August 25, 2026: the Resilient Schools proposal is presented

Call to order, roll call, land acknowledgement

0:25:57Nicole Rajpal I'd like to call to order this regular meeting of the Boulder Valley School District for Tuesday, August 25th, 2025. Board members may attend and participate in board meetings by electronic means in accordance with board policy BMEA and state law. Laura, can you please call the role?

0:26:20Roll call Bucher here. Chavez here. Medler here. Quinlan Aweida here. Rajpal here. Temu Otting here. Unger here. Thank you.

0:26:39Land acknowledgement (recorded) Like to encourage everyone to turn their attention to the screens for a land acknowledgement this evening. The Boulder Valley School District resides and operates on land that is the ancestral homeland and unjustly and illegally taken territory of the Ude, Puebloin, Arapjo, Cheyenne, Apache, Navajo, and 48 other tribal nations historically tied to this land who have called this land home since time and memorial. We acknowledge the atrocities committed here, including the painful history of genocide, forced assimilation, and efforts to alienate the indigenous inhabitants from their homeland, supported by the policies of the United States government.

0:27:36Land acknowledgement (recorded) BVSD is aware of the many indigenous peoples, past and present, and their dignified nations and cultures, who care for this land with strength and resilience. BVSD recognizes the histories of the land in Colorado and the survival of many nations that carried their oral traditions into the present. It is BVSD's responsibility to educate ourselves, our community, and our students so that we can embrace the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples and actively stand together to address injustices. In offering this land acknowledgement, we affirm and honor the history, wisdom, oral traditions, and resilience of indigenous people and recognize the responsibility to care for and appreciate this land together.

0:28:40Nicole Rajpal I'd like to remind everybody that the mission of the Boulder Valley School District is to create challenging, meaningful, and engaging learning opportunities so that all children thrive and are prepared for successful, civically engaged lives. Thank you everyone for taking the time to be here with us tonight in person and I know there are a lot of you tuning in uh remotely as well. We're always glad to have you observe and participate in our meetings. At this time is there a motion to approve today's agenda? Moved by Jason, seconded by Alex. Laura, can you please call the vote on the motion?

0:29:10Roll call Bucher, yes. Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Quinlan Aweida, yes. Rajpal, yes. Temu Otting, yes. Unger, yes. Motion passes.

Agenda approved; Dr. Anderson introduces the Resilient Schools proposal

0:29:28Nicole Rajpal As we all know, we have one topic today, this afternoon on our agenda. I think I said good evening earlier, but old habits die hard this afternoon. Um, which is the resilient schools proposal. I will turn it over to Dr. Anderson to do introductions.

0:29:46Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you, board president Rajpal. Board members, it's great to be here with you this afternoon. I want to thank everybody who is able to join us in person and also online. Um, we'll be presenting our resilient schools proposal today for the board's consideration. Um, board members and community members, as you know, closing consolidating schools is incredibly difficult work. Um, I want to start by thanking our staff that worked tirelessly this summer to help build and and develop this proposal. Um, I want to thank the board for your clarity, the clarity that you provided throughout this process in in in June on the task at hand, uh, which has shaped, uh, the proposal you'll see this evening.

0:30:25Dr. Rob Anderson Um, and I'd like to end by saying I'm really proud of the process that we developed. Uh, we listened first to our community and in the world of school closures and consolidations, unfortunately, that's unique. Um, I do believe that we've developed a plan that's thoughtful and will allow us to improve the student experience as defined by our community across the district. And you'll hear more about that as we present today. We have uh several members um of our team here today. And uh we're going to lead off with our assistant superintendent of operations, Rob Price. Rob, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Rob Price: scope, goals, engagement summary

0:31:05Rob Price Dr. Anderson, thank you. Good afternoon. Uh, President Rajpal, members of the board, I I just want to start by saying today is not fundamentally about closing schools. Today is about making sure that our students have the right level of resources and our board of education has made that very clear as we went through the process and spent the last two months together. I want to acknowledge first that this has been the most difficult work I've ever been part of. The hardest decisions that I will probably ever have to make in our not me but our team will ever have to make in our career. Um the impacts to our families, our staff, our students.

0:31:47Rob Price Uh I don't want that to be lost in this conversation, right? However, we ground ourselves in what's best for kids and we'll continue to do that as we work this uh move this work forward. This proposal today is not about failing schools. I think that is something that is extremely important in this. Also, it is about adjusting our system just to better serve our students. The changes that we are proposing today really are to ensure that we continue to provide the outstanding education that we promise our students and that our families expect. I'm just going to give you a moment to read this and then I'll present. As we've been working through this process, Resilient Schools is about protecting the excellence and equity in BVSD.

0:32:46Rob Price It's by adapting our system to the students we serve as we continue this work. As a reminder, today's work session is for us to present our proposal and for discussion with the board. There will be no action taken on this subject today. We will revisit this slide at the end of the presentation. Uh as we look at the scope of today's presentation, board policy FA FB guides this work and stated it is the Bulls uh board's goal to provide and maintain the number of facilities necessary to support our enrollment and our educational programs. Today's presentation will focus on our non-charter elementary and PKA schools in Boulder, Broomfield, Louisville, and Superior.

0:33:29Rob Price What is not included in today's presentation are our mountain schools and our schools in Lafayette and Erie. Also not included in today's presentation is a recommendation on the future use of the affected facilities. Uh following board action, we will begin evaluating the future use of our affected facilities and we will bring that back to the board through a separate process. And lastly, our dual language programs will require further study and we'll bring a recommendation at the end of today's presentation on dual language programs.

0:34:04Nicole Rajpal Um Rob, board members, just as a as a heads up, there's a few specific points at which I will break for questions, but we do have 75 slides to get through. So, I'll have those if you can just hold any questions as they come up to when we're specifically asked to do so. Sorry for that interruption.

0:34:20Rob Price Thank you for that. Uh, I want to start with something that I hope doesn't get lost in all of the data that we're going to be presenting this afternoon. U, we have 56 incredible schools in this district, and our goal is to make them more resilient in the future. With that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Miller, our deputy superintendent.

0:34:39Dr. Miller Good afternoon. Um, as you know, our enrollment has declined to a point where we do not have the resources in every school to provide a highquality BVSD education that we all believe each and every student deserves. If we do not act now, our students will have less support and fewer opportunities, such as increasing numbers of students in multi-grade classrooms, not by design, but by necessity. D decreasing student access to critical staff, for example, limited counselor staff and specialist FTE, as well as fewer enrichment opportunities during and after school. These proposed changes will ensure our district funds are leveraged to positively impact the BVSD student experience as opposed to sustaining more schools than are needed for the number of students in each region.

0:35:38Dr. Miller Specifically, we will redirect resources into what our educators and greater community prioritized during our community engagement work sessions last spring, which are which will result in smaller class sizes, reduced number of students in multi-grade classrooms, and an increased student access to differentiated support and specials teachers. And with that, I'm going to pass it over to Dr. Neil Anderson, our assistant superintendent of schools.

0:36:06Dr. Neil Anderson Thank you, Dr. Miller. This slide that you see in front of you is a familiar slide of we've used that a lot throughout our time together in our community sessions to frame the challenges of which we have and which we currently face. As you know, the majority of our schools in BVSD operate at two rounds or less. And this slide illustrates the challenges that come from that model. It is our goal that through this process we will eliminate the need for multi-grade classrooms and one round schools while establishing sustainable two round, three round or even four round schools so that we can provide the learning environments and school communities that provide the resources our students deserve and our families expect from us.

0:36:58Dr. Neil Anderson This slide outlines the three main buckets um of our goals and what we've already talked about. Specifically, throughout this process, we've wanted to solidify and ensure a student learning experience that allows for each and every student a sense of belonging and the support needed to thrive in our schools. This includes individualized attention and greater access to essential supports. It is through our proposal that we will achieve the benefits of smaller classes. The solidification of two, three, and four round schools, and therefore enhancing the student learning experience, increased access to our non-classroom specialists such as counselors and instructional specialists, and increasing the presence of presence of our elementary specialist teachers, particularly in our three and four round schools. I'm going to pass it back now to Mr.

0:37:51Dr. Neil Anderson Price.

0:37:53Rob Price I'm going to go through these next slides pretty quick. You've seen them a number of times, but if somebody from the community is tuning in for the first time, maybe they haven't. Uh declining enrollment not unique to BVSD. It's happening across Colorado, across across the state. Uh what's listed on this slide are really long-term demographic trends, uh housing trends that we cannot control as a district, but we do have the responsibility on how we respond to them. Uh since 2017, our enrollment has declined by more than 3,600 students by the number but the number of buildings that we operate has remained unchanged. Over the next five years, we are projected to decline by another 1,700 students by 2030.

0:38:38Rob Price As we've talked about and as I presented earlier, our community engagement this spring, the areas that we are focused on are Boulder, Louisville, Superior, and Broomfield as 50% or more of the schools in those three regions are at two classes per grade grade level or less. Following our June 9th presentation of the community engagement findings, the board provided additional direction and emphasized the need for a long-term approach that addresses declining enrollment and the impact of the student and staff experience. These were the outcomes we used to to evaluate our potential recommendations that we're bringing forward tonight. With that, I'll turn it back over to Dr. Miller.

0:39:26Dr. Miller As a reminder, um Oops. This slide illustrates the many different ways we have connected with different community stakeholders thus far. Knowing that our educators are the closest to the student experience, we began by visiting them at schools across the district. Superintendent Anderson and former Deputy Superintendent Da Cruz and board members met with elementary school principles and educators to better understand how they see declining enrollment affecting the experiences of students and staff as well as hear their concerns and what hope what they had hoped for for the future. We also engaged our district advisory committees and have made presentations to municipalities. And then in April and May, we held seven community engagement sessions throughout the district.

0:40:16Dr. Miller As we shared in June, here are some of the unified themes from the community engagement sessions that we heard throughout the process as a priority. class size and instructional complexity, comprehensive full-time staff such as special education staffing and whole child support and staffing stability, equitable funding, walkability and neighborhood schools, and varied school models.

0:40:45Rob Price Dr. Miller, can you go back one slide? Just a point of emphasis board members and for our community. This slide here is the difference between what we have done and what we are doing and others who have tackled this challenge. The amount of engagement of staff and our community has given us better information to make really difficult decisions. I'll remind you board members on June 9th uh we presented several different data sources. uh the 328 responses we received after spending over 60 hours talking directly with teachers and teacher roundtables, the 708 responses based on the 18 to 20 hours we engaged with our community in discussion at our community engagement sessions and the 5,244 responses from our resilient school survey that represented parents, staff, and community.

0:41:44Rob Price This is an informed plan and I want to just take this opportunity to thank our community for engaging with us on what we know is an incredibly important decision. Thank you, Dr. Miller.

0:42:00Nicole Rajpal I think this is a good spot to stop and see if there are any questions on the slides presented thus far. Seeing as there are none, you guys can continue on.

Broomfield region (Birch into Cole)

0:42:17Rob Price All right, with that context, we're now going to walk through the recommendations region by region. And first, for each region, we're going to show the current conditions first. Then we'll go through the resident population, the enrollment patterns that we're seeing. We will review the proposal, the rationale for the proposal, and then we're going to give a highle overview of all of the different options we studied for each individual region. Um, I would just say for the past two months, we have analyzed enrollment trends. We have looked at student population projections, parental choice, building capacity and utilization, uh, facility conditions, and long-term student needs.

0:42:56Rob Price uh we have compiled a lot and what I would say doesn't bring into this again is uh you know the impact to our families or staff we won't forget that and we'll continue to support our families our employees our students through this uh so I just hope that doesn't get lost in the numbers as we're walking through this slide deck um as I'm walking through this region by region Glenn Screw our senior planner will be presenting some of the data slides I'll present the overall proposal We will start this evening in the Broomfield region. Um Broomfield currently operates four elementary or three elementary schools and one PK8 school for a total of four schools serving elementary students.

0:43:40Rob Price And based on our enrollment projections for this regions for this region, three schools are needed to sustain three classes per grade level. And without a change, the region is projected to have 471 unused seats, which is equivalent to one three round school. With that, I'll turn it over to Glenn.

0:44:04Glen (senior planner) Thanks. This slide looks at the resident students or the students who actually live in live in each attendance area. Resident students are an important in any analysis to asssure neighborhood schools have a sufficient pool of students to pull from. This helps buffer a school's enrollment from potentially wide swings in open enrollment trends. A resident student approach also helps emphasize the families that reside closest to the school to support the transportation as well as the broader community. Uh and with this slide, I'd like to point out if you look at the blue sections of that slide, those are the students that live in that attendance area and also attend that particular school.

0:44:41Glen (senior planner) The green area, which I'll point to a little bit later in later slides, are the students that live in that attendance area but uh attend a different school through open enrollment. The takeaway for this slide is that there simply aren't enough students to um or project current or projected students in Broomfield to sustain four schools at the enrollment levels we're trying to achieve. On this slide, you can see that when considering resident students, Birch and Kohl have the lowest number of students in their attendance areas, while Aspen Creek and Emerald are only slightly above a two minimum uh slightly, excuse me, slightly above a two minimum class per grade level threshold.

