September 15, 2026: the board questions staff, a week before the vote

Call to order, roll call and land acknowledgement

0:15:18Nicole Rajpal I'd like to call to order this regular meeting of the Boulder Valley School District for Tuesday, September 15th, 2026. 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?

0:15:32Roll call Bucher, here. Chavez, here. Medler here. Quinlan Aweida here. Rajpal here. Temu Otting here. Unger here.

0:15:48Nicole Rajpal Thank you. Like to encourage everyone to turn their attention to the screens for our land acknowledgement this morning. The Boulder Valley School District resides and operates on land that is the ancestral homeland and unjustly and illegally taken territory of the Ude, Pueblin, 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. 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.

0:17:03Nicole Rajpal BBD 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. I'd like to remind everyone that the mission of the Boulder Valley School District is to create challenging, meaningful, and engaging learning opportunities environments so that all children thrive and are prepared for successful civically engaged lives. Good morning everyone.

0:18:02Nicole Rajpal Thanks for joining us here in person and for those of you who are watching this meeting remotely. 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 Deann, seconded by Jorge. Uh Laura, can you please call the role?

0:18:19Roll call Bucher, yes. Chavez, yes. Medler, yes. Quinlan Aweida, yes. Rajpal, yes. Temu Otting, yes. Unger. Yes.

0:18:34Nicole Rajpal Motion passes. Board members, as you know, today we have a work session, a study opportunity for one item. This meeting was originally planned to discuss our strategic plan update. Um, and given the extent of community feedback that we received last meeting, we have decided to replace that topic with another study of the resilient schools framework. and the draft resolution number 26-27 when we were discussing making that shift. One thing that I just really came to me is when we started our work with the strategic plan, there were a lot of significant changes that were really hard hard for our staff to incorporate, hard for the system to incorporate. And through that work, um, we have made some outstanding improvements for our schools.

Why a second work session: board and superintendent framing

0:19:25Nicole Rajpal Being credited with distinction for three years in a row was not without great effort, um, and faith, trust that we would do what's best for students. And so, um, while I am saddened that we couldn't get an update on that because it has been a lot of hard work and it's something we're celebrating, I do think it's really important to give a little bit more time to our community um to go through some of the questions that came up during our last board meeting on this resil resilient school proposal. And with that, I will hand this meeting over to Dr. Anderson.

0:19:58Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you, board president Rajpal, board members. Um, I want to start by by thanking the folks that are here with us today, folks that are watching online. um and really appreciate our board listening to our community and making this adjustment. So, we had an opportunity to get in a little more detail in terms of some of the community questions that we've received through our forums, through email communications, both to the board and individual board members, um and through the uh five plus hours of public comment that we uh heard last Tuesday. So board members, as you can see, um today we will we'll go we'll do a bit of a deeper dive in some of the proposals answering questions.

0:20:41Dr. Rob Anderson Encourage board members ask questions that you have today. Um based on those questions, then the proposal will go to uh to to the board for action at our meeting scheduled for September 22nd. And so this is an additional um session based on community feedback and board direction to provide more detail into some of the outstanding questions and hope to be able to clarify that for for many of the members of our community and this is what I just shared. Um before I I uh move forward uh board members and community members we have uh most of our senior team here at the dis in our work session today. Uh Rob Price, assistant superintendent of operations, Glen Segrue, our senior planner. Neil Anderson, assistant superintendent of schools.

0:21:30Dr. Rob Anderson Emma Herszog, chief academic officer. Uh Nativity Miller, deputy superintendent, Bill Sutter, CFO, Randy Barber, chief communications officer, and Jessica Azine, our executive director of accountability evaluation. And as we present, uh today, uh board members, we'll be bringing up additional members of our team uh to provide the expertise that you'll need to be able to ask the questions that you have around other topics as well. uh to make sure that um that that your questions are answered as you consider this proposal. Um I'll close this introduction with knowing and understanding that um and and and the appreciation for the level of engagement of our community on this proposal, the level of questions, the level of detail in those questions.

0:22:09Dr. Rob Anderson And so we look forward to today to be able to to begin to bring some clarification, bring bring some things to light that folks may maybe not have realized as they were trying to analyze what it is we presented on the 25th. um and make sure that the board has your questions answered in what I know is a really really difficult decision uh for the board to take uh next Tuesday. So with that, I'm turning the presentation over to assistant superintendent of operations Rob Price.

0:22:36Nicole Rajpal Rob, one quick thing. Board members, there are a lot of slides and I'm just trying to kind of think through how to like logical places for pausing and asking questions. We want all those questions to be answered. My thinking is if we can get through the methodology, pause for questions, look at the data, pause for questions, and so because this first section is pretty is quite long before we get to a discussion slide. So after the methodology slides, we'll ask questions and then if that's okay and if it's not, let me know. Thanks.

How the proposal was built: LRAC metrics and board direction

0:23:06Rob Price Sounds good. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Good morning, President Rajpal, members of the board. Uh we're just going to spend a little time this morning revisiting how we made our decisions. And as uh the proposal that we presented to you on August 25th did not begin with a list of schools and we've continued to see that around the country. This work has really grown out of several years of board direction um analysis by our long range advisory committee. Uh we've monitored, we've analyzed enrollment, we've engaged the community, and we've considered multiple options, all presented to you on August 25th.

0:23:47Rob Price Throughout all of this work, uh we have kept our focus centered on the student experience and providing a high quality and equitable learning experience to all students and to manage district district resources in a fiscally responsible uh manner. The long range advisory committee began its work in 2022 following the board prioritizing this work understanding the challenges that declining enrollment was presenting to the district and from the beginning and as I just mentioned we've been centered on the student experience the most important metric that we have followed is the number of or the average number of classes per grade level and for planning purposes you can see it here at the bottom of the slide one round is 25 students students in each grade or about 150 students across a K5 school.

0:24:38Rob Price That has come up on a number of occasions. So, we want to make sure that is understood by our community. Uh the committee then determined that when enrollment is equal to or less than two classes per grade level, schools feel the impacts of declining enrollment. LRA also considered utilization. Uh classes per grade level really helped us understand the student experience. utilization helped us understand uh operational efficiencies and that utilization accounts for different size of school buildings. Um the metrics uh as we have presented to the board on a number of occasions really was just an early warning system. Uh LRA um also if you remember emphasized the need for geographic uh consideration.

0:25:24Rob Price So looking at regions, we're looking at multiple schools at once uh within the same communities. Um the timeline over on the right side shows the steps we've taken to study enrollment policies, attendance boundaries. We looked at a number of ways to increase enrollment to avoid this difficult conversation. And like many districts, we have not been able to change the enrollment patterns just due to the underlying demographic uh trends that we have been seeing here in Boulder Valley School District. By the fall of 20ou 2025, enrollment showed that by 2030, more than half of our elementary school schools in Boulder, Louisville, and Spirior, and Broomfield were all projected to operate at or below two classes per grade level.

0:26:15Rob Price And at the same time, school leaders, teachers, families, uh, were all reporting the effects of declining enrollment. And I remember that conversation coming up many times at this board DAS about the challenges that we were faced with in some of our smaller schools. And for years, we figured out how to make it work. And Dr. Anderson has talked about this. We have pushed in resources. And that was workable when we had a few small schools. It is not sustainable when the majority of your schools are small. We're not funded like that. We're funded on a per pupil basis. And based on those underlying challenges, it was during the October 2025 work session. The board directed us to change course.

0:26:59Rob Price Uh that is when you had said let's not address this on a school by school basis. We need to address this on a regional approach with multiple schools to look at. So that direction led then to the development of the community engagement plan that we presented to you in January. We then started engaging our staff immediately. Dr. Anderson, Dr. De La Cruz went out, met with all of our teachers during roundt meetings.

0:27:22Rob Price Uh we then had at six community engagement sessions and then at seventh I guess at the Columbine community engagement session and then as we had stated we met as a staff over the summer to develop options and then based on those options we brought our proposal back to you uh on August 25th um as stated in the timeline that we originally presented to you back in the fall. I'm going to present this slide one more time. I bet I have presented this slide 30 or 40 times um since October, right? I've presented this during our community engagement sessions. I've presented this at least three different board meetings. I've presented this at every municip every every presentation municipalities uh district advisory committees.

0:28:12Rob Price I think we had 14 of those and in a number of written communications that have went out to the community. So, I'm a bit surprised why everybody is surprised with the uh option or the proposal that we brought forward to you. The proposal is within alignment with all of the options that we told the board we would consider. So, uh what we um consistently communicated was this full range of tools that districts use throughout the country when they're dealing with declining enrollment. As I talked about, districts go through the same thing. They find out how how to make it work. They push in resources. Then they shift to let's figure out how we can increase enrollment. We did that.

0:28:54Rob Price We had the BVSD this place to be showcased. We tried to generate additional enrollment. We have a commuter preference that we no longer had. We slowed declining enrollment for a bit, but again, there is no way to address the underlying demographic trends. The housing prices that we're seeing in Boulder Valley School District. Young families can no longer afford to live here, right? and that's why we're seeing what we're seeing. So again, just for clarification, the resilient schools proposal that we presented to you on August 25th utilized the options on this slide. And again, a lot of these options were prioritized by our community during the community engagement sessions and during some of the surveying and polling that we did.

0:29:39Rob Price Um, and with that, I'll turn it over to Randy Barber.

Community engagement and communications

0:29:42Randy Barber So, following the board's direction, as as Rob mentioned, as well as the plan that we uh brought to you in January of 2026, uh we hit the road. Um our philosophy has been listening before leading. Uh we wanted to first connect with our elementary school staff, so our principles, our teachers, and staff at those schools through roundts. Um you've seen the slide before, but now with a little bit more uh imagery, just again, we were out there, we've got uh we've got photographic proof of that. um 14 presentations, advisory groups, a lot of the places that that Rob was talking about where we presented this the plan, talked through the different options that we had for folks.

0:30:19Randy Barber Uh we did the same at the seven engagement sessions that he mentioned and we went to our city councils. We really wanted to make sure that our m municipalities were aware uh really be being following along with what's going on here. Obviously, these things are going to impact our cities and we wanted to make sure that they had an opportunity to hear what our our game plan was and in some cases they provided some feedback to us in in regards to their thoughts on it. Next slide. Oh, and then we also had a survey that we'll talk about as well. Uh, a big part of this was communication.

0:30:49Randy Barber So, since the beginning of the the process with LLR, uh, I think we've got something like 30 stories that we've done on the district side of things in regards to this process. every time that we had an update, we were coming back to the community and letting them know where we were at. As we went through the attendance boundaries, we were doing stories upon that. And then, of course, things really ramped up after that January plan came out right in February. Uh and since then, uh we have been uh doing uh updates uh to the community through a newsletter uh seven of those uh throughout throughout time.

0:31:21Randy Barber uh those were really action-packed with with all the information that we're talking about the plan uh opportunities for engagement, really encouraging people to participate. We were really reaching out to folks, letting them know about the regional approach to it, letting folks know again about the options that we had on the table here. Uh we also had a good amount of uh earned media coverage. Um you know, throughout uh our all of our media outlets in the the Metro Denver area, they've covered it. uh but most specifically our local paper of course would be the heaviest uh with seven stories uh covering both the regional and the options that we had on the table.

0:31:53Randy Barber So uh that has been out there in the community uh as we've been talking through it. I do want to just mention that this this work for my team uh while we've done a lot of things uh that are that are tough. Uh we obviously had the Marshall fire that was uh you know incredibly hard in terms of crisis communication. Uh we went through the pandemic and that communication was incredibly hard. Um this was a whole new area of uh of learning for us. Uh you know we had never uh gone through a closure uh like this and so with the board's suggestion um we were able to um bring in a couple consultants to give us a hand with this.

0:32:28Randy Barber Uh Planfully is a is a a couple ladies that have gone through this at Jeffco uh through Jeffco public schools uh had really lived through the process and they're communication focus. So, you know, they were able to give us some real insights into how to best approach community relations in this instance, uh the kinds of communications that would be needed uh through this. And then um on the back end, uh uh once the decision was made, we brought them back in to be able to have some conversations and actually give us a an extra pair of hands in drafting some of the communications that we used.

0:33:00Randy Barber uh as you can imagine there's quite a bit of things that we had to prepare and so having some extra uh communication folks um you know at our ready was really helpful to my to my team. Additionally and I I know everybody in the community that came out to our engagement sessions saw the work of ERS but I want to really uh highlight uh what their what their role was in this. As we went into those engagement sessions our team was really thinking about you know we didn't want this to be the normal uh feedback sessions that we had 20 years ago. We didn't want this to be what we see around the country. We wanted to do something different.

0:33:33Randy Barber And so again, with that idea of listening before leading, we our philosophy was a how do we introduce folks to the information that we're talking about? Uh give them a sense of what it's like to be in these schools when you've got uh students and staff that are being impacted by declining enrollment. That's, you know, tough. I mean, we could showed a video. We could have done a number of things, but by giving uh them exercises in order to see what that feels like, uh it was really helpful. a whole lot of parents, you know, could kind of really then understand uh kind of visualize what that experience was like.

0:34:02Randy Barber And then we really put them in the driver's seat and thinking about these different options and having uh throughout the process we've said that one of the big things that we really wanted to hear and something that uh Jessica is going to talk about in a minute is really, you know, we wanted to be able to hear from folks what their priorities, their values, you know, how they were looking at these things, the things that really were most important to them. And so at these tables and it was I I find amazing to watch the engagement that happened here. Uh parents uh some students we had a a small number of students come out.

0:34:33Randy Barber Um they were really debating and weighing these different things and I think everybody that came to these sessions said you know there was it's difficult work. I mean we'd like to prioritize all the things that we're thinking about here. And I think that's the difficulty that we as a as a district have. And so these cards that they created, the tabletop exercises really help people to be able to have that experience of of being part of the process, thinking through these things. And then part of this was actually trying to encapsulate trying to understand and document that feedback. And so of course we had our principles at the tables. And so they were facilitating this and writing down what they were hearing.

0:35:06Randy Barber And then each of the participants was able to in a packet be able to write down their feedback as well. And so all that was captured and then ERS took that data, compilated it, tabulated it, and then was able to hand it off to us. Uh before I hand it off to uh Jessica Aine, our executive director of accountability and evaluation to talk more about how that process worked once the data was handed off, I do want to just make a really important point, especially based on some of the feedback that we've heard in the community, that neither of these two consultants, truly no consultants were in the room when we were making these decisions as leadership team.

0:35:39Randy Barber uh we came together um you know that work had already been done in regards to the engagement and uh in those rooms it was district leadership that was really weighing considering the data and then making those decisions. So the the consultants were not part of that.

0:35:54Dr. Rob Anderson Just one other point, board members. Um, and thank you, Randy, and thank you, Rob, um, for sharing. You know, in my nine years here as superintendent, I don't know that there's been any topic or any moment in time where our community has had more opportunities for engagement and communication from the district than the process that we just went through. Um, uh, Dr. Dr. Azine will will talk you through the the the statistical analyses that we we were able to recover as a result of that.

0:36:22Dr. Rob Anderson But board members, we anyone and everyone who wanted to participate in um in these processes in these work sessions, we accommodated uh we shifted venues just like we did last week when we knew that we had more folks that wanted to talk to us than we potentially had room to be able to to accommodate in a way that was respectful and meaningful. Um, we originally planned having these sessions in libraries, then we moved them to gymnasiums. And I just want to thank our team for all of the things that they did to make those um those opportunities a reality. But it gave us really clarity on our community as a whole, what they're looking for from their elementary school student experience.

0:37:09Dr. Rob Anderson uh the the data and you'll see as we talk about the survey data and we talk about the community polling data and we talk about the teacher data that we collected uh triangulated in a way that gave us a really clear picture on what it is we were trying to do as we began to develop this proposal. Uh so I I I'll share that I'm very proud of the process that we used.

0:37:31Dr. Rob Anderson I will share that I'm proud of the ways that we tried to communicate and I think the trick with communications is and even engagement is to the extent that you can put forth the best effort, it doesn't mean that it's 100% guarantee that that everybody is able to participate or is is able to engage in that. And that's just human nature and that's just kind of I think the reality in any big decision that that school districts make is that you know we're going to put for our best foot forward and really try to do what we can.

0:38:00Dr. Rob Anderson But I will say that uh the ways in which we engaged the process that we used uh I think was was really a a great opportunity for lots in our community to learn about our challenges. That's one thing to say watch board meetings. It's another thing to come and sit for three three and a half hours with a facilitator know and understand the experiences that are happening across the district that might not be your own experience. Right? that that that you know as as we solve for these things we have individual experiences and then we have the collective experiences that we're trying to provide.

0:38:31Dr. Rob Anderson So um I will say that that the feedback that we received at the end of those of of these um these sessions was incredibly positive board members. You were there you heard what I heard. folks were really appreciative that we listened and heard and so um just as establishing that that those that that engagement that data that feedback very very important as we developed our proposal. So

Board questions: timeline, regions and dual language

0:38:56Nicole Rajpal before we turn it over to Dr. Elian I wanted to see if board members had any questions on the timeline u methodology up until this point of the presentation. Elena,

0:39:11Lalenia Quinlan Aweida first I appreciate the clarification on consultants. I've had a lot of questions on that. Um, so thank you for sharing that. Um, and I'm curious on the timeline. Did we ever change the timeline for voting on this? Did we ever move it up? I I I just I can't remember and I and I didn't know if there was the answer to that is yes. the answer to that. Can you just explain to me? I thought maybe it was an open enrollment thing, but I

0:39:49Rob Price No, we we had originally um shared I think it was October 8th for the vote and in board discussion. I think some really valid points were brought up on um the potentially negative impact that could have on individual families as they were trying to access our open enrollment process that that window would be too tight. And as a result, to make sure that we're supporting families, given, you know, the the magnitude of this decision, the board elected to move that back to the 22nd. And I believe that was at the June 9th board meeting.

0:40:19Nicole Rajpalspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Yeah, it was during the board work session, our prioritization meeting.

0:40:22Lalenia Quinlan Aweida And I'm certain I was at that session, but I did not remember that when someone asked me that. Um, though I assumed it was about open enrollment and and that window there. Okay. Thank you,

0:40:35Nicole Rajpal Deann.

0:40:39Deann Bucher because I'm a relative newcomer on the board, I uh kind of walked in and some of these decisions were sort of in progress. And so if I'm asking questions that are just um history that happened right before December last year, please uh help me fill in the blanks. Um when the decision was made to go to a regional approach um how were those regions defined and who defined them?

0:41:13Rob Price Well, the regions were well one of the outcomes from the October meeting was the board had told us that allowing schools to stay small is no longer an option. And by that time long range advisory committee had uh presented two different metrics and those are the metrics are average classes per grade level and then the utilization. So average classes per grade level we knew that uh the student experience was being impacted when they got less than two rounds. So that defined what a small school was is anything equal to or less than two classes per grade level. So we knew that allowing schools to stay small was no longer an option.

0:41:50Rob Price So then we looked at the different regions and in those regions, Boulder, Louisville, Spear, and Broomfield, at least half or the majority of the schools in those regions are at or below two classes per grade level. So that's what defined it. We saw some growth in Erie. We saw some growth in Lafayette. And then the mountain schools were not included just due to their unique geographic locations. So,

0:42:16Deann Bucher uh follow-up question would be um so the regions were um uh were set really by geography and yet it appears that there a region that would have included all the students that are all of the schools that are trying to do second language instruction that they were sort of not in a region because they're separate.

0:42:47Rob Price We're going to speak um in more detail on on the recommendation to study this the schools that are in dual language. Uh you when we did not identify Lafayette, you'd be correct that we would then not have been able to consider Pioneer or Angevine Middle School. We also limited this to the K8 uh schools in um in Louisville Superior and elementary schools. And so Casey Middle School, Manhattan Middle School also wouldn't be part of of this analysis. And so uh challenging because certainly um two of our dual language elementary schools are are in the middle of Boulder. Um but we will speak to kind of more detail on in regards of why we we recommended to take a year to study that.

0:43:29Rob Price um really studying that as a K8 continuum, not just elementary schools. And really thinking about systemically the experience, the student experience that we want our students who are studying or participating in dual language program schools to have. And through the engagement process we had, uh there wasn't specificity around dual language schools and programs. uh and their instruction and their experience is vastly different from students that are in our monolingual schools that just teach in English.

0:44:06Nicole Rajpal Anna,

0:44:08Ana Temu Otting thank you. And for a timeline, one of the biggest pieces of feedback that I've received is um folks did see the uh LRAC recommendations that uh kept coming out on um school consolidations and where we were at in elementary schools. And I think that some of the the community members um that really showed up to our community engagement sessions were of the schools that were in the red that had some of that notice put into some of those plans.

0:44:39Ana Temu Otting Um and now that we have announced the the consolidations that we are looking into, I wonder uh my my biggest question is where that shift happened of um looking at the recommendations of ELRACK um and then switching to what we have now um within that timeline for community engagement. Um just getting a clearer sense of what when that shift happened. Um, and I know that right uh right now is that that moment of uh where our community members are able to give um that feedback on our proposal.

0:45:17Ana Temu Otting Um, but I also just want to go back to acknowledge um just the fact that some of these parents um and community members, families um hadn't engaged as much because they weren't um considering that they were going to be uh put in this proposal for a consolidation or a closure.

0:45:47Dr. Rob Anderson Uh thank you for those questions. A couple clarifying points. Um, we had broad community participation at Broomfield High School, at Boulder High School, here at the Ed Center. Um, we Monarch High School, uh, gymnasiums filled with individuals and they were not limited to the schools that were identified in the in the engagement phase. um in the LRAC metrics that we released as part of the annual report um on LRAC declining enrollment annual trends report that is per board policy that we presented every February. And so um because we would only have had two uh small elementary schools participating if that would have been the case.

0:46:31Dr. Rob Anderson And so um I do understand that that there are some folks who didn't participate in that opportunity or maybe didn't participate in our surveys um that um that at this point uh maybe didn't realize the u the magnitude of that of that opportunity. And uh this is why we went through what what Randy shared which is uh you know we we were we're sending monthly updates to all of our families in communications. We weren't we weren't hiding the fact that this was a regional approach. It was very much front and center on why we were actually doing the engagement process. Uh and in any engagement session uh not every parent participated, right? We had we had a pretty good showing thousands you know thousand people.

0:47:14Dr. Rob Anderson I mean I think that you know when Jessica will speak you know when you look at all the individual data points 76,000 data points which we feel is a a really strong sample and we'll talk about that. Uh so uh so so there are people who didn't participate in that right but if they were to have participated without knowing their school is named would they have said anything differently than the sample size that we collected from all of these communities. The data we've suggested is is incredibly triangulated and clear. It's not really fuzzy at all. Uh so that process wasn't about individual schools and it wasn't an engagement process per LRAC.

0:47:52Dr. Rob Anderson that was a community engagement process on the student experience and I think that we were incredibly clear about that. So um and and as Rob shared, you know, we've really tried to engage in ways that are very honest and transparent in terms of the of of what the board shared, what your direction was, and how we communicated that to our community and the staff. And you know when it when when when you all shared in October 2025 we need to move to a regional approach. As superintendent I asked you for several months to think through what a strong process would be.

0:48:31Dr. Rob Anderson How do we create a worldclass process that listens to people before we just behind closed doors pick a list of schools and roll it out to the community and ask them if they like it or not? or even worse, when we did this in 20 or 2003, put out competing proposals and then ask communities to come and give feedback on whether or not we should close this school or that school. Proposals that competed directly with who was going to be closed. And I've talked to board members from that era. I've talked to staff members. I was in a meeting yesterday with a teacher who was part of that. Uh it was horrible. Not that this is easy. I'm not saying this is easy.

0:49:10Dr. Rob Anderson And I'm not saying that this um isn't hard. Uh however, I think we were really clear on what our task was. We engaged thoroughly. Um we, you know, as as part of of doing this, I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of districts across the country and I've asked them what's their process. Our process stands out as one that is more inclusive and more engaging than other districts. And you could compare what we've done and our our um engagement to any other district in Colorado. I tell you, we I I promise you our engagement has been the deepest. Our outreach has been the most proactive.

0:49:48Dr. Rob Anderson Um so I do understand at you know folks who are engaging at this point may have some questions about the process. I stand behind the process and our team who built the process. I think it is not um just an effective process for your decision, but it is something um that that should be stood up as a model across other districts going through something that is incredibly incredibly difficult.

0:50:15Nicole Rajpal Alex,

0:50:16Alex Medler yeah, I guess I have a comment and then a question. Um I would just say actually in partial response to my colleagues on the board, uh I campaigned and um came into the board very interested in moving to a regional approach. Uh I live and my kids attend schools in the Table Mesa neighborhood and the LRAC approach would treat Mesa Elementary as a totally different thing than Bear Creek than Community Montessori and Creekide. And the parents in that community treat it as the offerings that are within walking and biking distance of their houses. And so if you just looked at the LRAC thing, you'd be we were parsing out differences between uh small differences in enrollment when to our later point most of them were underenrolled.

