things are going so, and the last, the last stage is really what we can call the launch. So we are launching in fall of 2023. If you had to pick a specific date, I would pick the August 22 with the Board of Education Meeting, okay. So, Brian Kingsley said earlier tonight that people in process lead to performance. And so you can see throughout this plan, that's what our whole focus is on. It's our people. And it's our processes, and how we're going to utilize those and in a kind of focused manner in a sustained manner to impact outcomes. And that's what we're attempting to do. So we're going to close with two questions for the board. The first question is, have we addressed the board's top priorities for the input for an implementation next year? Okay, have we addressed your top priorities? The second question, are there any changes the board would like to see made? And with that, we'll turn it over to the Board of Education. Go ahead and eight.
Well, before I became a school bus driver, he was arguing for a living, so I don't plan to answer the questions you pose but I do appreciate that this current iteration is straightforward and seems like it's more achievable than the dense presentations that we had leading up to this. So that does address my priorities for implementation next year. And I think it's good to start with one of them. So that we can phase into this. And I don't know if there are any changes that I would like to see made, but I'll let you know at the retreat.
Go ahead, DJ.
First, start off I I agree that I think we were, we were too broad before. And so I do really appreciate us focusing in and going deeper. I'm gonna start actually, back to what Brian started with, with a little graphic to is, you had mentioned that, you know, you'd expect to see safety in long range all the way through? Well, I really think we would expect all that stuff that was in there, especially literacy are safety of our kids. And so I really think this is more of a change culture, you know, a system of change is what we're doing here. And we're trying to change different those three different avenues. And I'm very excited about about that, especially literacy, I really am excited to see what kind of changes we can do throughout our system, but also with the PD and the letter, and the the new books and stuff on there. I will say, though, that my expectation for the strategic plan, and it kind of goes back to a gripe I have a lot of times with the UIP is that we use language like continue to implement, hire and train. Okay, you're hired, you want to hire what, how many, and when, you know, those are the kinds of things that I would like to see in a plan. I appreciate the graduation with options that it kind of laid out different ones that when that happens in November, if it didn't happen, like, Hey, what happened? And you can tell me that. But it started off with developing a graduation proposal. Well, yeah, you know, you're gonna make a proposal to us is really what it was wasn't, I mean, that's part of it down there. I just really want us to set expectations for us and for the community, for teachers and everyone else that's out there, so that we aren't. So it doesn't get misinterpreted and that we can really drive it home. I am, I really liked the three things that we're focusing on, I would the mental health and safety one little bit, the one that I would really like us to get behind is finding a better way to address bullying and teasing in our schools and how it's how it's handled by different schools and different teachers and really have that as a focus because I, we had our conversation with the principals a few meetings back and they talked about how you know, we gotta get kids off the phones, and man that has stayed with in my head going around, because that's not realistic. And so we got to come up with mechanisms, that we can help these children and deal with the craziness that unfortunately, is in that social media. But we've got to find a better system that we are helping our teachers and administrators know how to deal with it fairly equitably, all the way through. It's so frustrating at how many times we will hear about a kid that had been bullied and finally lost it. And he's the one being punished. And we got to have systems in place that that kid feel safe to come and talk to us. And we can make changes. And I think that's the same thing with with teachers too, is that you know that if they're not feeling safe in their environment, we got to have systems to make it safer. And so I would throw that aspect in there on mental health that I really would love to see it as a major focus. The other two, I think make great sense. And I think we can we can break it down to where we know where we're going with it. And the whole group everybody knows. Yeah, so I think those covers my Thanks, Kristen.
Yeah, thank you guys. I think this really does. It brings it to you But I'd always term to the kiss term. Keep it simple, silly. So you just want to you know, and that's what it does. Yeah, silly, you know other things. But it really does, it narrows it down, it makes us focus, I really like this. I do have a few questions. So on the graduation a lot with options piece of it, I would love to see if we could engage the students that we had today. And the rest of this the student, the rest of the stack, and see what they would love to do for the buckets and how we talked about that, because they were chomping at the bit to get two buckets. And if we do this, we were talking about doing that next year with stack. I feel like, if we sat down and had one two hour session with them, y'all would probably have 90% of your answers right there. The work would be done for you. So if we could get that before the end of the school year to help it help you all with that proposal and then bring it to us, I think that would that would really be informative for everybody. And then maybe looking for specific student interests to have those who aren't who are behind the the stat group does not have a lot of the kid there, they have a lot of the kids who are very engaged and want to make changes and want to see how that can, can be put forth. And maybe there's some kids that we can access that are in that nine through 12, who are not at where they need to be. I mean, we can engage them as well. And I don't know if there's a way to do that. Maybe for credit. You know, like if there's, you know, if there's a way for it to count towards a, you know, a government class or something to that effect. Anyway, that's that was one thought that I had. question I had was on the completion of the career and academics plan, what year do they complete that?
They we monitor it every year because they have actual lessons annually that they have to do so we pay attention to it. sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, all the way through 12th grade. It's completed when they take their exit survey as a 12th grader. So which is part of what we talked about tonight, but but we pay attention to it each year.
Perfect. I just wanted to make sure that it was not one of those that they filled it out in their 12th grade year and went whatever. Perfect. So start in 16 all the way through 12. Is there a couple is it okay, if I
I think we're just rolling for each person. So go ahead, and then Carolyn's next.