0:45:27Glen (senior planner) Here we're looking at total enrollment for each Broomfield school which accounts not only for the resident students but also the uh impacts of open enrollment. It's important to note that open enrollment not only accounts for in district and out of district uh students coming into a particular school uh but it also reflects the residents students leaving for other schools. So that's that green section I was pointing out in the last slide. Also, the green circles on this chart uh show how the capacity of each school and the red diamonds show the projected enrollment for that school. You can see that the region has more capacity than the current and projected enrollment requires with excess capacity concentrated in Birch and Kohl.

0:46:15Glen (senior planner) You can also see that Birch and Kohl are currently below two classes per grade level and have the lowest enrollments above the four schools. In addition, note that Aspen Creek, while currently at capacity, is only able to do so through significant open enrollment uh that comprises 50% of its of its uh entire enrollment. Otherwise, Aspen Creek is second to Emerald when looking only at resident students. Uh and also, Aspen Creek, as an example of the influences of open enrollment in recent years, has fluctuated from from a a pretty strong declining trend to a very strong growing trend. And most of that was through open enrollment.

0:47:02Rob Price All right. This is the first proposal we are presenting this afternoon. I want to acknowledge what that means. We haven't done this for 20 plus years. Uh Birch is an extremely strong school and the community is very important to us. Um this proposal tonight is not a reflection on its students, its family or its staff. This is simply looking at resident numbers, enrollment numbers, etc. We are proposing that Birch and Kohl become one school community in the Kohl building with the Birch Ian program also moving into the Kohl building. These two schools are located about 1.6 miles apart, making this a feasible consolidation. something that we heard from our community was a priority or was valued out of all of the options we studied.

0:47:52Rob Price In this proposal, the attendance boundaries would be uh for both schools would be combined into a single attendance area serving or assigned to the Kohl building. the rationale uh for this proposal. I want to make sure I'm following here. I skip it. There we go. Um the rationale for this proposal is Kohl has the capacity to accommodate the combined community while the Birch facility does not. Kohl uh capacity is around 540 students. Burch's capacity is around 418. As shown on the previous slide, BIRCH also has the lowest current and projected resident student population. They also have the co uh lowest um projected enrollment in the region, which is really largely driven by declining birth rates.

0:48:47Rob Price This proposal will create a stronger, more resilient elementary school in the Broomfield region. This slide shows what the combined school would look like based on our projections. uh instead of operating two schools at 47% 62% you can see that the consolidated school would serve roughly 430 to 470 students which is enough for a three round school and operate in that 80 to 80 88% range. I would just say, and this is the same for every uh proposal we're going to be presenting tonight, more important than the utilization percentage uh is what the enrollment supports and it will support stronger grade level cohorts and increase student access to critical staff and supports and that is something that we have talked about for uh many years now.

0:49:44Rob Price So regionally this change uh substantially reduces excess capacity from 24% to 8% and also allows us to align our facilities with the actual number of students we serve in Broomfield. We studied several options in this region including redrawing boundaries and I want to talk about that just for a second. And as Glenn just presented, uh we don't have enough resident students in Broomfield to support four schools. So that was uh a lot of the feedback we got through the community process was look at redrawing boundaries, specifically Aspen Creek and Birch, and we just simply don't have enough kids. Uh we looked at grade reconfigurations, a K-2/3-5, and again that was some community feedback that we received.

0:50:28Rob Price uh they uh preferred consolidations over the split model of a K-2/3-5. We also looked at consolidation with other sites. Aspen Creek, although uh low resident population, is at capacity because of open enrollment and Emerald is a smaller school and they are close to capacity. So the option we landed on is the option we presented this evening and that would be merging Kohl and Birch into the Kohl facility. Board members, any questions on the Broomfield region and the proposed changes?

0:51:07Nicole Rajpal Lalenia,

0:51:15Lalenia Quinlan Aweida uh, on the new consolidated school, will it have a new name? How do we plan to do that piece? Have we navigated that yet?

0:51:26Rob Price You're asking, will we have a new name at the consolidated school? I think that is something that we still need to navigate. Um we will bring in leaders together talking about that with Sachs etc. Um I would not anticipate a name change on a lot of these you know mascots other things might change but the naming of the school I don't anticipate will change.

0:51:50Nicole Rajpal Alex,

0:51:52Alex Medler uh, one of the things I'm curious about as we do consolidations in all the regions is how many students will move from being in a walkable situation under our 1.5 mile elementary goal versus now living more than 1.5. Do we have any numbers on how many kids would turn into that, you know, now subject to transportation number because of the change?

0:52:12Rob Price you know, it would be the enrollment of Birch Elementary. Currently, everywhere east of Maine, we are considering to be within a transparation zone. So, we will be providing transportation for the Birch area and we'll discuss transportation more in more detail later in the presentation.

0:52:34Nicole Rajpal Board members, other questions on this proposal? I mean, I think this makes a high degree of sense um for these conditions and I I think it sometimes can be challenging to make sense of the bar graphs for folks. Our obligation really is to make sure we're taking care of our resident population. And because our schools have been performing so well over the past several years, we are fortunate, really fortunate to receive out of district enrollment to help keep some of these schools as robust as they are.

0:53:07Nicole Rajpal Um, but looking at those slides, it it really does send the message that our resident population, the ones students that live within our boundaries are really decreasing and we need to make sure we adapt to make sure to provide the best opportunity and experiences for those students.

Louisville and Superior region (Monarch, El Dorado)

0:53:31Rob Price All right. Now we move to the Louisville and Superior region which was more complex just because we're now looking at elementary and PK8 schools. So across Louisville and Superior we have four elementary schools, two preK8 schools. By 2030 we are projected to have approximately,00 open elementary seats if nothing changes. And based on our enrollment projections, five elementary schools are needed to sustain three classes per grade level. The same issue exists at the middle school level. We currently have three middle school programs in the region and two schools are needed to provide a comprehensive middle school experience for the population we serve in the region. With that, I'll turn it over to Glenn.

0:54:19Glen (senior planner) Uh this slide looks at the number of resident students in Louisville and Superior uh that reside in each attendance area. As we saw in Broom Broomfield, the important takeaway is that there aren't enough current or projected resident students to sustain six uh schools above two classes per grade level. Among the schools, only Louisville Elementary and Superior Elementary are well above two classes per grade level with resident students, while Monarch retains less than half of its resident students despite its population being relatively small. When looking at enrollment, oh yeah, when looking at enrollment at Louisville and Superior schools, three of the six schools in this region are already below two classes per grade level, and all six elementary schools in this region currently have available capacity.

0:55:07Glen (senior planner) Taken together, the region has more elementary space than than current and projected enrollment requires. At the middle level, we see see a similar story uh in uh a similar story in that the number of current and projected resident students don't support three comprehensive uh programs. This is especially true when looking at projected enrollment in Louisville at Lewis for Louisville Middle and El Dorado. These expected declines reflect the progression of smaller class sizes we're currently seeing in Louisville and Superior elementary schools. In in regard to middle level enrollment shown here, you can see that all three schools have available capacity that the region has more capacity than current and projected enrollment requires.

0:56:03Glen (senior planner) Looking toward 2030, maintaining three separate middle school programs spreads a relatively small number of student population across two many uh locations. We believe concentrating those students provides a stronger comprehensive middle school experience for students overall.

0:56:25Rob Price All right. This proposal really affects two deeply valued communities in BVSD. And for this region, we are proposing that Monarch Elementary G grades would close and we would distribute uh let me we are proposing that Monarch Elementary grades would uh close and Monarch would become a dedicated 6-8 middle school. El Dorado's middlegrades would close and El Dorado would become a dedicated PK through 5 elementary uh school. Neither building closes in this configuration. I just want to make sure that's clear. Monarch becomes a middle school. El Dorado becomes PK through 5. Um both the El Dorado and Monarch uh both El Dorado and Monarch would have AIM and Rise Autism programs in this proposal. The map on the right shows the existing attendance boundaries.

0:57:23Rob Price This map shows the proposed attendance boundaries. So you can see that Monarch's attendance area would be divided among Fireside, Superior, and El Dorado El Dorado as uh illustrated while the Monarch and El Dorado middle school attendance areas would be combined and that's illustrated by the red dotted line. The rationale for this proposal is that it keeps superior elementary students in superior superior elementary students in superior schools which was a community priority. Also reduces elementary capacity. It strengthens enrollment at the three receiving schools and it consolidates two small middle school programs into one more sustainable uh program at Monarch. It also builds on the enrollment patterns that are already exist today and I'll go through those.

0:58:21Rob Price At the elementary level, again, Eldo has the lowest K5 enrollment and student res or resident student population. Monarch has the second lowest uh enrollment without changes. El Dorado, Monarch, Coal Creek, all projected to be below two classes per grade level by 2030. The proposal that we have put forward retains El Dorado as an elementary school and redistributes those uh Monarch students to the three receiving schools again creating stronger, more sustainable grade cohorts uh while retaining five elementary schools in the region. And as Glenn just presented, this approach also reflects what families enrollment patterns are already showing us. So fewer than half of the elementary students living in Monarch attend uh Monarch, while nearly onethird of Monarch's resident students attend one of the three receiving schools.

0:59:12Rob Price So rather than creating entirely new destinations for families, the proposed boundaries really build on the choices that families are already making. It's even clear at the middle level. Um 36% of El Dorado area middle school students attend El Dorado currently while 40% of El Dorado's middle school students are attending Monarch. Um consolidating the two middle school programs at Monarch aligns the attendance structure with current family choices and it creates a more sustainable program at the Monarch location for Louisville and Superior. Uh, also locating Monarch or creating Monarch into a middle school creates a 6-12 campus, creating synergies that really don't exist today. Something that we are excited about. So, this slide shows the resulting projected elementary enrollment.

1:00:07Rob Price Fireside and El Dorado becomes just they move more towards that stronger enrollment level. Uh, Superior remains close to capacity. I will say uh we will have to continue to w monitor Superior's enrollment as it compares to its capacity and that's something um that we'll be able to do through open enrollment but we do feel confident we can serve the resident students in its current location. This slide shows the how the proposal reduces excess elementary capacity in the region. Uh there will still be capacity in the system. However, it does move us towards a more sustainable future. This slide shows the resulting middle school enrollment.

1:00:49Rob Price You can see that bringing these two programs uh together creates a middle school with the scale to provide a comprehensive middle school experience. I will say and you'll see that we have not reduced capacity at the middle level and this solution is primarily about consolidating two undersized uh programs and addressing the student experience not about just addressing capacity. Um but it does create a number of sustainable middle schools for the region. other options that we studied over the past two months. We looked at redistributing students by redrawing boundaries and again we went back. We don't have enough resident students to support six schools is what it came down to.

1:01:38Rob Price Um we looked at closing schools and you can see the schools that we looked at and where they're listed here and other grade configuration. And I will just admit every option had tradeoffs when we look through these. And after studying all of those options, probably plus some that are not listed here, we believe the proposed configuration best serves our students both at the elementary level um and at the middle level. It addresses what we heard from our community through our uh community engagement and it strengthens the middle level experience for our students in Louisville and Spear. And with that, I'll open it up for questions.

1:02:17Nicole Rajpal Board members, any questions? Alex.

1:02:25Alex Medler Um, so, uh, in summary, we're dealing with, um, two K8 schools that become a K5 and a and a 68. And both those campuses currently have some of the highest sort of open enrollment elsewhere. Um, do you believe or do we have any sense from where they go now? I assume they're not going to K8 when they're in the middle grades. They're going to middle grade schools that are just 6-8s, right? Most of the time.

1:02:57Rob Price Yeah. I for example, El Dorado, 40% of El Dorado's middle school students are going to Monarch. So they're going to a cave.

1:03:07Alex Medler So they are going but they're going

1:03:08Rob Price but at the middle level, right? So 40% of those are going from Eldo's attendance area at the middle level to Monarch's attendance area to attend Monarch K.

1:03:18Alex Medler Okay. So they're not necessarily exiting K8. They're they're going from where they are to a different one, but still not at at levels sufficient to make a full size.

1:03:30Rob Price And you know, one of the challenges is, and I'll just be completely honest, it's where these buildings are located. They made sense back in the day when we had 800 plus resident students living in these areas and our buildings were full and we had etc. The reason a lot of El Dorado parents are going to Monarch is because Monarch is closer. Right? So when you look at the north side of Eldo's attendance area, it's easier to get to Monarch than it is to get back to El Dorado. So you can understand why parents are making choices. similar in the Monarch Elementary attendance area. A lot of the families that live north of 36 live closer to Fireside, so it's easier for them to get to Fireside.

1:04:10Rob Price Maybe there's other reasons they've selected Fireside. Um, but that that's why we're seeing the movement. We are it's not just about the school. It's not about school quality. A lot of times it's about location of where people live. Um, I will say when we look through this, we still feel like we need the five elementary schools and the locations that they're in, right? When we looked at Coal Creek, when we looked at Fireside, we have a lot of kids that live around these schools. So, if you were to close one of those schools, now you're creating these islands where you're going to be providing transportation. We knew walkability and and biking were important to our community through this.