0:50:56Alex Medler So, we needed to act more and we're acting as if one school because Heatherwood was a little smaller than the next school that Heatherwood's obviously the one that should change and it's all on them and we'd put all our resources into solving Heatherwood. So, we give spend a quarter million and what do you know? It adds six kids in enrollment to the school. So, it just doesn't really work and it doesn't serve the community. So, uh, my memory from when the board suggested moving from the LRAC to, uh, more bold action in part was because we knew we needed to act substantially and that we shouldn't act on schools in isolation.

0:51:30Alex Medler Uh, we didn't want to go back to 2003 or whatever and pit one school against another. We wanted communities to talk about how best to serve the all the schools in their in their communities. And we're not just Boulder, like we're I forget how many geographies we serve, but it's a lot of government institutions and counties and stuff. And people do sort of work within their community. Some will commute a half hour, 40 minutes to a school, but not many. Most people want to make it practical. And so I am a strong believer that the move from the individual school parsing out small differences to having a regional approach was something the board uh I'm argued for it.

0:52:04Alex Medler I found that the rest of the board u many of the new people were agreeing with that approach and that it is more holistic and comprehensive and from the feedback that we get I think we we see that that's probably necessary and it leads to a lot of transition planning. Um the other thing I would just say is that the the LRA the the issues we were dealing with collectively with all 27,000 kids were before us all the time and that the shortcomings were not hypothetical or in the future.

0:52:33Alex Medler they were kid families leaving the district now for private schools or homeschooling because uh they couldn't get the services they needed uh for their neurodeiverse kid in the place where they were or that there was no acceleration available because they had to do advanced courses uh online rather than in person and their kid couldn't learn that modality. So like the shortcomings were real. the school by-school approach was really a short service to our community and I for one on the board didn't not want to wait four or five more years of waiting for those numbers to creep even lower. So I I think the red and orange stuff is helpful, but there was no green there.

0:53:11Alex Medler Like all those schools, so many of those schools are under enroll to the point where they were harming kids. And I think that's where the board I've heard feedback from the community about, you know, the transition from the LRAC as if they were the policymaking body. This is the policymaking body. We're the decision makers directing where we go. and we directed the district to move in a more regional comprehensive holistic approach and to accelerate the action so that we wouldn't be waiting four or five more years to pull the trigger and just punt it off to some future board when kids are suffering today.

0:53:37Alex Medler So I just wanted to explain the regionalism for me from for new members on the board who weren't there during some of those discussions. That's that's where I was coming from and that's how I remember those discussions. And one more thing on the uh there's been the discussion about the engagement. Um, I think it's wrong to frame what we're doing now as like a short version of engagement versus this other stuff. The other stuff we did is in addition to what districts normally do. Most of the districts would do a short version of what we've done in the last 8 weeks. That's what community engagement is at the best case in our surrounding districts. In St.

0:54:13Alex Medler Green, I think they had like two weeks notice before they closed an elementary school. Jeffco had their LRAC thing and they went to just quick action and proposed closing you know 11. Um so I think our large engagement process which I look forward to having described in more detail now is in addition to what is actually a normal district engagement process with a fairly normal district timeline that we've been engaged in in over the last 10 weeks. That's the way I see it. And I never expected the the deep community engagement which I found also great greatly gratifying to see the sophistication and the engagement and the deep dive of our families and our educators.

0:54:51Alex Medler Um but that was not to avoid having the discussion we've had over the last two months. That was to inform the discussion for the whole community that we're now engaged in. So it's not an either or or the right or the wrong way. I think we did an additional step that was very necessary and appropriate.

0:55:08Nicole Rajpal Before we move on, I just want to again provide context to this timeline. I have been on the board for five years and we've been talking about declining enrollment since I was elected in November of 2021. Before that, I was on the district accountability committee and we were talking about the impacts of declining enrollment on student learning experiences and student data. So, it has been a long time coming and I understand particularly for parents of kindergarteners or elementary school student or first graders who haven't kind of been along for the ride with us in the same way or haven't watched the experiences at their individual schools deteriorate over time because there are fewer and fewer students.

0:55:52Nicole Rajpal Um, I understand that this feels like a surprise and I just really hope everybody hears how long me personally on this board and representing on school accountability committees and district accountability committee before that have been considering declining enrollment relying on Glenn's data. I mean, I first looked at your enrollment matrices when my senior was in first grade. It's been a long time coming. Um so I I just want to share that and also share re-emphasize that the board which does change every two years roughly on the composition we directed we told staff schools could not stay small. We asked staff to come up with a plan. It wasn't consultants or something else that said we're going to close schools. You should close these schools.

0:56:47Nicole Rajpal We said schools cannot remain small. Present us with options that meet the needs of our this entire school district. 500 square miles, 27,000 students, and 4,000 employees. That was the cadence we directed. That was the cadence that was taken. Um, so I just wanted to clarify that as well. And then I'll turn it over to Dr. Aline or Dr. Anderson.

0:57:12Dr. Rob Anderson Just one point of of clarification because I think that there's uh, you know, words really matter here. um when you state options, options for each region, not multiple options for each region to be considered. And so, uh the direction was clear that that wasn't specified on October 20 25th or January or in any any point in time during this process that the board directed staff to come up with multiple options for consideration. I just want to be really clear about that. um that it was to look at each region and options for each region, it would come forward in one proposal. So, just wanted to make sure that I clarify that uh board president Rajbo. And with that, Dr.

0:57:52Dr. Rob Anderson Azine, uh we'll turn it over to you uh to um get into our data sources and some of the analysis that we did.

What the community prioritized: survey and engagement data

0:58:04Jessica Azine Okay. Uh so when we talk about all of those opportunities for our stakeholders to provide feedback, you can imagine that we amassed a pretty robust u and varied data corpus of data. And so this table summarizes what we had to work with. We had the feedback from the teachers at those elementary roundts. We had community engagement feedback packets. These were packets that individuals who attended those sessions filled out during the evening and submitted at the end. There was also a follow-up survey that was offered to attendees via QR code as they were leaving that evening. And then we had our resilient school survey that we offered to the full census of every staff member and every family currently affiliated with BVSD.

0:58:43Jessica Azine And it was also offered to a random sample of community members not currently affiliated with the district but residing within district boundaries. So as Dr. Anderson stated this we had the 63,000 responses ultimately 76,000 bits of data and before I walk through this findings I want to ground us in the scope of this data and kind of give a little bit more background on the methods that we use to turn this table into the information that was used to help support and inform the proposal. So we uh conducted several sensitivity analysis and checks uh with this data just to make sure that we felt confident that this was a round representation of what the community wanted and what they valued and what they prioritized.

0:59:27Jessica Azine So first of all um as Dr. Anderson said these were open to everyone. We didn't turn people away and that extended all the way to the resilient school survey. uh rather than sending that to a random sample of individuals that would have guaranteed or at least better protected against unresponse bias, we wanted to make sure that everyone had the opportunity to provide feedback via the survey in particular, well across all of these. So, uh I want to talk to this 9% response rate from families and make sure that we uh know that there were some sensitivity checks done to to check in on the validity of that being representative of what our community wanted. So first we looked at the response rates across regions.

1:00:06Jessica Azine So that 9% of families overall worked out to about 7 to 11% by region. So that means that no single region is driving the results from the survey from the family viewpoint. We also looked at we'll talk in a minute one of the items or or sections of the survey was where individuals identified their top three musthaves. We looked at that list by role as well as by region to see if there was great variability there. there was some limited variability and all of those results were presented to the board in June as well as what was used to inform the proposal. And then finally, just to talk a little bit more about this community survey that occurred, we uh contracted out with Mellan Strategies.

1:00:46Jessica Azine It's a local polling firm. So they are who ran that was a stratified random sample in the community to ensure that it had representation across the district. Uh and they ran analysis separate from the analysis that we ran internally. and we looked at their results compared to what we saw within the district. Again, a little bit of variability, not nothing that was extreme. And all of that was used to inform the proposal, to inform the information that was used to inform the proposal. So, that's just adding to the validity of some external validity to what our internal results showed through that survey analysis.

1:01:23Jessica Azine And then as was said, we triangulated across all of these different data sources to make sure that we were again trying to provide the most full picture of what we heard from individuals across roles, across regions, across these opportunities for engagement. Okay, so talking about the survey, the resilient schools community survey had two primary sections. The first section was this what's referred to as max diff. This is where there was a predetermined set of 12 priorities under consideration when thinking about schools experiencing declining enrollment. Individuals had nine items where they saw four random priorities and they had to identify what was the most and least important from those four. They repeated that nine times.

1:02:10Jessica Azine We heard from the community that this this felt really frustrating that we they were being asked to identify most and least important from a list where everything was important and that we recognized that and we named that. That was by design because that is where we find ourselves needing to move forward and make some decisions. We needed to know from our community given limited resources what is the relative ranking of these priorities and that's what this form of survey design allows us to do.

1:02:35Jessica Azine So head and shoulders above the rest within our community, small class sizes was the number one priority, but these six are the ones that rose to the top from the fullest of 12 as being the most likely to be chosen as most important across all survey respondents. When we go to the second part of that survey, that next part was after they had those random sample of items, they saw the full list of 12 and individuals could select up to three as their top three musthaves. And these were the top three that were pro uh identified across the sample. Oh, sorry.

1:03:12Jessica Azine Next, at the community engagement sessions, one of the activities that people were invited to participate in was that collaboratively at their tables, they learned about challenges that schools experience uh when they have under enrollment. and the tables worked together to collaboratively identify those difficulties that they wanted the district to prioritize to solve when the proposal came forward. And these are the top five of those cards that were identified as the problems that the community wanted to see solved. And then lastly, doing some qualitative analysis through the roundt discussions. Uh the top two themes that came up most often in those conversations with staff were problems related to small class sizes as well as uh challenges related to part-time staff.

1:03:55Jessica Azine So when we look across these data, we kind of quickly see some themes show up. Uh small class sizes as well as challenges related to variable class size or small class sizes came across as the top priority across all of these data sources. Next, we saw some emphasis for challenges related to part-time staff. So, our our uh stakeholders really emphasized they wanted to see full-time comprehensive staff in every building. And then finally, uh equitable funding and neighborhood proximity were also the most likely to be chosen as uh top priorities from the community.

1:04:35Jessica Azine And then lastly, at the community engagement sessions, one of the activities in the packets as well as conversations that happened at the roundts was when given a list of options that the school district could take to solve these problems. Uh what would be the highest priority? What would be the first choice? uh or specifically I believe this action is a move in the right direction to solve the challenges of underenrolled schools is how individuals responded from both the community engagement sessions and the roundts consolidating schools was the uh most chosen top priority in those shifts there at the community engagement sessions the second one was to reconfigure PK8 schools

1:05:19Nicole Rajpalspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Dr. Charlesine, can you go through all of those the um how all of the the uh the options that folks considered? You you gave the top two. Can you just kind of run through the rest of those? I don't know that that's on the slide, but I'd want that to be on the record.

1:05:32Jessica Azine Yes. Uh so the top was um consolidating schools, second being the PK8 split, third was close and redistribute students, fourth was relocating for focus programs, fifth was to reconfigure or split K5 schools. And then uh final was introducing new focus programs.

Enrollment projection methodology

1:05:56Rob Price All right, the next part Glen Segrue, our senior planner, is going to be presenting some of our methodology on how we determine projections. Uh all of you around this table know Glenn, but a lot of people in our community don't. Glenn has been doing this work for this district for 19 years. Uh, and if you have followed any of our enrollment work, it has been extremely accurate over those 19 years. And I would say it took something like a uh, global pandemic to throw those projections off. And that's about the only time that Glenn has been off. We have a lot of people in this community, extremely intelligent, that are looking at numbers. There's a lot that goes into projections.

1:06:33Rob Price And Glenn's going to get into that a little bit. Uh, I'll jump in if need to, but um, and I've got a tremendous amount of confidence in Glenn's numbers, and it's not about me. We can go back year over year over year and look at our, uh, uh, enrollment projections to see where Glenn projected and where we actually landed, and you would see that for yourself. So, with that, I will turn it over to Glenn to present our methodology.

1:07:02Glen Segrue Thank you, Rob. Um, let's get the right slide. So our methodology uh these are the main data sources used in most current planning projects and the resilient schools initiative. Uh the student records are the primary source for trend analysis and projections. These records are universal meaning they are pulling data from actual records not estimates or extrapolations from outside sources. Also, these records are by address and can be aggregated in multiple ways, usually by attendance area, but other ways are possible as well. This is important for school districts because most outside data sources aggregate at the county or municipal levels, uh, which do not align with BVSD's boundaries. The next category there, the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, you need to go one more.

1:07:59Glen Segrue All right, there we go.

1:08:02Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video This one. Okay, data sources. Yes, our methodology. Data sources here. Methodology. Okay, apologize.

1:08:14Glen Segrue Okay, so uh every student is guaranteed a seat in the neighborhood school. Um so this is based on our resident populations as the starting point for our projections. Colorado law allows parents to apply to attend another school only if there is available space and programmat programmatic capacity. Resident student population and housing stock data is less variable and more predictable than parent choice uh which is a large component of open enrollment. Open enrollment is the valve that we can use at times to fill space in neighborhood schools once we account for all of the residential students. Okay. So, moving on to our data sources. I did discuss uh uh the BVSD student records is one of the is the primary source that we start from.

1:09:05Glen Segrue We also use department u of health and environment uh data birth data which is primary to establishing kindergarten class estimates uh and also just general tren trend analysis as well. Parcel records and development referrals from local governments form the basis of housing estimates uh estimates found in projections and student generation rates. These are also fieldverified with periodic site uh visits to to make sure that uh the the the data is accurate and that it's timely because sometimes there's quite a bit of a lag time between some of the data we get from parcel records for example uh and when we actually need it.

1:09:47Glen Segrue Other outside data sources are useful references and can be valuable for some uh projects especially redistricting data uses a lot of census data and state demography data but otherwise these sources uh can be tricky to use since they don't align with our boundaries as I mentioned earlier and are frequently frequently not timely enough for district use. So moving on to the enrollment projections themselves. Uh the district uses a cohort survival uh method which is the principal technique. Uh it looks at seven years of historical data resident student data by grade for a given school. It then calculates ratios for each class as it progresses from one year to the next. So in the illustration you can see past year data.

1:10:35Glen Segrue Uh this one shows 2017 through 2023. uh you take that first kindergarten class and look at how it compares the next year and turns into a first grade class and that makes a ratio and that's the red circle on the bottom. You can calculate that for all of the classes uh in all of the years and use those uh those averaged ratios and apply them to your current kindergarten class and first grade and so forth and then project those out in the future. That's the core principle and using that with resident students. In doing so, BVSD can estimate how future classes uh will grow or decline based on uh these past ratios.

1:11:14Glen Segrue It also effectively accounts for large or small classes in the system as they progress through the grades. Basically, if entering kindergarten classes are small, the the model will typically project a decline in the coming years as those classes progress to higher and higher uh grade levels. In fact, this is what the district has been seeing in the years preceding the pandemic and we continue to see today. Cohorts based on residential students have distinct advantages over some districts use enrollment basis, but we use resident uh here for these reasons. Resident patterns tend to move more slowly and stably than open enrollment patterns which are constantly evolving year after year.

1:11:59Glen Segrue This method better isolates the underlying population in a neighborhood and separate it separates it from open enrollment impacts uh at the school. For example, in the past, we've seen uh schools where we may see enrollment growth at that school while at the same time the neighborhood population is declining. So the open enrollment rate in that school is what's really driving that growth when in fact the underlying neighborhood population can be declining. So it's important to make those distinctions. Resident students form the foundation for many of the analysis going forward into the resilient schools. Using resident student location, we can determine how many students are in close proximity to school buildings. Here a heat map of resident students in the Douglas attendance area.

1:12:50Glen Segrue The right, the light yellow represents clusters of one to five u students with darker colors representing increasing densities of students. Also shown in this table uh is also shown on this is a table of students and housing units within one mile of the school. again and we see far fewer students and housing units close to the school compared to other district neighborhood schools. Uh we did do have to note that we use single family detached here as the measure. Um there are other housing types that we do use in our projections in our estimates. Uh but they can complicate things with CU apartments and things like that. For the purposes of here of illustration, we just use single family detached.

1:13:38Glen Segrue We consider proximity to neighborhood schools an important measure since almost twothirds of of BVSD students or about 63% attend their neighborhood school rather than an open enrollment rather than opening rolling to a different neighborhood focus or charter school. In fact, recent public out uh outreach listed walkability or proximity for that matter as a value our school of our school communities. We can see here that the resident students in BVSD schools vary widely with many schools having insufficient resident students to meet a two classes per grade standard or about 300 student school. As of 2025, nine schools in the initiative were operating with resident populations below 300 and another four only slightly above that level.

1:14:31Glen Segrue Uh this slide also shows the number of students that have that leave neighborhood schools shown here in green as opposed to those that attend their neighborhood school shown in blue. The district average for students attending their neighborhood school is about 67%. But that number ranges widely from some schools being below 50% to some schools being as high as around 85%. But that's only a very small handful of schools. We can see here that open enrollment out of the of the school has a significant impact on many schools ability to populate a two- round school with neighborhood students alone, making those schools very reliant on attracting open enrollment.

1:15:10Glen Segrue In the past, open enrollment has functioned as a somewhat of a relief valve for crowding in the district, allowing some leveling between schools with varying resident populations. However, the current situation is very different. Few schools are in need of such a relief valve. While the overall uh u resident population of our schools has been declining dramatically in in recent years, the focus on residenta populations pro prompted the board to recommend a review process for attendance boundaries every 5 years uh uh including the one that we just undertook this last fall. In turn, the boundary exercise also revealed that the district has too few students to balance populations through boundary changes alone.

1:15:57Glen Segrue The resilient schools initiative, as proposed, redistributes resident students to better bolster populations in surrounding schools. This slide shows schools from the perspective en of enrollment composition rather than resident population. When looking at enrollment, 15 out of the schools do not meet the threshold of two classes per grade level or 300 students overall. Another two are only slightly above that threshold. It's important to note that enrollment is only part partly composed of resident students again shown here in blue. The yellow and orange are the open open enroll in components of enrollment. Open enrollment is based on choice rather than core de demographic characteristics of resident populations which evolve much more slowly over time.

1:16:49Glen Segrue Rather choice uh open enrollment components can fluctuate widely and are more difficult to predict especially at the school level. This is especially true when we start to combine schools. Combining schools inevitably changes open enrollment behavior both for parents and for the district. Open enrolled parents may not want to attend the receiving schools and the district may elect to manage new open enrollment uh in order to accept increased neighborhood uh an increased neighborhood load. A good example of that is Aspen Creek and uh Dylan Point uh subdivision, which is something that was brought up in the the last public hearing. Um you can see on the bottom there is Aspen Creek. Half of that school is filled with open enrollment.

1:17:34Glen Segrue So, as we get new neighborhood kids from Dylan Point or other new subdivisions, uh, we can accept those those students merely by just managing open enrollment a little bit. That's a very different situation than if we if Aspen Creek was filled with neighborhood kids and we would have to change a boundary or something to accommodate those students. Uh, in fact, we did hear some of the concern from the public that the projected enrollment at some schools was less than the sum of the contributing schools. uh the the two contri two or three contributing uh schools enrollments combined. This is because the combined school projection was modeled with open enrollment adjustments for the contributing schools.

1:18:19Nicole Rajpal Glenn, before we go on to how you applied this data, I wondered if board members had questions about how the data was collected in itself. Alex.

Board questions: housing, development and walkability

1:18:33Alex Medler Yeah, thank you. Um, uh, one question for you, Glenn. Thank you very much for the analysis. Um, uh, I've appreciated the depth of the analysis all along the way and the support you provided to the LRAC as well. Um, I guess I have a first question like you've been doing this for almost 20 years. Um, when did you start telling us as a district that we were facing future enrollment declines?

1:19:01Glen Segrue uh you know where we casually started noticing really small kindergarten classes is early 2012. So this is something that's been building over a long time but you don't really know if that's going to continue but after by by 2017 or so we can see a trend patterning because those small classes started filtering up through the system first bringing down elementary enrollment then those classes progress and and moving on to middle school and now we're seeing it in high school.

1:19:25Alex Medler And and when do you think you first started briefing the board of BVSD about that decline?

1:19:31Glen Segrue Well, we do do our annual report. Uh and I do mention it in those reports.

1:19:36Alex Medler Okay. And then uh I know we've had discussions, you know, about like the developments in Erie on an individual development process. How well are we able to get updated data on pending housing development by the developers and all the geographies we work in and how do you do that?

1:19:53Glen Segrue So that is from the development referrals that we get from local governments um mostly cities sometimes county uh and they tell us right from concept plan which is you know just sketches and things of what generally might happen or even annexation would be before that uh that developments you know that process takes you know two to sometimes 10 years. We've seen projects take 10 years. So, we're constantly getting those new applications from local governments, giving them responses to those about what the student impact is so they can make informed decisions uh and getting that into our data sets.

1:20:26Glen Segrue Uh once it is a bit tricky on timing with those because everybody, you know, developers are very optimistic bunch and they'll they'll say it'll start in the next two or three years. Like I said, some for a lot of reasons can can take 10 years to develop. So, you really have to have a pulse on what's going on and how soon you need to start putting those into future projections.

1:20:51Alex Medler And do you have a good um with that experience in collaborating with the cities, how confident are you that uh you have a good like confidence band of your projections based on future development?

1:21:04Glen Segrue Based on future development, it's actually pretty easy right now because we just really don't have a lot. I mean, I know some subdivisions look big for 100 units or something like that, but that's pretty small in the scale of things considering you're getting 20, maybe 25 elementary kids out of that. Um, you know, a lot of our larger development has uh has been built out in the district. We only have a very few really large new lots that can handle that kind of load. Mostly what we're dealing with now is infill. Infill tends to be higher densities, not always. Um, and they come in much smaller little packets. Um,

1:21:39Alex Medler yeah. When when do you think uh I'm I'm curious about the collaboration and coordination with like the city of Boulder and the county and city of Broomfield. So like I live in South Boulder and CU South's been a big thing for a long time. Uh people of the university side probably wished it was already constructed whereas it's been litigated non-stop ever since the proposals were out there. as an example, how did you model or predict when and how and how many students might come out of CU South and when might we expect them?

1:22:12Glen Segrue Uh, so when we might expect, I don't know. I I mean, I've seen CU change quite frequently. The Boulder uh Boulder High area, CU of CU properties around there has gone through several different projects. I think none have really really changed much except for now there's a little bit of of scrape off and rebuild in the area but not some of these elaborate ones. Uh for CU South I have worked with the city and CU a little bit. I've modeled in the past some scenarios and they've used those bringing forward. I haven't heard much in a while.

1:22:44Glen Segrue Uh but I I certainly and I talked with CU I think uh this last spring about this topic and there's certainly nothing right now that is immediately imminent from what I can tell uh with CU South, but we do keep uh keep those students in mind and what the potential generations that we've been told of um will will come come will ultimately come to be.

1:23:06Alex Medler And how do you uh another follow-up question on that is when you're dealing with something like you know a new housing infill development in Boulder. I mean, I've been frustrated honestly as an advocate for children and families in this district that we like, yes, we want housing, but we tend to build one in bedrooms and studios and fireside is building three and fourbedroom homes. So, how do you uh estimate based on like the usual development patterns in a place like Boulder for how many kids the units will generate?

1:23:35Glen Segrue Uh, we do periodic reviews of we call them student yield, some places call them student generation. So that's the average number of students per house. Uh and I use those parcel records and I've modified them with site inspections and stuff like I mentioned so that we know exactly what's on the ground. Uh and we can lay our students plot our students on top of that and get a very accurate calculation not only of how many house units per um household but even by year. So we can see that newer development tends to generate the most kids.

1:24:05Glen Segrue Um, you know, sometimes there's a shadow bump later on, but new development usually has the most and we can see that very clearly and definitely the most are the single family detached housing consistently uh show more students than any other kind of housing type. Um, uh, generally speaking, the more dense you get, the fewer kids we've been seeing. Um, sometimes some apartment complexes, especially affordable ones, might produce some kids, but generally what we've been seeing in the last really 15, 20 years, has been units for young professionals and and uh um empty nesters. And yeah,

1:24:46Alex Medler I want to not lose that point. So in a place like Boulder where we see lots of construction and I actually am shocked by when people talk about not building I look at how many new units there are for CU students that affects our market and then I look at the big developments that exist. I'm I am struck by how few of them are attractive to American families. Um so you're saying that when we do more dense housing in a place like Boulder, we're actually generating fewer students per unit than we would with other housing types.

1:25:16Glen Segrue Absolutely.

1:25:16Alex Medler And so and Boulder's choices of what kind of housing to develop in its infill is now driven sort of by maximizing affordability and numbers, not by maximizing children. Is that fair?

1:25:27Glen Segrue That's that they say that's fair.