Okay, so um, for the, for the mental health, I, I love the idea of it, I hope it works. I know that everybody's struggling to hire and keep mental health professional. So that's, that's gonna be a struggle for us. And I think we have to acknowledge that. But we need to also try as hard as we can to make it happen. What I am curious about is the Healthy Kids Club survey comes out every other year. And I don't want to wait every other year to see if we're making progress on that. So what's what can we do when we had the connection surveys, so we can use that. But when you look like you're chomping at the bit, you got an answer for me, I'd like
to speak to and if that's okay, let's just for a minute. So we have a few sources, it's true, like if they're kind of spread out. So we have things that give the student voice, teacher voice and parent voice on these things around mental health, wellness and belonging. And so in there, and some of the surveys are offset so that all every year of the connections is at once every year is you know in the fall, so that's great. The family engagement survey or the year, the tell survey is every other year, and the family engagement to already see that one are healthy kids, Colorado is every so three of them are every other one of them's every year. So collectively, though, we get a pretty consistent once a year kind of input from a couple different levels, if you will, you know students themselves families, and then teachers and kind of where we're at and what levels we can monitor those. Okay. Within the connection survey, there's a really interesting graph that Liz and her colleagues and I have been talking about that we'll be utilizing, that really shows you where which students are kind of shown up low on both the connections and on the social emotional learning competencies. And it's a real small subset of our overall set of students, which makes it a real interesting group to specifically monitor. And we know exactly which kids those kids are. And we're not limited to waiting once a year for the connection survey because we have staff in our schools and our family liaisons, and all kinds of people so we can build some things, which we're talking about doing to monitor that in a more formative kind of real time aspects, something we haven't had we haven't done in the past, which is a possibility because this is a priority. And it's in the strategic plan. It'll just show up in the UIP and we're putting quite a bit of funding towards mental health and wellness. Obviously, you know, we can do this and then the budget design team, the cabinet and the board have supported this type of like research evaluation capability. And so this is one of the areas will point that capability and utilize it.
Okay. Great, thank you. I think that will help. And I know that the grant that we'll be getting is going to help a lot in this area as well. So I'm very excited about that. And then I have one other thing. Let me see if I can find it now. And that was on the Yes. And on the literacy. Question was that I had on that was when you said instructional staff, is that are those certified teachers, or is that the parents that are helping the certified teachers as well,
it would be the parent for instructional paraprofessionals as well. So we've been working to build in professional development days into our classified staffs calendar, particularly the instructional staff so that they can participate in literacy, professional development.
Awesome, that's fantastic. And I love the idea to have monitoring how the students see themselves. That's one of those, like, again, in in library world, we refer to that as the mirrors, Windows and sliding glass doors. And so I just love the ability to monitor that and see if if the kids are seeing more of themselves and how they can go ahead and go through that. So thank you,
Carolyn. So I wanted to just follow up a little bit on what Kristin was talking about, about the career and academic plan. So kids generally start that in eighth grade, is that correct? Or is that about sixth grade, sixth grade, okay. And then, as I've visited schools, I've realized that not all schools are implementing the current academic plan the same, like some schools have a much more robust plan for the kids to do their career and academic plan. I know that at Wilmington, middle school, that the kids spend some time every day on that. And if I look at Lopez, elementary, the leader in me really those kids are starting that even earlier, right? They there, they have a little planter, right? And they are they're working on that really early. So are we thinking about any kind of basic ceiling or expectation we have about that career neck? The for the current academic plan across all the schools so that it'll be fairly similar?
So right now, Carolyn, there is what we what I would say is a floor, right? What's the what's the expectation for all that's what we're monitoring, for completeness. And it's a set of lessons, if you will, that are by grade level, that have been determined by counselors in conjunction with our career and innovation team. So and they've done that as part of the summer work the last several years. And that's in place right now. So when I asked and pull the data that Tonya helps me get, that's what it's assessing, have they taken a look? And are they done with those lessons? There are others that go broader that go beyond? And you're right, right now at Wellington, that height those the middle school there is doing much of what our middle schools and other places are doing their their schedule at the high school level is the same as their middle school schedule. So they have that extra skinny period that our big high schools right now don't have. So that is something I think the district will have to monitor and pay attention to going forward. But that is definitely a master schedule conversation, right is to take a look at what's the impact of that because master schedule, were more consistent across our district right now than we've ever been with master schedule. But our two new high schools have that skinny that the four bigs have never had. So it's it, I think it's that's worth further look at to see how's that impacting things? It'll
be interesting to see, yeah, if that works out really well for them, or if we get better outcomes because of them. So I'm interested to see how that'll turn out. And then I heard you say, a year we're talking about historically marginalized students will have more access to graduation with options. So that made me want to ask you, what were those barriers? And how will those barriers be improved?
Well, I think just in general trying to talk about I mean, our belief is that when we look at Passion Driven learning, and when we build in flexibility into our, into our options, if you are pathways, it may change the opportunities, right, we've seen some barriers for students where they've had a support class that hasn't counted for English credit.
So I'm thinking actually, of our ESL students being negatively impacted. So so just describe for people a little bit of what that barrier was like and how that might be addressed. So are our parents I think that might be listening with kids in the ESL program. I think they'd like to know that
Yeah, I think taking a look at what is what what can count for say English credit, which I think is what you're referring to. I would also refer to conversation was had and community comment in here about taking what's that can't find it in my head right now. ASL. Yeah. So ASL is something we've already had conversations as a district? And how can we count that as credit that historically might not have. So I think taking a look at what are those barriers that work is in process right now. But I also think, an area like mathematics, that this board helped us a few years ago, take a look at computer science, which has helped some students that might have struggled, when they got to Algebra Two, that they were allowed to take a computer science course that might actually help them be more employable than the algebra two, and that helps with math bucket. So those kinds of opportunities exist also for individuals that might not find their passion area, in a traditional core class, but might find it in geometry construction, for instance. So I think those are opportunities in front of this district.