1:04:47Rob Price Um but you know a lot of thought has went into where do our schools need to be located, where do the students live. Um and again parents are making decisions that helped guide the decisions or the proposal that we recommended tonight

1:05:05Nicole Rajpal Jorge and then Deann.

1:05:08Jorge Chávez Uh thanks for the presentation and the thoughtful consideration of all the topics, right? Um, we spent a lot of time thinking about how our elementary schools are lacking services and resources and access for our students because of the small enrollment, but we haven't thought so much about the middle school. Can you speak a little bit more about how this consolidation really might help that for the middle schools and what the appeal, you know, what the benefits are for our students by by that sort of move?

1:05:36Rob Pricespeaker unconfirmed · check the video Dr. Anderson or other Dr. Anderson, you're both excited to answer this one.

1:05:41Dr. Rob Anderson You go first. Thank you, Jorge. That that's the great question and it's it's the right question. I think that uh especially at the middle school level as a former middle school principal and high school principal, um the number of students dictates the number of people and the number of offerings and the levels of offerings. Uh you know, we know that that our community through their feedback wants more individualized supports and experiences for their kids. Um they want opportunities for advanced coursework. they want uh they want the the supports that come with bigger schools. And so uh I really am excited about the opportunity that having an a middle school next to a high school can provide to to the Louisville Superior community.

1:06:25Dr. Rob Anderson Um I know that uh that currently Southern Hills, which is one of our most popular uh middle schools, provides those different types of opportunities for for students that go end up going to Fairview. And and Dr. the other Dr. Anderson can speak to that as he was the principal at Monarch High. Uh and um you know the K8 model and I think Rob you hit the nail on the head. Location matters and um you have folks that aren't staying you know less than half the kids are staying in the El Dorado program. So uh I I do think this proposal makes lots of sense.

1:07:00Dr. Rob Anderson Um and I do think that more kids will be able to get their unique needs served in a school that's bigger that combines both. But I'll also let Neil talk about some of the promise and potential putting uh a middle school next to a high school will provide.

1:07:16Dr. Neil Anderson Yeah, thank you. Um there is the promise of potential and I think our two leaders at the current schools will see that promise of potential. Um both Mr. Don, the current principal at Monarch High School and Miss Garcia, the current principal at Monarch PreK8. Because when you have a 6-12 component, you can really design CTE pathways. when we think about the big three that our high schools are facing in their SPF reports.

1:07:39Dr. Neil Anderson Um by starting that conversation early and align aligning the pathways through CTE program, you allow students to really experience a track of opportunity and growth while also solidifying really strong core programming and allowing students to be able to walk to in this case from Monarch Middle School to Monarch High School for either a language potentially for a math um and other avenues that create connectivity. Likewise, you can connect teacher to teacher through middle level to high school. So the baton pass off from six, 8th grade to 9th grade is smoother, more successful. Teachers can collaborate with one another and there's a greater sense of community that's built when you have an opportunity such as that.

1:08:29Dr. Neil Anderson And I think this is a really rich opportunity not just at Monarch Mi to be proposed middle school to Monarch High School, but as a model for other campuses. Dr. Anderson referenced Southern Hills to Fairview. We have another in Broomfield area, Broomfield Heights Middle School to Broomfield High School. We have the opportunity to do this and this is really a neat opportunity to redesign, rethink, reinvigorate what a 6-12 learning experience continuum could be like for our students. Yeah,

1:09:02Nicole Rajpal I will say as a parent of kids that attended Southern Hills and went to Fairview, it that synergy is really wonderful once it's established. Because there are folks turning tuning in this afternoon that don't normally attend our meetings, do you want to quickly define SPF, CTE, and what the big three are?

1:09:20Dr. Neil Anderson Yes, happily. I used a lot of education ease right there, didn't I? SPF is basically our school performance framework. It's the measurement that the Colorado Department of Education utilizes to showcase the success of our schools through certain indicators at the high school level. Uh graduation rates historically, it's been also the SAT, PSAT growth and achievement, but it's changing to what Colorado Department of Education has adopted as a big three. And I think I got these right. work-based learning experience, um, industry certification, and 12 college credits earned during their four years at high school. Um, we're monitoring that, working with our high schools to really design that out so all students see a pathway for success regardless of each one of those.

1:10:09Dr. Neil Anderson And we feel really confident with where we're at and where we're going and the conversations we're having in that way. And what was the other acronym I used?

1:10:19Nicole Rajpal CTE.

1:10:20Dr. Neil Anderson Oh, yeah. CTE. CT is career technical education. Um, a lot of all of our schools have built out career and technical education programs. Um, some of them are very specifi specified to their school, but all our schools have programs. And the goal is to create a four-year path where a student by the end of their time at graduation um leaves a career technical education program with an industry certification. Um, and we've led the way in the state of Colorado through our Grad Plus work that we've done. And Grad Plus feeds directly into the big three. And if you I know you've gone to some of our graduations, you see so many of the students wearing the Grad Plus medallions and specified pins.

1:10:58Dr. Neil Anderson That just reinforces that and really emphasizes that work. And at the middle level, it starts with career exploration. And even at the elementary level, we've started with uh dare to dream career exploration with our community partners.

1:11:15Nicole Rajpal Thank you for that. I know there's parents of elementary schoolers and middle schoolers that that might not be on the radar, but now they are they are informed and we can carry on with our discussion. Deann had her hand up and then Jason

1:11:29Deann Bucher uh Neil answered some of the questions I that I had already, but I am still curious about um what will happen with um we have particular facilities for preschool at um Monarch but not at El Dorado. So will the facilities be provided so that they have the right preschool um preschool facilities and um let's see I think that'll do it. Thank you.

1:12:03Dr. Herszog We do actually have preschool at El Dorado that's thriving but it's a great question and there's a slide later on that talks about it. We will be revisiting where preschool is by region as well and Rob will get to that at the end.

1:12:15Nicole Rajpal Thank you, Dr. Herszog. Jason,

1:12:18Jason Unger um yeah, I just want to talk about and this is not specific to this particular proposal, but um when we started this process last fall, last summer, you know, we there were a few slides and a big part of the presentation was on all the advantages of a three- round school. Uh and we've touched on it here, but kind of in the in the spirit of kind of reminding people why that's advantageous, why that's our goal here, why we're aiming for 80% capacity and a three- round school.

1:12:42Jason Unger You know, we talked about not having multi-age classes, but uh for those of us that have toured schools and we see the difference from kind of behind the scenes of what a three- round school is versus a two round or a one round. Um it I think it'd be really helpful if we could just talk real briefly about kind of what what are the advantages, you know, in terms of staffing, teachers, services. Um just as a reminder because that's how we started this process of kind of wanting to get to this place. Uh and so I just wanted to ask if we could just talk about that a bit.

1:13:11Dr. Rob Anderson Anyway, we're all so excited to talk about it, we just look at each other. Um, it comes down to staffing, right? you know. So, uh we have staffing formulas that's that that um our counselors follow that our um our specialists follow that are um that the funds we provide for student how they follow within schools that allow schools to put those dollars together to um along with our weighted differentiated funding to do things like SPE uh literacy specialists, math specialists. uh you know the more students that you have in the building the the economies of scale allow us to drive all the resources in the one place as as opposed to being spread to two or three schools.

1:13:58Dr. Rob Anderson And so for our schools under two rounds they were dealing with half-time counselors. And the way a half-time counselor works is that it's uh you know they're either there on certain days of the week or certain hours of the day and not necessarily there when students need to see their counselor. And the way interventionist works, it's very similar formula. Um, and then the the teachers that that teach art, music, and PE, when you don't have enough students for teachers to teach, they're teaching at two and three sites. And so, we're paying people to drive versus be in front of our our kids and do what they went to school for and what they came here for, which is teach our kids.

1:14:36Dr. Rob Anderson And so you get to a three round school, you get whole people, not um somebody who comes a couple times a week or in worst case scenario, uh we'll teach you PE or art for two weeks and then we'll be see we'll see you again in six weeks because we're on a twoe rotation. And so, you know, the three round school really provides that consistency that kids need, kids who love art, kids who love music, kids who um who need PE and love PE. Uh and it's also the counseling support and it's also allows us to really consolidate intervention supports um and also along with special education supports and gifted and talented uh supports and services as well.

1:15:19Dr. Rob Anderson board members, we've heard the concerns and that this also came up as we as we engage folks gifted and talented, how are kids going to get the supports that they need. The more gifted and talented students you have in in schools, the easier it is for us to provide those supports and resources. And so, the benefits of a three round school, uh, all of those services all kids get access to. And I would invite anyone on the team to uh either correct anything I said or add anything additionally.

1:15:48Dr. Herszog no correcting. Um, but just I think an an illustrative point and something we've talked a lot about is all of our elementary kids right now have all three specials, right? But what they don't have is if I'm in the middle of an art project and it's the week my art teacher's in another building, I can't just go there when I might go there if she were in the building. Or if I'm the leader or a teacher and I'm trying to collaborate with the music teacher on this really cool unit I'm doing and the music teacher is at a week in another building, I might start walking there and realize, oh, this is a week.

1:16:14Dr. Herszog So, it's about the kids and then it's also about the adult experience around the kids to support the kids. Um, and that can get really nuanced because it's not that kids don't have access to the class. When you have a full-time person in a building, it becomes more than the class also,

1:16:34Nicole Rajpal Deann, and then Alex.

1:16:37Deann Bucher I'm sorry that I my question came to me as I was uh listening to others. This will eliminate the very odd um the very odd segregation of Bell Flatirons and the Horizons once and for all. Is that true?

1:16:55Rob Price I So in the proposal,

1:16:57Deann Bucher yeah,

1:16:58Rob Price the Bell Flatirons um community is moving to be part of the El Dorado community. Is that what your question was?

1:17:09Deann Bucher Well, if they're but if they're middle schoolers, they will go to Monarch and if they're elementary, they will go to El Dorado and they will not be segregated from Superior.

1:17:19Rob Price Correct.

1:17:20Deann Bucher Any more quick? That's what I wanted to know.

1:17:22Dr. Neil Anderson Yeah, they will move that that map that um Mr. Price showed. This one will showcase that the students that are in this entire capacity catchment area will all be proposed to go to Monarch Middle School as 6-8. And then you can see um the Bell Flatirons community there on that bottom right corner is to El Dorado. And so they move as a community um within a community.

1:17:51Nicole Rajpal And to clarify, there wasn't capacity at Superior to have them go to Superior. It looks a little disjointed, but there

1:17:59Rob Price that is a true statement. Yes.

1:18:04Alex Medler Um, we we've had a lot of discussion of the elementary, you know, three round stuff, but not as much on the middle school. And I'm I'm excited about the the 6-12 connections and the sort of, you know, um, grad plus connections for the middle schoolers, but I'm also always interested in kids having fun and a good time and everything else. And in the in the middle school, I think that kind of often comes down to electives.

1:18:27Alex Medler And so I wonder I think of like we had junior highs 30 years ago and we switched to middle schools because it was more developmentally appropriate and the sixth through 8th graders were more likely to not be as ready for high school as seventh and 9th graders as we imagined it. And then we put the K through fives together with the 6-8s and created K8s. We also thought that that was sort of developmentally appropriate. It'd be good to have the different grades together and we would not be making kids step into their high school life earlier. It's 30 years later. we've stepped on. We're trying to make sure everybody's prepared after they leave high school.

1:19:02Alex Medler And we have things like the focus on acceleration for those that are able and want to accelerate. And we have the work force preparation stuff, which is great. And it's wonderful to see the graduations, but I'm equally concerned about making it fun for sixth through 8th graders to not be in high school yet. And I think of the larger middle school as being able to have more electives. And that's one of the things I'm interested in tracking as we go through the next few years, like what is the what's the equity, what's the access to the range and number and variety of electives in our middle schools.

1:19:31Alex Medler So, I wonder if you could speak a little bit to what we might see in a larger, you know, larger middle schools through this change in terms of some of those fun things.

1:19:43Dr. Neil Anderson Yeah. So, I'm happy to talk about that. Um, Dr. Herszoga's academics chief academic officer might have some other additions but you're exactly right board member Medler when you're a larger school and Dr. Anderson spoke about this before you are able to offer more elective choice for students um you have more staff members that would be able to offer classes and by running a student centered master schedule you put classes out that students might be interested in taking and then you create that. So in that space there might be more art classes specific like a pottery class or draw paint class.

1:20:18Dr. Neil Anderson There could be a robotics class or industrial tech class or a woods design through like industrial design class that bridges into other programmings at the high schools regardless of the high school that choose choose students choose to go to. Um more language opportunities um might be able to be in existence or at least more exposure to languages um for students. And then also many times we can create classes that are based on student interest. We go through the curriculum council to design those opportunities or design our wheel experiences that really give students an exposure to a variety of different types of classes though so they can find their interest because that's really what middle school is about.