1:25:28Alex Medler So when people in the city complain about whether or not we've taken into account Boulder's uh 30-year plan, have we taken into account Boulder's 30-year plan? And do we believe it might generate many students? And how many students might it generate in your estimation?

1:25:43Glen Segrue I couldn't tell you how many students it'll generate in our estimation. You know, these are very generalized categories. We're talking about the comprehensive plan. Um, we really need to start seeing applications on the ground because, like I said, there's that leeway where we do five-year projections. So, until we actually have applications for new development, uh, it's difficult to put put a number on on what we're actually going to get out of out of uh out of those city plans.

1:26:06Alex Medler And if I may ask, how how many years out into the future in our different geographies do you think you can plan for realistically? Uh not knowing what an interest rate's going to be, a recession, a development, uh land use planning changes, like how how far out based on the last 20 years, do you think you can plan into the future to predict our students?

1:26:29Glen Segrue Well, it depends how accurate you want to be. Um so I can go out a hundred years if if that doesn't matter. Um, you know, we really have based five years is the one I really like to stick to because we can base that, we can rationally base our kindergarten classes on those births. So, you know, we have births today. We're not going to see those kids in our system for 5 years. So, we've got a kind of a 5year window where we can get those kindergarteners in through the system. When we start getting out out beyond that, we're flying blind about what's feeding the system that way.

1:27:00Alex Medler And then I'm sorry for having so many questions, but I find this very helpful and it's been very informative for me over the last three years. Um, and I think it's useful to our community as well. Uh, what is when you look at the patterns of enrollment year-over-year in your cohort model, like I we have a bump from like kindergarten to first grade, right? Where people really want to get into the elementary schools by first grade if they didn't end kindergarten. Is that right?

1:27:25Glen Segrue Yeah, we have we've it's historically had a little bit of a bump. There's also some private kindergarten programs that people attend um that they so they don't come in till first grade.

1:27:35Alex Medler All right. And how do you have very good data on uh the enrollment in the private schools that are in the area and the degree of homeschooling?

1:27:42Glen Segrue That's a tough one. Um you know, we have we have tried to do a spreadsheet modeling how many private schools we have in the district and what their populations are. They don't always advertise how many students they have. There's also CDE uh information that tracks that. Most of that is self-reported. Uh we can see schools on those lists that haven't worked in year haven't been functioning in years. We see new schools that aren't on the list. So given it's self-reported, especially from the homeschool angle, um we have data, but it is is I wouldn't consider it very high quality.

1:28:19Alex Medler Great. It's Yeah. And have you seen the recent data from CDE on online enrollment and homeschool enrichment enrollment? And does that come into our calculations as well?

1:28:29Glen Segrue Um so online enrollment in terms of within the school district or

1:28:36Alex Medler both in the district and out like students we lose out to online enrollment.

1:28:39Glen Segrue uh it's a little bit of the same principle where it's difficult to get the quality control on those especially you're talking online programs that are are private or or charter or things like that.

1:28:50Alex Medler All right. And then process-wise for us getting to the proposal you've given us. Can you tell me anything about uh like I like to see the analysis of the 47 people living within a mile of Douglas as opposed to 466 at a place like Coal Creek. Can you tell us how much analysis you did of the other regional proposals based on the ability to maintain uh neighborhood schools that are walkable and walkable distances to our schools?

1:29:16Glen Segrue Uh we we have run those numbers uh on occasion uh to help help inform some of our decisions and our process. Um we don't have anything I think as specific as what we show there um uh for every school.

1:29:28Alex Medler Yeah. And then in a in a region like um Broomfield for example uh how much of the decision-m is based on those neighborhoods versus the what's in the res I mean I guess we'll get to that later so I I should be sticking to the methodology questions but um we're able to take into account the walkability of the neighborhoods the streets that need to be crossed the transportation that happens. Uh, we've been briefed as I don't know if the new board members have, but we've been briefed on like our bicycling programs and our walkable programs to the schools.

1:30:00Alex Medler Um, I I value greatly both the choice and the neighborhood schools, and I'd love to see everybody walk in and the ebikes with their kids going to school. Um, do we have very good data um on how many of our kids walk to their elementary schools versus ride or get dropped off or ride a bus?

1:30:18Glen Segrue I do know the transportation tracks some of that um mostly through the programs they run. Um but you know outside of those programs I'm not sure there's a lot of numbers out there that we can go from. Rob might have some more to add.

1:30:33Rob Price Yeah. The annual survey that parents complete and we now have very accurate data on how families get to school, how students get to school.

1:30:40Alex Medler Can Rob, could you give me just a brief synopsis of how many of our current elementary kids like walk to school versus how many don't walk?

1:30:51Rob Price Give me, if you can give me until the end of the work session, I'll have that for you. I can say we are double uh the um state average, double the national average on how many kids walk and bike to school. But I will get that for you.

1:31:02Alex Medler But it's not something everybody can do and there's no way how would we be able to arrange that without closing schools. I mean, we've got a lot of geographies where walking is currently not possible, right?

1:31:13Rob Price That is true.

1:31:14Rob Pricespeaker unconfirmed · check the video Yes.

1:31:14Alex Medler And do our schools vary dramatically in terms of how many kids can walk to them versus not?

1:31:19Rob Price You know, it depends on the region where they're at. Um, all of our municipalities when you think about the infrastructure that Boulder has put in, the infrastructure Louisville Superior has put in, uh, even Broomfield in many cases, uh, support walking and biking to schools, right? So, I mean that shows in the the amount of work that municipalities have put into that and that has been a board priority that has as uh Dr. Azine uh communicated that was a community priority as we're looking at this. So, yes, we did look at how many students live within a mile of the school knowing that's a priority.

1:31:55Alex Medler And let me just add also for my new board members, one of the big calculus for me and well just supporting it's great that kids can bike and walk to school, but it also contributes to greater likelihood that they're going to attend their neighborhood school. And so if parents have to get in a car to get their kid to their neighborhood school, then they're like, "Oh, as long as I'm in a car, what are the other ones within 15 miles?" So the more we can make our schools be designed around walkability and access by bike and foot or parents walking their kids, the more we can support enrollment in our neighborhood schools was part of my point.

1:32:30Nicole Rajpal Yes, shout out to our safe routes to school team and all the work they do with our municipalities to make that happen. Um moving on to Anna and then Dion.

1:32:39Ana Temu Otting um the regional approach of um the proposal. I also want to get clarity on um the methodology on data that was used and the projections for enrollment. Um, primarily I ask because the uh, enrollment decline isn't as steep in Broomfield as it is in Boulder and I want to know what those numbers and if that model was used separately for Broomfield versus within Boulder proper.

1:33:11Glen Segrue Well, will we calculate projections for each individual school? So, yes, we we can sum up the schools in Broomfield um those those school projections that would be unique to Broomfield. They're not averaged with Boulder or anything like that if that answers your question.

1:33:26Ana Temu Otting Yeah. And what did that what did that look like for um the Boulder or the sorry the Broomfield area of um the declining enrollment and its projections within the next 5 years.

1:33:37Glen Segrue So with Broomfield's has been a little different than the other parts of the district where Boulder and Louisville and Lafayette grew quite a bit through the 2000s and 2010s um until this recent trend. Uh Broomfield has been on a long just very slow decline for pretty much that whole time for years and years and years. So we've kind of uh projected a similar pattern going into the future. Now the caveat to that always is open enrollment. Broomfield is located so that they can pull in lots of open enrollment and we can see that best illustrated on that chart right there from Aspen Creek which is half open enrollment.

1:34:15Glen Segrue So that does skew things a little bit but the resident population the underlying population has been on a long slow decline for quite some time.

1:34:24Ana Temu Otting Yeah. And in that uh methodology because we do have um Broomfield again is different than uh within Boulder County that we do have um space for growth and we do have um multifamily single family housing being actively built right now. primarily Dylan Point that has over 300 uh houses being built that would be um districted into the Aspen Creek um neighborhood into the Aspen Creek schools. And so I also wondering what the models look like and the projections look like in that included active housing developments in Brimfield.

1:35:06Glen Segrue So with active housing developments, the the Dylan point is a is a great example. I don't really expect that to increase enrollments because as we as we showed in the previous slides, we can manage open enrollment uh because Aspen Creek's full, but we can just manage open enrollment that that side of the equation to allow more of those neighborhood kids into that school. Um other active developments um I know there's a few concept plans out there and possibly an apartment kind of in Emerald's area, a couple of apartment complexes. um those uh apartment complexes in Emerald area have not generated many students at all.

1:35:40Glen Segrue Um I mean there's some with um you know close to eight or 900 units that are have maybe a dozen kids or something in them.

1:35:50Ana Temu Otting Okay. And uh I guess my other uh just my biggest worry is that we're uh Broomfield is growing and they do have more plans on creating more housing developments within Broomfield. um that we're not leaving enough space for growth um for the ability to have room for our students within Kohl or Aspen Creek or at Emerald. Um, and I just want to because the landscape since this proposal came out, the educational landscape has changed um, with Adams County and I understand that it's not feasible to bank on open enrollment, especially when you're in places like Broomfield proper where it's maybe like 10 15 kids, but you did just say that in Broomfield it is different because we do have half open enrollment in Aspen Creek and with the Adams County closing schools within Broomfield that the educational landscape um in that city uh has changed since the the development of this proposal.

1:36:51Ana Temu Otting And I want to know if there has been any reconsideration on the data on enrollment. Not necessarily that we're banking on open enrollment and that we're using any of those numbers for our projections, but what does that look like in terms of projected and um calculated capacity within the next 5 to 10 years in our schools in Broomfield?

1:37:18Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you for those questions and I appreciate that. I know these are questions that that folks in our community are asking as well. Um, you know, a couple things and I'll let Rob or Glenn jump in. Uh, so Adams 12 hasn't voted on their proposal yet, right? So they have a proposal out there to the extent that that will be voted on or not. I I think that it's really I mean the issues in Broomfield are being magnified that multiple school districts are all closing schools, consolidating schools, reconfiguring schools. Um, so it would be impossible a to know what Adams 12 board is going to do. that's that's outside of our our control.

1:37:57Dr. Rob Anderson Um it's really if but if they're closing because they don't have enough kids to fill their schools, the idea that they'd have enough kids to fill our schools in a decline in England. Maybe you want to talk about the significant decline at Birch over the ne the course of the next five years, one of the steepest declines that we have projected in our entire school district. Um, and then talk a little bit about this idea of of and and just reiterate this fact around resident student population and open enrollment, the variability in open enrollment in PL in and things that were that are really very much outside of our control.

1:38:34Dr. Rob Anderson So, I'll turn it over to Robert Glenn to kind of talk that, but I would just want to make sure that um we don't know what Adams 12 will do and when is there when are they voting?

1:38:44Rob Price Yeah, it's after us.

1:38:45Dr. Rob Anderson So, their vote would be after us. So we couldn't consider that

1:38:49Rob Price next few weeks I would imagine. Um I want to bring to our attention this slide. Right. So uh back in October allowing schools to stay small is no longer an option. So when we look at Birch's enrollment for example you can see that in the next five years we're just barely over 200 students 208 Kohl Elementary in the next five years. uh what around 220 give me one second uh 266 sick students based on our projections and then when you look at Aspen Creek at the very bottom of the slide I think that is an important and we're going to get into this later in this presentation but half of Aspen Creek's enrollment right now is based on open enrollment from either inside or outside the district.

1:39:40Rob Price So if resident student population increases, we use the levers of open enrollment to drive additional capacity within that school. And again, uh Dr. Neil Anderson's going to be speaking to this on how we use those levers. Those students will metriculate out of the system. We are slowing open enrollment down into Aspen Creek right now to allow that to happen. So we have plenty of capacity within the Broomfield schools based on the development that we are seeing with the three schools not counting the fourth school in Broomfield utilizing the le levers that that we have. I would say from a planning and operational standpoint it is our responsibility to plan for the number of resident students we have in an area. Right? That's as Glenn started there.

1:40:27Rob Price That's the foundation of our system is to plan for that. If we can allow additional students from inside the district or outside the district to attend schools, that's great. And and thinking back in just 10 years ago, you know, the number of students that attended their uh their neighborhood school was 70%. Today it's 63% because we have space available, right? The number was even higher when we were even fuller in this district. So I would just say that we we have a number of mechanisms. Open enrollment being the primary one. uh if we had to create additional capacity within a building, we could also do that. We're going to talk a little bit about that a little later in the presentation.

1:41:08Rob Price But we feel comfortable based on the developments we know about the five-year projections by having three schools in Broomfield without the fourth. Based on our projections, that's a three round school about 470 empty seats in Broomfield if we do nothing. So that's how I guess I would answer that is again it when we think about this we're really grounding ourselves in the number of resident students that live in the area and we see that declining.

1:41:38Ana Temu Otting And just one followup on to that, the within this data of enrollment um specifically for Birch going into Kohl um were any of the uh walkability and traffic pollution into on Midway and 10th considered of how much that would congest um cuz it goes right by the high school and it goes right by the middle school. And for that neighborhood, those are really the only two roads that would be able to get us to Kohl. Um what what were the um the transportation calculations used within this part of the methodology?

1:42:20Rob Price Great question and something we analyzed. Uh as a reminder, elementary schools in that area start at 7:50. Aspen Creek's a little bit later. High school starts at 8:35. I believe the middle school starts at 8:45. So, we feel very conf confident that we can uh the roads, etc. around there can handle the additional traffic over to Kohl. Kohl lends itself. It has a really nice site. A lot of queuing all the way around Kohl Elementary, something that Birch has lacks, something that we've actually struggled with for many years. Um, so yes, a lot of thought has been in that, but the bell time separation provides for uh good traffic in and out of all the schools in that area.

1:43:00Nicole Rajpal I'm going to go um Jason and then Deann and board members. I had thought about a comfort break at slide 24, but that really depends on how many more questions we have until we get there. So, um stay tuned and if someone needs a break before 24, you just let me know.

1:43:23Jason Unger Okay. Um yeah, thanks. I also want to move on to the next topic, but I I wanted to, you know, we've talked a lot about this October 2025 date and the shift. Um, you know, I've been on the board three years. It was probably the biggest issue when many of us were campaigning. It was an issue when we got on the board. Um, you know, Glenn, you talked about this since 2012. Nicole has talked about how long this has been an issue and Alex as well. But something did shift in the last few years that caused us as a board to move from LRAC, which as others have said is really just an advisory committee and not dictating direction, uh to this regional approach.

1:44:01Jason Unger And so I really I think it's important that we make this connection between the projections, the enrollment numbers over the last two or three years, which have from what I remember really did change and even though historically very accurate, Glenn, I think have come in lower than projected in the last two years. uh and make that connection between that data, the the actual enrollment and why we had to move and make this shift in October of last year.

1:44:27Rob Price Just real quick because I want to honor the work that our long range advisory committee has done

1:44:33Jason Unger and I didn't mean to be

1:44:34Rob Price No, no, no, no. I for everyone I've you know I think people have looked at this like this these were metrics individual schools the metrics were always established as an early warning system. We have said that at many many meetings when long-range advisory committee gave an update. Long-range advisory committee and these were uh uh the recommendations the metrics that were presented to the board back in June of 23 always stated that decision-m should be in the context looking at geographic areas or multiple schools at the same time. Right? So they even recommended this. So we had to have a metric that told us where schools were at and we centered that around the student experience. That's how we came to the two classes per grade level.

1:45:17Rob Price We tied the finances or the operational efficiency within the utilization of the building. So way back when we had said this, we started Heatherwood's engagement process out of the gate and I think that's where people are like oh they're looking at this as a school by school uh basis. We did that because Heatherwood was four miles or six miles away from Crest View, four and a half or so miles away from Douglas Elementary School. It sat in a unique geographic area. It was one of the very first schools out of the gate. So, we started that engagement process on a singular school. And then it was the board that said, "Hold on, looking at this school by school isn't acceptable."

1:45:59Rob Price That's when we really had to go to a regional approach because declining enrollment was being felt throughout the district. This is where we really created some equitable experiences, inequitable experiences across their district where you go to a three- round school and they have a full-time counselor, art, music, and PE, and you go to a school that's got 150 students, and they don't have near that. And I think you as board members said, "This is not acceptable. We've created this with declining enrollment, and there's something that we have to do about it." So, I I'm speaking a little bit for the board. That's the direction that I felt like we received.

1:46:32Rob Price Um, but I will say that when the majority of our schools got below two classes per grade level in these areas, again was when the board said we have to take a regional approach to this and that that was again determined off of the metrics that were established by LRAC to be able to again give you an early warning system that we've got challenges at these lower enrolled schools. They don't have the resources that some of our other schools have. So, you have anything to add to that?

1:47:07Nicole Rajpal Then depart and then Alex,

1:47:09Deann Bucher it sounds like some of my questions can be deferred because someone's going to talk about these mysterious levers of open enrollment at some point that

1:47:19Rob Price it's actually the next two slides.

1:47:19Deann Bucher Okay, good.

1:47:21Rob Price Not not mysterious at all. That we'll be able to explain those explicitly. It's one of those words that you don't really know what it means, right?

1:47:28Deann Bucher Um, but I do want to also say I'm guessing that a biking, walking um projection to schools does not uh make any sense in the mountain schools.

1:47:49Rob Price I would say it would not make any sense in the mountain schools. Those kids already get or our students already get transportation in the mountain areas. Yep.

1:47:57Deann Bucher Was there any consideration to put Douglas as a rural place instead of an urban place?

1:48:04Rob Price No, there was not.

1:48:08Nicole Rajpal Jorge and then Alex.

1:48:13Jorge Chávez Thank you. Um I appreciate the discussion just understanding kind of what do the numbers represent, where do our estimates come from, kind of how complex it is. So I want to go back to the methodology part. I know you've mentioned um yields from developments and how tricky that is moving forward. But um based on the estimates for yields for the existing developments that already in place, are we seeing what they expected or how has that outlook changed um in the last couple years?

1:48:38Glen Segrue Well, so we do that analysis every few years. It's been I think 2023 since we've done that. We're due for another um update of the bigger document. I do a lot of spot checking. Um, and not so much on existing housing, but new housing. Um, in conversations with surrounding districts, everybody's saying how few students we're seeing in new housing. Uh, and we're seeing the same. Actually, the yields I've established for new housing are have been coming in about half of what they typically are. Um, so there's a lot of housing dynamic stuff I've heard that may explain some of that, but yields are coming in considerably lower just in these last year or two.

1:49:20Rob Price Give you a very specific example what we're seeing at Parkdale. For example, we assume that we would see one elementary student for every uh four rooftops. And right now, we're seeing one elementary student for about every eight rooftops out there. So, as Glenn talks about half, just to put some numbers to it, that's one singular development, but it is what we are seeing across the district with a lot of these developments.

1:49:44Jorge Chávez Thank you. I appreciate that context. I think it's an important part of the larger trend that we're seeing with uh enrollment pattern. Thank you.

1:49:52Alex Medler Um, I know we're going to talk about open enrollment, but uh, like I look at the like the Broomfield schools and I see something like 280 out of district kids enrolled in the Broomfield area. How long does it take to like transition with our enrollment preferences if we wanted to replace that with in district choice or with newly assigned folks within the district? And we do that by following our enrollment preferences, right? and saying, "Hey, we're going to preference kids within the district ahead of the kids from out of the district," which over time replaces the out of district kids with kids in the district. Am I understanding that correctly?

1:50:30Rob Pricespeaker unconfirmed · check the video Yes, I'd say that's exactly correct.

1:50:32Alex Medler All right. And so, how long does it I know we have sibling preferences for the kids that are already there, but how long does it kind of take for if we you know, if we switched the the switch on a school and said, "Hey, we want to spend more time. we're gonna have more kids from within district trying to open enroll into this. Um I know that it's sort of a function of which grades they're coming from, right? So, uh how often how long does it take before like a new equilibrium would be achieved in which the indistrict people would be able to choose what they want and still have the space once we've sort of flushed through out of district kids.

1:51:08Alex Medler Like we're not filling things with out of district kids at the expense of kids within the district, right?

1:51:12Nicole Rajpal Can I wonder if we want to pause on that until we talk about that because I think that's going to generate and relate to some of the questions that Deann had on how like the levers of open enrollment work if that's okay

1:51:24Alex Medlerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video and um if any board members I have two I mean I get you guys all get to ask your questions first

1:51:32Nicole Rajpal Helenia. So if I can ask two questions and then we'll take a comfort break. Is that okay Lena?

1:51:37Lalenia Quinlan Aweida Thank you. Um, in all the years you've been doing this modeling, has res resident student population always been the number that you've used? Has it been the primary driver in um, in your calculations?

1:51:53Glen Segrue Not since the beginning. It's something that had to be developed over a number of years because there aren't a lot of other models out there that do it exactly like that. Uh, but certainly for the last 5 years or so, that's been um, been the primary way of doing it. Um and before and going back further for schools with a lot of de development potential. That was really where the model kind of came from where you have these schools with lots of development potential. Um and the enrollment system kind of breaks down. So that probably goes back more like 10 years.

1:52:24Lalenia Quinlan Aweida Thank you. Um and then I just wanted to highlight what you said about projections. really five years is where we feel confident and I know we talked a lot about that board members when we were updating board policy JC on looking at attendance boundaries and that was really the rationale for why five years was the decide what we decided in um and re-evaluating those attendance policies and so I I just want to elevate again for a while we've been talking about five-year confidences um that's not entirely new and then last but not least I just wondered I kind of elevating back to the data that Dr. Azine presented on parental and staff desires around consolidation versus closure versus reconfiguration back in the June meeting.

1:53:12Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I I acknowledge that the primary the biggest preference was consolidation and that because our obligation to ensure that every student with with a resident student has to have the ability to have a seat, it may not be possible in all solutions. And so can you in all state situations? And so I just wonder if you can talk a little bit about the pressures of us and our responsibility to provide resident students access to their neighborhood school should they choose it and the way in which that may have impacted decisions around which schools could be easily consolidated versus which ones had to be um you know divided amongst a couple different schools.

1:53:55Glen Segrue Well really starting with the resident population is the key to that. So we want to look can the school accommodate the resident population you know with the new combination. Um so we looked at that closely and and I I pointed out one slide earlier too that it you know the resident population can be a little bit bigger than the capacity um because of that because of open enrollment. Not all kids will go there.

1:54:17Nicole Rajpal You go to the next slide real quick and continue your thoughts. Oh, if it has to do with your next slide, you can hold it because I do know my board members want a come for a break. The

1:54:26Glen Segrue next slide though.

1:54:27Nicole Rajpal Okay. Okay. Thanks. We will take a fivem minute comfort break and we'll resume on discussing levers for of open enrollment. like to call this meeting back to order and turn it back over to staff to discuss enrollment utilization.

Enrollment utilization and combined-school projections

2:01:33Glen Segrue So here we can see uh Bear Creek and Mesa combination as an example of uh what it looks like when we combine two schools and how we project that situation. Uh we can see on the left side we have Bear Creek. Uh it's 25 26 enroll resident students and enrollment utilization. Uh and the same for Mesa. Uh on the on the right side we see the projected consolidated schools for 27 28 which would be the first year that school would would function as a consolidated school. Uh and also a further projection in 2030 and 31. Um going down the list we have uh the resident students in 27 in the combined school.

2:02:13Glen Segrue Uh now that number are the number of students that live in the the really kind of three um enrollment areas, right? You've got Bear Creek enrollment area, you've got Mesa's enrollment area, but you've got the dual area too, which almost functions as a third enrollment uh area in that in that uh part of the of the city. Um and then going further into the future, that number does go up to 522, which is more than the capacity of 492. However, um you know, again, even using 85% which is the highest end of that we see of resident students attending their neighborhood school, that still puts the population at 455. Now, that's without open enrollment or anything like that, though.

2:02:55Glen Segrue And that gets to be the tricky part. Uh in the enrollment part in the bottom, we have uh we did a range um based on how many students from Mesa, resident students from Mesa will carry over. Uh and then that part also does not include the portion of Mesa uh students that are open enrolled into Mesa. Um and it also includes part of students that uh in Bear Creek. uh we would probably manage enrollment that first year for all new uh uh open enrolled kids in the Mesa rather than um you know we wouldn't touch the kids that are already in the building but for the new open enrollment would probably have to be managed uh in order to make sure we get everybody in.

2:03:41Dr. Rob Anderson Yeah, I think uh board members this is an important point. Um and Glenn, if you can speak to uh you know when we look at resident students, right, we have uh decades of enrollment trend data that tell us what percentage of any resident group of students attends their neighborhood school. And uh that is that is some of the data that Glenn leaned on. Um you know, because you could look at this and say, gosh, you've got more resident students than you have capacity. Right. And I think that some of our folks in our community, you know, gave us some pretty straightforward feedback at our last meeting. Wait a minute, you have 522 resident students and you have capacity of 492.