Moved out every everything Scott said is great. And I would add to like, as we expand in which we are working on career tech ed options, dual enrollment options, you know, concurrent enrollment, all these options. But on top of that work, we're working on the systems, the families, the students awareness of those options. And in I think the board's aware of some of the work obviously, going on down near the mall and stuff and a new center that's going to be opening up and stuff, which a big part of that idea is that people become more aware of what is available, well, who's who's currently may be less aware. And who was and has been aware, if you think about that, and how that intersects with historically marginalized students, I think we're talking about expanding those opportunities in that way. And then you think about integrated suit services, and IEPs. And I each IEP driven diplomas, that's on the table as part of this work as well. And that hits a whole nother group that needs some support in that space, and that the board is going to get to decent thinking about that. So there's a lot to this that's going to address exactly, I think what you're asking about.
Go ahead, Brian. And then if you have more, Carolyn after that.
Thank you. So I just I really appreciate the conversation. I think for those members of the public that are listening into this that you may be curious around, like the integrity of our diploma, maybe wondering, are we looking to kind of change the rules in order to just improve graduation rates? I want to say with emphatically no. That is not what we are after here. I want us to just reclaim that this district has its highest graduation rate in 16 years with our current standards, we have not changed one thing. I would also say as a point, it's outlined in our monitoring report that there's tremendous integrity of our data in terms of college and career readiness. When you think about our students who graduate and go on to a two year or four year program, their average GPA is above a 3.0. It's been much higher than many of our comparable districts. So this is about fine tuning. I like what Scott Nielsen shared about passion driven learning. This is also about opening access to courses that students are locked out of. So that's what this is about. I really want to be sure just want to reiterate that not just to the people here. I know you get it. But as we continue to engage the public in this particular conversation, this is not a shell game, and I just wanted to really make sure that we're clear about that.
Carolyn, did you have anything else you wanted to ask?
Follow up on the icap Go ahead. I last meeting on one of our consent agenda, things there was something in it it talks about, about the icap completion. And I thought it was great that you you defined it, I thought really well this time that, you know, it's Each grade has their own to complete. And I really wonder if that is something you know, it's almost on track, you know, to be able to, again, with graduation, it's an on track thing. I really wonder if that's something that we could monitor, you know, is it's something that we talk about and and as US tries to help drive it to, because I think it is something that is missed out on many missed out with opportunities for these kids. And I think if we also shine a light on a little bit more, so I just wanted to bring that up because I have this thought last meeting. And then when we talked about again, I just think it's something that we we are missing out on so just want to share that.
Jim or Jess, do you have anything? Go ahead? Yes.
So I have a few. For starters, you just talked about the ninth and 10th grade ELA and we're using the IMS? Are we also planning to use the culturally responsive rubric again as well. Yes, great. We talked a lot about testing and see themselves in monitoring. Do you have any anticipation and like how they might want how we're going to monitor that how we'll get that feedback from them.
You know, probably our best avenue is first starters possibly through the connection survey. So we have different questions about how students are connected to their interest, I can see a pathway of a couple of questions within the connection survey that show, you know how students are experiencing their curriculum, you know, noticing about the materials that they have, whether it reflects their identities, what what might be their level of awareness about the curriculum that's in front of them, I think there's also a level of family engagement and family survey that we do have a family engagement survey that it could potentially be a couple of items in that family engagement survey that also that we can gauge whether people are seeing a difference in the materials that other students are experiencing in the classroom.
So just sort of a kind of trigger a thought. So we heard tonight about a classroom with a student who saw themselves in a book, and then the class really supported them. Now, I know that's not quantitative data, right. But if there's any weight way to get more of like, even those stories to be part of that data, I know, I would like to hear it, because it's really feel good. Alright, so move on. We're talking a lot about getting teachers professional development, and we really want them to do have fidelity, do we have any ideas on how teachers will get support or be able to ask questions between their professional development days.
So I don't want to get too far out in front. But you know, we are, as we talked to the board, at our last meeting, we are contracting or working with rivet education to identify a professional development provider who can assist with that, that and my understanding is part of that providers work is to provide that job embedded coaching that happens in between those district led professional development sessions or provider led professional development sessions. There's also some on demand components of the curriculum that are available and in support of one of the other aspects of the plan that the team is developing are different collaborative days for teens, so grade level, like teams to come together. So creating that network of both the in District support of your teammates and colleagues across the district as well as to have a professional provider who can provide expertise and on demand, who knows the program more deeply than we do, since we're new to it, that can give us that instant sort of professional expertise.
Great. And I know we talked to them about that with the literacy adoption, but I, I appreciate it. And then I think I'd have a couple more questions for mental health and belonging, I think it kind of piggybacks on what Kristin said earlier? Do you have any idea how many people we will likely be able to hire for those mental health positions? Go ahead, Brian.