1:21:01Dr. Neil Anderson As a former middle school principal myself, I really wanted my students to experience a breadth of um opportunities so they can find out what they like from music to art to PE classes that might be specialized to um industrial tech design class, engineering type classes because that's where they get to experience and learn and grow, find their new passions, and find things that they're like, "Yeah, thought about it, but nope. not for me, but that's important to do as well. And so by having larger classes, in this case at the Monarch um 68 proposal around 500 students, that's a nice size middle school that creates the intimacy but the choice that students want to explore these interests that they would have.

1:21:49Dr. Neil Anderson and our principles and leaders do a great job of offering classes for students to select and take on top of or in addition to the clubs that might be extensions of student interests that are found within our schools. Dr. Herszog, anything you want to add?

1:22:05Dr. Herszog No, I was going to say clubs, but I'm stuck that board member Medler doesn't think math is fun. I'm just kidding. Just kidding.

1:22:18Nicole Rajpal I have a question. Um slide 40 shows the excess capacity at middle school increasing. And then the slides before kind of talk about the total resident populations for middle school for our middle school students. LMS is not in this discussion because we aren't talking about standalone middle schools. But looking at the resident population, the projected population between the what will be two middle schools in the Louisville Superior area, what would happen to that protected projected capacity if we did not consider the PK5 portion of that really big Monarch PK8 campus. So looking just at the capacity of the middle school side, considering the capacity of the Louisville Middle School itself, I'm thinking the facilities.

1:23:07Nicole Rajpal I don't want the community to think we're going to have all this we it looks like we have excess capacity. We also still have two middle schools and thinking about future utilization of buildings, future potential bond dollars. Not wanting to go down a rabbit hole, but what would that um that graph that pie chart look like if we took out the elementary capacity or even like the PK through four capacity where things are built smaller than they would be built for a middle schooler and how might that capacity shift?

1:23:38Rob Price I don't have the answer you're probably looking for. That's something that I will have to evaluate and get back to you. Um, I want to point out a little bit of what we're seeing at the middle level in five years from now. If you look at the red diamond on this graph, you can see that LMS is projected to drop by over 100 students in the next 5 years. Right? So that's what's resulting in that excess capacity at the middle level is we're we're seeing a decline and that's really again a decline of from elementary through middle school etc. So a lot of that resulting excess capacity is in that number right there.

1:24:15Nicole Rajpal Yeah. But the pie chart just showed the capacity at that one facility and because I this slide really brings home our excess middle school capacity that will be coming down the road as a result of the decline in the elementary schools. I'm just wondering um what it would look like with both middle schools taken into consideration. Does that

1:24:35Rob Price It does make sense and we'll get back to you on that.

1:24:37Nicole Rajpal Thank you.

1:24:38Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Y

1:24:45Nicole Rajpal board members, any other questions on Superior Louisville area? Seeing as there are none, we will carry on into the Boulder region.

Boulder region: Douglas, High Peaks, Community Montessori

1:24:55Rob Price All right. Thank you for that. Uh we're now going to move to Boulder, which definitely proved to be our most complex really due to the number of schools we operate, the amount of space that we have, the variety of program programs that we have in Boulder. And so you're going to see a variety of um strategies that we've used to address uh declining enrollment in the Boulder region. So I'm just going to start out at a high level. We have 16 schools in Boulder. Our projections indicate far fewer than that. You can actually see that our projections tell us we need 10 schools to sustain three round schools uh if we're operating at that level. We are not proposing that today.

1:25:34Rob Price Uh the region has more than 2500 open seats. Um it demonstrates I think right now the mismatch that we have between the number of seats that we have and the number of students that we currently serve. Uh, another way of looking at this is we have 2100 elementary students that live north of Arapahoe and we have seven schools. We have 1,750 students living south of Arapahoe and nine schools. So, we have focused a lot of our attention on South Boulder knowing that we had a lot of excess capacity in that region. Before I hand this off to Glenn, I want to point out, I should have pointed this out earlier. When we've showed these slides to the board, they've been in alphabetical order.

1:26:19Rob Price Now, we've done them from low to high, right? And one of the board's goals was when we started this process is we want to see sustainable two round schools. So, as we focused on this, you're going to see a lot of these schools that are on the lower end in our proposal tonight because we again, if you think about resident students as the foundation, 70% of the resident students attend their neighborhood school. That sets the bar. A lot of these schools that we're looking at on this chart don't have enough students to support a two- round school, let alone trying to get to a sustainable two- round school.

1:26:57Rob Price So there's only certain strategies you can use either to increase their number of resident students in their attendance area or you get into the closure consolidation. So with that I'm going to turn it back over to Glen Screw.

1:27:13Glen (senior planner) Like the other regions, Boulder schools are also struggling to maintain a sufficient number of resident students and there are not enough resident students in Boulder to support the current 16 schools. When just looking at neighborhood schools, five of the 11 cannot support two classes per grade level with their resident students alone. When looking at to projections, schools are expected to decline further or maintain current low levels. Looking towards enrollment in Boulder, this slide shows, among other things, the large gap between enrollment and available capacity, which is shown in the green circles there. 14 out of 15 of our non-charter elementary schools have available capacity, many by a very wide margin.

1:28:00Glen (senior planner) This chart clearly shows that for Boulder, it's not only about a handful of schools uh being underenrolled. The takeaway is that the region itself has substantially more capacity than resident and enrollment enrolled student populations require.

1:28:20Rob Price All right, the first move we're going to show you three different proposals for Boulder and this first one is a multi-step move and each step is contingent on one another. So, the first of three proposals were proposing the closure of Douglas Elementary School and dividing the attendance area amongst Coal Creek Elementary, Eisenhower, and Heatherwood. The map on the right shows the existing attendance boundaries as they exist today. And then the map now shows the proposed attendance boundaries for the three receiving schools. Douglas has a lot of history. It's a wonderful school. It has incredible staff and students. Um this recommendation again is not a reflection of that school or its community.

1:29:16Rob Price Um I'll just present the rationale for this move in a moment. So in this proposal, High Peaks Elementary would move, which is a focus school, would move to Douglas Elementary's building. Also included in this proposal is we would close the Community Montessori building and move the Community Montessori program to the current High Peaks location or what we call the Aurora 7 campus. And they would colllocate with BCSIS. We would then close the Montessori building. A lot of moves under this proposal. So when we look at the rationale for this proposal, this addresses enrollment. It addresses program demand and it addresses excess capacity across uh Boulder. Douglas has one of the lowest resident student populations in Boulder. its current enrollment.

1:30:19Rob Price It's projected resident students are both below two classes per grade level and they're projected to remain at that level. I would also just talk a little bit about Douglas's attendance area. When we go back a slide here, maybe it's too many steps. You can see how large and densely less densely populated it is compared to other uh non- mountain attendance areas in Boulder. So closing Douglas and redistributing its resident student population strengthens the resident student population of the three receiving schools. When we move to the High Peaks move, the rationale for moving High Peaks, it's currently our most in demand focus school in the district.

1:31:05Rob Price and the High Peaks location uh or the the new location for High Peaks would allow it to grow and it would also allow it to serve the eastern part of the district which has been a board priority for some time. That school would be able to grow from two rounds to three rounds in the Douglas building. Uh community Montessori's current and projected enrollment can be accommodated in the existing high peaks location and then that school would be just operationally more efficient. uh colllocating with BCSIS than operating in a standalone building at uh significant less utilization than what they would be. Um also closing Community Montessori significantly decreases capacity in South Boulder.

1:31:56Rob Price So the benefit of the proposal you can see in the three receiving schools again what what's over to the left is the current state and then what is to the right is projected state. Kohl elementary school benefits the most from this proposal. Um they go from a three projected number of students about 390 to 420. So 80 to 80% utilization. Eisenhower benefits slightly. They go from about 280 students to 290 students. And then Heatherwood also benefits. They are around that 260 267 student mark. We'll talk about rationale and other options we studied. And there's these schools are in these areas for a reason. We still felt like we needed buildings in there to st serve the students that live in these areas.

1:32:45Nicole Rajpal Rob,

1:32:46Rob Price yes.

1:32:46Nicole Rajpal Can you go back?

1:32:47Rob Price Yep.

1:32:49Nicole Rajpal Because you started this Boulder region saying it is complex and there are a lot of moves. I would like to pause for questions for a little bit between each of the three moves that are going to be proposed. So board members, do we have any questions on this proposal or these this set of proposed moves? Lalenia,

1:33:10Lalenia Quinlan Aweida can you talk briefly about transportation for Douglas students that will be reszoned per attendance boundary?

1:33:16Rob Price If you don't mind, we will talk about transportation in a couple slides and I'll address concerns there if you don't mind.

1:33:27Nicole Rajpal Alex,

1:33:29Alex Medler yeah, I'm uh my kids Community Montessori. It's across the street from me. Love the place. Um uh as it would be relocated, how many of its current students are from the surrounding neighborhood that community monasteries in would be affected by this move um to the new location? because my understanding it's it's always had and now has a relatively low proportion of students that are in like southwest Table Mesa in the neighborhood.

1:33:57Rob Price We'll have to get that number for you, board member Medler.

1:34:02Staff (unidentified)speaker unconfirmed · check the video We do have the data, that's for sure.

1:34:04Nicole Rajpal It's also on those dashboards.

1:34:06Alex Medler Yeah, I I think it's like under 10%, more like 8% of the students there are in the catchment zones of Bear Creek and Mesa. Um the other question I have is knowing that we have we've traditionally had BCSIS and High Peak share the Aurora 7 campus. What is the nature of like those extra services that we get from you know larger school size with the two small schools still sharing the Aurora 7 campus? Like do we do we get some of that benefit of them being collectively a bigger school or are those the two small schools that will share that campus still sort of not getting as good access to the advantages of a larger school? How does that work out with a shared facility?

1:34:51Dr. Neil Anderson Yeah, that's a great question. By having a shared in this space, I think we can be smarter with how we go about some of that. such as in one school. We want to have and honor each school community, but it does provide the opportunity for us to have a staff member that supports both schools when it comes to potential the specials rotations or the counseling. But we were going to want to take some time to be really thoughtful about that because you also need to think about the capacity that the teachers hold in this course of the both school schedules because they're designed differently with Community Montessori with the lower L upper L um and their combined grades versus um how BCSIS is designed more in a traditional first grade, second grade, third grade but with a looping cycle.

1:35:38Dr. Neil Anderson So we need to be thoughtful about how we would approach how we support those learning experiences for the students with appropriate staffing based on their two schedules. But it does create the opportunity to create efficiencies and supports with internal staff members internally within the school.

1:36:01Alex Medler And this is probably also a later discussion, but one of my priorities, well, one of the community's priorities in all the engagement was protecting our variety of educational models. And um I I just want to make sure that we're figuring out transition plans that I think uh high peaks will benefit from a larger campus and be able to spread out and attract even more families. But I want to make sure that BCSIS and Community Montessori are able to maintain or even refine and further evolve and improve their special models and I would hate for uh like the scheduling that happens when you need to coordinate with another school to make that more difficult.

1:36:37Alex Medler So I'd really I want to put a point in as we go through a transition process, how do we support all our focus schools maintaining what makes them special and cool and not have unintended consequences that sort of normalize them? And I could see trying to coordinate that that schedule and the other services make it hard. Uh so I'm confident we can work that out and we have great people to figure it out, but I just want to I want to keep the specialness of our special schools a priority as we move forward.

1:37:08Nicole Rajpal Jason,

1:37:10Jason Unger um I have a question on the impact on middle school. I don't know if that's it's not in here. I don't know if that could be answered, but for you know with Douglas uh it looks like most of those kids or all the kids end up in at three different schools but possibly more at Coal Creek. What is the impact on their middle school options? Do we have that yet or not yet?

1:37:30Rob Price So tonight we are not proposing middle school boundary adjustments other than Monarch and El Dorado. Um, so there will be some impacts for students that would be now in Coal Creek's attendance area. At Douglas, they would have went to Platt Middle School. Now those students will go to Louisville Middle School being in Coal Creek. Does that make sense? So we'll have to I say that um is but that's not but we're not changing the attendance boundary. So So wherever their home address will be is the middle school they will attend. Maybe that's the right way of saying because we're not changing middle school boundaries. So, sorry about that. I'm looking at President Rajpal on that. She corrected me.

1:38:14Nicole Rajpal Yeah, we are not adjusting middle school attendance boundaries with the exception of the impacted middle PK8 area in Louisville Superior. Folks from Douglas have always had the wonkiest feeder boundaries. Same thing with Coal Creek. So, it's it's not unusual for that community. It might more people might have that I'm now attending Coal Creek. I'm going to feed back into Plat, which is a question I have. Um, but the boundaries themselves will not change. But as the community should be well aware, board policy JC does outline that attendance boundaries shall be adjusted or considered at least every five years, which from today means just four years from today.

1:38:59Nicole Rajpal So that will come up probably quicker than any of us are prepared for as we've taken this um time to reflect on school closures. Other questions? So I have a question that's related to that. There are a significant number now to Jason's point a larger number of students that live within the city of Boulder that will be going to Coal Creek Elementary and we still have as we will see well as we can see with Eisenhower and Heatherwood still lack of cap we have a lot of excess capacity still within the city of Boulder.