2:04:20Dr. Rob Anderson Uh again, um not every resident student goes to their neighborhood school. As a matter of fact, as we've shared, you know, it's between somewhere between 60 and 70 depend depending 70% depending on the availability that you have. So, three out of every 10 schools that are a resident student um don't go to their uh their neighborhood schools. And as we shared a few slides previously where we could talk to you specifically, maybe go back to that, Glenn, to just kind of highlight this point. Um now, just kind of the all of the the folks on the green bars do not attend their resident school. And so uh you know you can see uh those are significant amounts um and significant amounts in our smallest schools.

2:05:07Dr. Rob Anderson Uh um so I think that when folks are trying to um fully understand the methodology that we use there just be there's some pieces of information that are missing uh that we use to and this is how Glenn gets really accurate with his projections within 1% 19 out of 20 years or something like that is when we were thinking about it. Um so uh I just wanted to highlight that point. You can go back Glenn to to where we're we where we're at.

2:05:36Dr. Rob Anderson Um and then the other this other idea around open enrollment as a lever I think we're going to get into here a little bit but again remember board members resident students and then open enrollment right so in in future years in a consolidated Bear Creek and Mesa right we're not going to have the open enrollment ability that we have today right as school just like we don't have the open enrollment ability at other schools that are filled Right. The open enrollment process accounts for that and it ensures that we don't open enroll in ways that overcrowd schools or overcrowd classrooms.

2:06:15Dr. Rob Anderson And I think that those were really big concerns because if you start looking at more students than you have capacity, then the only way that if you didn't have these other data points, these other methodologies that we're speaking to, you you'd have to put them in really big classes. And we're going to get to this board members, but again, our community spoke loud and clear, right? They don't want really large class sizes, right? Very very evident. And so to the extent that we are going to begin to be able to drop those class sizes is is a big um I think um anchor of the plan and the proposal that that that we've shared with you all.

2:06:57Dr. Rob Anderson So Rob, I didn't know if you wanted to add anything else there. Um or if Glenn if you wanted anything else. I just think that I just wanted to to pause and highlight I think a valid question for folks who wouldn't have understood what what Glenn shared with you all in terms of uh you know you you're know it looks like you're going to overcrowd the schools to make this plan work. That's not the case.

2:07:23Rob Price Do you have a question on this slide?

2:07:23Jason Unger I I do just while we're on the topic of Bear Creek Mesa if if that's soon we can I can wait I mean if we if we have a few more slides to cover but I think this there's a few questions that I'd like to ask around this specific thing.

2:07:39Rob Price So there are three slides on this levers that relate to class size and consult and so it's your your call.

2:07:48Jason Unger Okay. Thanks. I'm I'm gonna take the opportunity to ask that question. Uh we've I've we've all heard from a lot of folks uh particularly parents and families at Mesa concerned about exactly what Dr. Anderson talked about. Can you you know I think this is relevant here but can you talk about you know where the rise kids fits it fit into this if that's part of the numbers you're talking about and then I think Glenn you mentioned kids that are currently open enrolled to Mesa now like what does this mean for them next year and is that factored into this calculation here?

2:08:19Rob Price So the RISE students are included and we brought brought that program over uh so that is included uh in in the projection. Um and as far as the Mesa students, we the the Mesa uh students that are currently attending um um Mesa it assumes all of those students coming over. Uh and the high there's a range in that one. So that's the high range that all of those kids come over. Uh the low range is just a lower percentage of those come over. And then the students that are open enrolled uh into Mesa currently that is going to be dealt with through the open enrollment process and the preferences that we established.

2:08:55Jason Unger Um and then I guess related if I can uh you know Rob you know all these facilities really well. I think a lot of people have raised concerns you know you have a school even if it's middle of that range you know I I actually I don't know the the layout exactly at Bear Creek but I a lot of open open concept classrooms. Are you could you talk about you know the ability of that building to be able to absorb at the high range high end of this range the kids the new programmatic things that are moving over and just addressing concerns that Dr. Anderson did about you know overcrowded room classrooms.

2:09:31Jason Unger I think just there's a lot of concern uh I think understandably so about um even if these were on the lower end the ability of this building to be able to successfully kind of incorporate that many kids.

2:09:43Rob Price Yeah, we've uh spent a lot of time this summer walking buildings, looking at buildings, know this building really well. The um as a reminder, it wasn't long ago when these buildings were at this size. I mean, I think we can look back to 2016 2017 numbers and a lot of these schools were over 400 students. Um the what I do want to recognize though, as schools have gotten smaller, they've expanded into different spaces, right? right? They've used it as a swing space, a reading room, um additional staff lounges, etc. And that's change management and that's going to take some time and we'll have to work with the building leaders, work with staffs, etc.

2:10:27Rob Price because a lot of that space that they've expanded to will now have to be classroom space. It was intended to be classroom space when the building was first built. Uh so when we look at capacity we look at it of uh classrooms that are what bigger than 600 600 square f feet. We have a multiplier of 25 students. So in the case of Bear Creek we have 20 classrooms out there. Um we have uh multiply that times 25 and that's how you get to 492 um as a capacity. So little over a three round school out there. Um again, you know, the learning environment, uh do have some spaces that are that open concept similar to Heatherwood, Eisenhower, uh Mesa has some of that right now.

2:11:14Rob Price Um and again, we'll be working with staffs to figure out how we can mitigate a lot of that. But, uh I just want to remind us it wasn't long ago when these schools were this full. Um and they were, uh very successful at that time.

2:11:28Dr. Rob Anderson Okay, couple things for folks who are watching at home. Uh 25 time 20 doesn't equal 492.

2:11:37Rob Price I'm sorry. You're right. Our class size is 24

2:11:41Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video 20.

2:11:41Rob Price Yes. 24.58 is our multip. So So you're right.

2:11:46Dr. Rob Anderson So sorry about that, Rob, but I just want to be very accurate with folks. Um and you know, I appreciate the level of precision that our our community is seeking. Um I will say that board members, as we think about this and we think about class sizes, right? So, our capacity, we're building on a ca a capacity of a of an average K12 general ed class size of 24.58 to1. Right now, you may be asking, you know, why don't we have class sizes of 24.58 to1? Part of this consolidation effort shrinks the range of class sizes that we see. And we're going to get into this a little bit, but I think it's worth taking a moment to speak to here.

2:12:27Dr. Rob Anderson Um because if you have an average of 25 board members, if you have a class of 17, what does that mean? You need to have on the other end to average to 25, right? Like so if so by consolidating so our community understands how we're going to use this to shrink class size, you shrink the range by having more rounds per school, right? Because if you get 34 kids in a grade at a two round or at a one round school, then you have two classes of 17, right?

2:12:56Dr. Rob Anderson But if you get a couple kids and you have three classes of 25 26, you don't get to the place where you're adding a teacher um and you're expanding your range on the low end and then on the high end to get to that average, right? And then the efficiencies, and we're going to talk a little bit about this when Bill speaks, creates new resources that we can then redeploy into schools to even bring that average down lower and shrink that range so there's a more consistent class size K through five.

2:13:29Dr. Rob Anderson So, um, I just wanted, sorry, Rob, to I'm going to keep an eye on the math to make sure that that that folks, um, you know, understand, you know, that we're talking and how it adds up, but I'm also really trying to describe more in detail how all this works together.

2:13:49Dr. Neil Anderson All right. So, um, thank you very much. I'm going to be continuing to talk about those two levers. a lot of the discussion has already kind of taken some of the points that I had to make and it's been wonderful in that space. So either I'll be adding some new information, I'll be layering some consistent information about what was said and I hope what uh the next couple slides lay out for you is um a little more clarity around those two levers that Mr. Price and Mr. Segrue and Dr. Anderson talked about. So those two levers levers are managing school choice enrollment process and I'll use the terminology choice enrollment versus open enrollment. They are interchangeable.

Levers: choice enrollment and classroom capacity

2:14:30Dr. Neil Anderson They mean the same thing but um and then the other one being maximizing designated classroom usage which Mr. Price just spoke about. Can you advance this? Perfect. Yeah. So um the first one levers to manage enrollment specifically through choice enrollment. Um the ability for us to clearly identify overall student enrollment availability by school and by grade level during the choice enrollment window is going to be very important. We've already emphasized that we will maintain our choice enrollment process. That's important. It's a value within the state of Colorado and BVSD to have choice enrollment. But our first priority will be our currently enrolled and resident students. We just spoke about that. Followed by students and families that have elected to choice enroll. Choice enrollment is exactly that.

2:15:17Dr. Neil Anderson It's a family choice. Each year, families choose to attend a school other than their neighborhood school. That's across our system, K12. For example, current Mesa families may choose to uh choose a school other than Bear Creek. This is a normal process of choice enrollment. Likewise, each year families choose to leave their neighborhood school to attend a different school. And that's kind of some of the details Mr. Shaggru spoke about. If there is room at a school after the um currently enrolled and resident students, we will be offering seats to a to a degree. Our commitment is that we are not going to be overfilling our classrooms as Dr.

2:15:58Dr. Neil Anderson Anderson just spoke about, nor our schools when it comes to the defined of capacity based on the available classroom spaces. During the process, it's important to note a couple things. First, choice enrollment in Colorado does not guarantee enrollment in a school. However, we also understand choice enrollment is a value of BVSD. As previously mentioned, currently 63% of our students attend their identified schools. Sometimes that ranges to be more. Um, and our plan underscores this resident student population. To ensure our efficiencies as we move forward towards the 2728 school year, our proposal reflects a change in how we identify the number of choice enrollment space available at each school and also changes the window of choice enrollment to November 1st to December 18th.

2:16:44Dr. Neil Anderson That's going to help us be better defined and be more purposeful with ensuring our numbers are accurate. And therefore by rethinking how we identify our class sizes and space available, we'll better be better able to create more predictable access to instruction and the in learning environments that we want for each and every single student in BVSD. So let's talk about how this happens. The other second lever and this is what Mr. Price was talking about. So this is kind of like what we would say a school was originally designed for. Each one of those boxes just to orient ourselves is a classroom. the little people in the classroom is not accurate, right?

2:17:23Dr. Neil Anderson So there's we have more than 12 students in the class, but just to orient ourselves to that. So it's important to talk about how class size is determined. Um first, it's determined by our identified recommended class size guidelines, which is found within our negotiated agreement. However, our elementary school class sizes range from the mid- teens to 30, 31, and 32. Therefore, what is often thought of as capacity is based on feel found in the classroom instead of the number of students. And we face this every single year. As our student as our schools have gotten smaller, our schools have thoughtfully and honestly transformed previously identified classroom spaces into non-classroom spaces.

2:18:04Dr. Neil Anderson For example, across BVSD, schools have transformed previously identified classrooms into other spaces such as I've seen staff lounges, reading areas, maker spaces, open collaboration spaces, student dens, conference rooms, parent volunteer rooms, make the list, but and they've done that thoughtfully and with intention um because they've had the space. Likewise, we've have some schools that have movable walls and some teachers have opened up the wall to create one really big classroom instead of two classrooms. So, we have to go back and think about what our classroom designations actually originally were based on the information square footage and the like that has been shared.

2:18:49Dr. Neil Anderson So because of those conversions, our community and sometimes our own staff see that there's not as much space available within the school because they don't go back to think about what that space might have originally been designed for. And therefore, it looks like there's less capacity than otherwise would be. Therefore, by rethinking our capacity and ensuring that we are using classrooms as pre previously designed, going back to the classroom model, we are actually better able to ensure the goal of not overfilling our classrooms and our schools beyond their capacity.

2:19:22Dr. Neil Anderson Though there may be some outliers to this, we intend to smooth out as many currently large classes to better align with our overarching goals of of our class sizes while maintaining the negotiated contract language around class size maximums at a minimum. Ultimately, our space availabilities in relation to school capacity is managed solely through the identification, usage of, and designated classroom spaces. By ensuring we're utilizing every single one of those, uh we can maximize our school capacity while simultaneously ensuring that we are not overfilling our classrooms by managing the choice enrollment process by denying the opportunity to accept a seat um in that space. And so that's kind of what I had.

2:20:08Dr. Neil Anderson I can certainly talk about open enrollment and how we're going to manage those seats if you would like.

2:20:18Rob Price We'll just wrap up this portion before we get to a discussion slide. I'm not going to spend much time on it. These are the three main points that really summarize the methodology we use to build our proposal. Uh main point is we uh centered ourselves on student learning experience and we've done that since we started this process. We engaged the community. We listened first. We used their feedback to develop the proposal. And then everything we talked about today is what went into developing that proposal that we presented to you on August 25th. And I'll just reemphasize because it continues to be uh asked is there was no single data point that we used uh determine these recommendations.

2:20:57Rob Price It was all of this and we've presented this a number of times. You can see how much went into this presentation. So with that we will open this section for discussion.

2:21:13Ana Temu Otting I do have a question on um when we're thinking of the class sizes that uh we are going to have with the consolidations. Um what were also the considerations when you took into account the programs that you would be bringing into the schools? I'm really particularly thinking um around um coal that would feature an ILC program with an IAN program and um what that consideration was when we were thinking about class sizes because when we were talking to principles and teachers, one of their um biggest points of feedback was the the high needs of our students that are coming in and how a classroom of 18 can feel like a classroom of 30 because of the needs of our students.

2:21:59Ana Temu Otting And so I want to know what um those considerations were. And if you're going to talk about it later, that's also okay.

2:22:06Dr. Rob Anderson We are going to talk about it later. And I think it's an important point to to to to bring up. Um, and we will have uh Michelle Brener um to come up and speak to this the the specifics around not just what we're hearing from our families that are actually in these programs who we've talked to a vast majority of them uh but also some of the issues and challenges that actually multiple programs can actually having him in the same place can actually support those students and other other teachers as well. So more to come on that. Thank you for asking that question.

2:22:44Dr. Nativity Miller And then I'll just add a little bit. Um, and again, executive director Michelle Brener will join us for the student experience portion. But one of the things that I will say that our special education team does is that we we build programs almost every single year. And so that team works very closely with Rob Price depending on where the need is at the school. Always reviewing the spaces, looking for sensory spaces. They have they are everything and precise.

2:23:07Dr. Nativity Miller um through a checklist of what's needed for the spaces from deescalation spaces to sensory spaces um you know to all the areas that we need and so that is a that is something we do on a regular basis and so Michelle has been a part of this process from the onset and in all proposals looking at giving us feedback on where can we do it where can we not do it um those types of things and so I think they're they're they're pretty wellversed in building new programs and looking at spaces in collaboration with operations.

2:23:44Nicole Rajpal Alex.

2:23:45Alex Medler Yeah. Um, thank you very much. Uh, I I think this the stuff you've presented in terms of the the influence of these levers is really important and I think really helpful for the public to understand. I mean, one of the things I've always mined for insight are the enrollment matrices in Glenn's website that are up there for every year for elementary, middle, and if people haven't looked at them, there's data on the c the neighborhood school that someone's coming from and the school they're attending and those from where they're outgoing, how much in district and out of district enrollment there is, you know, into all these schools. And it's it's illustrative to me.

2:24:17Alex Medler So, like for example, I live across the street from Community Montessori, which will be relocated under this plan. And so one of my thoughts was okay well how many of those kids uh will not go with Community Montessori will want to return to their neighborhoods. They might be in the Bear Creek Mesa catchment zones. Turns out it's 23. So like uh some of them will go to the BCSIS campus because it's not that far but some will probably elect to stay but we don't know.

2:24:44Alex Medler So I'm think okay there's a universe of 23 kids who are going to impact who should have a right to enroll in their neighborhood school which will now bear creek who'd been in the Mason Bear Creek collective catchment zones when you do the planning for like expecting capacity uh in the region which is one of the reasons why we need to do this regionally not school by school. Um do do you take into account like all the schools that might be affected? So another school is closing at Flatirons and Community Montessori is moving and Mesa is closing.

2:25:17Alex Medler So from where I live, there's two buildings that will not have schools in them in the future and we got to figure out where all those kids would go. And then how do you predict where a Mesa family like we can assume we'll probably have 30 40% not go where they're assigned because that's always the case. But do we have any more insight to think about other than those big ratios of likely choosing out?

2:25:40Glen Segrue Yeah. predict that the behavioral piece with open enrollment is really tough. There isn't much information that can guide us how all of those interactions will play out, especially when you change things because all of the base assumptions are gone. Uh that's why we do try to anchor ourselves in that resident population. So, can the resident population, for example, of Mesa, Bear Creek, um in the dual area, all of those students fit in into the school? And the answer that we've shown is yes. So that's probably the best way to deal with that than trying to track every single possible, you know, scenario out there.

2:26:14Alex Medler If I may follow up on that, one of the things I've been advocating for since actually for two decades in this district, when we have so much choice, I believe I support neighborhood schools and I don't want people to enroll in private schools when we don't let them back into their neighborhood school. So I'm going to be proposing and I'd like your reaction to the idea that if someone's in a choice school, a focus school, let's say particularly high peaks or Community Montessori and they don't want to go to the relocated version, I don't think they should have an enrollment preference. I think they should have an enrollment right like any other resident to enroll the next school year in that school.

2:26:49Alex Medler what would be the implications of making a change to the proposal to uh do what I think is in best interest of our long-term enrollment which is to give people the right of return the following school year to their neighborhood school and so I look at those numbers from Community Montessori within the Bear Creek Mesa and duel Bear Creek Mesa enrollment place that's 23 kids if those 23 kids don't want to go to the Aurora 7 campus I want them to have a right to stay in their neighborhood and not go behind, frankly, someone who's been enrolled in a private school or homeschooling ahead of them uh into what could be a more crowded school. Have you taken thought about that?

2:27:29Alex Medler And what would be the implications of providing that? Right.

2:27:34Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you, board member Medler, and and um and appreciate this is as as a long-standing passion of yours that that you have have brought forward on multiple occasions, and so do appreciate that. Uh it just I think there there's a couple of factors. It depends on timing, right? Like, so are you saying that they would because if you're proposing that they would have to declare before open enrollment starts, right? Because if you don't know where they're going to go, then you don't know what seats you can open part of as part of open enrollment. And I think the hard thing about managing something like this, not impossible, we're not talking about lots of kids, right?

2:28:12Dr. Rob Anderson This is a small group of kids is do you hold open seats during a process that takes opportunity away from others to hold it for some? So if you've chosen to go to high peaks or say say you've chosen to go to Community Montessori um and uh then you decide before open enrollment window closes or before we start the process of of placing students. Um if you would have to do it ahead of that to not have to to be able to have that seat reserved for that for that student to come back.

2:28:51Dr. Rob Anderson Um, so timing is one and if it's if it's at any time at any point I think what could potentially be impacted is um you know again we're talking about small groups of students uh would it ever be that one student that would tip you over a class size to add another section and in that instance do you have a classroom to put that section in? I mean I think those are the considerations like so for the worst case like like the worst possible scenario I'm describing for you which I the the likelihood I I don't think is is is really high is you have a student uh who at some point um if they don't tell you ahead of time then then you would

2:29:35Dr. Rob Anderson have to keep a seat open for the potential for that kid to to come over so they wouldn't tip you over a class-siz trigger that would add another section but again very small um in the consideration I think we're talking about small numbers of students and I'll look to the team to to to to to add any more context before for before board member Medler's follow-up?

2:29:57Rob Price No. And I I we would have to analyze it. Uh board member Medler, I um I don't know if I can sit here today and answer that question. What does it mean for our projections, etc. I think it's something we would have to analyze school by school. It's not just one building. If you do it, you're going to do it for all. So, we'd have to see what that impact is across the district.

2:30:16Alex Medler I've actually asked you to do that a few times. So, I would love to see the analysis. I I'd also also suggest that the numbers we're talking about are not 100% of those people who would want to exercise that. They didn't choose their neighborhood school for a reason. So there's quite likely a reason why they would choose a different neighborhood school afterwards. So I think the numbers get even smaller. And for the last two years, I have said I'd be delighted to have it be happen before. So I think the sort of timing is something that that's fair.

2:30:41Alex Medler Um, but I will add the reason I've been advocating for this ye for years in a declining enrollment thing is first it's good for kids because people have exercised a choice and maybe they found the choice was bad and they just even if they're not closing they should return to their school because it's where they want their kid to be. Secondly, we are losing somewhere around and Glenn can correct me. I might estimate you know 2,2200 kids to private schools, homeschool enrollment or we know we're losing,00 kids to out of district enrollment. So, these are people who didn't chose their neighborhood school, chose something else, uh, can't even get back to their neighborhood school.

2:31:16Alex Medler So, I think they're highly likely to be the people who will homeschool uh, open enroll of the district or private school their student. So, when we're trying to save every kid we can, I think a right of return is actually the moral thing to do, the educational thing to do, and the long-term financial thing to do. That's those are all the reasons why I advocate. And then I asked for in a request for information earlier this year that took a long time to get fulfilled, I might add. And the numbers are really small. So that's why I mean, you can look back at the RFI put in that you submitted to me, and you'll see that these numbers are small.

2:31:50Alex Medler So, I'm going to be pushing I will I will propose an amendment to the resolution that will say that I believe students in uh schools that are uh focused schools, choice only schools that are being relocated should have not an open enrollment preference but a right of return to their school if they designate that that's what they want to do during the open enrollment period. So, um I'd like more data on that. I think the numbers are small. I think there's three or four different domains in which it's the right thing for the district and for our kids.

2:32:23Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you, board member Medler. I do appreciate your advocacy on this point. I will say that um the way that we've structured this in this priority enrollment choice preference does move anyone who is impacted both at focus schools and um schools that are being um closed or consolidated somewhere else. um the very first uh preference. Um and again, vast majority of our schools are going to have room. Some schools, Bear Creek Mesa, Superior Elementary, these are schools that we've been transparent with the community on. Those numbers will be tight.

2:33:02Dr. Rob Anderson And if there's a proposal that that the board would like to consider around this, I think the thing to think about is this even part of open enrollment or do you just reach out to the folks in the focus schools and ask them if they'd want to go back to their neighborhood schools prior to that that that open enrollment window. I know that the board has considered this and not taken action on this previously and I know this is board member Medler's um he he's bringing this up at this moment which I which I honor. Um, but I would say that that would probably the me be the mechanism that you would have to do um to be able to make that insured guarantee.

2:33:36Dr. Rob Anderson I think the trick is based on what what I've heard you say, board member Medler, that you'd have to know right away you didn't like your choice. And if the choice, you know, midyear, you know, you know, you'd have to you'd have to know theoretically before um before December 16th, I think would be the last because that's when we close the window and that's when we'd process the seats and things of that nature. So I I would say that those would be the things for the board to consider if that's something that you wanted to to to entertain.

2:34:07Nicole Rajpal Deann,

2:34:10Deann Bucher uh, my question about these the management of, um, open enrollment is, uh, pretty particular, so I'll just be specific about it. Will, um, managing the open enrollment at High Peaks bring that school to capacity, so we'll open it up for a hundred children to come.

2:34:36Dr. Rob Anderson I believe yes. The answer is is that as as when we looked at at High Peaks and we looked at all of our our our um our focus programs, uh we have a a standing weight list at High Peaks. Um that has been limited traditionally by by two rounds. Um by move by moving that school into um its new location, you'd be able to expand that to three rounds, which would then expand opportunities for anyone who who would be interested. But again, anybody who's impacted would have that priority enrollment preference uh to be able to to apply apply for those new opportunities.

2:35:13Deann Bucher Does does the priority um the priority enrollment of people who are impacted um override the longstanding weight list?

2:35:30Dr. Neil Andersonspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Yeah, thanks Deann or board member Bucher. Sorry about that. um uh the priority improvement is meant for that and you have to each year open enrollment re redo itself and so a family would have to recommmit to wanting to open enroll to say High Peaks and at that point the or out of that the school to go to another school and therefore if they're an impacted family that priority component would be a factor that would um supersede a general all open enrollment um request through our normal process. But every year a family has to re-up their open enrollment requests um regardless of level and regardless of where they currently attend unless they've been accepted in a school.

2:36:18Dr. Neil Andersonspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Then it's assuming that they're going to carry forward unless they choose to open enroll or choice and roll out.

2:36:31Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I just needed to clarify the weight list piece also and so thank you. So going back to the question I asked before the recess given the number of where we could completely consolidate we did in instances where consolid consolidation was not possible because of the number of resident students where the numbers of students in those facilities did not work out we then chose to um I know we're using the word closure and reallocate those to either one between two schools or between three schools depending on those resident students and depending on in some cases I mean logistics I would say like where those families lived in proximity to other facilities is that the case

2:37:26Rob Pricespeaker unconfirmed · check the video yeah you framed it well and that is correct yes

2:37:29Nicole Rajpal thank you Lalenia and I think for clarity for the community Um, if you were to be reszoned to a different elementary school, you would always have a bus to that. Correct. I'm not talking about focus schools. I'm talking about if you were um at Flatirons, you would have a bus to either Whittier or Foothill. If you were at Douglas, you'd have a bus to one of the three particular schools. There would never be a time you wouldn't have a bus.

2:38:08Rob Price No, that that would not be a correct statement, but we will get into the transportation.

2:38:13Nicole Rajpal Okay. Thanks.