So we have scenarios. And we we want in DJ, thank you for your question about this, too, in terms of wanting to get to that level of explicit detail, the WHO THE what the where we have scenarios that we've worked on both that. So let me slow down. This is such an important conversation. But I also want to be respectful of the processes that we have in our system, whether it's our budget development process, whether it's our big circle negotiations process, and not put something here that we didn't bring other people along and have shared dialogue. So that's the reason why you didn't see that level of detail here tonight. What I will tell you is the team is taking a very aggressive approach to trying to figure out how do we leverage any new dollars that may be available through the school finance act, but also recognize that that is not going to come close to meeting the total need. So they're aggressively pursuing as many grant opportunities as Liz articulated earlier, but we need to acknowledge they're not sustainable over time, we're going to continue to go after them aggressively. And we believe there's incredible news on the near horizon about that. But it's a both and not an either or, because even with the grant funded positions, if we were to get them and or any dollars that we put together from our general fund, it's still not meeting the total knee that's outlined in the Healthy Kids Colorado survey. And so I just I know, that's sobering. But we promised to bring that level of detail back to you, as well as through the budget development process in the big circle. So we're doing that in partnership with people and not to people so but I appreciate the level of questions and the push, it's the right push. We just want to make sure we're respectful of those other areas in vehicles. Okay, for sure.
And I don't think it's just a question of dollars, but even just are the people there to be able to hire is more my question like do we do we feel confident that we will be able to fulfill the positions that we have the money to afford? And I don't necessarily know that you have an answer but a curiosity for whatever we do. Go ahead less.
I think more to come on that you know, Having spent the last eight years at the university and working with students who are eager to get into jobs and systems that are functional and supportive of employees, I think PST would be a competitive place to be. And, and I've had conversations with students over the years on that. So I don't have concerns. And I want to be collaborative in our community with our partners on how we strategize that. Okay, I appreciate that. Thank
what she said. And I want to I want to build something, I want to build off of something that you've actually been incredibly educative to our system. That, you know, nine months ago investment in this area, I would have brought a level of professional ignorance. That was said, we just need to add more mental health specialists. And yes, that's true. But this is also about adding more psychologists, this is also about more school counselors, this is also about nurses. This is also more about other wraparound supports that are identity based. So there's a lot of different ways of looking at this. And so when we think about the spread, and the hybrid approach that the system is thinking about, and I promise, the big reveal will be coming around how we're thinking, it's a lot of those positions where I think we're more able to attain some of them in each of those areas, rather than putting all of our resources into one particular type of role. Thank you.
Carolyn. Looks like you wanted to add something this conversation?
Yeah, I was gonna say that I toured long view today in those beautiful big building on the we're going to have a mental health facility here in Fort Collins to serve our citizens. But they do plan to open in 2024. That's a really big facility. They're already hiring right now. And so they plan to open in 2024. So about the time they are hiring, we will be competing for the same applicants. So that's probably something we need to think about. But I think you're right, Liz, a lot of our applicants are looking for a place to work where they can be happy and feel and be fulfilled. And so I think that's like the cache, maybe that we have to offer. And so yeah, but I think it is going to be a heavy lift, hiring iron staff is going to be a heavy lift.
Just back to you.
So one more overarching question. I promise. It's not a doozy. And it may not be wanting to answer tonight, but maybe at our retreat or something in the future. But you guys mentioned that we should be able to see the strategic plan next year when we're going investing in schools. So I would like to know what we should be looking for to see it. Because I am not the expert. So I'd love for you to tell me whenever you kind of figure that out?
Can we just take a small crack at it and just go with each of the areas real quickly? You want to kick us off? Tracy? Yeah. So
with that fidelity of implementation, we will be identifying some really explicit look for so I think it would be beneficial for board members to be able to see that tool of what we as a group of admin will be looking for and coaching and engaging staff for those are the things in practices that we want to be able to see, you know, the the behaviors of the students, how they're engaging with texts, how they're engaging with one another, the level of collaborative conversation that they're having the engagement in written response and tasks that they're doing. So those Look Fors, as part of the development, there are some that are embedded in the curriculum. But we have some that we've developed and have been working on and iterating on for the last year and a half, that we would forecast as being part of that what you would see if there is fidelity of implementation in a classroom.
Then I'm thinking about maybe you would see some mental health trainees in our buildings, maybe you would see more of the collaboration we're talking about, between thinking about mental health and belonging between counselors and nurses and school psychologists and mental health specialists, and integrated services, social workers, really, you know, all working together alongside the rest of our staff. And so in really all holding that piece, it's it doesn't mental health and belonging doesn't fall in one area. It falls with all of our work in all that we do every single day. So I think you'll see lots more of that collaboration, especially with community partnerships, and we're excited about next steps with that. You know, Kristin talked about the resources Fair last night and it was exciting. We had so many partners in the space supporting Kids, and I think we'll see more and more of that with some structures on how to partner together. So we're excited about that. Yeah.
And I would say, if you think back to the things I talked about as some of the fidelity monitors for graduate with options, right, it's along the way. But I think all the way six through 12, I think you could talk to kids about what are their interests? What are some of their passions? Do they feel connected to those in the schools that they're in? There's learning to do just by talking to kids at any point about those now or next year? I also think you're, you're probably not going to allow you might see them working on their current academic plan. But do they know about it? Are they aware of it? And I would encourage us as we go forward, and I won't be here to monitor this. But as you go forward, I would encourage you to talk about that career and academic plan. Do they know where they're headed? Do they know some of their interests? I think sometimes we get connected to Zillow as a tool. And I would encourage us to have conversations about do they have an idea of their career and academic plan, and use that language with them and see if they can go with you on that and have some idea of what it's telling them? The other I think is asking about interests? And do they feel like we're connected to their interest? They have opportunities to go after that and our buildings.