1:39:38Nicole Rajpal Can you ex kind of talk us through why the decision was made to send those students to Coal Creek instead of keeping them within the city of Boulder and and zoning them into either Eisenhower or Heatherwood?

1:39:58Rob Price Yeah. Uh I think you want to pull up the map that help. Um, looking at the map, um, a lot of that area on the east, when you start getting to the east side of Douglas, uh, is closer to the Louisville community, uh, and the Coal Creek schools for sure. And as you get even further east, uh, up along Arapahoe, you're getting, uh, into actual Lafayette, city of Lafayette municipal boundaries. Uh so uh those areas really weren't traditionally part you know considered I think outside of the school district considered part of of the larger Boulder. So we tried to respect those communities as much as possible.

1:40:38Nicole Rajpal And just in that map too I mean transportation wise they're geographically nearest Coal Creek. If you look at the neighborhood very pale blue lines there they're geographically nearer. So even for a transportation perspective it probably makes sense. It just is a shift um for folks

1:40:58Rob Price and also Coal Creek has the available capacity which um is another factor.

1:41:04Nicole Rajpal Other questions on these proposed maneuvers? Board members, I will say I am appreciative of the ability of the school district of staff members to move some of our choice and focus school programming out east to create access for more students throughout the district. they h those schools ended up being densely located in a small part very specific section and so moving them does inherently create a little bit more access to folks throughout the school district and so I am I I know you heard that from the board members. I just want to say that I I I can see that you listen to that feedback and I really appreciate th that maneuver for that sake.

1:41:58Rob Price All right. In the second of our three proposals, we are recommending that Mesa and Bear Creek become one school in the Bear Creek community. And just as you all know, Mesa is a strong school community. And I want to be just very clear that its inclusion here is really just about based on geography, the location of the two buildings to one another and the size of the Bear Creek building. So in this proposal, the attendance boundaries uh for Mesa and Bear Creek would become one and we would also absorb the dual attendance area into uh one attendance area that would be assigned to the Bear Creek building.

1:42:39Rob Price Um, in this proposal, Mesa's RISE program would also move to Bear Creek, which would give us an AIM and a rise program at Bear Creek. As we looked at the rationale for this proposal, Mesa is the lowest enrolled school in Boulder. Um, is one among one of the lowest enrolled schools in Boulder and is projected to continue to climb. Mesa also has the s second lowest number of resident students in the attendance area. The two schools are less than a mile apart. Um, and of the two schools, Bear Creek is the bigger of the two, having the larger capacity. And we do believe that bringing these two schools uh together creates the potential for a stronger three round elementary school.

1:43:31Rob Price So last school year you can see the two buildings operated at 63% 54% utilization and the combined uh utilization is projected to be somewhere between 80 to 94%. Um this is another school just along with Superior Elementary that we're going to have to continue to monitor their enrollment. we see this and uh watch their resident population, but we'll be able to use again open enrollment to make sure that they do not exceed the capacity of their school.

Boulder region: Mesa into Bear Creek

1:44:04Nicole Rajpal Rob, can I have you stop there?

1:44:06Rob Price Yep.

1:44:07Nicole Rajpal Thank you. Board members, questions on this maneuver, proposed maneuver. Alex,

1:44:14Alex Medler um so I just want to see if I'm reading the numbers right. If you were to reverse this, for example, and close Bear Creek and put them to Mesa, we'd have 80 too many kids to fit into Mesa. And so this way, we have a small wiggle room, but not very much at Bear Creek. Um, how many kids are in the the rise in AIM programs between the two schools? And how many would those be affected by that? Do we have a rough

1:44:39Rob Price No, but I can get it.

1:44:40Alex Medler Okay. All right. And um do we uh I know the schools are 7/10 of a mile apart, but as we combine those catchment zones, um how many kids will be like outside the 1.5 miles maybe uh within the larger catchment zone from Bear Creek and how much I know people very much like their walking to school and we have huge bike parade, you know, buses that go by at my house every morning. How much of that will still work within the combined catchment zone for the Bear Creek?

1:45:14Glen (senior planner)speaker unconfirmed · check the video The most of the area is within walking distance even to Bear Creek, but you do when you start getting to the south and east, there are outer some of the outer communities that do lie outside of that boundary. And that's from a little more of an informal analysis. We haven't actually looked at the tra actual travel distance uh which transportation can help with. Yeah.

1:45:37Nicole Rajpal Other questions, board members? Alex um my

1:45:42Alex Medler again for later consideration as we talk about the transition planning um I just keep in mind that the a lot of those places farther from it are are walking uphill at least one way to the school. Um uh so um I think we might want to think liberally about the transportation uh within the far south and east portions as we think about that process. I know we'll talk about it later, but

Boulder region: Flatirons into Foothill and Whittier

1:46:07Rob Price board me board member Medler, I have the number for you. We're at capacity at both. So Bear Creek has 11 and Rise has 11. Bear Creek and Mesa. All right, our final proposal this evening uh for the Boulder area is Flatirons, another school mo school with tremendous community and history. So in the third and final proposal, we are proposing to close Flatirons and divide its attendance area among both Foothill and Whittier. And I'll talk a little bit more. Um we heard clearly from our community that value consolidations over closures. And we'll talk a little bit more about other options studied to why that wasn't possible, why we are making this recommendation tonight.

1:46:55Rob Price Uh but we would um the attendance boundaries would be divided along Boulder Canyon more to be in alignment with the middle school boundary um and becomes more of a logical geographic uh division. Um you can see the current attendance boundaries and the new attendance boundaries as we're proposing here. Flatirons' rise program would move to Whittier. Um we are also uh proposing a bell time change at Whittier. There currently is 750. we would propose that goes to 8:35 uh to accommodate the mountain routes. Um that would align also with foothills belt time which is also at 8:35 um which also accommodates some of our mountain routes.

1:47:42Rob Price As we look at the rationale for this region again Flatirons has the lowest enrollment and the lowest number of resident students of all of our Boulder Boulder schools. They're they're currently operating at approximately one class per grade level. Their building is at 47% utilization. And just after analyzing the capacity of both Whittier and Foothills, they both have room to serve the Flatirons community. Um, this proposal would close the Flatirons building and we would reduce excess capacity in the South Boulder area. These numbers show what the receiving schools would look like. You can see that Foothills moves into a stronger three-round elementary school. Uh Whittier also benefits from receiving additional students from a larger attendance area.

1:48:33Rob Price Really building that building Whittier into a sustainable two round school. And with that, I'll open it up for questions.

1:48:44Nicole Rajpal Board members, any questions on this proposed maneuver? Rob, I wanted to clarify something that you said just so the community is crystal clear on um it was the communitywide feedback of a preference over consolidating versus redistribute like break taking a school community and redistributing its residents elsewhere. It wasn't the efforts of one community being extra vocal. it wasn't when we talk about community feedback. Um, one school still has to close here. So, yes, the school is closing, but it's they're trying to we're consolidating to the best we can. Um, I just want to make sure that we're clear on what you meant when you said no.

1:49:31Rob Price And thank you for that clarification.

1:49:35Nicole Rajpal Alex, did you have a question?

1:49:35Dr. Rob Anderson Oh, Dr. I I will say just going back to the data board members that we shared with you on June 9th, we had 48% agree and 16% strongly agree uh to that consolidating schools was the preferred method um as we addressed um declining enrollment. Um and then in our roundts 52% of uh of teachers agreed that consolidating schools was was the preferred way in which uh we would move forward with this plan and strategy. And so that was across regions uh and uh really clear data. And so as Rob shared when we were able to consolidate that is what we did.

1:50:16Dr. Rob Anderson And um when we had to close and and distribute students to multiple schools as in this case uh we tried to make that at least where neighborhoods would all go to the same place.

1:50:29Nicole Rajpal And it's my understanding that both the size of Whittier itself and its conditions would not allow all of Flatirons to be absorbed into Whittier. Is that is that the case? And that's why partial part of that population is going to foothill.

1:50:44Rob Price So under other options study that walks us right into that conversation. So we spent a lot of time looking at a just a true consolidation closing Flatirons consolidating directly into Whittier. Uh really three big concerns. Um Whittier has a very small cafeteria. So we'd be starting lunch periods around 9:30 10:00 in the morning going till late afternoon. Um queuing around Whittier for buses and vehicles is has always been problematic for us. and to think about having seven buses down there with all of the different vehicle traffic etc. We didn't believe we'd be able to accommodate that.

1:51:19Rob Price Um the other thing is is we have some classrooms at Whittier uh that we didn't feel like bringing that school up to 400 or 450 students in an older building. Building the Whittier is now what 140 plus years old. So um we didn't feel like that was best for either community. So that's why we brought forth the recommendation tonight.

1:51:45Nicole Rajpal Thank you for that.

1:51:47Rob Price Some of the before we get back into questions, I just want to go through some of the other options, configurations for Boulder. We had more options, more configurations that we studied just because of the number of schools we had. So, um, really what this came down to was is maintaining geographic distribution of our neighborhood schools throughout the district. Um, so when we looked at that very beginning slide, we got 16 schools. we could consolidate all the way down to 10. However, we felt like it was best to serve our families by leaving some schools where they're at and having excess capacity. I just want that to be very transparent with the board. Uh there were transportation issues in some of the options we studied.

1:52:28Rob Price There were capacity issues, other what I'll call undesirable impacts that we found as we were studying other all these other options. Um, and the proposal we presented this afternoon is just weighing those trade-offs over a couple months and bringing this forward, valuing the input that we receive from our community.

1:52:54Nicole Rajpal Do you want to go back to slide 55 because I don't think we went over that.

1:52:59Rob Price Yeah. Here you can see that we have reduced our excess capacity from 37% approximately down to 32%. So again, we still have available capacity in the system to respond to needs. We haven't reduced it all the way down. Um, but it is a change in the right direction for a more sustainable future.

1:53:22Nicole Rajpal I concur that this is a definitely a change in the right direction. It is hard to wrap your brain around we need 10 schools, we have 16. I think the plan that's proposed really did a nice job of honoring the feedback we heard from our communities about desire for walkability, desire for neighborhood schools, desire to have our choice schools spread out. We will have some flexibility moving forward with this. Um but definitely more capacity remains in Boulder than we have elsewhere. And um I think this problem is not going to go away.

1:53:58Nicole Rajpal And so I think down the road, maybe not this year, but down the road, we'll have to continue to this board, future boards will have to continue to look at what makes sense for the city of Boulder. And I think that these maneuvers really do set us up, set the district up for success to continue to be able to evolve and adapt, be resilient, meeting the needs of our students with our facilities. So I I just um all of these changes are hard. They're a lot to process. And I think looking at this slide brings home that we could have done more. We chose not to because we listened.

1:54:33Nicole Rajpal We chose not to because it it doesn't necessarily feel like today is the best day to do that. Um and um I just wanted to to elevate that. Alex

1:54:46Alex Medler to that point. I guess I mean I I'm hoping that we don't go through processes like this too often. And so, you know, I think one of the board's other priorities is to do uh intense changes now so that we don't have to revisit them. And I know we'll we'll still have work to do after this. Uh one thing I'd be interested in perhaps later analysis um as we make all these changes, we have a huge amount of open enrollment that happens in district and intra district. I think with our preference for people who are coming into the district who are working in the district having capacity in city of you know Boulder works where we have a lot of employment.

Other options studied; district-wide summary

1:55:20Alex Medler So, I understand uh that there's advantages as we move forward and and maintaining some extra capacity and some wiggle room a minute, but I also want to make sure that we um the changes that we're making are worth this uh the juice is worth the squeeze as Dr. Anderson says and that we um have enough uh increased school size and classroom units to be able to get the extra services and the benefits that we're looking for.

1:55:45Alex Medler So I would be curious to know perhaps later um what kind of space this gives us to accommodate open enrollment um in the different schools that we end up in the final configuration for because I expect to see some parents looking at what we do and then saying oh well yeah you've assigned me there but I would like to go I still want to go over there which has just always been a big part of Boulder.

1:56:17Rob Price All right, now that we've reviewed uh all three region, this section is going to show you just a combined district-wide summary. Um the information at the bottom summarizes the overall uh scale of the proposal. So, six schools or grade level programs would close for a total of four buildings would close for oper for school operations. In total, 16 schools would be affected as either closing, relocating, consolidating, or receiving schools. The proposal also reduces excess capacity by about 1,900 seats and really better aligns us for the future of aligning our seats with the number of students that we serve with our projected enrollment. The metrics on the right show how these changes strengthen our schools by 203031.

1:57:05Rob Price uh average number of classes would increase from two to 2.5 providing more sustainable grade level cohorts which was a priority of the board. The number of schools operating below two classes per grade level decreases from 14 to six and overall utilization increases from 68% to 75%. Um just when we think about this all taken together the results show that we've reduced excess capacity in these proposals. We've strengthened grade level cohorts and we've allowed the use the district to use its facilities and resources more efficiently while cont continuing to serve grade students across all grade levels and all regions. Um all priorities set by the board early on in this process as discussed early in this presentation. this slide and board members, I do apologize.