2:38:14Rob Price The slide deck will address that when we get there.

2:38:17Nicole Rajpal Okay. I just want to make sure that we really help people to understand how how we're navigating that. Anna and then Alex.

2:38:26Ana Temu Otting Thank you. And I do want to make sure that as we're going into the conversation of resources um that again we are considering that in Broomfield um we did have a consistent um uh open enrollment uh cohort of students coming into our schools. Um that did give us an average of around 230 students every single year. um and really taking into account that that is just a significant amount of students within coming into our district that are out of district. That would be a significant amount of money uh on top of the money that we're trying to um uh really save and sustain to ensure that we have those resources in our schools.

2:39:11Ana Temu Otting And so I want to just not lose the point of making sure that I understand the banking on an open enrollment uh out of district student um when we're creating our budgets is irresponsible. But I do want to also highlight that this has been a consistent group coming into this coming into the district from from out of district students. And so really reconsidering uh like the rebalance within Broomfield knowing that we already have of our four elementary schools, two of those are already at or over capacity already.

2:39:47Ana Temu Otting Um and so just making sure as we're going into the resource conversation that we're not losing track of of the students that we have coming in out of district that provide a significant amount of dollars that come into the district as well.

2:40:05Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you. Thank you for that question. I I will say that uh can you go back to slide uh 19 as we think about the students that have o openen enrolled into Birch Elementary School from outside the district. Um, as a reminder, board members, in the proposal that those students, even though they're out of district, would get a priority enrollment preference. And if you could look at the enrollment of of Kohl, uh, it's one of our largest elementary schools. So, so there there will be space for open enrollment at Kohl Elementary School from out of district students.

2:40:51Dr. Rob Anderson Um and again when we speak to managing resident student population versus open enrollment population, you know, we're not closing the district to open enrollment population from outside of the district. I think that when our resident student populations in our new reconfigured schools reaches close to capacity, that's when you would turn that off. folks could still apply uh but because of the preferences and because of the amount of seats by the time that their preference came in those preferences would be given to resident students.

2:41:26Dr. Rob Anderson And so uh you know for folks who are thinking we're closing open enrollment at Birch, we're going to lose all these dollars uh and and the the dollars that we're going to lose doesn't support what it is that we're trying to do. I don't believe that to be the case. Uh that Kohl will have lots of lots of space. Kohl is less than a mile away from Birch Elementary School. This is not a school that's really really um further located. And as as Rob Price shared, we actually have better capacity and better space at Kohl Elementary School to accommodate folks coming in from out of the district with the queuing spaces in in those areas. And so do appreciate the question.

2:42:01Dr. Rob Anderson I appreciate the the detail of the question. Um and I'd let Rob and Glenn, you know, fact check me if there's anything I said that's inaccurate um in in in my response to that. Um, but I do think it's a good question that I think we should be answering in public. So,

2:42:17Rob Price no. And I I think you are right. One of the things I wanted to pull up, I think that gets missed sometimes, and I want to prove this out, but we continue to graduate out these really large classes, right? And we're bringing in smaller, much smaller than we historically have seen kindergarten classes. So, we've got these large cohorts that are leaving the system, smaller cohorts that are coming, and that's really what we're starting to see. And that's kind of the same throughout the system. So we we're losing these larger which frees up space within our buildings if if that if you're following me on that.

2:42:49Rob Price So that's also what we're trying to plan for is we just got smaller class sizes that are coming into the system. So but I think Dr. Anderson summarized it well. But uh there just is a lot of nuances as we think about this available space and then the levers that we have as as students apply uh apply through open enrollment or choice enrollment um through the priority preference they will have that first priority if they're in a closed school and then schools students that are out of district would fall in the typical open enrollment process that they would go through normally.

2:43:25Ana Temu Otting Thank you. And I think again my question falls on the numbers of the projections were that the the kindergarten classes were coming in at around uh 36 each year but the lived experience at Birch has been that they are having students coming in at 45 kindergarteners each year. And so just making sure that we are taking that into account of it's not the it's not the steep decline that we're seeing in Bold within Boulder.

2:43:58Nicole Rajpal Alex.

2:43:59Alex Medler Yeah. Um I think uh I'd be curious and I wouldn't put you on the spot for being able to answer this now, but I'm intrigued um visually when I look at like slides 18 and 19. I think we're kind of burying the lead. If you could pull one of, let's say, slide 18 up or 19. Um, yeah. So, for me, the whole cause of this problem is the hard to estimate white space between the green circle and the red triangle. And I wish that was a red bar because then we would see the unused capacity that we don't have in the schools.

2:44:39Alex Medler And a lot of these questions about like well how much space will there be are if we talked about them in a percent of capacity of the building we'd be like yeah this is a manageable thing that we need to move forward and manage carefully and do with equity and students best interest in mind but the whole reason we're doing this is because we have so much open space between the red triangle and the green circle and um so it's and we've sort of got the red line as sort of a self-inflicted piece about you know what's efficient for two grades before we start having uh you know much more expensive activity but we have this building capacity that is the cause of our problem

2:45:20Alex Medler and part of our asset in the places that remain when we're moving forward so and then we have to do that with the estimation of a smaller number of people moving forward because enrollment's declining it's getting worse so I would just bring that to I guess people's attention that this graphics that we've used have really sort visually understated the cause of the problem and you know one of the assets we have to solve it. Um and so I that's one thing I'm just like I think we have a lot to manage and choice and we always have a lot to manage and choice. Um uh but I just I just wanted to highlight that for people.

2:46:01Rob Pricespeaker unconfirmed · check the video Okay, turn it over to Mr. Sutter.

Reinvesting in the student experience: estimated savings

2:46:16Bill Sutter Okay, moving into the uh reinvesting into the student experience. Uh as was noted at the August 25th uh board work session on this topic, we estimate the savings uh that could be created uh between three and a half to $4 million. Uh these are recurring uh annual savings, so not one-time uh savings that we've identified. Um we will direct these uh resources toward the priorities our community identified uh particularly the smaller and more uniform elementary class sizes uh and increased access to those critical staff of the elementary specials and counselors and uh library staff.

2:47:04Bill Sutter Uh recurring uh savings really matter because they allow us to support the student experience year after year as opposed to uh one-time resources that may get bu um put into a building uh to support uh the um a smaller class size uh for one year at a time. Moving into the uh summary of the estimated savings. So the methodology we used on this um was taking the kindergarten through fifth grade classes uh or 8th grade and the 2K8s that are impacted. Uh the projected student counts for this current year. Uh recalculating the staffing with the projected number of resident students postclosure or consolidation of those impacted schools.

2:47:59Bill Sutter and then uh using the staffing formulas uh that exist for this current year at those uh class size maximums. Uh so just rerunning the existing state. The jobs that were included in this analysis uh fall into two general categories. the fixed operational support. Uh those are building administrators, clerical support, food service and custodial. Uh those are the kind of positions that uh move in less of a straight line we'll say uh than the variable classroom supports uh teachers, librarians, counselors, par educators. Uh so these fixed operational supports are identified um per building. Uh you know we have one principle per building.

2:48:57Bill Sutter Uh the process uh is very similar to the calculation that was used in 2003 and 2004 that I did because I was here in 2003 and 4 uh when we went through this. uh it is documented on page 20 of the 20034 revised budget. So we did present this information. Uh there have been claims that you know we had no idea of what happened back then. It actually was printed in the book and you can find it uh online. Back then there were three schools uh and 19 FTE uh that were impacted uh obviously a lower dollar amount two decades prior uh to now uh but is that is very similar to the six schools and 38 FTE uh that are referenced here.

2:49:47Bill Sutter So very similar in the movement of uh these fixed costs and these uh classroom costs. An assumption is being made uh that preschool and special education students the the movement of those programs will result in all students and staff moving together uh resulting in no savings. Uh however, as student enrollment is determined uh through the spring, the actual staffing results may change with special education itinerants uh or potentially other positions such as uh English language acquisition uh and will all depend on the student demographics and staff case loads. uh and obviously the final results will be dependent on the resident students uh who attend their neighborhood schools and uh go through that choice enrollment process.

2:50:49Bill Sutter So there were also some comments made about uh you know these savings are less than 1% of the operating budget or even uh a rounding error in the overall budget. Um the operating budget is roughly $400 million for the district. Um these are just some other examples of programs, services, supports, and educational experiences that fall into the general amount being discussed. Um the entire Apex Career and Technical Education Center is $3.3 million. So, uh, that also would be a rounding error in the district's budget. Uh, the the school board has invested heavily in that program, uh, for all the right reasons. Uh, high school interscolastic athletics, uh, 2.9 million. Uh, all the elementary counselors, 3.8 million. All the elementary librarians, 3 million.

2:51:48Bill Sutter So like three and a half to4 million dollars is real money uh and will be invested in reducing that uh variability and range of uh class sizes. I think that's the last slide on that. If there's any questions I'll go through a few more slides and then we'll open up for questions. This is the same slide you saw on August 25th. We're estimating facility modifications. somewhere in the 7.5 to $10 million range. Uh this cost will be slightly offset by about 3 million in savings from not investing in the closed schools if the resolution is approved. This is a breakdown of the I'm going to emphasize this preliminary estimates for the facility modifications. These are amounts are attended intended just to establish at a reasonable range.

Facility modifications and the bond process

2:52:44Bill Sutter only final cost and scope would be dependent on uh final design uh building conditions, program requirements, getting contractor bids, etc. So, you can see here the largest invest in investment is the conversion of Monarch PK8 into a dedicated middle school estimated somewhere between 3 and 3.5 million. Kohl Whittier or Bear Creek improvements would support special education programs. Uh Bear Creek, we have some additional money in there for some facility improvements to uh accommodate the combined school community. At Community Montessori's new location, we're estimating approximately 1 and a half to 2.45 million needed to create the preschool kindergarten spaces uh and a uh preschool kindergarten or a preschool playground.

2:53:30Bill Sutter Um, we've also included some money in for improvements at Superior and potential costs for preschool at uh Birch if the location is ultimately needed. And again, we haven't finalized uh preschool locations yet. That will be known on October 1st, but we have included some funds there. I do want to note um because there's been a lot of uh comment about spending upwards of $10 million, but we need to think about our long-term investments. And as we look at our capital needs over the next 10 years, the district could avoid approximately $44.8 million and anticipated capital expenditures by no longer investing in these buildings in the future.

2:54:12Bill Sutter And I just want to make sure that is known um as we continue to get stuck on some of these smaller numbers. There is some big decisions to be made as we uh bring back if the board approves the resolution on the future of these buildings and what happens with that and that will guide some of those expenditures. Um we have also budgeted the $5 million to provide school transition support knowing that we would have expenses. This was money that we set aside in January to help cover some of the cost of moving that transitional support. Um, a lot of this is informed by previous experiences in the bond projects, etc. And there's not a specified plan on how these dollars will be spent.

2:54:55Bill Sutter They could be used for facility modifications. They could be used for moving expenses, uh, helping fund some of the transitional costs. Any funds that are not spent will be returned to the general fund. So, with that, we'll open it up for questions.

2:55:13Nicole Rajpal Thanks, Rob. Anna,

2:55:13Ana Temu Otting I do have a question regarding the um preschool at Birch. If you could talk about a little bit more about um how many students we would need in order to keep that going? And would that at all be uh a data point that we should be considering for the the demand for um keeping Burge open?

2:55:40Rob Pricespeaker unconfirmed · check the video Do you want to speak to preschool and data? How do you incorporate that in?

2:55:46Glen Segrue Well, preschool is is a separate program. Uh, so it's really a matter of of providing the space initially with with um within the building and then um um and that's managed by the preschool um by you know by our preschool people. in terms of acceptances into the program and uh through the state, you know, the state lottery and things like that. Uh you know, that's almost like an all open enrollment model. It's not like we have to take all of the preschool kids in. Uh it's it's really a matter of providing that space.

2:56:19Bill Sutterspeaker unconfirmed · check the video I would just add to that that as we're thinking about preschool in that in that area of Broomfield, we're thinking about what we currently have, how filled those classrooms are, and then we have preschool community liaison who are embedded in each area of our community who really have a sense of more qualitatively like what needs of families are and so we're planning accordingly.

2:56:40Ana Temu Otting And just for the facilities, um could you also talk about some of the changes that you will need to make um that you have made at Birch that will need to be made at Kohl, particularly around asbestous mitigation um mitigation?

2:56:55Rob Price Yeah, we'll if you don't mind, we'll talk about asbestous later in the presentation. So, anytime we do building renovations, etc., we have to plan around asbestous. We have a Hera plan that allows us that, but I'll talk more about that when we get there,

2:57:09Nicole Rajpal Jason. and then Anna. I'm sorry, Deann.

2:57:13Jason Unger Yeah, thanks. Um Michelle, I'm glad you're able to join. I had a few questions related to special ed. Um and I'm, you know, it looks like there's three programs we're moving that will require new facility modifications or special needs programs. Um I I'd really like to understand uh you know, there's a lot of concern folks have raised about the current facilities and being you know, those are kind of ideal and better and smaller for uh special needs students. And so I'd love to be able to kind of translate those dollar amounts to what this is going to look like at a school like if we're talking about building a new special needs program. Uh what is what is involved?

2:57:47Jason Unger Are you confident that these new facilities are able to be able to serve the kids in the same way that uh there won't be you know we we talked about kind of larger schools but I think there's real concern and maybe understandably so about the ability of the new schools to be able to serve these kids. So, I really want to get a sense of, you know, not just dollar amounts, but what this looks like in terms of um, you know, what needs to be done, what kind of I think maybe Glenn or someone mentioned a few of these things, but I'd really like to talk about that transition if possible.

2:58:21Rob Price Um, we do have like slide 37 for that. So, I don't want to get too far ahead of the presentation. um maybe the facility budget spec or the budget specific component of that but then the the impact to student experience I think we are talking about coming up so I'm just trying to be mindful of

2:58:39Jason Unger I can wait yeah whatever I just wanted to um pan that

2:58:42Nicole Rajpal and I yeah just also trying to be mindful of we've got 60some slides um uh so I know it's taking a while to get to all of our best questions um so let's hold on that one Deann and then Alex,

2:58:57Deann Bucher let's see. I think that um the the slide that's called facility modifications number 30 doesn't include any improvements for Coal Creek. It doesn't um have improvements for um Heatherwood. So the receiving schools of the Douglas students are not getting improvements according to that chart.

2:59:27Rob Price Yeah.

2:59:27Nicole Rajpal Hey, I need to ask the audience to kind of quiet down. It's impacting the ability of our board members to hear and because we will be the one making the decision on this next week. It really is important for us to understand the answers to the questions that are being asked and the questions that are being asked themselves. So please um quiet down in the audience.

2:59:44Rob Price So uh Coal Creek, we don't have any improvements slated at Coal Creek. We don't believe there are any needed. Um, and then at Heatherwood, as a reminder, Heatherwood is a phase four project and already had work planned at Heatherwood. So, we'll be able to accommodate some of the special education modifications within the phase 4 work that's already planned out there.

3:00:05Deann Bucher Is there any thought about making Heatherwood not such an open plan school?

3:00:10Rob Price Uh there has been thoughts for years on uh changing the layout of some of these buildings and um due to fire ratings of the building uh and other things it really is not possible or feasible to turn that into a typical classroom setting. So we have I would say the district has studied that since the early 2000s at a lot of these places um and fire ratings etc. of wall assemblies, roof assemblies, etc. come into play. I

3:00:41Dr. Rob Anderson I would say that I've spent some time at Eisenhower, at Heatherwood, um and and the district um has taken some measures to ensure that it's less than the open concept that was 80s prevalent. And I do think that there's lessons to be learned as a district when you when you build facilities around a certain type of philosophy, right? then and these are 50 to 75 year assets and the philosophy changes I think that it can propose some challenge.

3:01:12Dr. Rob Anderson Um uh that being said uh you know as we even think about Heather what do we think about Eisenhower um uh you know these these are not um if we if we project what the amount of students will be in those schools they're not going to be at full capacity still have lots of capacity and they'll have lots of space in those buildings uh for growth um you know any you know that that would be a consideration for the board in a future bond if if it was the desire of of the board to say, "Okay, these we really want to rectify these schools that um that that have this open um concept."

3:01:46Dr. Rob Anderson Uh because I think that the investments, Rob, to your point, uh it's not where it's it's there's a cost associated that certain point it may it makes sense to tear it down and build new. Is is that that's that's correct? Right.

3:02:03Rob Price That is a correct statement. Yes.

3:02:06Deann Bucher I'm worried because I heard uh from some of the parents who have um students that need intensive learning and they are will refuse to go to Heatherwood because the kids it's too open and it's going to be too confusing for their particular learner. So I feel like the move to Heatherwood is going to cause um inequality for our special ed students.

3:02:33Dr. Rob Andersonspeaker unconfirmed · check the video I we look forward to answering that question. We do not believe that to be the case.

3:02:39Nicole Rajpal Alex,

3:02:40Alex Medler thank you. Um, uh, for the 7.5 or $10 million of the modifications, what would the time frame be for, uh, getting those done?

3:02:48Rob Price That work would be completed this summer. So, if the board approves the resolution, we would begin immediately with design, getting architects, contractors on board, uh, getting design underway, permitting, etc. to be ready uh through the summer uh for the start of the 2728 school year.

3:03:09Alex Medler Great. So they wouldn't be these when when they have their new enrollments, these would be in place.

3:03:15Rob Price That's right.

3:03:16Alex Medler Okay.

3:03:19Nicole Rajpal Piggyback on that. I mean all of our bomb projects have a a specific kind of cadence that they go through including seabach oversight, board approval. My expectation is I I mean these are as you noted these are estimates there are projections based on you know the potential for this for the resilient schools proposal to be approved. Um can you speak a little bit to what that looks like that process between like my assumption is this isn't just a guarantee there is sort of those checks and balances and if you could explain that as to the board members and our community as well.

3:03:55Rob Price No, we I mean we have to engage architects in a lot of these uh some of these projects are phase four projects. So we already have architects on board when we delayed some of these projects. So going through a design advisory team meetings etc to figure out what work needs to be done. There's different levels of design, there's design development, there's uh uh construction drawings that have to be completed and a certain point at design development, we get bids from our contractors that tells us where we're at. Usually at that time is when we are bringing budgets to not only Seabach for review and then if if SEO supports it then we would bring it to the board for approval.

3:04:34Rob Price So we go through that process with design at uh construction drawings we get something we call the guaranteed maximum price. Guaranteed maximum price comes to the board. If it's over a certain threshold, the board would approve that contract after the after which you've already approved the funding for that and then we go through procurement getting materials uh equipment etc for whatever is needed for the project. Uh the the big lag here in the um reason for the expedited timeline for some of this is is permitting can take up to 12 to to 14 weeks in some occasions with CDPHE and the state. Um, so that is important for us to understand and to plan around.

3:05:17Rob Price So we've got to get through that design process, get a guaranteed maximum price, get drawing submitted for permitting to allow us to be successful over the summer months. And again, we have a proven track record to be able to do this work over the summer. I think last summer, uh, I don't remember quite the numbers, but somewhere around that $60 million, I believe, uh, over 11week time frame. Um, and we have been very successful over the 2014 bond, the 2022 bond and proving that success. So, um, I don't know if that answers your question, but I just wanted to give you a level of detail there that we do understand the commitment it takes in order to hit the 2728 school year.

School finance: local versus state share

3:05:57Nicole Rajpal And then I have a follow-up question um, a little bit to a point that board member Temu Otting brought up earlier. you know, this BVSD taxpayers have been exceedingly generous over the years in passing bonds and in passing mills and um it helps us provide the type of educational experiences our students deserve. Uh and there has been a strong community sensitivity to, you know, who is benefiting from those tax dollars.

3:06:22Nicole Rajpal And I would say that even when this board approved the the um commuter preference, there was some push back saying, well, oh, out of district students have always received the lowest priority because they do not pay taxes within the bounds of with the same tax rates as other people that live within the boundaries of BVSD do. And so there was some push back here. And so I wonder if Bill could speak to the per pupil the um Anna had asked the question, do we receive the same amount of money per pupil from a student that's enrolling from Adams or St. Vin or Jeffco to BVSD that we receive from BVSD? And is there a difference there?

3:07:15Bill Sutter The uh school finance act um calculates uh or is uh agnostic to where the student lives. Uh it is based on the district uh enrollment um geographic um the student demographics. So it's it's not the location where the student lives if they're moving between districts. Um the source of the funding uh depends on where you live. So in Boulder, we're 85ish% locally funded. So, uh those local property taxes from uh residential and non-residential uh properties uh are supporting the majority of the cost. Um the the marginal change for one student up or one student down is not going to affect anybody's local property tax.

3:08:22Bill Sutter Um we would uh that that difference between being uh fully locally funded and uh um the split that we have now um is that sort of margin of error where the the property taxpayers in Boulder Valley uh could experience higher property taxes uh with declining student enrollment just be as that percentage of local share changes. So, no, the amount that the school finance act provides per pupil uh is not different based on where you live uh in u it's a little different if you're like in a really small district.

3:09:12Bill Sutter Um but generally speaking in the front range um it's the really the mix of of uh local and state share for that school finance act which won't move uh the the needle on the handful of students that we have.

3:09:34Nicole Rajpal Bill, talk about mill levy overrides and and that impact because I think that was Can I ask that the slide about local versus state share is up there? It's in the appendix and I asked specifically for it to be included because I get it, but only because you've only told me 70 times how it works, right? And and Jason's starting to get it because he sits on a committee, right? like we're we we're we get it. But I think it's a really really important piece here. Um and when I submitted my questions ahead of time to staff, I asked that this be included because there it is, Bill. It's our great slide with the the buckets.

3:10:19Nicole Rajpal Um, I think that this is important because I've had questions from the community about property taxes and um why we aren't more wellunded and why we haven't done enough and this is what explains it. Primer, can you give us a primer, Bill, and then come back to mill levy overrides because there is some difference there.

3:10:44Bill Sutter Yes. Um so this graphic uh is intended to uh illustrate how the state's interaction with the school finance act and state budgets uh uh work. So total program funding which is the bucket um is made up of the local share and the state um equalization with the intent being the school finance act identifies the amount per pupil that uh a district receives and the mix of local property tax versus uh the state share. uh is different uh all over the state. Uh down in the St. Louis Valley with very low property values, uh that looks a lot different than in Boulder Valley or, uh Aspen that's 100% locally funded.

3:12:00Bill Sutter So, uh, as property values increase, that blue portion of the total program budget grows, even as enrollments decline statewide, right? So, enrollments declining statewide. Uh so the portion proportion of the total program funding is funded greater from uh local property taxes. Uh that is partially how the state was able to um uh backfill the negative factor. That is partially how uh the new school finance act is being implemented uh is through that growth of uh property values uh that uh everybody has experienced. So we'll come back to the if that gets there.

3:12:59Nicole Rajpal No, I I get it. I just um I think that I continue to get questions on this um and why can't we just find more money and it's what we have to come to terms with whether we like it or not is our high property tax does help people in different parts of our state. Um, and we have strong advocacy at state legislative levels on trying to do the very best for our district. It's not that we've been um unaware, but Senate Bill 1448 has an impact and we spent a lot of time working through that and we will continue to feel impacts. And I don't want to bring up averaging because that will make everybody's head explode, right?

3:13:59Nicole Rajpal But I just I in a in a lot of ways I would like to lay to rest that somehow we are not trying everything we can to get as much funding as we can.

3:14:16Bill Sutter Yeah. the only uh uh local uh funding that benefits the district. Uh not the only um the local property tax funding that uh is an increase in funding are those local mill levy overrides. Uh those are for operating uh costs and uh as opposed to um uh general obligation bonds and uh those capital construction those are a separate mill levy. Um but those mill levy overrides which are uh capped at 25% of the total program we are at the cap we are at the maximum. Uh so that uh amount of dollars isn't growing uh really um in any significant way.

3:15:18Bill Sutter So that outofd district student is being funded at the school finance act per pupil amount plus the 25% local mill levy override uh which is uh borne by the local property taxpayers. Um so that benefits the whole system. Um you there's certainly a debate on whether that should be done. It is a structure of the the um choice enrollment uh being able to go between districts. Um so it's a it's a nature of the structure. Um but it does come from the local property taxpayers when a student comes from out of this side of the district.

3:16:10Nicole Rajpal Thank you. Alex.

3:16:15Alex Medler Yeah, thank you. Um, uh, I have both some micro and some macroeconomic questions about it. Um, I guess one thing, we'll move to a little bit more on the MLOS's, but if we're at the cap now, um, how much flexibility, if any, do we have to change what we spend an MLO or a bond on after we've had it passed by the voters in Colorado?

3:16:40Bill Sutter So, uh, bond questions are usually fairly specific. Um uh there is uh generally some um uh language in there that allows some flexibility, but for example, the last um bond question uh specifically said a new school in Erie, which is why we did not issue that debt uh in the last round because the decision was made to pause on building that school in Erie because the students weren't showing up. Uh so um there's a little flexibility but not very much. Um you have to go back to the voters to say uh can we use those dollars to do something different uh if you're going to radically uh change the direction of it. Um school improvements are sort of generic across schools.