Anything else? Yes. Jim,
first, I love the idea of moving safety to the baseline, I think that's something we just need to continue to do an excellent job on. And that's that's where that needs to be looking at literacy, mental health and graduation requirements. Another way I was trying to think about this is if I had to throw something off the boat, what would it be? I think that's a good exercise to go through. And for me, that would probably be number three, the the multiple pathways because I feel like literacy is so critical, and we've got a well underway, we need to do an excellent job on that with our teachers, and mental health. We're dealing with life and death situation. So it's hard for me to split one and two. But for me, if I had to pick one, it would be three. That's it.
Kristen, you had something else? And then I have some things. Yeah, it
just it just struck me as you were talking. The when do we let our students sorry, when we let our students know, in the families as well, the multitude of options that they have? Because I think that's part of it, too, is is, you know, do we do that in the freshman year? Do we do it in sixth grade? Do we do it in eighth grade when they're thinking about transitioning? Because I feel like that needs to be a huge part of this as well.
Yeah, we do it right now eighth to ninth grade? I think well, we've heard through the strategic planning processes, we can get better at that. I think when we talked to the team, about updating the graduation requirements, they felt like that was critical. As we continue to think about what are we doing to tell people about the options to make sure we're telling them about the most current options, instead of putting a ton of energy into telling them about what may go away in a year. So I think that was part of the staging. With that being important was that that was that felt like groundwork to allow us to do the other work that we feel like is important. I think the other thing, and maybe Jim, this may help you as well, when we as a team, were talking about the three that were most important, right? One of the things we felt like was made the graduation requirements more doable, was the group that is actually doing the work tends to be the leaders. This one doesn't lean as much on the teachers, initially, the teachers focus on literacy across K 12. Yes, we're impo, we're bringing on a new curriculum, K six, or K five, that's a blast from the past K 6k. Five. But we're talking literacy all the way through the system. And that's not going to stop next year, just as we think about continue energy there. But the graduation requirements, we felt like the cross functional team is, is creating the proposal right now that that we will present or the district will present to the these two groups in the fall. And we felt like that didn't get down to the classroom level and influence that as much as some of the other things we talked about and graduated with options. I did wonder
about that. And I appreciate you covering it. Thanks.
Yeah, go ahead.
So I would thank you for the question about how we market the various options that we have. I think whether and as many of you were a part of the community engagement session on that topic. You know, our data suggests that a lot of people who are moving to our community have older students, and they're not just moving when they're in the transition year. And so this is really pushing our thinking we're getting a lot of feedback around how do we make sure that the options are attainable and accessible from a language standpoint for middle school students to see themselves in and aspire to attain How do we message and over communicate, but keep it simple. And I think many of you as you responded to a presentation on the various options like we're learning, and we're, we speak as you speak, we're in the system. So that's an area that we're targeting around reimagining how we communicate around that in the year ahead. Got
a question for that, too. Because Can we can we make sure that we're doing that within our various schools as well? So when students are going back and forth between comprehensive Yeah, and and, and specialized schools, so they understand what their options are as well? That'd be great. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, this is kind of a pretty specific thing. But at the risk of being a turd in the Punchbowl, I wanted to bring it up. When we talked about safety and security and mental health, I was reminded when I went to the safety, community engagement last Thursday, and two Sundays ago, Denver Post had a front page article about expulsions in Denver and surrounding Metro districts. And I, at least for me, I think it would be good for us at some point, to evaluate our process for expulsions and see whether they're they're consistent as as consistent as they can be, and at or at our at an appropriate level. And that we're doing what we should be doing to make sure that our schools stay safe. So I don't remember if we have a the the presentation on this one is that twice a year? Do we have that in the fall as well.
We the last several years, our presentation has really been focused on what we're doing with our SRO partnership. Yeah. That has been a couple times a year in dinner session is one that's better. The last I guess that dinner session has been this year. Last year was when we did it four times here. So yeah,
I just didn't know what the appropriate time was. And I'm not saying that we should do it quickly. But it seems to me that we should evaluate whether we're doing what we need to do in that space. Thanks.
All right. So just quickly, following up on you said there is also a bill currently in the legislature that would institute additional procedures and expectations around expulsions. And we shared that with staff to get their feedback and are trying to work with our lawmakers on that. But we may hear more about that from our legislature before things are done. So I have three areas, two questions. And each starting with literacy, I saw that the next the plan is to continue the adoption with 910. I'm I guess I'm surprised as a layperson that we wouldn't go next to middle school so that we can continue the expectation, you know, the what we've the foundation we've built in K five, so if you could address that question.
Yes. And my understanding is that the ninth and 10th grade curriculum is more than 20 years old. It has been by far the most in need of an adoption for both, you know, high quality as well as currency of materials. And so that's my understanding is why the team elevated that one is to be next in line because it is the most dated adoption that we have currently in our literacy span K 12.
Well, that's certainly fair, do we risk for lack of a better term, backsliding with the middle school than if we set off set all this great foundation in K five and then they get to middle school?