1:57:58Rob Price This slide is not in your deck, but we will make sure you get this was something we added uh late in the game. It really reflects the district-wide attendance boundaries as we have proposed this afternoon. Um the school attendance boundaries that are in gray are unchanged at the elementary level, but you can see the number of schools now that have a larger attendance area, which we project will create more sustainable enrollments. They're drawing from bigger areas, therefore increasing the number of resident students in each attendance area. And with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Anderson.

Dr. Anderson: reinvestment, transition budget

1:58:43Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you, Rob. Um, you know, board members, as we've started this and we've been very clear that that this is really about the student experience, uh, the number of rounds, the services and supports that each student receives in every one of our schools. Uh, by making the uh prop by um adopting the proposal that we have presented to you. Um provided that our projections and the enrollment patterns and trends that we have projected hold projected hold up uh we will be able to reinvest three and a half to$4 million into what our prior our community has prioritized our teachers have prioritized.

1:59:23Dr. Rob Anderson Uh there is an a clearer data point than we have that folks want smaller class sizes and this will give us significant resources to provide that across the district for both impacted and non-impacted schools. I would say that that $4 million is in addition to the increased efficiencies you get by walk by operating fewer sites. We'll have fewer schools that have uh classes of 30 something and 17 something because you just have more three round schools. And so the $4 million is in addition to the additional um uh the additional uh efficiencies that we'll see um and again increased student access to all of the the resources and supports that we've shared uh will have significant resource to reinvest year-over-year.

2:00:08Dr. Rob Anderson And board members, I will remind you this is in addition to the $1 million of administrative cuts that we made as part of adopting the budget last year to eliminate the multi-age classrooms. So $5 million in total to reduce class sizes and increase supports for students. Uh and that again um I highlighted the one slide which was um our engagement process is what makes what we're doing different. This is also something that's very different. Again, board members, oftentimes uh governance teams don't have the courage to act early enough um on things that are as hard as school consolidation and school closure.

2:00:48Dr. Rob Anderson But by acting now, by acting today, the dollars that we recover, we can reinvest in schools as opposed to take to pay for things that we already bought we couldn't afford because of our enrollment was declining. So, $4 million through this, another million dollars which is already allocated as a recurring budget item. Uh because we won't have the multi-age classes because of the of of what we're doing uh to invest in in class size.

2:01:11Dr. Rob Anderson uh it will it will help not only with the student experience but I know that as our educators are watching this presentation and wondering what's going to happen especially for those schools that are closed uh we will have and we'll be hiring more teachers next year uh with these resources and so there'll be lots of opportunities as we go through those processes with those employees. Uh there are one-time transition costs, board members, facility modifications. Uh these are rough estimates, but we're also anticipating offset by savings from dollars that we were going to be investing in buildings that we are now proposing that we close. Somewhere between three and $4 million, three million,

2:01:57Rob Price two and a half to three million.

2:01:59Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you, Rob. Um and uh we board members, you've already budgeted $5 million to transition our schools and support um to make sure that we're moving appropriately, supporting our staff, supporting our schools as they transition. Uh we had really um great conversations with our principles this morning. They're going to be communicating with their staffs and communities as we're transitioning and bringing communities together. and we already have resources allocated to do what we need to do to support each school and community as we move through this plan. I think this just reiterates what it is that I just said. Um, but it's important to say again, uh, um, again, I want to thank our community.

2:02:45Dr. Rob Anderson Um, and I want to I want to commend our staff for listening to our community as we've developed this proposal. Um, and really strengthening the experience that students get in BVSD and making the best district in Colorado even stronger.

2:03:01Nicole Rajpal Board members, any questions on that those summary slides? Deann,

2:03:10Deann Bucher um, I noticed and probably the public noticed that there's a there's a small group of schools that hasn't been dealt with. So, could you, Dr. Anderson, talk about the ones that were for the future like the bilingual programs?

2:03:28Dr. Rob Anderson We're going to be speaking to that later in the presentation.

2:03:33Nicole Rajpal Alex,

2:03:34Alex Medler um I don't know if this is a later topic as well, but uh was this a time to talk a little bit more about the transition support and the affected schools both on

2:03:44Rob Price We'll also get to that in the later in the presentation if you don't mind.

2:03:50Nicole Rajpal I have a question uh on slide 58. It noted notes that not all schools will become three round schools. We'll still have six schools at two rounds or below. We have talked a lot about the operational efficiencies, the efficiencies of student experiences with a three round school. And I'm wondering considerations for those schools that remain still not at three rounds programmatically. Are we consider I mean what are thoughts around that?

2:04:26Dr. Rob Anderson Again, we'll have more resources to support um through the efficiencies and I think that we will have to watch to see how open enrollment impacts where students um end up actually attending. And so, um again, the the goal here is this plan is to support each and every one of our schools in all of our communities, even if those schools weren't listed in this in this um proposal. uh the resources and the investment across the board uh to create those equitable opportunities that we want for our kids and families will be the goal.

2:05:01Nicole Rajpal Thank you.

Enrollment preference (JCCR), transportation, preschool, school-age care

2:05:08Rob Price All right. As we think about next steps, so the proposal is only one part of it. How we transition, support our families, how we support our staff, uh is the next uh part of this process. The very first question that families will have uh more than likely, okay, what happens if my school is closed? And I'm going to walk through this and my intent here will be is to bring back JCCR redlined for study at the next meeting. And you can read through this, but um if a neighborhood school is closed, I'm going to walk through a few of these scenarios. Um your child would be assigned to a new neighborhood school.

2:05:47Rob Price So if we think about Birch and Kohl for example, Birch closes, we have a new attendance area. The new neighborhood school would be Birch or Kohl Elementary or for this year we are proposing a priority preference for all students that are impacted by a closure. So that first priority would give them a preference over all other preferences that are currently stated in the open enrollment process. So that would be for one year only 2728 only for students that are impacted not for students that are transitioning to a next grade level from fifth grade to sixth grade for example. This is only within that grade level. Some of the important to know is listed on this slide.

2:06:33Rob Price Uh if a focus school moves to a new location, those students would move to the focus school. If they prefer not to because it's not convenient, then that family would be able to enter the open enrollment process, have a first priority in the lottery process for 2728 school year. If a child is open enrolled into a closed neighborhood school, the child would be assigned to their designated neighborhood school or again they could enter the open enrollment process, have a priority preference. That priority preference I just want to make clear is to all non-charter elementary schools. This is not for charter schools. This is for our non-charter schools. Um again the important to know I'll let you read through those.

2:07:20Rob Price I'm not going to go through each one of those but for the 2728 school year. We will bring a red line back to the board on September 8th during the study item for you to understand the details the complexities of that change. So I think I'll stop there. I think there will get a lot of questions for this one. Okay. As we look at uh the different services we provide, families are going to want to know what support will continue. So eligible students uh will still receive transportation based on the eligibility standards that are listed here. So if you live outside of the 1 and a half mile walk distance, you're going to get transportation. middle schools that two plus miles.

2:08:05Rob Price Um students with uh that have an IEP that require transportation, nothing's going to change. They're still going to get transportation. One thing that we are excited to announce tonight that is not listed on this presentation that will be part of the study item is we will be able to provide transportation for incomequalifying families to all of our focus schools across the district. Currently in the way our schools are set up, BCSIS and High Peaks don't receive transportation and I can't tell you why. However, Community Montessori, Pioneer, uh, Uni Hill all receive transportation for income qualifying students. So, we will bring that also back uh as a study item.

2:08:56Rob Price But I think that is a significant move in the right direction for our families to be able to provide supports for those families that need the additional support. Um, as we move over to preschool programming, preschool programming will remain in the affected regions and we will announce the locations by October 1st. And the reason for that is we just need to work with our building leaders really understand the capacity of their buildings uh work with them possibly use some space as swing space. So we need to understand that before we define the preschool locations. School age care will continue to be offered at the receiving schools and the lottery window for our school age care program will still be in the spring.

2:09:39Rob Price We will be looking at when you typically when you reduce the number of buildings we reduce the capacity of SAC. However, going through community engagement, getting feedback from the community, we know how important that is. So, we will be looking at expanding SAC at these locations which might we might have to give up something else, lifelong learning programs, etc. And again, that's going to take some collaboration with our department, our building leaders, etc. But we do want this board to know that we will be pri prioritizing school age care for our families. Um I guess with all of that is it is our uncertainty to rem remove as much uncertainty for our families right as we think through this.

2:10:25Rob Price We've had a team that's been working on it for the last couple months. Uh there is more here more we will present tonight but with that I will stop for questions.

2:10:34Nicole Rajpal Thank you. So board members slide questions in these two slides after which we will take a short comfort break and then resume the presentation but who wants to kick us off on questions regarding enroll choice enrollment preferences transportation preschool and school age care. Alex,

2:10:50Alex Medler um, as we figure out how to accommodate the changes in the open enrollment preferences, I guess I would reiterate something I've pushed for before, which is, uh, I believe already that the families that are exercising open enrollment into our focus schools that want to return to their neighborhood schools should always have that not as an open enrollment preference, but as a right, just like anybody who moves into their neighborhood. And especially as we move focus schools from one place to another, in particular, High Peaks, moving it quite a ways away.

2:11:17Alex Medler If I lived near uh the Aurora 7 campus and my kid was in High Peaks and I didn't want to drive my kid all the way to Douglas and I wasn't FRL, I'd sure want to go to my neighborhood school. And if I couldn't get into it and somebody who just moved in did, I'd be pretty annoyed by that. So I feel the same way about when families like get divorced and people move out of the district that to do the right thing by kids and by our families is to not involve either of those groups in our open enrollment and treat them as a right.

2:11:50Alex Medler So if you're enrolled in one of our schools, I believe you should be able to stay in that school through all the grades that it's in regardless what happens to where your family moves. And if you're in a focus or choice school, especially one that moves far away from where it is when you enrolled in it, then you should be able to return to your neighborhood school without having to um win the open enrollment spot since we don't know how many spots there are. I advocated for that before we were doing the closing. And if we're going to reopen the open enrollment preferences to accommodate this, I'll still be moving that we do that.

2:12:19Alex Medler And I think that's the right thing to do for the families that um were partially enrolled in a cool focus school because it was really close to their house, not just because it was a different model. And if it's now 7 miles away from their house, um that's a very different calculation for that family regardless of their income.

2:12:41Nicole Rajpal from the presentation, we will have some elementary school neighborhood schools that are at capacity and so I would want to make sure any changes to our open enrollment policy like the one board member Mother is presenting that may not the math could work out that that's not feasible and so I want to make sure any changes to the policy that are discussed allow prevent us from exceeding capacity. We have a lot of capacity to go around, but at a couple particular schools in the very immediate transition process from this proposal, they will be pushing the upper thresholds. I think that's that's a reality that we also need to contend with. Other questions on proposed policy changes trans or this section?

2:13:43Nicole Rajpal I will say with JCCR I I like the idea of providing a one-time preference. I think part of the challenge always with choice enrollment is when you have students of multiple ages, you want to know at roughly the same time, are they all getting a spot together? If you have a 10-day window to accept or deny a choice location and you don't know if all of your kids can colllocate together if that is a priority, I think it makes a great deal of sense to use our existing lottery in this way rather than just saying one person like if you already are in school and have to move. So I I do like this option.

2:14:17Nicole Rajpal I think it's it really does help families who might need to have alternate transportation or rely on siblings to help walk youngers to school, bike to school and that nature. So, I do I do like that uh one time, one year for non-charter schools only. Uh priority preference for any families that'll be impacted and displaced. Seeing as there are no additional questions, we're going to take a very brief comfort break, come back to the presentation. We are about to get started. So, anybody can if you can please take your seats. Okay, welcome back everybody. Thank you for accommodating our comfort break there. We will resume the presentation on resilient schools. I'll turn it back over to Rob Price and Dr. Neil Anderson.

Transition plan for families and staff

2:24:59Dr. Neil Anderson Thank you, President Rajpal. So, um, we're starting the kind of the logistics. How are we transitioning and supporting our communities, our teachers, and our families with this slide. So, our process, policies, and interactions are going to be consistently grounded in clarity. Sorry. Oh, no. I'm I got Yeah. um consistently grounded in clarity, timeliness, and comprehen comprehensive components so everybody has the information they need. We're going to maintain our focus on our people because we know our people are our strength and it goes without saying that that is an important value that we will be leading from during this transition.

2:25:43Dr. Neil Anderson um our care for our students and our employees and it's our goal that through this period of change we ensure everyone is supported and cared for. So to begin with first and foremost we have created um kind of five buckets of structures to support our students and our families. As I've already said, people are our strength and we've identified these means and these areas to engage with support our families and our students and our employees. These five areas focus around communication, transition support, clear resources, special events, and ways to engage in the newly identified school communities.