3:17:35Bill Sutter So to the extent that the question doesn't say this school gets this modification which it the question never does uh this school could become some other school uh well within the the confines of the question. And then the second question was

3:17:57Alex Medler uh I guess with the bonds do we have any flexibility with the bonds for like reallocating it to operations or could we do some shell game so that we use the bond money to do for something for facilities that was being paid for with other money for the same facilities. How does that work for supplanting or

3:18:13Bill Sutter Right. So you cannot use um any general obligation uh debt for operating costs. they're very specific to the capital construction plan. Um, so there's that.

3:18:27Alex Medler And then I I guess another sort of macro question. So we have like 2400 kids come in through open enrollment and like,00 go out. So we might get the revenue for the 2400 at PO and do the math and hopefully the incremental extra cost of educating those students is less and we that's how we might actually subsidize our residents by incoming. What's the impact of the 1100 kids that leave or does the state sort of tally it up and say okay you're net400 here's the money?

3:19:00Bill Sutter Uh yes, it's a net. The the the count is not by uh um a a plus and minus. It's just the bottom line number of whatever your student count is.

3:19:15Alex Medler And then to follow up on that, so uh I guess one of the things I remain concerned about is always, you know, losing enrollment out of district or to private schools and stuff. How does a decrease in our enrollment affect our total bottom line budget? So I know that we sort of get you know we have our 85% obligation into the finance formula but for like what's the mechanism by which losing another thousand kids loses us money in the finance system.

3:19:48Bill Sutter Uh so it's it's the the school finance act. How many pupils do you have? you run them through the formula on the per pupil funding and it's the dollar amount. Uh since 2019, we're down 3700 uh FTE of student count. That's $44.5 million. Uh that we if all of the students were still here that were here in uh 2019, we would have $44.5 million more. We'd have more teachers. we'd have uh we also still have the same number of schools that we did in 2019 uh when we had those 3,700 more students.

3:20:29Alex Medler Yeah. And then um like I'm struck by uh and I I know our community cares greatly about equity issues and our ability to support all our kids and dedicate at least similar resources. Um when our schools get small, you know, what happens to our unit cost? I look at the state, you know, school transparency data and I see that Flatirons comes in at about $26,000 per kid and uh Lewis or Lafayette Elementary School comes in at, you know, 20. So, as we adjust this our plan, how will we be improving the equity of the money we spend per kid in our elementary school? So, it's not so much a function of your zip code for how much we might spend on your student.

3:21:19Bill Sutter I mean the short answer is on a pure dollar basis um probably right um the the that state um transparency is purely dollar-based right it is not referencing uh the student needs the programs that are there um this I mean it's a structure of the size of the school on the cost per pupil generally. Um but certainly if you're not having to put the three and a half to$4 million into maintaining smaller schools, I think it's roughly twothirds of that cost is from those sort of fixed operational things. You have those dollars to reinvest uh elsewhere uh for a higher and better use purpose.

3:22:11Bill Sutter Um the the reason that our uh um variable classroom costs are uh only a small portion of that, a third of the savings is every year during the budget cycle we readjust for the students that we have. Uh not everywhere does that, right? Not every uh district uh will adjust the teachers in a building down for the number of student or up. Um that is um it's challenging uh that uh um when we hear about it, the board hears about it uh every year with you know why are we losing uh Miss Smith because she's a great teacher but there's fewer students. So uh during our budget process we uh always adjust down for the number of students as we're experiencing declining enrollment.

3:23:13Bill Sutter We adjust up if there are uh a growth in students. Um so by doing that we have uh been as efficient as possible but there's a a point at which you just can't be more efficient when you have only one class and there's only 15 or 18 students in that class. You just can't be any more efficient.

3:23:40Alex Medler And one last question. When I look around the front range and again I see uh I believe we've had a long range planning process and we have been acting prudently and I as former treasurer I believe uh that we're uh we're exercising good stewardship of our funds and quite responsible from year to year. I see districts around Colorado that are spending down reserves and not making the changes that are necessary. Um, have we had to do that or are we avoiding that kind of short-term uh, you know, put off the pain for later stuff very much in the way we run our budget?

3:24:13Alex Medler It looks to me from my understanding that we've been fairly responsible and are not like, you know, spending reserves in order to get by and punt this down further.

3:24:23Bill Sutter The um the analogy that I've used u multiple times over my 30 years in Boulder Valley uh is um shock absorbers, right? Are sort of the variability in revenues and expenditures from year to year. We're going to be hopefully uh 101 or two or 3% of revenues and hopefully 97 98 99% of expenditures because that can flip. We have uh shortfalls in revenues. Property taxes don't come in. We're projecting these, you know, a year out. Um, so that's the shock absorber that we can uh take a little bit of uh hotter weather, drier weather, colder weather, snowier weather, like and and adjust uh within the year. The reserves are those barrels full of water before you hit the wall when you're driving down the highway.

3:25:25Bill Sutter You really don't want to run into them. Those are there for emergencies. Those are there for crisis situations. uh we didn't dip into reserves during uh the pandemic largely because there was a lot of federal resources, but like the reserves are there for truly emergency situations um that you want to hopefully plan around uh the um unknown unknowns or the known unknowns I think if we quote Donald Rumsfeld. Um, so, uh, reserves, you really don't want to spend down. Uh, reserves are part of the calculation for a district's credit rating, which is what you pay, uh, the interest rate on your debt.

3:26:11Bill Sutter Uh, so if you have uh poor reserves uh or um uh not good financial stewardship, you'll have a a lower credit rating, so you'll pay more on your debt. Uh and uh we actually have a better credit rating than the state of Colorado. Uh so like all of those things uh um benefit the taxpayers in the district and the district overall from a consistency standpoint.

3:26:45Nicole Rajpal Okay. Board members. Um student exp I was anticipating getting through slide 40 and then asking questions on the student experience. I wondered about do we need a comfort break before then or can we get to the everything before transportation discussion before we take a comfort break. We're going to keep going. So, we're going to segue into the student experience. There's a few different programs we'll discuss. We'll hold off questions until right before transportation and then ask all those questions about school age care and um learning environments, preschool, etc. I will turn it over to Dr. Neil Anderson.

Student experience: class size, specials and special education

3:27:25Dr. Neil Anderson Thank you, President Rajpal. So throughout our approach to the proposal we've presented to you, it was built around ensuring a student learning experience and that was our foundational component. We've utilized this slide as an anchor to the learning experience challenges that many of our schools currently face, particularly when they operate less than 200 students. And it's probably the second most used slide. If Mr. Price has the first most used slide, this is the one we have utilized a lot.

3:27:54Dr. Neil Anderson I'm bringing it back because it does provide an important anchor for us and it allows to kind of talk about some of the components that were previously discuss discussed as well particularly around class size number as it's defined in one two three or more rounds and we've defined that round at 25 students as described before. Um, as we've stated, the majority of our schools in BVSD operate at two rounds or less. And that number of two rounds is set by the BVSD negotiated agreement with BVEA. I'll get into those numbers. Um, again, you can see them on the screen uh above you.

3:28:36Dr. Neil Anderson Throughout my experience as a principal here in BVSD and in another school district, a network executive director here in BVSD, and now in this role, I've experienced efficiencies and inefficiencies around class sizes and the overall perception of capacity. What I know to be true is this. One round in multi-grade, though incredibly efficient, is incredibly hard. Um, it's hard on teachers, it's hard on parents. Even small two and three round schools create challenges for our overarching system because of budgetary inefficiencies or part-time staff. Though they feel and look good from the outside and if you're a parent in a small class um because um it's a two- round school maybe mid- teens low 20s that feels great but there are other challenges that come with that.

3:29:25Dr. Neil Anderson Additionally, two round schools does not necessarily mean that they are the ideal number of students based on the recommended class size. So, our current classroom size maximums per negotiated agreement, as you can see in the blue box up there, are K126, 23 29, and 4531 students. However, these are ideal numbers in an ideal world. We have schools that are mathematically at 1.8 rounds, 2.9 rounds, and everything in between. We've had 1.5 round schools. That's considered a multi-grade environment. And in fact, this year we had identified 14 multi-grade classrooms across seven schools.

3:30:04Dr. Neil Anderson And if we do not act, it is projected that we'd again have at least 14 multi-grade classrooms and the potential of up to 16 or more with the other additional potential that some schools might experience a couple multi-grade classrooms as well depending on the how their numbers translate over from year to year. The fact is the trend for the need for more multi-grade classrooms is continue to expand. While our proposal would eliminate the need for multi-grade classrooms, we have very few schools that are currently operating at the suggested classroom round structure. Most of our schools um see classroom sizes ranging from well below the suggested class sizes to above and that can even vary between schools and within the same schools.

3:30:47Dr. Neil Anderson For example, if we currently have a grade level class of 35, we say that that's too many students for one class. And so we break that into two sections. So it's seen as two teachers. Oh, two rounds, but that's actually 17 and 18 students. Likewise, we have a class size of 30 or 31. Um, we might say that is not too big and so we're going to have that to be one class um instead of two.

3:31:13Dr. Neil Anderson This creates some significant challenges because our parents might be used to well previous year I had only 20 students in my class and now I have 31 kids in my class or a colleague across our network might have a friend that um is teaching a class of 21 but they have 28 or 29 or 30 in their class. And so there's that constant comparison that happens. And those examples illustrate the breadth of difference that's found within our schools and within sometimes and often within the same school itself. In summary, our community interprets two rounds as two interprets two teachers as two full rounds, but our interpretation is that two full classes equals two rounds. And that's a really important distinction.

3:32:00Dr. Neil Anderson When our class sizes range between the mid- teens and low30s, often within the same school, we create a system that's inefficient due to small class sizes while other classes feel really full and teachers and parents ask for additional teacher, additional FTE, additional supports, thus upping our overall budgetary components and costs. And without predictive and consistent class size ranges, we have a system that results in budgetary impacts, learning impacts, and teacher impacts. This proposal, as presented, eliminates the one- rounded multi-grade classrooms while strengthening our two, three, and potentially four round schools. It establishes consistent experiences for our student, staff, and communities across BVSD. Though there might be still some variability as students move through our system.

3:32:46Dr. Neil Anderson Our goal is to decrease the variability and through the reduction of variability in our learning environments while establishing a better range of predictable class sizes. By doing this, we'll provide consistent learning environments. I'm going to pass it over now to our chief academic officer, Dr. Emma Herszog, that will talk about the impacts that have happened within these unpredictable classes and the impact of these sizes and rounds within our schools. Thank you.

3:33:17Dr. Emma Herszog Thank you, Dr. Neil Anderson. Um, the number of rounds per grade also impacts how we assign art, music, and PE teachers, otherwise known as what we call our specials teachers at elementary. When schools have smaller numbers of rounds, there are not enough total rounds in the building for a special teacher to be full-time in that building, and that specials teacher then needs to teach in multiple buildings to reach their full FTE. The graph on this slide paints a picture of the reality of travel for our specials teachers. And the headings on the graph are defined as follows. Traveling teachers are specials teachers who work at multiple schools to fulfill their assignment.

3:33:57Dr. Emma Herszog Schools with traveling teachers are schools that have at least one traveling teacher, which impacts scheduling flexibility for the whole school. Split positions with no home teacher means that the that particular specials position is filled by multiple traveling teachers where none of them spend the majority of their time at that school. And so for key events like an art show or a musical production, there's no main or primary specials teacher in that building to lead and coordinate the event. So you can see the trajectory that we're on and where we will continue to go if we do nothing versus our projection should the resilient schools proposal pass.

3:34:33Dr. Emma Herszog Should we continue on our current trajectory, we estimate that we will have 40 traveling teachers next year versus 18 with the resilient schools proposal. Should we continue as is, we estimate we will have 29 schools with traveling teachers versus 14 with resilient schools. And without any changes, we anticipate 12 split teacher positions for the coming school year versus zero with the resilient schools proposal. The reality is we are increasingly paying our teachers to drive and coordinate between buildings, not to teach and lead enriching experiences for students. And there are lots of missed opportunities for students that come with that. When our specialist teachers are assigned to multiple buildings, it makes a significant impact. First, it impacts efficiency.

3:35:20Dr. Emma Herszog more of their day is spent traveling, setting up and cleaning up and navigating administrative tasks like emails, schedulings and scheduling and procedures at multiple buildings. This means that less of their time is spent teaching and connecting with kids. Second, it impacts continuity. One of the amazing things about specials is that teachers have the opportunity to follow kids for six years throughout elementary school and build traditions and deeper longitudinal relationships. With a lot of traveling teachers, students have a different teacher each year, and those deep community connections and school-based traditions are harder to form. Third, it impacts flexibility. Currently, buildings often plan their schedules based on when staff members are available rather than what would truly work best for the school.

3:36:06Dr. Emma Herszog This impacts master scheduling, but also has day-to-day impacts. If there's an assembly, a field trip, some type of testing, or a delayed start, there's just no room to adjust and students lose out as a result. Fourth, it impacts collaboration. Often, traveling teachers do not have any shared planning time with either the building staff or others who teach the same content at that same school. The lack of teacher collaboration often leads to disjointed student experiences. And fifth, it impacts student experiences beyond the actual art, music, and PE classes. It's much more challenging to provide special experiences like field trips, concerts, intramurals, art shows, field days, or clubs.

3:36:49Dr. Emma Herszog As one example, we have an elementary school that used to have an afterchool choir, but when the music teacher began traveling, she was unable to keep that up and so it went away. Those types of examples are all over our district. The question becomes really what are we willing to fund and to what degree of benefit. We can keep patching things together for the next few years. But as you can see from the previous slide, eventually this will break and our system will become similar to having adjunct special teachers popping in to teach their class versus building a longitudinal specials program that fully enriches the student experience in all the ways we value and have come to expect.

3:37:27Dr. Emma Herszog I'm going to pass it over to our executive director of special education, Michelle Brener, who will explain some of the benefits of the resilient schools proposal from the special education lens.

3:37:37Michelle Brener Thank Thank you, Dr. Herszog. Additionally, our students with IEPs will benefit from larger right-sized schools in a variety of ways across the continuum of services. We anticipate benefits both to inclusionary practices and for students benefiting from our intensive learning centers. Schools with larger numbers provide a benefit to staffing with increased frequency of service providers and resource teachers at a building. For example, an occupational therapist for a smaller school might only be assigned one day a week and assigned to multiple buildings. They are able to provide the necessary services for a student's IEP. However, they do not have an opportunity to be part of the school culture, collaborate with any real frequency, or have flexibility to reschedule if a student is absent that one day a week.

3:38:25Michelle Brener In another example, most of the schools considered for closure and consolidation have only one full-time resource teacher and sometimes even just a half-time resource teacher to serve the mild moderate needs students uh K8. Once again, we always ensure that all IEP services are met. However, the ability to collaborate with colleagues and parents, flexibly group students, and overall support inclusionary practices has its limitations with this limited staffing. In a larger, more right-sized school, I noted that peer groupings for students is also a benefit. With more students with IEPs and more staff on site, we have a better ability to group students with peers who have similar needs, allowing for more tailored instructional groups for services provided both inside and outside of the general education classroom.

3:39:18Michelle Brener For staff, increases in staff also provides more opportunities for collaboration. When you have two intensive programs at one site, you now have two specialized staff who can share expertise. We have heard for some time now how isolating it can be for that intensive teacher when there is only one intensive program at an elementary school without another intensive program teacher to collaborate with. Two specialized programs can also mean flexibility for PAR educators to collaborate between program needs and for professional learning opportunities. More collaboration between special education staff and general education staff benefits our students experience. Lastly, increased on-site staff means increased on-site support when needs arise.

3:40:02Michelle Brener For example, at a smaller school, when a student elopes out of the classroom or building, there is limited staff for implementing a behavior response protocol. When you have a psychologist who is often the behavioral expert for a building for only one or two days a week or even just one resource teacher to implement such response plans, then resources become more stretched when behaviors arise. Similarly, with limited staff on site each day, smaller schools tend to wait for district specialists to come provide guidance and specialty support rather than having that guidance available and on hand each day. Increased special education staff available means increased on-site support and quicker response time when these and other needs arise.

3:40:45Michelle Brener And I'm going to pass this along to talk about school age care.

School age care and preschool

3:40:53Bill Sutter No, two slides. Um so priority of the board uh to at a minimum maintain uh and where practical expand uh our family support with our school age care program. Uh this is you know uh accomplished by uh increasing the capacity which is the licensed spaces uh increasing the number of qualified uh child care staff and also setting expectations on school facility use uh and the interaction with child care. Uh state licensing for child care spaces is very specific and very particular. Um, room contents cannot shift. Um, I mean this is down to the level of scissors can't be left out on a table or uh hand sanitizer can't be left out uh if the space is to be used for child care.

3:41:54Bill Sutter Uh last minute changes uh cannot occur because the spaces are licensed uh not the whole building. Um typical hiring for our SAC employees uh over the summer uh just to maintain existing seats is about 15 uh staff members uh due to just annual turnover. U the expansion of of the program will require hiring two to three times as many staff uh to uh sort of maximize uh what we have. Uh this will be challenging certainly but uh efforts are currently underway. Uh we're hiring in a pool situation. So instead of for specific locations uh it's uh becoming a district sack employee that will get assigned.

3:42:43Bill Sutter Um and as we reduce uh available spaces uh with the number of buildings uh the programming, the planning and the scheduling will be critical to a successful expansion. uh of our school age care child care program. So um this slide is uh intended to sort of illustrate um the specificity that I mentioned uh regarding the child care licensing. Um the space is literally measured. Um there are strict student staff ratios. So these are not things that the district gets to set as a 1:15 uh staffto student ratio. Um there's defined separate spaces. So these uh concepts of pods uh are are set and you have to identify in a space in the cafeteria which pod is in which area of the cafeteria.

3:43:47Bill Sutter Uh and the students cannot intermingle. Um it's it's kind of bizarre. um when you think these students are doing all day and then go into child care uh and that have these ridiculous rules in place. Um so uh this this expansion of the capacity will be specific and thoughtful u and is currently u underway following the threat of child care licensing. Just a little more information about preschool. Um, as we shared previously, all preschool locations for the 2728 school year will be announced on October 1st. And adjusting preschool locations has additional complexities that require more time. Every year we make some adjustments to our preschool locations based on demand. Moving locations is not new.

3:44:40Bill Sutter However, every time we move a preschool location, there are variety of factors that we need to consider for each individual adjustment. space available, licensing of indoor spaces, licensing of outdoor spaces, feedback from building principles, and then matching all of that with the needs of the local community. Thanks to our preschool liaison who work in every area of our district, we're connected with family needs at the individual and group level by each region. Because our resilient schools proposal was not predetermined once the recommendation was finalized, we needed more time to take all needed preschool and licensing appropriate next steps to ensure we proceed in the best way possible for families.

3:45:18Bill Sutter Maintaining preschool in each region is a priority and our preschool community liaison will work directly with individual returning preschool families who are impacted to support with their next steps. I'm going to pass it to Well, we'll pause for questions and I will pause for questions.

3:45:35Staff (unidentified)speaker unconfirmed · check the video Just to jump in, we have separate licenses for child care and preschool in the same building. So, that's how complex it is. And there were some there were a few bills last year that we supported to try to make that um delineation easier for us and our families. Dr. Did you want to say something before I

3:45:58Dr. Rob Anderson ju just just to reiterate the point? Um you know it's it's hard right because we're community facing and we want to be accommodating to the extent that we can especially around school age care. We know how many two you know um families with two parents that are working and and their needs around school age care. We understand that and we understand the needs for preschool. um you know uh and board members I will remind you I pushed back against the both of these things um in addition to 1448 as as an advocate for the school district.

3:46:30Dr. Rob Anderson Uh but it can be tricky because as a parent you'd think, oh just one more kid or two more kids and then the the consequences of the spot site visits, right? Um become very significant. Board members, for those of you that were paying attention, I think it was back in 2019 2020 when we had to take all of this in house. we were partnering with the YMCA at that point that was providing services in our schools and the constant citations and violations and issues there. Um, and so I think we've done a good job of stabilizing the program. Um, but licensing the spaces, hiring the people, it's just a a complexity.

3:47:10Dr. Rob Anderson Uh, we're up for the task, but uh we can't grow to the needs of our community. We are limited to the spaces that we have to grow these programs.

Board questions: special education, 504s and school age care

3:47:21Nicole Rajpal Thank you, Dr. Rob. Anderson. Uh board members, who would like to begin? I know, um Jason and Deann both had a question earlier that I asked you to hold on to until we got to this point in the presentation. So maybe I will start with the two of you and then move on to other board members that may have questions.

3:47:40Jason Unger Um yeah, my question and thanks to that really appreciate uh all that information. Um, I have some additional questions that came up, but I'll start with the special education question that we talked about. Just, you know, I think we've talked about it previously in the budget section and what it means dollar-wise. I just want to get a sense and obviously you talked about all the high all the benefits of, you know, combined programs and additional staffing and just larger schools. Um, but what what are we talking about when in terms like when we're talking about a, you know, standing up a new site at a new location that didn't previously have it?

3:48:10Jason Unger you know, you know, Rob went into kind of the logistics of construction, but what does that look like? Do you have any major concerns about some of these uh potentially new locations? Um, I think just what what is the what will like students kind of exp will their experience be different? Will it um hopefully not um decrease, but like you know what what are we what are we looking at when it comes to this transition?

3:48:38Michelle Brener Thank you. And thank you for waiting. Um so standing up new sites is not new. This is my 16th year here and we have opened new programs. We've moved new programs. We have learned a lot um often by doing that well and sometimes by doing it not well unfortunately. Um so we are working from um as Dr. Miller had had shared earlier, you know, checklist of things that work well that we've learned over time from from doing this. Um, I'm really honored that our community has come out and said we love our programs at the schools that are there. I think I take that as a real positive. Um, we we want to work with our communities at each of these schools.

3:49:23Michelle Brener And so I want to start by saying one of the things that we've done um the day after the proposals was the proposal was announced is um we did a couple of things. My department the directors of my department and I called parents of uh students in the intensive learning center programs the ICANS autism programs who would be potentially impacted. We called each of those parents um between 70 and 80 parents. We had a just a couple we didn't get in touch with. Um so that's why I say between 70 and 80 and we spoke with them directly. We said did you hear the board meeting? You know did what did you understand from the proposal?

3:50:02Michelle Brener We wanted to talk with them and make sure they understood directly from us what the proposal meant for their child. Answer their questions. Um hear from them directly. um and and um make sure they knew that we would call them back directly so that they knew what when the decisions were made, what that would mean for their child, if they had a direct concern about a particular location, what the options might be for their child. Um because with any location decision for a child, um at times we can honor some differences for that family and that child. Um, so most of our families um are ready to work with us on that decision. They understand the decision if that's what's made.

3:50:49Michelle Brener Um, and and they gave us some feedback. So, we have a couple of schools that those parents said, "Hey, for this school and this community, we we are interested in how we can develop that culture from this school to this school. Can we have a parent steering committee?" Yes, let's do that. So, we took a lot of their feedback and we're working with them um not only on that checklist of things that we usually do like school tours with the families and meet and greets like the things that we know that work over time as we move in open programs.

3:51:19Michelle Brener Um but what are the things for the unique individual programs at that school as we move it the communities um and what those families and ultimately as we start to talk to students what will the students want us to do because their input is important important their voice is important we haven't gotten to that yet because I think it's important that those decisions are made before we speak to the students but we heard that from the parents um we're talking to them and we said we will call you back we want to talk to you directly The other thing we did that next morning um before we talked to the parents was we offered a meeting directly with the intensive learning center teachers um and it was optional.

3:52:01Michelle Brener It was during a late start. We didn't say you have to be here but we offered to speak with them before we called the parents so that they understood the proposal. They understood the potential impact and and they came with all levels of questions and all levels of emotions but they were really grateful. So, I want to say that that was that was the thing we heard the most both from the parents and the teachers was just being grateful that they got to have that direct communication and that they could ask direct questions and understand directly from our department. Um, uh, and also grateful for the feedback, the time to give direct feedback with us.

3:52:44Michelle Brener That wasn't a direct response to your question, but I feel like it was important to put out in the space right away. Um, so the things that we do to stand up a new site, we have that sort of checklist of things that work. Again, walkthroughs with families, invite you to a tour, walkthroughs with the principal. So, we're already thinking about dates that those could happen, looking at the space of the site. Um we have um back to the thinking about the spaces and the dollars set aside for uh facilities, right? We have standard procedures um specifications for each program. We know an IAN program needs to have a calming space. We know um every program needs to have a sensory space.

3:53:31Michelle Brener We know each program has to have a classroom with a certain amount of space for the students. Each of those specifications are already being thought about for each buildings. So that's part of standing up a new site. The list goes on. I won't go through every little detail. And then for each of these, then again, we're talking with families. We're talking with teachers. What are the things in addition to the standard kinds of things that are unique to your school and your school culture and your community? Because what we know we want to do is lift up that program. and what's special about that program and move it with the school in the program.