It's a fair question. I think what we're resource constrained in terms of our capacity to implement new curriculum everywhere and support it with the same people. So that's an that's a challenge. There's no doubt that we have curricular challenges at the middle school level as well. The adoption recency at the middle school level is more recent than the high school Pisa. Dr. Gao is absolutely correct. Why that's jumping up. If you remember the data points from the quality review that we did with TNTP. A point that elevated in a good way at the middle school level was the quality and the complexity of the texts. At the middle school level is quite sound. Where we have challenges is on the actual curriculum and the instructional activities in terms of actually building Knowledge and having evidence based questions wrapped into that there's work to make quality improvements, the team is already trying to do that in house. I think that's a short term solution, not a long term solution, we will need to have an adoption process at the middle school level in short order. But I do think that the team is pretty spot on with prioritizing High School and, and really taking another look at an English teachers, I don't want to start with you, but like re analyzing our adherence to the canon. You know, we think about our perspective around identifying and honoring multiple perspectives and multiple identities. There are new texts, the candidate is not bad, it is absolutely educationally appropriate. So hear me. But it's not the only set of texts that we should be thinking about, especially knowing that as our community, and our society continues to diversify itself, we need to begin to bring in those various representations not just in characters, but also in authors. So if that's the intent,
that's an era Thanks for that clarification. So the second question in the in the literacy area, what you mentioned a couple of ways we can check on fidelity. You'll recall that one of the concerns that I raised when we talked about the literacy adoption was that we ensure that we still have social studies and science and specials and all the other things that we want to have in elementary school, will there be monitoring for lack of a better word of fidelity to that expectation as well?
Yes, thank you for that question. We're actually working as an elementary group of administrators right now on master scheduling best practices that re commit to the what did our curriculum say is needed for fidelity of implementation for what we've adopted in math and science and in social studies, and that, in collaboration with one another, as schools, we're building our master schedule with those given parameters from the curriculum and what it names is needed for fidelity. So that we are not It absolutely is one of the parameters and values that we have is to not let go of science and social studies and math instruction in service of new adoption.
Excellent, thanks. I'm really glad to hear that I appreciate it. So moving to the mental health area, I would just say that I, what DJ said about bullying resonates with me a lot. Not sure you could maybe slip that under safety or whatever. But I think there is a there is really a question of, of bullying and harassment and those kinds of things that is, can affect kids for the rest of their lives, frankly. And so I think what we can do to address that anything we can do to address that, it'd be a good thing. I will say, as I mentioned about the expulsions thing there is, as you know, with also possibly some legislation coming in the legislature that's going to try to address the at least the stuff that's associated with harassment and discrimination, which is only a subset of bullying. But it, so be on lookout for that. I know you're giving comments in response to that. But anyway, so just sort of ditto to what he said about bullying. The other question that I wanted to ask was, you know, as superintendent Kingsley mentioned, even if we even if we can hire all these people, that that we are hoping to hire and bring in trainees or whatever other creative ideas, we have to bring people under directly under our umbrella. One thing that several of us have asked over time is is there a possibility of partnering with folks in the community to bring some of those resources into the school not to replace what we can do? We've already said that we can't possibly meet all the need, even if we had the money and the grants and all this and hire everybody we can hire, we feel like I'm meeting the need. So is there some kind of partnership that allows mental health professionals into the schools either during the day or as a community hub kind of thing, so that so that students can access as many mental health folks as possible. So I'd like to see that sort of work in its way into this as well. If that's possible, I don't know whether you want to say anything, or address that or just take that as a value statement, but entirely up to you.
Now, that's great feedback. And, you know, I think we're thinking a lot about, you know, the edges of our PSD community linking with our community partners and systems and what that looks like, and how to operationalize that in a in a way that provides transparency and access and more support for our kids and families. It's we're excited about some of the things we've been thinking about and talking about and truly, with conversations with our community partners already, so more to come. And that's the work of next year. So we're excited.
Okay, I appreciate that. Go ahead, Brian,
just to build off of what Liz is saying, and maybe we need to, as a staff need to go back and relook at our language, because I don't know if it's as explicit as we need to be around the partnership strategy, but it's there. And I know that you and Carolyn who had an opportunity to attend our state of our youth event, you know, our providers in both mental and behavioral health space, have given me really clear feedback that they want it to be easier to partner. And so part of our strategy is building not just a single point of contact, but a system around defining what a partnership is and what it means. And one of the things that we need to work through is are they paid for services, because that may not be a partnership? Right? That's, that's a service. And so thinking about how we look at that has implications on a few different things. But the team has put some really good scenarios that we intend on moving forward in the year ahead, that will, it's going to come in short order. But around trying to operationalize this making it easier to come and partner with us. I feel really good about the things that are happening.
Well, and I'll just say, obviously, we have health clinics and a couple of our schools which which is a, which is a model that could maybe be expanded, depending on resources and space. Okay, so the last area is sort of the general area that No, it's not, it's not graduating with options. Sorry. Scott. Is No. So So I I gather that focusing on these specific items under each of the three areas is a year one thing and what I think I heard you say Dwayne, is that we should expect those things potentially to change as we move into year two, and year three, as the year one things are accomplished. Is that correct?