2:26:25Dr. Neil Anderson Highlights include clear and consistent communication that will provide clarity around timeliness and timelines, our decision processes, enrollment options, and school specific transition events, dedicated BVSD staff to answer questions for families throughout the transition process, a hub for family resources on how to support their ch child or children during this transition, and specialized events specifically designed for our impacted families. For example, starting with our BVSD is the place to be showcased and school specific open enrollment events. And then finally, each one of our schools will also be holding school specific events to build community and relationships through this time of transition.

2:27:15Dr. Neil Anderson A timeline is important in this because it gives clarity of what ex things to expect and therefore it's also important to ensure that we're clear with our employees when it comes to our timeline so that everyone has clarity around what to expect. And this slide creates a roadmap of the major milestones for this school year. Starting today and ending in March, you will see that after board action on September 22nd, our human resources team will be actively supporting our impacted schools. The open enrollment window opens November 1st and closes December 18th. That is an important note because that is a change from our past practices when it comes to the window closing, which is typically in the first week of the new year.

2:28:00Dr. Neil Anderson We are moving that forward to Friday, December 18th. Why that's important is because that allows us to complete our budgetary employee assignment ver identification process by the end of February which ensures all employees assignments are finalized by the end of Mar March. That actually is an acceleration by around 3 weeks from our normal practice because we believe that the sooner our employees and our families know in the OE role and then the open enrollment process and then our staffing process and finalization, the better we are going to be in the period of transition in support. And then finally, it's important to note that our employee processes will be grounded in all of our negotiated agreements.

2:28:45Dr. Neil Anderson Our human resources team has worked diligently to do that and ensure that communication and partnership will occur. So let's kind of move to that slide that talks about our structures of support for our employees. A timeline doesn't provide the layer of detail often necessary. It's kind of just date oriented and doesn't give the specific details. So, we hope that these seven points provide more structure, more details, and I know our human resources department will be reaching out and partnering with our schools as well. As I said, our processes will be grounded in negotiating agreements, and our communication will be ongoing and transparent so that everyone is informed and can access the resources necessary to consistently answer their individual questions.

2:29:32Dr. Neil Anderson Our human resources team will visit each of the school of they will visit each of the identified school sites to clearly define the placement process for all employees, honor individual communication with each of our employees and share the bank of re resources available to each and every single one of our employees. Likewise, our school leaders will develop opportunities to build community between new teaching teams and implement opportunities for employees to engage and learn in their new schools with their new teams andor in their new roles. That community building between teachers and within that school community is incredibly valuable and our leaders after our time today with them recognize that, value that and will lead with that important value.

2:30:20Dr. Neil Anderson And finally, we will also be purposeful in our support of our principles. Um, a few highlights include bringing them together every two weeks to problem solve, share ideas, and collaborate with one another along with identifying transition coaches for our principles so we can support them while they also focus on ensuring success for the students in their building this year at each one of our grade levels. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. price unless you have questions.

2:30:54Nicole Rajpal Let's pause for questions on the transition proposed transition plan. Any questions there board members? I think it's great that we are adjusting that enrollment window a little bit sooner, wrapping that up. Families can make that decisions while kids are still in school. They don't have to have that those decisions being made while they are on winter break. I wonder if the notification timeline is going to be sooner than previously or are we still using the same notification timeline for spots, open choice enrollment seats? I forgot to turn off my mic.

2:31:33Dr. Neil Anderson Um, so it was still on. So our intention in working with Mr. for Will Cox and the enrollment office is that we would be off making getting through the open enrollment offers um by the first week of January um to make sure first our data is accurate over the winter break and then push those offers out the first week of January is our goal. And by doing that, families will know early on in the second semester um in their choice process um and planning for next year.

2:32:09Nicole Rajpal Thank you for that. Also, if I recall, previous board member, board president Kathy Gebhardt asked for our employment off window to be moved up. And so I think that is a great change as well. I think if we can keep that that timeline moving forward even after this year to help ensure that our employee employees are being settled, we're able to offer opportunities earlier when those vacancies arise. I think that would be wonderful as well. So, I I am appreciative of the timeline change on those two items. Alex.

2:32:43Alex Medler Uh yeah, I'm uh I appreciate the care for all our staff and the families through the transition planning and um I think about as families do think about the open enrollment options that they have. I know that it uh people will be thinking about well when do they do the joint things at the new school and part of my lens on this is making this fun and exciting for students rather than an additional source of trauma in their lives. And so to the extent that the schools are ready to welcome the potentially new families into their buildings, I think doing that the sooner we can the better and framing that in a positive um way where people are looking at the excitement.

2:33:20Alex Medler I know I'm I'm gratified that we have done more consolidating of whole schools into one another so that friend groups that are transitioning into their new neighborhood school would be going together. And so I'm interested in um I know all the leaders and the staff and the central staff will have a lot of work to do, but I really do believe that some degree of stuff focused at the families that's focused on the new schools that happen sooner rather than later will help inform open enrollment and also make people uh more excited about not exercising open enrollment and leading to thriving neighborhood schools. So, I just wouldn't delay that stuff until everybody's figured everything else out and then bring the parents in.

2:34:07Nicole Rajpal Thanks for elevating that, Alex. It's also something I've been thinking a lot about with school accountability committees and district accountability committees and PTOs and sort of the the way in which that those really important stakeholder groups that are both sitebased and then roll up into district um district level committees how they can be how can they how can they start communicating and building bridges and how can they work with their school leaders through this to help this transition for the parents in particular and the students. So, thank you for elevating that. Looks like no other questions on that topic, so we can continue on.

Next steps and how to give feedback

2:34:43Rob Price All right, as we think about next steps, you've seen this timeline a number of times. The yellow bar shows where we're currently at. As we get into a little bit more detail, you can see where we're headed over the next month. So, right now, we are scheduled to bring this back to the board on September 8th for further study uh based on what we heard from the board um this afternoon. uh that will be an opportunity for the public to come to the board meeting and provide comment. So that will be during public input and then based on that meeting we are generally we are scheduled for September 22nd for proposed action. That would be another opportunity for the community to provide input.

2:35:26Rob Price Um that concludes tonight's presentation before we move on to the dual language uh on the proposal. But with that, if unless there's any other questions, I will turn it over to Dr. Herszog to talk about dual language programs.

2:35:40Nicole Rajpal One more point of clarification. Earlier on, you said that there is a way for families to engage and ask questions that are not just at the board meeting. And so, as you're highlighting the two opportunities for the community to provide feedback in person or virtually during board comment, can you remind the community of the other opportunity to provide feedback on these proposals?

2:35:59Rob Price Yeah, there will be a letter that goes out to all families this evening and that letter will include different ways to um ask questions to the district. So, there's going to be an email address. We also have a form or there will be a form on our website to submit questions and we have a team that's prepared to be able to answer those questions in a timely manner. So really two opportunities and there's also uh we have a number of numbers to call for transition support to support both our employees and our families through this transition. So um we have thought long and hard about this. I mean these decisions are hard.

2:36:37Rob Price The hardest work starts now and moving forward and that's how we support people through this. So uh that's where our focus will be. But we do want to make sure we hear from our families through that process, through the board process. Um, and we will commit to being responsive to those families.

Board comments

2:36:55Nicole Rajpal I appreciate that. And you were you and your team was were very responsive when we did the attendance boundary adjustment. And so I have full confidence that you'll continue to be responsive um using those same methods through this. Lalenia,

2:37:10Lalenia Quinlan Aweida uh, first I want to tell staff I really appreciate how thorough you've been. this is a um a big ball of wax and and you've worked really hard defining um this proposal and hearing what uh the community wanted and what the board wanted. Um and while I'm sure not everyone will be thrilled, I do think that that this meets many many of the needs. Um, I'm also really thankful for our community engagement. Um, and I do hope that that can enable people to be supportive of the plan even though it will require change. Um, I love seeing the help that we're going to give to our families as they navigate the change. Um, let's once again note that December 18th open enrollment deadline.

2:38:03Lalenia Quinlan Aweida Um, and the help for our teachers is really meaningful and important because our teachers are our first line there and how they're feeling is going to impact our kids. And third and not least, um, I am so thrilled for students to have more resources and I look forward to supporting this plan. Um, I know students are resilient in the face of change and these are changes for the better. I do believe. Um, all of that being said, I do want to talk a little bit about excess capacity. So, I notice in Louisville, we decrease our excess capacity by about 10 points. And in Broomfield, uh, we decrease it, let's see, oh gosh, even more than that.

2:38:54Lalenia Quinlan Aweida And then when we get to Boulder, we reduce it from 37% to 32%. And I do think that that's because Boulder um was more challenging, right? I heard you say that how how many more pieces to the puzzle there are. So, I'm I want to encourage just from my standpoint the continued um look at Boulder because if we need 10 schools and we have 16 and we're not quite bridging that gap, I'm curious about how we're going to bridge that gap in a prompt way. um because that is something we committed to with community. We want to give them all the information to choose the best school for their kid going into kindergarten or first or second grade. So I just want to encourage that.

2:39:50Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I certainly um think this proposal is really well thought out, but I do want to encourage the continued look at um you know the five points of decrease in that excess capacity in Boulder. Um because I personally don't think it's quite enough um not because this proposal can't move forward, but can we keep looking I guess is the question. Alex

2:40:22Alex Medler Yeah. Um I have been absolutely astounded by not just the effort by the leadership and the staff to facilitate community engagement but by the response by the community. And I went to I think six of the school uh focus groups and I went to five of the community groups and sat down at the tables and was just amazed at the intentionality, the the care of the thought, the constructive engagement that our community had on it. And um I'm not surprised. We live in an amazing community with great people and they were really very focused on kids and I look forward to the community input. I know there will be very strong feelings uh between now and September 22nd and after.

2:41:05Alex Medler And I think one of the key things having lived in Boulder for 35 years is to really think about the long-term uh effects of how we behave as adults on our community and our ability to solve the next problem that comes up next year. And we really want people to feel as good about their district uh today in five years as they do today. And so I just really hope we can engage constructively thinking with kids first and foremost as we participate in this difficult decision and really take the time to figure out how to make it be successful and kid-facing.

2:41:38Alex Medler To that point, I I don't mean to say what to do and what not to do, but we're primarily changing elementary schools with three-year-olds to like 11 year olds in them. And I'm really hoping that the difficulty of this is not focused on our kids and transferred to them so that the hard parts of it get emphasized for them and instead that we can focus on the good parts for the kids. So, I'd really love to hear from adults in the public engagement period about what they're angry about and what they want and how to do it.

2:42:09Alex Medler and I'd love to hear about the good stuff, but I'm really hoping we're not uh exposing kids to more trauma and um uh anxiety than we need to over the next year. And that's why I want to hope that we are celebrating the integrations of our new school communities. Why we are emphasizing the positive things that kids will experience because of this. And that we as leaders, parents, teachers, staff, everybody are really focused on making the most positive student experience we can through this important, powerful, and potentially uh scary experience.

2:42:55Nicole Rajpal Looks like there are no other hands coming up. So, we will move on.

2:43:02Rob Price As we've mentioned a couple times, we have one ending item that's a hold for further study, uh, which is our dual language schools.

2:43:10Dr. Herszog So, what I want to do is just talk through a little bit of our current context and then our proposed next steps. So, at this time, we know we have some opportunities for improvement with our dual language programming across our district in both Boulder and Lafayette. I think that's an important note because to date, we haven't been talking about Lafayette. Now, we're talking about our dual language programs across the district. And we also know enough to know that we need more information before we proceed with a recommendation. To date, we've had limited Spanish speaking feedback. During our community engagement phase, we had one session fully in Spanish at Columbine, we had about 60 people attending and 39 packets collected.

2:43:49Dr. Herszog You compare that to the total number of packets. It's not very many. Second, we know that we have opportunities for improvement with our student outcomes. Our outcomes are not yet where we would like them to be consistently. Third, we have inconsistent continuation with dual language programming from elementary to middle school. When we looked at our dual our students who were in fifth grade at our dual language schools last spring and those students where they are starting sixth grade now, about 60% of those students are attending a middle school with dual language programming. So in other words, 40% of our recently graduated fifth graders are now not continuing with dual language programming in middle school.

2:44:30Dr. Herszog And for students who do attend a middle school with dual language programming, the specific courses offered vary by school and by year because staffing can be quite challenging. And last, we have opportunities for improvement with the Seal of Biliteracy attainment. We've made some really significant strides that we're proud of. Uh but we also know that we have more work to do. When we looked at our our last 2026 graduates, out of those graduates, um, those who attended a dual language elementary school K5, only 50% of those students attain the seal of climate the Seal of Biliteracy. Excuse me. If I said climate literacy earlier, I definitely meant biliteracy.

Dual language programs: hold for further study

2:45:09Dr. Herszog So going forward as our proposed next steps, we'd like to take this year to engage in a thorough process to review our PK5 and 68 dual language models across the district in both Boulder and Lafayette. To do that, we propose taking this fall to conduct an internal review of our programming with district staff and principles. And then in the spring semester, we would engage in a systematic review of national research and hold teacher and family dual language specific feedback sessions at both the elementary and secondary levels.