3:54:09Michelle Brener I'm working right now with our human resources on also how quickly and how much can we commit to moving this staff. Um, and I think we can make some real quick commitments to that because um, and I say that because I'm speaking with human resources about it. Um, because that is the plan to move the program and as much of the staff as possible because that that that's what's going to make this transition work for our students in these programs. having the culture, having the staff as much as possible move with them. Um because the consistency, the culture, not just the space, right? Not just the name of the program. So those are some of the things that standing up a new site means.

3:54:53Michelle Brener And because of those things, I don't have the concerns with the new new locations. We also have had a lot of opportunity to talk in pre-planning about the specific locations that were selected to make sure they're very inclusive, that they have strong leaders, like all the things that you would desire in those new locations, not again, not just the space. Um, and to ensure that the student experience is is going to be strong.

3:55:23Deann Bucher Yeah, thanks very much, Michelle. Um, what about two I have two questions. One is uh the 10 families that you talked about that you haven't reached. Should they reach out to you if they're listening to this?

3:55:41Michelle Brener I would love for any family to reach out um please. Um we one of the things that we also uh did in our things that we've already done is we have on on the website there's a spot that says for um I'm not going to quote it exactly. I'm going to paraphrase for students with special needs. There's a little spot on the website. Um, you know, there's click here and there's a drop down. We also have a parent liaison that any family can reach out to. She's been taking phone calls. Her name is Elizabeth Likenstein. Um, she's available. Give her a call. She can answer questions probably faster than I can. Um, so please give her a call. Send her an email. She'll call you back.

3:56:17Michelle Brener Um, but any parent, please call her. Um, and and then also reach out to me. the parents we didn't reach, we have tried them multiple times and some of those families have reached out um in the interim both to me and to Elizabeth.

3:56:34Deann Bucher Um my question is really about um maybe harder to reach families. How about all of our students who are on who have 504s and um the building that they're being moved to is is maybe not appropriate for them to deal with if they have ADHD or something? Is that something that you can help families with?

3:57:00Michelle Brener Sure. Um well, I work closely with Shannon Numeare, who's our 504 uh coordinator, I think is her title. Um sorry Shannon if I got it wrong. Um so that's part of the facilities I think dollars that we were talking about on the earlier slide is um once decisions are made um already sort of planning time I think we've held time on the calendars just in case as quickly as possible after decisions are made to walk all the buildings um and say what are those things from a um adaptability standpoint because we know some of that will need to be done that's why dollars are earmarked um we know what the ADA rules are ADA a rules don't go far enough in many cases.

3:57:40Michelle Brener So, what well, our buildings meet the ADA rules. So, what beyond that do we need to be thinking about? Um, and again, we would invite families to reach out that have concerns and let's talk to them about the concerns that they have so that we can we have time to problem solve those things that they have questions and concerns about. I'm gonna let Dr. Anderson jump in here.

3:58:02Dr. Rob Anderson Michelle, to clarify, um, within within parents and students who have 504 plans, do we have 504 plans that have building limitations, building design limitations within the language of a 504 plan where it wouldn't allow a student to go to their neighborhood school?

3:58:21Michelle Brener No. No. Um, in a 504 plan, you would have accommodations, right? So, it wouldn't have a building limitation, right? But it might have things like that they need to access like the an elevator, right? So to speak. Um it it would be those kinds of accommodations.

3:58:37Dr. Rob Anderson Okay. Just wanted to clarify. Thanks.

3:58:42Nicole Rajpal Jason and then Alex.

3:58:45Jason Unger Um thanks. Uh I have a question, Bill, about sack. Um, I appreciate uh the complexity of the permitting and just uncertainty of it all, but particularly for the families that are in the proposed consolidations. You know, they've been there's questions. Are we going to be able to, you know, if there's 30 spots at one school and 30 at the next, can we guarantee 60 new spots? I know we sounds like we cannot do that at this point but what is there a point where we should be able to know more where we'll be able to provide some kind of um guarantee information commitment to families that you know we will have x number of spots or we should expect this I think that's you know obviously Dr.

3:59:23Jason Unger parents who talked about um you know for for families with two working parents this is a big consideration something you know we're providing information about preschools on October 1st. It would be great if there's a a set date or something we can put on the calendar to let families know you will know or have a a better sense uh of what to expect than we have right now.

3:59:46Bill Sutter Uh guarantee is a strong word um to be able to say that we can guarantee something um because a lot of it will rely on that uh result of combining and open enrollment uh and the spaces available. Um we are working starting to work with uh the u licensing staff to uh relook at the spaces, reme-measure uh um uh look at new spaces that haven't been used. Uh and this is where some of the challenge with uh resetting expectations with uh building staff um and the community of what some spaces have been used for. Uh and if we're going to uh identify them as licensed child care spaces, uh they won't be able to be used for what they may have been in the past.

4:00:52Bill Sutter Um we run our lottery uh after open enrollment. Uh so that will help uh to some extent um identify you know where uh the uh resulting effects of of choice enrollment uh fall out. Um the hiring will be the greatest challenge. Uh these are all part-time jobs. Uh they are um highly qualified. they have to have specific um qualifications and lenture. Um and uh while we do have that uh annual turnover uh we um have to really work hard at maintaining that. So to the extent that a uh two buildings are merging and the two buildings have uh sack programs in them, there are staff available uh to be able to move over. So that uh uh helps uh in a significant way.

4:02:05Bill Sutter Um to be able to expand beyond that and clear weight lists is where some of the challenge uh comes. uh we are um putting a priority in place or um and we used this uh when the boundary changes were implemented a year ago um to give reszoned families the that are in the program that returning uh status. So, um that's a like if you're in the two schools and you're coming together, it's like you uh had been in those two schools um previously.

4:02:49Bill Sutter Um, so in the spring when we get towards that uh uh lottery process for uh sack, we will have better answers uh than we do right now because again, you know, we can only start so much um before the decision has been made.

4:03:10Nicole Rajpal Dr. Anderson,

4:03:12Dr. Rob Anderson you know, board members, this is an example of why timing matters, right? the the um once you have your questions answered, once you um have heard from from our team, uh the answers to community questions, uh the faster uh and and and the the timeline just matters, right? Licensing is something outside of our control. Hiring processes take time. Um, so, uh, I just wanted to highlight, um, you know, why why does timing matter? In addition to the open enrollment timeline that you all are well aware of, which is why you moved this decision to the 22nd, that's not the only thing that's hanging on.

4:03:49Dr. Rob Anderson The more time we have, the higher the likelihood we'll be able to deliver on things that folks really are counting on from the school district.

4:04:03Alex Medler Thank you. Uh if I could I'd um go back to slide 35. Uh we've heard from the community that they are interested in various guarantees and I agree that with Bill that guarantees are really I I would never saddle future boards uh with guarantees of things that we can't deliver on and so if we did it'd be like oh I'm imagining I know what the budget from the state's going to be and I can imagine you know all these things that we can't control. So I think that's guarantees are basically dishonest. Um but I believe transparency is a commitment we can fulfill and so uh we've talked and our community has talked a lot about the things they value through that engagement process.

4:04:44Alex Medler So I'm glad to see like slide 35 and I I really uh I think it's incumbent on us as a district to develop a sophisticated system to track the implementation of the things that we're doing this for. And so I want to make sure that as we move forward over the next five or ten years that we keep track of the specials that are traveling to teachers in the split positions that people have really transparent data on class size and not just class size but also I mean I would make two comments on the class size stuff. It's teacher salaries and class size are part of the same thing.

4:05:20Alex Medler Like if you only have a million dollars to pay for teacher compensation, you can pay teachers more if you have bigger class sizes and fewer teachers. And you can have bigger smaller class size if there's more teachers. And if the money's fixed, you have to pay them less. So like we we know we will want to have the smallest class size for the students benefits possible. We also have committed to honoring our professional educators uh in all those positions and so our ratios can be higher and those are trade-offs.

4:05:49Alex Medler But I do want to have the data that's transparent and I do think we should make a commitment to you know being able to report on class size on this part on traveling teachers and split positions and stuff and uh also on um like I I do want to see like I'm interested in making these changes so that we lose fewer students. So I'd really like to know about sort of you know the the metriculation patterns of how many students we're losing and if that goes up or down you know for making the experience better. Can you speak to that, Emma, or anybody?

4:06:21Dr. Emma Herszog I would say the specials part uh falls under academics and I can pass it over to Neil if he has anything to add um for for some of the class size um particulars. All of this work is the work of Aubrey Yay and I'm going to mess up her title, but she is specials fine performing arts PE extraordinaire and she's been tracking this data for a long time. Um and so continuing to track it in a transparent way won't won't be new for her at all. Um and we will just we will just continue to do that.

4:06:52Dr. Rob Anderson I would just say board members when when it comes to transparency that has been a value of this board and previous boards. It's the reason we have such clear dashboards and data on declining enrollment on on open enrollment. Um we have created and built out at the direction of the board I believe one of the most transparent systems in the entire country in terms of how our enrollment looks where it is month by month how many kids are coming in how many kids are leaving and board members you reviewed and approved that and so um anything that has to do with transparency would be in alignment um Alex with the values of this board and this this senior team uh and I do think that some some visibility into this class size and the variability and the consistency and the range.

4:07:43Dr. Rob Anderson Um I think that that could be super helpful for sure. Um and to the extent that we can make that transparent and make that clear so the data is not confusing. You know sometimes because all of our data is dynamic and I think we've run into this over the course of the past week. you know, where you might somebody might by looking at because we're so transparent the enrollment numbers for last week and we may be using last year's October count because that's because we know and understand that there's a trend in data where the kids that are here today, we're going to have less kids in October and the ins and outs.

4:08:19Dr. Rob Anderson So I think that we can be clear on the data points that we use, our sources and systems and um I will always support opportunities to be more transparent to build the trust in our community that I think is really really important.

4:08:34Alex Medler Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to turn to special education. Um uh I guess um I hear from parents of students with disabilities who are not always satisfied with our district's delivery or that do not always find that all the elements of their IEP have have been met. So um I I do believe that there's when we think about the work that starts after whatever decision we make, one of the big challenges for me is thinking through the quality of special education programming. I know from previous presentations that the placement of our ILC's and the balance of the I all the different types of ILC's has been taken into consideration.

4:09:15Alex Medler Um I do think uh that um our special education programs need to our schools need to be inclusive and welcoming and all the students are valued and there's a lot of tier one work that's not in our ILC's and I think we need to do intense transition planning and I would like to and I know you're going to speak to that later but I I think there are circumstances where the transition planning around students with disabilities is really key and it's not just about the ILC. So for like the Mesa parents I know who have celebrated the inclusive nature for narrow affirming care that they believe they're getting from Mesa, they think Bear Creek is not as good at that.

4:09:55Alex Medler Like the choice that they've made to be there instead of Bear Creek is based on the judgment, right? So I think to the extent Bear Creek is absorbing a lot of Mesa parents that includes a number of parents of kids who are neurodeiverse and have special needs and I want to make sure that the transition planning of Bear Creek is focusing on that challenge and I also think that that's an opportunity for the community to be engaged like I think the sack at uh Bear Creek I would challenge them to figure out you know what are they going to track in a school's UIP over the next 5 years to make sure that the school is fulfilling a transition to a a pretty universal and inclusive approach as well as what they're doing with their ILC's.

4:10:38Alex Medler Similarly for high peaks I mean I note that their rate of students with IEPs uh it's within our range but it's lower than uh average so like around 10%. So and we're around 14%. So as they are expanding to a new location, I would love to see them be challenged and to do program planning and transition planning that is designed around pursuing uh parody in their enrollment and that maybe that would be with an an ILC placed there. Um, but to the extent that they're going to grow and take a bigger responsibility in our district in a bigger building with an opportunity to grow, I want to make sure that that opportunity to grow is for all students, including the students with disabilities.

4:11:20Alex Medler Likewise, I know that when our students um with disabilities open enroll in this district, uh they don't get equal access to their choices um after enrollment in some circumstances because of the nature of their kids' disability and the way we administer that. So I'm I'm advocating that as we manage not just the transition planning the placement of the ILC's but also uh the work that we would do with principles and staff on sachs on UIPs and stuff that we are cognizant of how we're serving all kids and that as we create a new equilibrium of open enrollment amongst all these changes that we are providing to the maximum extent possible full access to our kids with disabilities.

4:12:05Alex Medler ities or other special needs or vulnerable populations and not having artifacts of what we do that lead to lack of par and access. And I think that that's organizational, but I also think it's instructional and leadership and school-based stuff. So, I'd be curious to hear what we can do um if this plan were to move forward as constructed to try to build to like greater parody it uh the new High Peaks and to reassure the parents going into Bear Creek that this is planned with on their behalf of the students who have different needs. You

4:12:42Michelle Brener shared a lot of things in there, so I'll try to touch on as many as I can. Um, I do think, um, first I want to say I I don't want to minimize the parents who have expressed concerns. I think there are real concerns and I I certainly know that not all of our families are pleased with the services their children are getting. I hear that all the time. I I know that that is true. I'm just also honored that parents have come out and said that they, you know, really do appreciate their programs and that they've come out and shared that in this process.

4:13:10Michelle Brener Um so for some of the things that you have said I think we have prioritized the con the the needs for the students um with those intensive learning centers because I think as we've sort of analyzed um who is mostly impacted I think that's sort of the the acute need right on the the forefront of this um I think one of the values that we've had in this has been that if a school is going to to move or be consolidated or closed right that our students with disab disabilities are a part of that process, right? That they belong, that they're a part of that community and we're thinking of them as general ed students first.

4:13:47Michelle Brener And so when you talk about that um that community again, we've been prioritizing the intensive learning center because I think sometimes they're um not just sometimes, I think in a lot of the conversations in a lot of other districts, it's been okay, the school's moving over here, the intensive learning center program is moving over here. So, a lot of our conversation has focused there and you you're asking a good question about but how are we also thinking about um maybe our students with mild and moderate needs. Um so I think that work is is absolutely a part of this. It needs to come and it hasn't been a lot of the work we've done yet.

4:14:24Michelle Brener I think the things that we would be thinking about are just some of the things that you've said. How are we engaging sex? How are we engaging principles? How are we engaging students? I think student voice is important in this. um we haven't sort of laid out those plans. We haven't um thought as much about that. Um but I think that is important in this process for our sort of mild moderate resource level students. Um in terms of high peaks because you mentioned that specifically um their numbers are going to grow, right? And as we talked about today, I think that's what we anticipate with um this proposal.

4:14:58Michelle Brener And so, um, by by that in and of itself, we have to be talking about what that looks like. Right now, they're a school who has very little special ed services because their numbers are small. So, part of the the plan for next steps. If we're planning for their numbers to grow as a school, we need to be planning for then what are the increases in services? What does that look like for students with disabilities? if you're increasing um the number of students with special needs, you need to have a plan for that. So, that has been in in the forefront of my mind if this is um the plan that goes through. Right now, they have a half-time specialed teacher.

4:15:39Michelle Brener They need to have more special ed services with more students. Um so, there's a lot of discussion and thinking about what that looks like. They're going to then need to plan for more students with intensive needs. that is just as much work um as any other part of the plan that I think we're proposing. So I think that gets to the parody that you're thinking of. Um maybe not all the way there, but it's a part of the plan and process that we need to be thinking about. Um and and this is more district-wide.

4:16:07Michelle Brener It's not necessarily part of the resilient schools, but I I think a lot about the parody of access and the work the board's been doing around um charter school agreements and things like that. So I think that is a part of the holistic work that we need to be thinking about as a district. Um I also just want to comment back to the the um sort of 504 thing we were talking about because I I think I missed the mark a little bit on the comments that I made and I just want to say because I think it relates to this um the I think what some of the families are maybe worried about is the open school concept for some of the the buildings that we're talking about.

4:16:43Michelle Brener Um, so there is a piece of walking the buildings. There is a piece about thinking about access and what we need to do as we're designing space. Um, there is a piece about implementing students accommodations. Um, I think there is a piece about communicating to families that haven't been in those schools before because we've had programs in those schools. We've had autism programs with students with very intensive needs and they've been incredibly successful in open schools before. Um, and it's I think it's um I think families are right to worry if they haven't been in those schools before and we have lots of students who've been incredibly successful there. So, I'd love to talk with those families.

4:17:25Michelle Brener We also have um options for school choice for families that don't feel like that's going to be the right fit. So, I think the conversations, the walkthroughs, the looking at what students are what are in the students plans to make sure that they are designed and appropriately fit. Um, and then also talking with families about what the choices are if they feel like that's not going to be the right fit because it's those things with sensory um, how how their sounds and sensory things work in those open concept schools that I imagine are the concerns. We know that works for many students and I can see those questions and how they're coming up.

4:18:02Nicole Rajpal Thank you, Michelle. Okay, board members, it is time for a comfort break. Lunch has also been served. Should you want to um grab a bite to eat, let's say 15 minutes. Does that sound 10 to 15 minutes to come back here? You're welcome to bring food. Staff likewise. If you would like to bring food back out, you um definitely can do that. So, we will um reconvene at roughly quarter after. Um but stay tuned. Welcome back everyone. Just as a reminder to the folks in the audience, try to keep conversations at a minimum and if you can't, please move yourself to the back of the audience so we can hear up here. With that, we will resume our conversations. Um, starting with transportation.

4:38:59Nicole Rajpal I will turn it over to Rob Price.

Transportation, walk zones and attendance boundaries

4:39:01Rob Price Perfect. Thank you, President Rushball. We still have 19 slides to go, so some of these uh I'll do a quick hitter on, but uh to answer board member Medler's question from earlier this morning, uh transportation survey results done in December of 25, we had 14,700 respondents. 23% walk and bike to school. Uh 23% walk and bike to school. 18% ride the school bus. 50% take the family car, 3% car pool, 4% RTD. I just want to say our 23% walk and bike is double the national average. That was a community priority. We heard through community engagement sessions and a priority of the board as we were developing our proposal. All right. So, I'm going to get into transportation. I'm going to ground us in board policy.

4:39:51Rob Price Eligible students will receive transportation to the assigned neighborhood school. The eligibility criteria is elementary 1 and a half miles, middle school uh two plus miles, and high school 2 and a half miles. There were some comments at public uh at the September 8th meeting, how is that measured? There's language on this slide also in board policy how that's measured. And then when we're going through some of these different attendance boundary adjustments, we'll talk about when there's a hazard, how is that applied and when does transportation become applicable. So, as we go to the next slide, I have included attachments for all of the attendance boundary adjustments. This first one being Kohl.

4:40:35Rob Price Again, I'm not going to get into the specifics of every single one unless you want me to. So, but I'm happy to if you need me to. Kohl Elementary. This is showing Kohl and Burch's attendance area combined. Students east of Main Street will receive transportation in this scenario. We considered Main Street a hazardous street. Even though we do have several biking, walking assets across there. You can see we have a traffic light with signals at Maine and Engle. Uh Maine and 136. We have a new light at Maine and Marramont. We have a crosswalk at Maine and 14th. However, we are still uh providing transportation anyone that lives east of Main Street and attends Kohl Elementary School.

4:41:23Rob Price As we look at El Dorado, this is the second uh proposed attendance boundary adjustments. Um as it pertains to Eldo, students north of Colton Road will receive transportation. And then as shown below, you can see all of the different walking and biking assets that would allow students to walk and bike to El Dorado. Again, I'm not going to go through each one of these, but again, uh here is another one for Superior. Students north of Vista Corridor Trail will receive a transportation. If you live in this area, you know where that exists. That is not shown on this map. And then again, all of the different walking and biking assets to Superior that would allow students to walk and bike safely uh to Superior Elementary.

4:42:06Rob Price I'm going to stop there, but you can see we have included these for each one of the attendance boundary adjustments with specific language on the right hand side. I'm happy to address any questions, but I do believe this answers the board's comments at our August 25th meeting and then some of the community feedback that we re we have received since then.

4:42:36Nicole Rajpal Anna on

4:42:37Ana Temu Otting and you spoke to this earlier on the congestion um from for the families driving from Birch to Kohl. Um, and I know that you've spoken to um, Broomfield City Council and the city manager. Has there been, did they raise any um, sort of um, traffic congestion concerns? And can you also talk us through start times one more time?

4:43:03Rob Price Yep. Um, no, no one has mentioned uh, concerns with traffic congestion. We haven't got into that level of detail though with either the city manager or uh, the city and county of Broomfield. Um, looking at start times, elementary start times are at 7:50 in the morning. The high school starts at 8:35 and I believe Broomfield Heights Middle School starts at 8:45. I need to confirm Broomfield Heights Middle School, but we have enough separation between those bell times that will allow traffic to cue, leave, high school traffic to come in, etc.

4:43:42Nicole Rajpal I appreciate the detail or the attention to detail on this and just like an emphasis for the community whenever there are hazards like safe routes to school has been around for a long time working with localities as different areas become more busy due to development or what have you trying to find safe passages for students and then when this district cannot if they cannot we do provide busing I think Broadway is a really great example We don't ask our youngest students to cross Broadway because it can be hazardous. Some places underpasses have been put in, some places underpasses have not been able to be put in.

4:44:19Nicole Rajpal So like safe routes to school does a really great job working with family concerns, working with our transportation department, localities, and I would expect with this change, I mean like it's a wellestablished process to make sure our kids are getting to school safely. Millennium,

4:44:44Lalenia Quinlan Aweidaspeaker unconfirmed · check the video thank you. Um, I appreciate slide number 47 where we address the students in Paul no neighborhood. um because they were within the walk zone for Douglas and I think they might have been having some challenges with bus service in that neighborhood generally and I don't I don't know the particulars of that but I'm happy to see it called out here that there will be bus service.

4:45:21Nicole Rajpal Jason,

4:45:23Jason Unger this is not so much of a transportation question, but because we have the maps and the um the new zones, I'm wondering if you could answer a question about, you know, a lot of families that are currently at Flatirons have talked a lot about this this splits their kids u and there is a split. You know, some go to Foothill and some go, you know, the majority, I would imagine, go to Whittier. Um, but as I see this, I it looks like it's really the impact is really on uh students that are currently or students that live at the mountain communities.

4:45:52Jason Unger Do you have a kind of sense of percentage- wise like what number of kids would be zoned that are currently at Flatirons would be zoned to go to Woodier versus Foothill? It it just from looking at the maps it would seem like a vast majority arena up at Woodier. So the the concern that the kids are split in half I think is are not accurate but if you

4:46:16Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video the sorry about that didn't I know this transportation but it's first you know time

4:46:21Rob Price I will we'll have to go back to the original slide deck we presented to you on uh August 25th but you can see here the majority of our students that are living central into Boulder are feeding in to Whittier. It's our mountain communities that have split that are now some of those mountain community students are going to Foothill and others are going to Whittier. So that that's the answer, but I'd have to look at individual numbers uh that were provided in our August 25th presentation. Any other questions on this before I move on?

4:47:01Nicole Rajpal Alex.

4:47:02Alex Medler Yeah. um uh Netherlands in my district and uh people have talked about the transportation being similar to the mountains, but I look up at Netherland and I'm like, okay, well, how how far is the next school from Netherland Elementary for someone who's choosing as opposed to some of our other schools? Like it's like 20 miles, right?

4:47:21Rob Price Yes,

4:47:23Alex Medler if they're not going if they're not going to Ned, they're going up and down a mountain canyon uh where winter happens um more than 20 miles, right? So, I just I just think that is not similar to our more desperate uh less dense parts on the flats.

4:47:42Rob Price True statement. Okay. All right. Just addressing some of the other questions that have came up through community engagement, emails, core requests, etc. A few people have brought up asbestous in our buildings. Um, I am not the first one to tell you asbests containing materials exists in our schools, in several of our schools and mainly in our older buildings. Uh, their presence does not mean that a school is unsafe. uh their presence is really about us making sure they remain and they are intact and they are safely managed in place. So each school has a uh asbestous management plan identifying all known asbesus containing materials.

Asbestos, the Boulder comp plan and the draft resolution

4:48:27Rob Price Our environmental team conducts uh surveillance inspections every six months and then a more comprehensive re reinspection every 3 years using qualified certified staff. And that is really a big difference uh between what we do and some others and how other districts handle this. Those reinspections can happen with custodial staff, other staff. We have two people on our environmental team that do all of our uh six-month inspections and our three-year inspections. They are qualified. Again, they are certified to do this work. Um, I would just emphasize and I'm going to say this a couple times. We have no known asbesus related safety concerns in any of our schools. We have no known asbesus related safety concerns in any of our schools.

4:49:17Rob Price We would not have kids in our buildings if we had known safety concerns. I just there's a message out there. Um, in no way would we ever do that. So, I can't emphasize that enough. Uh we're responding to Colorado open records request ask as quickly as we can and we will ensure transparency with our community as we respond to those. Um but I will uh continue to emphasize that and uh we take a lot of pride on our buildings being safe, being healthy. Um and we have spent years in doing that. So that's a false statement that is out there. Um, as we look at the Boulder comprehensive uh plan, I think we've talked about this in depth.