The key that you just said if and as year one things are accomplished. So some of that work, obviously, like the literacy adoption, that's not a year, one thing that's going to continue, like the support and the training for staff and so on, that goes on year after year, even as John pasand Tino in his department is really moving into the ninth 10th realm and all that. But what I'm being clear about is there are things in that strategic plan you all have seen that are they're not, they're not gone. And we're being strategic about thinking, well, which ones do you start onboarding? And I just want to say real quick, what does onboarding really mean and look like? If you think about our three priorities right now, our literacy, and mental health, longing, graduating with options, we've been setting the stage for that work for multiple years, quite frankly, prior to today, right? So the system is not shocked by these are three priorities, in our case that we've made over time is really strong about why these are our three priorities. And that same type of upfront thinking and work and preparation should go into anything that we're onboarding is like a next piece, we might move into the system, you kind of start now building system awareness and readiness and capability. It's not like all of a sudden would just pull a switch on something so that that onboarding business, it's just a comment on those things aren't lost, the work our staff did is important in those areas and the community feedback, we got that there stages to rolling this stuff into in a thoughtful way into a plan that's actually can operationalize and impact the system. So that's a mouthful to say. That's what I mean by onboarding, basically,
that's fair. And I want to be clear that I wasn't talking about adding a different priority. I was talking about the action plans underneath the priorities. And I guess, in answer to your question, Am I comfortable with top priorities for implementation next year? Yes. And if those if those are the priorities for I mean, if those are the action plans for two or three years running underneath those priorities, I wouldn't be here to address it, except maybe in committee comment three minutes, then I would be a little concerned, right? Because there are other very important things that were that were identified by those action teams, right, that that, you know, maybe they bow in priority, if you will, to these three things we've identified, but they can't be left for five years from now. Because as we're talking, kids are moving through the system, right. And so we need to do what we can to address, dress those within the capacity of the system. So I get that balance. I'm just, you know, pushing over here, and we'll have pushing over there. And we'll get to the right middle place. I'm sure. So, and the last thing I wanted to address was this question of expectations. I forget who mentioned it, that, you know, what are the expectations that we can reasonably expect from this, you? You spoke, you all spoke about? metrics that you want to use the monitor the the success of these action plans under these priority areas. And I think that's terrific. I'm so excited to see that the data is going to be monitored. I guess the question I have is, what should the expectations of this board and the community be with respect to the timeframe by which we're going to see meaning meaningful improvements, let alone actually meeting all of those, all of those targets? But What expectations do you think we should have in that space?
I think it's conversational. I mean, we talked about just you Ask this a similar question maybe using a little bit different framing and push me if I'm interpreting the questions as the same, and maybe they're different. As you're going in schools, I think there's different stakeholder groups that you should be looking for different things. Right. So as you're engaging with students, you know, are they immersed in our new curriculum? And is it meaningful experience? You can see that you can count it, you can hear it, right. That's things that I would invite you to be curious about. I think from a teacher perspective, it's those same things to it, but also getting data around it. How is the support systems working? You know, have the professional development opportunities been sufficient for you to feel like you're able to do this and do it with integrity? What do you need more of what do you need less of? Those are questions that I think are fair game, for us to make quality, continuous improvements. I think the highest lever though, that we all have a system, executive leaders and a governance team is to be asking school and district leadership, what are the systems to ensure that this work is sustainable? So when you think about the various things, I'll just use graduation with options as an example, you can look at whether somebody did an icap or not. Or you can be asking you like, what are the systems to make sure people are doing that? And who are the people who are not doing it? And what are we doing about it? And what supports can we provide as a system to help that go, the more systems level of thinking that we can bring into this district, the better we will catapult and accelerate this work. And it's not it can't be a gotcha. And you don't all none of you show up as a gotcha type person in any of these environments, I fully, you know, ask you that you ask that you engage, but also realize that leaders are doing things differently that they haven't been asked to do before. So as we think about the system's level type questions give grace as well, recognizing this is a new expectation, not just for those who are on the ground, but those who are leading the effort, both at the school and the district level. And I think us having safe conversations around those things can be quite transformative.
Okay, so I agree 100% with everything you just said. And I was asking a slightly different question, which maybe Dwayne gets he's let me
maybe I get it in a different way. Different lands very nice way. I have a different I can ask it a different way. Yeah, no, I. Yes. I think
I caught it. So I would say this yes to everything. Superintendent, Kingsley just said, and I would mention in this room that yeah, I am challenged to think about how improvements in any one of these areas would not affect all three of these areas, right. So if you improve literacy, if you improve mental health and wellness, you're going to impact graduation rates, it's going to be a little bit of a lagging indicator down the road, but you are going to impact it and sustainably which is important, right? The first two literacy and mental health, those two are going to react a lot faster. And they're going to be there. We have data on it, we know that they move together actually mental health, wellness, belonging and academic outcomes. So these three things do move together. Now, if we implement the plan, and not if let me reword that, when we implement the plan super successfully, in 2324, you know, and we do our monitoring report, which is looking back at 2324 data the following year, or Yeah, it's not it's not going to show up, in my opinion, and a whole lot of metrics, the implementation your I would be surprised. I do think that we might start to see some needles move a little bit in the following year, like the second year of implementation, if we don't see any movement at all in the right direction, and at least a couple indicators, the third year out, I'll be I'll be quite frankly, surprised. That's what I think Rob, you might be asking is like the timeline of when we start to see these things. And what I what I do think we're going to see is it's going to cut across these things, we're going to see connections, self reported connections going up, we're going to see, you know, discipline rates going down, we're gonna see achievement, which we measure quite well, like at the elementary level, in particular on literacy, which we're targeting initially. So in those early grades K three, especially, we'll probably see those metrics start to move. I think that's a reasonable expectation. So not the year of implementation. May be something a year or two. Definitely, I would guess by year three.
Okay, that's that's the that's the that's the flavor I was trying to get at. I guess the question becomes that we have this these targets of what 95% or 90% or 85%, depending on what we're talking about. Is it realistic to expect that we're going to actually achieve those targets in four years? Five years? 10 years? What do we think?
I say? Yes, I think there's no i Yes. i say yes, because we didn't set any targets in the morning report that aren't based in some form of reality, right? They're absolutely there. They're rigorous, but they're attainable. And we know that existence proof right that we have evidence that things have existed or occurred in other places. So I'm I want to say yes, that Our targets. And keeping in mind, we've always talked about this as as a leadership group, that the real importance is not as much to the exact target. No, it's the trend, right? And it's where are we moving? Are we improving things are things sliding down, that is truly the most important. As long as we're moving in the right direction, wherever you set that target, eventually, you would get there. And in any way, so there you go. So well, monitoring the trends, I think is critical.