2:45:40Dr. Herszog We know this, but it's important to say dual language programming continues to be a district priority and we just need more information from our community and from the research before we proceed and in order to ensure that we're extremely thoughtful in how we proceed. With that can open it for discussion.

2:46:00Nicole Rajpal Thank you for that. I'll hold my questions until my colleagues get a chance and lots of quick quick hands to be raised. Um we're going to go Anna, Lalenia, and Deann.

2:46:13Ana Temu Otting Thank you. I first just want to start by saying thank you for the intentionality that went into this entire process. um from getting to talk to teachers and principles and have lunch with them over several several days and weeks to getting to meet parents uh in the evening. It was a very involved process and um I had mentioned it before, but I felt really spoiled being a a new board member getting to engage with so many parents, teachers, and principles um from the get-go.

2:46:44Ana Temu Otting And it was a really great um starting point for me to really understand uh where uh our school leaders and our teachers are in the classroom and what that reality looks like for them um with the current uh school structures that we have now. Um some of the things that uh came out were really greatly reflected within the plan of class sizes, stable full-time um staff, counselors, specials, making sure that they're there consistently. Um, and one of the things that I really enjoyed and really appreciate so deeply about this community is that at the engagement sessions, several parents over and over again kept asking who is missing from this conversation. They would look around and they they know the friends of their of their kids.

2:47:35Ana Temu Otting They know their neighbors and they know they knew who wasn't in that room in those engagement sessions. And to that end, I really just want to um again thank the staff and really applaud the staff for taking a pause on making decisions on dual language. Um because Spanish-sp speakaking families, I think that they they are a different demographic that we want to handle with care that they um that they deserve um because of the added barriers that we've seen.

2:48:09Ana Temu Otting And throughout these months where we've gotten um a rundown and all the data of why this declining enrollment is happening from birth rates to housing, one of the things over and over again was the the experiences that immigrant families are facing just in our society in general and that is also going into our declining enrollment. So really taking that step back, the pause, the intentionality to really look and see what our Spanish-sp speakaking families and and dual language families really need. Um I think really just speaks volumes to where and how the process um uh where or how the district has been taking this process so seriously. And it just shows a great great care amount of care.

2:49:03Ana Temu Otting Um and even beyond that, a great amount of duty and responsibility to ensuring belonging in all of our classrooms and all of our buildings. Um so I am really grateful of of us taking that step back and really making sure that it it's given the the extra time and care that it does need. Um, one of the really great things, um, to, uh, what some of my other colleagues were saying as I was talking to friends and family members and neighbors, uh, were really awesome memories that had been had at different schools. Um, particularly for me that I'm in Broomfield and my family has lived there for a while, too. um they had stories of um going to Kohl and going to Birch.

2:49:54Ana Temu Otting And recently um the Broomfield Library launched this archives website where they have a lot of old Broomfield articles. And I got to see a lot of um Christmas recital and uh different things happening at at the schools. And I think that that is also a great opportunity for us to really highlight a lot of the histories of the schools that um we are uh looking to consolidate um that we are making sure that we are creating space for sharing the stories of what has been in our BVSD schools. And so, um, as one of the good things that we can bring up are are the the good stories that we've had, the beautiful memories that we've we've experienced, um, in BVSD schools.

2:50:40Ana Temu Otting Um, and again, I just want to bring it back to to our teachers that are there with our kids every single day. And I'm so grateful for this district that you're really thinking about them at the core and making sure that they they feel like they are supported, that they know that that is a top-of- mind issue. um and that we have a plan to make sure to guide them through this transition. Um and so as we go through the um more discussions and and the proposal, I do want to also just continue asking the question of um who who are we still not hearing from? What are the stories that we still need to listen to to elevate?

2:51:23Ana Temu Otting because the resilience is not simply in us making a hard decision, but it's in us being able to listen and learn and adjust when it when we're going through difficult decisions. And that's what really makes us a stronger community. And so I'm very grateful to to um everyone in this district and really taking the time to be so intentional and so caring um in making sure that we continue belonging and that um we step up to ensuring that there is belonging in all of our schools. And so I am one just very grateful and very grateful for the steps that we're taking for dual language. So thank you

2:52:02Nicole Rajpal Lalenia and then Deann.

2:52:05Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I just Emma, would you just tell me I wrote down that 50% of kids who attend bilingual elementary school don't earn this seal of biliteracy. Is that what you said?

2:52:16Dr. Herszog Well, I did some work with our incredible executive director of evaluation and accountability, Jessica Alazine. I never get her title right. And it's it's a it's a tricky data set to look at over time. So, what we did was when we looked at the 2026 graduates When we looked at those graduates, of those who attended a dual language elementary school K5, their entire elementary school, 50% of those graduates earned the Seal of Biliteracy.

2:52:48Lalenia Quinlan Aweida Thank you. I just for sure

2:52:53Nicole Rajpal Deann,

2:52:56Deann Bucher thank you for answering my question about these schools. I thought it was actually important for people to think about when we're thinking about schools in Boulder and in Lafayette to know that we did skip some schools. So maybe we're not done creating efficiencies in Boulder yet, but I got to um attend the um parent forum that was in Spanish and that one was really different than the ones that were in English. And the parents were very very worried about making sure that the program for bilingualism was set. That was the thing that they were most most import um worried about. They didn't want it to be dissipated or um if they joined with another school, they thought it would disappear.

2:53:44Deann Bucher So I I feel really good that we have put it on hold in order to put some more thought into what that process might be because we will make our schools uh better for that. So I I really wanted to do that. Um I also just wanted to say comments uh once upon a time in a lounge very 35 years ago there was a superintendent named Dean Damon and Mr. Damon used to te say every teacher should change jobs every five years so that they'd stay fresh. Like he really thought that that was a good thing. He would didn't stay in the same job for 20 years. I did that.

2:54:25Deann Bucher So I can tell you but I think that he had there was something to that and I think it's it's an opportunity for refreshment for people who have been doing the same thing with the same people for a long time. and I think it can be a really enriching experience. So, I hope you can look at the positives for the staff. I got to meet with two of our union leaders um in the last couple days and they um I asked them both the same question. Do our teachers have enough? Do our parapros have enough? do our other staff have enough support in order to feel like they're not going to be abandoned um in this process?

2:55:11Deann Bucher And they they both thought that there was going to be enough support. And that was really important to me. I don't want people to feel like they were closing my school and therefore I need to just disappear. Um there's another role for you to take. It sounds like we're going to need some more teachers. So um one of those roles might be being a mentor to somebody new. So, um, thank you for the tremendous work. I think it's incredibly thoughtful and, um, I think that it's going to be very successful and I hope the community supports it

2:55:48Nicole Rajpal with the with regard to the delay. If you could go back one slide, I really understand the need to take the time to be intentional about our bilingual programming throughout the school district. I think we've been hearing for years over time the challenges of hiring staff at our bilingual schools. The challenges of not having fully fully rounded out programs, the challenges of different bilingual schools operating very differently and providing very different types of educational experiences to our students. And so I think we do need to take some time systemwide to identify what is best. How do we best serve the educational needs of these students?

2:56:27Nicole Rajpal students that come from Spanish speaking families and student attend students that attend these schools from families that English is their pro predominant language in the home both and and the populations at these schools have been declining like they have with all of our other schools. When my kiddos started elementary school, Uni Hill was a solid fourround 5050 split bilingual elementary school. That's not where they are today. And so those students in those schools also deserve the things that we've really been trying to tackle around how the programmatic excellence and making sure opportunities don't diminish.

2:57:07Nicole Rajpal And I'm a little bit concerned about the timeline and and because I want to ensure that our programs are robust and we are not allowing our students to delay the benefits that some of our the consolidations will happen in these other schools. So I would really a ask staff if there was a way to know at the end of spring semester 2027 what our plan forward might be because it will then impact subsequent enrollment choices for those families. If you look at University Hill 26% of those kiddos come from Crest View 17% come from Columbine another 20 some odd percent come from Foothill and Whittier. Why? If those school catchment zones are changing, how might that impact those families?

2:57:59Nicole Rajpal If we change those schools today or this year, what happens to those families and their choices? Same thing, Lafayette, Pioneer, a lot of those families come from Alicia Sanchez, Ryan, the neighboring elementary schools. We think about middle schools, similar, right? And I do think it's worth wondering what happens also between 8th grade and 12th grade that's allowing kids to drop off. Our high schools are are not really, if I'm honest, they're not designed for bilingual education. There are advanced classes one can take, but if we're doing this holistically, I understand our populations are um for an enrollment perspective are declining most significantly PK8, but we probably should be looking at what happens in high school.

2:58:44Nicole Rajpal And so I think this really is the right I think it is important to pause and and I want to communicate to our communities that are attending bilingual schools. I am not okay with this taking too much longer. We do have a problem. We need to fix it. Um we need to take a little bit more time and I hope we can come to a resolution. So all of those schools and the challenges that they've faced over the past couple years and thinking about the emails we received from Pioneer, the emails we've received from like the staffing problems challenges alone are significant and I want those communities to know that I also know that that's not that's not the ideal operating status for those schools.

2:59:24Nicole Rajpal So I implore us to move as quickly as is reasonable to ensure our students are attending our bilingual schools really have the robust educational experiences that we are hoping to attain in closing and consolidating schools at our predom that are predominantly English speaking. Jorge

2:59:49Jorge Chávez I want to start by saying thank you to the uh administrative staff for the work you've done. And I think it's been a really hard work and I appreciate how thoughtful you've been in your approach and putting us in a better position for 5 years from now from where we are today even though some tough issues remain. And I appreciate you elevating this issue in particular um because it's singular and different from the needs of our other students and our other schools. Um and it's tricky um all the points that Nicole noted are really important, right? We don't have a true pathway through high school for our bilingual students or for our bilingual education.

3:00:21Jorge Chávez And I think it's really important to consider not just PK through 8, but information from our high school students about where the gaps are. What did they miss? Why did they not follow those trajectories? Um, yes, our bilingual schools have had declining enrollment, but let's look at some of the barriers. What does accessibility look like? Um, you know, as our programs have expanded, there have been challenges in hiring and and how can we provide a a a um families the proper avenues by which to access these programs because they don't have neighborhoods, right? So transportation is is an issue. Um concerns about what happens to kids when they go to middle school is an issue.

3:00:54Jorge Chávez I think that's a very reality when there isn't a true bilingual program at the middle school level for kids who are English language learners who um have need additional supports um are bilingual schools um have lacked resources in their kind of physical environments and their ability to recruit um in their ability to kind of um provide additional support services outside the classroom. Um and so I think it's a important question for us to address because you know that in our current world um knowing multiple language is a benefit to our students over the long terms they do better in school and our increasingly interconnected world we need to have that kind of knowledge.

3:01:36Jorge Chávez Um and so to the degree that we can expand access eliminate barriers um and start addressing some of these questions I I think that's a critical thing for us to do to serve our students. So, um, so thank you.

Closing remarks; adjournment

3:01:56Nicole Rajpal Looks like we have no further questions for tonight's meeting. I want to thank staff again for all the work that you've put in, not only over the summer to develop these plans, but for the past few years to come up with a process. I know it's not been just the folks that have been sitting here. Members of our long-range advisory committee have played an important role. Everybody that turned out for our community engagement sessions have played a significant role.

3:02:19Nicole Rajpal The people in the back of this room um have really pulled a significant amount of weight and I I really want to honor how much time and effort it has taken to do to put forth this resilient schools plan in a way that our BVSD community expects. Um you did listen, you iterated, you took feedback. um you did the best that you could to meet the feedback you received and to to do what's best for all students. Um and so I just want to say that work is noticed. I hope our community notices it.

3:02:52Nicole Rajpal And I really just want to emphasize the gratitude that I feel for the forethought in how to care for our communities starting this evening and what that will look like moving forward as we work through um what will become a move from a process to a plan to a reality. And so I just immense amount of gratitude for the thoughtfulness that has gone into the first discussion up until making sure our students are settled into their new schools at the start of next year and beyond. So thank you very much to staff Dr. Anderson.

3:03:28Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you Nicole. Um I just want to take this moment to to recognize our team and uh the this is certainly logistically challenging. Uh certainly lots of uh um analysis. Uh but what I want our community to know is how much heart our team has poured into this plan. That the folks who have developed this plan care about our families. They care about our kids. They care about our educators very deeply.

3:04:04Dr. Rob Anderson And hopefully as this plan, board members, as you as you um assess uh this proposal and as our community um assesses this proposal, which is what they'll do, uh that they'll be able to see and feel the care that we've put in uh to make sure that that the the changes and challenging circumstances that some folks might find themselves in because their school is closed or their place they've worked for a very long time is being proposed to not be here um anymore. That uh that we've done that to provide better provide better for our kids, provide better for our families um while taking care of all of our people.

3:04:50Dr. Rob Anderson And so, uh, the the gratitude that I have, not just for the the intellect, but the heart that was poured into this plan, um, I'll be forever grateful for the team that has spent countless countless hours, uh, working through this, caring about every single detail, caring about every single person impacted. And so, um, thank you team. I appreciate you. Seeing as there are no further questions or comments, the night's evening is adjourned.