So I did understand your question. And I'm not being defensive. But I know. Ah, that's fair. But public education, since its inception, has been really good at evaluating and monitoring student data. And I didn't answer that question in that way. Because we can continue, we're already doing that through the monitoring report, there are well embedded systems in this district around being data informed around student outcomes. This district's theory of action, though, has to shift to marrying those student outcomes to adult practices, the highest levers that we all have as leaders is paying attention to the right adult practices, and making people feel supported and helped in those particular areas. Your question is appropriate around when can we expect everybody wants to know that, but the only way that we get there is by focusing on the adults. And I just share that with you, because I think what can get lost in translation is just monitoring the heck of the student piece. We've already been doing that. Right. So that's that's the shift that I think is fundamental that I just wanted to explicitly name.
Well, I'm assuming Yeah, I appreciate that. And I'm assuming that the adult practices will, at the very least be monitored, monitored in the unified improvement plan in a quantitative way, if not also in a qualitative way, like what Jeff was talking about? So I think that's I think it's a both and it's not a it's not an either or, and obviously, the end result is we want the students to be successful. So all right, Nate, go ahead.
Well, I wanted to illustrate what we talked about, but also just pulled it up. That all of this work that went into getting where we are today, very much value it and thank everyone that participated in and the action teams and everyone. It's always been my concern that we don't we, we hesitate to overemphasize graduation rate rather than trying to educate individuals, so that they're solid, and they can go out and do what they want to do in the world. So the monitoring report, and all the indicators are ways that we track that. And but I think we want to, we want to make sure that all of our systems are in place to try not to lose any student on their way to aging out of our system. So just want to point that
out, Nate. Thanks, TJ.
I did also want to ask if if you've been able to come up with something that we can name that we're we're taking off the plate or that we're de emphasizing we there were some mentioned for the literacy, but I was wondering if if there's something that we can name or make our system feel better about that. Something else that's gonna win.
But what I would share is as a step forward, if you remember the last iteration of the plan that you saw tonight, had about five to seven additional strategies on top of the ones you saw tonight, per item, per per item. Yeah. So that was our initial step of not adding more increased pressure into the system does that answer of taking away things that are currently potentially in place? I think some of those things are in the implementation process at the elementary level, I think that's going to have different implications in the graduation with options piece, as we learn about that. I think adding increased mental health supports, takes things pressures, off the, you know, shoulders and hearts and minds of current staff and structure. So this is definitely you know, the recalibration and the strengthening of the alignment is not just in response to feedback from you, but it's been in response to feedback from system stakeholders who have been saying, you know, we need to have the systems to do this. We're excited we share the vision and want to go in this direction. But you know, do we have the money to sustain it? Right, do we have the capacity to train on it all at once? And I think it's, we have really high expectations of each other. So the dialogue that we are having around the push and pull. I'm hopeful that through tonight's presentation, it's a start. It's not the end all be all, but it's definitely In response to people saying, let's take some things and simplify, and I feel really great that the team did a great job on that. So I appreciate the question.
Jim, you had something you
wanted just one final thing. I just wanted to be realistic about things. We're making a big change to our literacy curriculum. My experience with changes, sometimes things get worse, you don't just automatically start firing on all cylinders. Right. So there could even be a dip here. Speaking to your question, Rob, about what should our expectation be? I hope not. But, you know, we're making a big change here. So So I think we're on the right path. I think we're doing all the right things, but I think we should be cautiously optimistic.
Okay. Other comments? All right. I will just add, pardon me add my thanks. I hope nobody took my questions as as not not supporting the work that's done, because it's been really good and important work that needs to be done. And I do appreciate the focus that that you all have brought to what we're going to try to do next year what we are going to do, what did you say spectacularly I forget. But what we're going to do what we're going to do really well next year, and you should look to the board to support you in doing that, both through a budgetary adoption point of view and any other way we can do that. So thank you very much. We will now move to an Executive Session, can I or actually two executive sessions. Can I have a motion to move us into those? Go ahead, Kristen.
I move that the Board enter executive session for the purpose of receiving legal advice on real estate transactions relating to the proposed Ron taba development, as authorized by CRS 24 Dash six dash 402 subsection four A and for the purpose of developing the strategy at school district for negotiations relating to the 2023 2024 collective bargaining agreement or employment contracts as authorized by CRS 24 Dash six dash 402 subsection four e three individuals invited to join the board and executive session as Superintendent Brian Kingsley. chief officers John Jeff Connell, Lauren Hooton, Dave Montoya, Madeline novelette, and Eric. I'm Savage, Director of Facilities and construction Aerosmith and General Counsel autumn Aspen.
Do I have a second? Looks like Nate has a second there. Can you get up? Can we get a vote on that motion please? Gil?
DJ Anderson. Hi. Jim broken. Nate Donovan. Kristen Draper I, Rob Patterson. Hi. Carolyn Reid. i Jessica Zamora aye. Motion passes seven zero.
Thank you jail. For those watching. Still, you should be aware that this is the we'll be going into executive session. And the only thing that's going to happen afterwards, when we come out of Executive Session is for I'm going to pound this gavel and adjourn the meeting. So that won't be on television. But if you want to come to the room, you can. Thank you very much for joining us seriously, really appreciate it if you stay to listen to these important developments in our system. We will convene an executive session in the superintendent's office at 20 minutes to 10 which is 10 minutes from now so people can do what they need to do