4:50:02Rob Price I don't know if we need to go into any more detail on this. We have had conversations with uh the city of Boulder on their comp plan. Um, it's great. Uh, Superiors went through something similar. Louisville has went through something similar. Uh, Boulder has done this. Boulder County. We hope that it makes a meaningful long-term difference for our communities, that we have more affordable housing, that we see uh more uh children in our community. That is all we hope for. However, we don't feel like this is going to fix declining enrollment in the near future. So, I'll just say that uh there is something in the comp plan that talks about a 15 minute 15minute neighborhood. We do meet that expectation.

4:50:43Rob Price So, just want to emphasize um that work. That really concludes uh today's presentation. I believe we do have the resolution that has been presented to the board. It has two red lines. Uh there was a comment at the last board meeting to affirm the community's desire to maintain a variety of educational models through BVSD focused schools. That language has been added. And then there was another statement about school age care and that statement has been added in both our red lines and the resolution. Um with that I would open it up for conversation. No

Board discussion: excess capacity, transition and cost of delay

4:51:22Nicole Rajpal I just wanted to because we talked a little bit about school age care and we have heard some desires for language around guarantees. Uh I think we discussed a little bit why can't really guarantee things in a lottery which is by definition a system of chance. Um, so I just wanted to double check with staff since that language that I proposed was before the school age care programming discussion discussion we had today that that um that language is not in conflict with our ability to provide care given the restraints that the state imposes upon us. I think this works. Deann,

4:52:08Deann Bucher uh, my computer has died now. So, uh, the meeting was too long. Can we go back to the, um, the toggling switches of open enrollment for a minute? Can we go back to all the way back there?

4:52:23Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Oh, no. I have no idea. those that are.

4:52:28Deann Bucherspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Yeah, probably close. Thank you.

4:52:30Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Slide 2122.

4:52:37Deann Bucherspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Thank you. So close.

4:52:49Deann Bucher There it is. Okay. Um let's see. So uh let's take for an example where we haven't really talked about this school change and it's kind of a big one and that is that um the students at quote Monarch Elementary will now go to El Dorado Elementary. What if a a family has openen enrolled from another place in U Lafayette and they they go to Louisville um I can't call it that Monarch K8 and they're a fourth grader will they be able to stay with their with their um cohort or will they be ousted because they're not you're not a

4:53:48Dr. Rob Anderson so nobody would be ousted. Um I will say that the Monarch K8 elementary students will be relocating to three different schools. Um so some students Bell's Flatirons will be will will go to El Dorado. Um some schools will go to Fire students will go to Fireside. Um and other students will go to

4:54:11Rob Pricespeaker unconfirmed · check the video Superior.

4:54:12Dr. Rob Anderson South of 36. 36. And so, um, it it's because of this that that we've designed, uh, this priority choice enrollment in a way that empowers families to make a choice as opposed to saying if you don't live in the zone, I can't, you know, which of the three schools would we decide somebody goes to versus where would the family be empowered to use that priority enrollment to enroll? And so all of the students at Monarch K5 would have this priority choice. Open enrollment was the very first priority. Um and then they would have a decision to make.

4:54:48Dr. Rob Anderson Uh would they want to go back to their neighborhood school where they came from or would they want to be able to choose any of those schools or other schools within the district? You know, it's tricky because we wanted to create a system and we're very thoughtful about tried to be thoughtful about this priority choice enrollment preference which board members I know we've se re received a lot of feedback from a lot of people. I have not received one piece of feedback to say that's not a good idea that that this is actually you have to empower families to make choices in a new system.

4:55:18Dr. Rob Anderson So in that system they would have if they wanted to open enroll in fireside or in Superior or in um El Dorado uh what they would have to consider in that process is the available capacity in those in those buildings. Um but then they would be able to uh to to be able to use that choice to enter their preferences through open enrollment.

4:55:41Nicole Rajpal Thank you. I do just also want to comment maybe for the community to know that um as soon as we opened Monarch High School that there was some of the writing was on the wall about what was going to happen um because of the the opportunity for choice that also existed at the same time. So immediately when El Dorado opened, people chose to go elsewhere. And um even though we had the beautiful Monarch High School just down the street, um they weren't necessarily coming. They were going to Boulder through Marshall Mesa and that was closer for them in their perception. So it doesn't surprise me.

4:56:24Nicole Rajpal Um, and but it's really sad because it is a community that I've cared for and helped build for uh many years. And um I'm sorry that it came to a point where we had to make a really difficult decision about u what's going to happen to those schools. and we're giving up our PK through 8 or PK through 12 model which my daughter got to do everything but the K. Um so it was uh it was a tremendous experience and I'm sorry that that won't be in existence anymore. Anna and Lolia,

4:57:08Ana Temu Otting thank you. And Rob and Rob, you've answered this um throughout the the session and I just want to and or answered parts of um my question throughout the session. Um but I it is my understanding that the last time that we um redid boundaries for the schools um the Broomfield elementary schools were not a part of that redistricting. And so I want to know um what and if that was a consideration that was um brought up within leadership and what was the conversation around um what that redistricting would look like um and what are the plans with the Birch building um following uh the the closure?

4:57:59Rob Price Yeah, I'm happy to take this. Um great questions. There simply aren't enough students that live in Broomfield to change the attendance boundaries. And I think this chart here shows the issues that we're dealing with again when we're the board made it a priority that we can no longer have small schools. So when we look at how many kids live in Birch's attendance area, well below the two classes per grade level benchmark, that was a that's a minimum that we set. Uh when we look at um Kohl, well below, Aspen Creek barely above um and then uh Emerald um barely above that 300 mark. There's no kids to shuffle or to move around to create four uh sustainable two round schools. There's just not simply enough kids.

4:58:59Rob Price That's the challenge. We looked at it. We looked at attendance boundaries across this entire district. And this is what we continue to run into is if resident students are the foundation, we don't have enough resident students to support four schools in Broomfield. That that's the challenge. Yeah, definitely looked at them.

4:59:17Ana Temu Otting And I think what's hard for for the Broomfield community is understanding that we have two schools that are nearly at capacity, two other schools that aren't, but that we have a consistent um year-over-year amount of open enrollment students that come into the district. um that parents and families and community members feel like that should be in consideration because of how close we get to at capacity at Aspen and at Emerald. And then again, I know that Adams hasn't taken a vote, but the the educational landscape of that area within that area of Broomfield is proposed to change drastically. And so I I do want to know like what are the if the resilient proposal passes, what is the short-term plan for the Birch um school?

5:00:12Ana Temu Otting And then when we get if if we get to at capacity at the three elementary schools, what are the plans then?

5:00:21Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you. Thank you for that question. Um, we have been really clear that we have not designated any other uses for any school buildings that currently house students and we would not undertake those conversations until the board has taken action on the proposal. So, I cannot answer what will happen to the Birch School building. And and for those who say that we have a consistent amount of open enrolled students that fills up the school, that's not true. If that were the case, we would have two, three round schools at Burge, at Kohl, and we don't.

5:00:57Dr. Rob Anderson Um, we do have now open enrollment in Aspen Creek, but as Glenn had shared with you, that is a new that within the past four years, that is that was that's a kind of a new thing happening. If you to go back four years ago, folks were open and rolling out of Aspen Creek. And this is this and I think that this is the best example of the volatility of open enrollment when you're asking us to create sustainable long range planning that you cannot rely on open enrollment especially from a community that is also declining.

5:01:27Dr. Rob Anderson The num the pool of students that could open enroll into our district is declining from Adams 12 which is why Adams 12 is also going through the painstaking process of closing schools. So, um, for those who would say that that Birch and Kohl, neither of those schools are meet our 300 300, which is just two full rounds, not full 25 students per class, right? So, we have underfilled two round schools at Kohl. We have underfilled two round schools at Bir. And Birch's de neighborhood enrollment continues to decline. And we know and understand that the neighborhoods in Birch and Kohl can fit into the Colt building um uh moving forward. Again, uh to your point, what happens if we get this massive influx of resident students?

5:02:17Dr. Rob Anderson We don't have the information that would lead us to believe that there is something coming down the down the plan from the planning from the city of Broomfield. As as a reminder, board members, we talked to every municipality. We went and spoke directly to Boulder City Council, to Broomfield City Council, to Superior Town Council, to Louisville Town Council, right? We shared with them the data that we shared with you. We shared with them that we are no longer going to allow small schools. And at those meetings, all of those meetings which are public and recorded and our and our public is free to watch those meetings, there was no mention of comprehensive plan.

5:03:02Dr. Rob Anderson We actually think that um we're going to have a bunch of new students. You shouldn't do any of these things. As a matter of fact, the opposite was true. An acknowledgment of the lack of affordability. As a matter of fact, and and I think Rob, it was when you were in is it uh city city or town of Louisville?

5:03:23Rob Price City of Louisville.

5:03:24Dr. Rob Anderson Their quote is we caused this. This is our fault.

5:03:30Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video We

5:03:32Dr. Rob Anderson as I I'll let Rob tell the story. I wasn't there. Uh but but but because of the of the decisions that that council had made and and just just the the the the issue that we're dealing with. I'll let I'll let you I'll I'll let you share.

5:03:49Rob Price No. And that is correct. And since that time, the city of Louisville has adopted a new uh comp plan. And with that, it's just going to take time for that to build out. It doesn't, you know, it's not going to solve anything today. It's not going to solve anything 5 years from now. Our best hope is that we start seeing some solutions 10 years out, right? But it's not going to happen immediately. And I think we all have to understand that. Cities understand that, towns understand that. But it is a move in the right direction. But they also understand that we, you know, it's all of us collectively that have contributed to what we're seeing right now, high cost of living, etc.

5:04:26Rob Price Um, you know, when we talk about Flatirons, and I I hate to keep coming back to this, and we wonder why we have declining enrollment. Look at the houses around Flatirons. I mean, pull it up. It's they're $2 million plus homes. I mean, we got declining birth rates of one, but I mean, who can argue with high home prices and young families moving in and working two jobs and having kids? I mean, it's not sustainable for us. So, um, all of the I I don't want to make any of our municipalities look bad. That's not the intent. They're all good partners. They all have skin in the game, if that's the way to say it. They're all making the right moves.

5:05:06Rob Price It's just going to take time, right? We need affordable housing. It's affordable housing crisis that we're all faced with.

5:05:16Dr. Rob Andersonspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Yeah. And the infill sometimes is as Glenn showed infill is not going to solve it because our families continue to sh like live in a certain type of housing stock.

5:05:25Nicole Rajpal Um thank you for that. I it was Lalenia and then Jason and then Alex.

5:05:35Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I uh want to come back to this is not on today's slide presentation but this this will help us I'm sure. Um we've talked about decreasing excess capacity and in particular the um Boulder area doesn't decrease capacity as much as I would hope. Um, and I also, and I think it's just important to have that discussion that we have a slide that says we have 16 elementary schools and we have students for 10. And so I to me it's important that we just have this discussion very publicly about how we plan to get where we need to go because I I will just and I am only speaking for myself. This is not board voice. I want to see that decreased excess capacity taken.

5:06:36Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I mean I I want to see that decrease. I

5:06:43Dr. Rob Anderson I'll let Thank you Lillian for that question and because I don't think you're alone in asking that question. I think there's folks in the community have they've asked the question. Uh our proposal is for five years out. We have five-year projections. We created our proposal. We feel like in five years those projections hold. We return the resources to improve the student experience. Um I think that as you've seen through this closure consolidation right we don't have the the schools and students are coming aren't coming in neat buckets right you just can't do you know the the schools don't all the both two two schools in close proximity don't come to 50% and you merge them together then they fit uh you know so you have building capacity that's a limiting factor you have um you know some of the other things that our communities has has has has really prioritized around walkability and and those preferences that are a limiting factor.

5:07:38Dr. Rob Anderson Um and uh you have um a a significant amount of of proposed changes here for you all to consider. You know, if you were to compare the number of schools to the number of schools other schools in districts and see how much action we're taking versus how the action that other school districts have taken. I think in uh if you were if you were to look at that we're very much on par um with with other districts that have three times the schools we have closing maybe 11 and we're here at six. So I do think that it is something that um that the board is free to direct staff to continue to monitor.

5:08:18Dr. Rob Anderson I think we have we have taken your direction and have said in five we think this holds in five years out to 2030. Um and then we have to look and see how how enrollment patterns how neighborhood patterns are there any shifts in that data. Do we are some some neighborhoods declining faster? Are some neighborhoods growing faster? You know Glenn shared you with you his methodology. He shared with our community at large the methodology. That won't be a surprise for folks as we continue to measure and monitor this. And so, uh, the things that come into place where schools are located, residents, students, and projected enrollment. Uh, and we will continue to monitor those.

5:08:59Dr. Rob Anderson Board members, you will get an annual report every year on enrollment projections. Um, as as as we've done every year for the for the the nine years that I've been here. Um, and this can continue to be a conversation that we have. Um, and you'll see the budgets. I mean the the you know Bill talked about the budget but when you have declining enrollment and rising costs and the revenues that you get are decreased because the decline in students that don't match the cost of living and then you have an employee base 90% of our money is people in our budget uh trying to keep the money trying to keep up with the pressures of the cost of living um to be able to give folks adequate steps um and cost of living adjustments and the and your your your your dollars declined.

5:09:48Dr. Rob Anderson signing because you have less and less students. This will be an annual conversation in regards to where are we. I think it's a very significant move for a board and a school district to go through what we're going through and I wouldn't recommend this to be an annual conversation. I think that that's chaotic and unfair. I think that our projections are are based on on where we think things will be in five years, right? I think in four years, in 5 years, we could look at that and the board at that point in time um could take this and I do think that we have a roadmap for a process now that would validate what do folks want? Let's listen to folks.

5:10:26Dr. Rob Anderson Let's see where the capacity is and the next time maybe it's only maybe we've we've cleaned up um the um the the o open seats in Broomfield. Maybe Broomfield doesn't have to go through this again. Maybe Boulder does have to go through this again. Maybe maybe maybe Louisville and Superior in 5 years something different has changed. Uh so um I hope that answers your question. I think it's something that we have to measure. Um the that the and we have to continue to keep an eye on but we made this plan based on a five-year out projection. Um all the projections, all the data is out to five years, right?

5:11:03Dr. Rob Anderson And if you go beyond five years, as Glenn said, you're kind of flying in the dark. We don't understand what's going to happen with birth rates. At what point will birth rates take an uptick? Will that happen? Um, we understand um housing prices. We understand high interest rates. We understand folks in our community wanting to age in place because this is a beautiful place to live. And we also understand that the school district is absolutely doing its job with backto backto back years of the highest performance in the Denver metro area. No district in the metro is even close to the levels we're performing at. So, this is a desirable place for folks who would want to come and raise their families and raise their kids.

5:11:40Dr. Rob Anderson Uh, to Rob's point, and I hope my comment uh that I made in terms of the meeting that you were at was was not looked at, and I certainly understand um all of our municipalities are doing what they can, and not to suggest that Louisville or any municipality has done anything um wrong. I just think that there's this convergence of realities that are that are happening in our community uh that are making it very very complicated.

5:12:10Nicole Rajpal Helenia, then Jason, then Alex,

5:12:12Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I'm only slightly satisfied with that explanation. Um and I will continue to encourage reducing excess capacity. Um, I think it is in the best interest of our students and I feel that's my job is to look out for our students and I feel like there is too much excess capacity and several schools that are going to still be too small. So that being said, um I also would like to talk about um how I think that Okay, actually I'm going to take a minute to get my mind around it because I have a little bit of frustration. That's okay. Um let me take a minute, please.

5:13:09Nicole Rajpal Jason, then Alex.

5:13:13Jason Unger Um yeah. Uh I'm not sure who this question is for. It's maybe kind of a bigger picture question. Um you know, Alex, when this first was proposed a few weeks ago, Alex uh talked a lot about, you know, making this transition should something should this pass um you know, making this as easy as possible for kids and families and what can we do to make it um you know, as seamless as possible. And that really has stuck with me the way he described it. Uh and I know there's a lot of planning, you know, for every aspect of this and that's clear from uh today whether you agree with it or not.

5:13:47Jason Unger You can't argue that this has not been thought out well and there's not contingency in planning for every aspect of this. But I'd love to talk a little bit about kind of that point of like what what thought has been put into I'm sure a lot um into these kinds of transitions for kids, for families. Um, you know, I I think Alex, not to quote you, but talked about, you know, inviting families over and uh, you know, merging sachs and talking about um, and this some of this is obviously premature, but I just want to I think that's important because so much of this is um, you know, should this pass is it will be difficult for families and I think we've thought about so many things uh, except maybe we haven't talked enough about this and what this means for uh, kids and families and communities.

5:14:32Jason Unger And so I'd love to just spend a little time uh maybe as we're closing here on like how we've thought about this transition.

5:14:41Dr. Neil Anderson Yeah, great question board member. We've really spent a lot of time, as much time as possible to be as proactive around how does that baton pass? Um, why I say it that way is we know the baton between fifth grade and sixth grade and eighth grade and nth grade are some of the most important p transitions in a K12 students experience of learning community and you know seal component social emotional components. This probably surpasses all that in the spaces of where schools are uh closing and or consolidating. And so we've stood up a team that is really geared to support our school leaders, teachers, front office staff, and other educators along with school communities in a really thoughtful, proactive way.

5:15:40Dr. Neil Anderson Board member Medler talked about developing transition plans. And so we have um identified means that we can support the schools to be really proactive and thoughtful. What each one of them needs might be a little different based upon the community. And so we need to learn first from our community and our school leaders about the uniqueness of their schools. And so we've already started meeting with our principles because we want to get as proactive as possible knowing that the proposal is yet to be finalized and voted on. But we can't wait for some of these conversations to happen. So um just on Monday we brought in Dr. Cooney who is a professor at University of Northern Colorado.

5:16:23Dr. Neil Anderson He might be one of the only individuals that has done a study uh researchbased study that's been published around consolidation closure and what schools need to be thinking about um in this space. That was a really great discussion. Uh just happened yesterday actually because today is Tuesday. Um and that led our ability for our leaders to work in um collaboration between the schools that were going to be consolidating into another as well as leaders sitting and talking about where they're at with their schools. What are they thinking about if they are like similar schools? So the schools that have um that are going to be closed or consolidated in other school those principles.

5:17:10Dr. Neil Anderson So let's say Flatirons um uh Mesa so on so forth came together and sat and talked about what some of their ideas what are they feeling. So we built this collaboration um cohesion component with our leaders and then our next move is going to be thinking through a transition plan specifically for that area and ways that we can do things um out publicly. Well, we've talked about like we've talked about for open enrollment, meaning the showcase um having a special time for choice uh at our show, BVSD is the place to be specifically for them, but also what are the micro components and I think this is where you're getting at that we do internally within the schools to bring um PTO's together, to bring SAC members members together, to bring students together and that is going to be something that's built throughout the course of this year.

5:18:03Dr. Neil Anderson And we also have to remember that this is not just a this year thing. It's also going to be a next year when it actually comes to be and comes to fruition if it passes and you vote to approve the proposal. We also have to think about what this transition is going to be like and how we support the um actions from day one of the following year. Dr. Anderson, anything to add?

5:18:27Dr. Rob Anderson No, I I think that you've done a really good job just being mindful and as a reminder board, we have set aside resources um for things like if teachers need extra time and pre-planning and we've had some of these conversations with teacher advisory council and and cabinet meetings um if we need uh t you know time and dollars for these events to bring folks together. I do think that that we have to have a a final decision from from the board to be able to to to to start to do s significant planning.

5:19:01Dr. Rob Anderson Um and then we've really started to lay the groundwork, the leadership groundwork on if this if this is approved by the board, what is that going to take from our leaders coming together? And one of the ideas that um that that I think that we've shared and I'm not sure if we shared this on the 25th is is is utilizing, you know, some transitional specialists between schools uh that can that that really can help um help with some of this because you're going to have to support families, you're going to have to per support kids, you're going to have to support our educators as well. Uh so really really thoughtful and bringing folks together as one community.

5:19:35Dr. Rob Anderson And I would say that the approach we've taken um will make that a lot easier than had we taken the old approach where we pitted communities against each other. There was a winner and a loser and the loser had to um had to merge with the like like like we haven't done that in a way where folks are fighting with one another. So um I do think that that that will help us as we transition. Not that it'll be easy um but I do think that helps.

5:20:04Nicole Rajpal Alex and then Jorge.

5:20:04Alex Medler Yeah, I guess um as long as we're sort of doing the wrap-up issues, I there's a few things I think that I've heard in uh in the community that I'd like to address headon. Um let me just say that at at some level the public discourse like everything in America is sort of a jumps to conspiracy theater and an assumption of malevolence of somebody who disagrees with you. And I just I just believe that we have been transparent. We have been talking from the dis. We have been being briefed for three years. previous board was briefed for three more years. Um, and this the ELRACK met monthly, you know, for all their time in public. And so this has been all done up above board.

5:20:43Alex Medler And and I think some people are being maligned inappropriately. For like one thing, people are talking about the focus schools are being relocated as if they bid for their new location and they're taking this building because they wanted it. Um, question. Did any of our focus schools request their new building or lobby you to get a new building?

5:21:02Dr. Rob Andersonspeaker unconfirmed · check the video No.

5:21:03Alex Medler All right. Secondly, um when we look at uh delay and the fact that delay is perceived by some people as costless, um like do you have any estimate of how much staff time has gone into the last since the board said we're impatient with LROCK, let's make a bold change. Um like that is an opportunity cost of all the other priorities we have as a community and a board. And the idea that we would go through another year or two of that and just put all the other things that you guys have had to and gals have had to put into your life over the last 6 months and put it on a shelf and wait another year.

5:21:43Alex Medler Anybody got a take on how much what the cost of delay actually is? I I put it in, you know, two or three other priorities that we want to make change on. Whether it's implementing a strong uh uh anti-discrimination, anti- uh semitism policy, whether it's working with schools in middle schools and high schools, which aren't affected by this, on what they're doing for improvement, and Neil's staff are all sucked into this. Anybody want to estimate what the cost of delay might be?

5:22:16Dr. Rob Anderson Board member Medler, I would just encourage you to look at who's at this table and look who's in the audience and who's been here all day long to be able to answer your question and the community's question. That's one day of a 261day work calendar for most senior staff. Uh it is emotional. It is tiring. It is uh challenging and uh it is uh very very difficult to meet the other goals that our community and district have and continue to to to keep up the level of of effort and focus um on on on this topic.

5:22:56Dr. Rob Anderson Um I don't know that it would be sustainable uh to to to delay this uh and wi-i with the idea that you know board members you've asked us you've told us small schools right schools can't stand can't stay small. Uh if you look at the list we're addressing all the smallest schools in the district. So, uh, if you were to ask to delay and continue to to move forward, right, you're you're still, you know, the where people live is where they live. Where the schools are are where they are. Those those factors don't change. The projections are the projections, right? And I know that this is hard, right? But delaying it doesn't make it easier.

5:23:44Alex Medler Thank you. Another one I've heard regularly from the field is, and this one kind of wrankles me a bit to be honest, that like my questions about transition are taking in evidence that some decisions already been made or the fact that we hire consultants to help us engage the public means that we've already made our decisions. Um, I for one, I guess this is just a statement, believe that asking hard questions and planning for transitions when the board has said we're going to make these changes is the responsible thing to do, not the irresponsible or somehow conspiratorial thing to do. And so, I totally defend my questions and asks for us to plan as if we're closing schools because I think we will.

5:24:21Alex Medler And if we were to wait to have discussions about what the postclosure plannings are and somehow to prove that no decisions were made, we'd be doing performing malpractice to our community and our kids. And so I just I just uh want to give uh I want to push back on the concept that like all the research that you did, all the planning that you've done, all the work on, you know, transitions that we're prepping for so that when we when we do vote uh soon that that all the next work can happen. So I if you could speak to the importance of like doing our homework before so that we can plan to do work when we know we're going to have to do it.

5:25:02Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you, board member Medler. I I do appreciate uh those comments and this question. Uh it is um I I do think that you know um to do something well, you always have to not only look in front of you, but you have your eyes on the horizon on what's coming and what you need to do to be ready. Uh, and so to the extent that there have been efforts to think about what this looks like on the other side, if the board bo the board would vote yes, I would be a bad superintendent. Um, and I would be failing our organization and our community and our families if I wasn't doing some of that.

5:25:45Dr. Rob Anderson Uh, because there's time is a limiting factor and taking enough time to deliberate and engage. Um, I think we've we've thought through all of this for uh since last October, since you charged the the the staff with doing this. I also want to be empathetic to our families who are um who love their schools, who love their teachers, whose kids are happy. I'm a parent and uh um I understand what that means when your kids are doing well and if if there's change that there's even a slight chance that that um that changes. And uh you know, we had a always a saying in in in my house, you know, we're always as happy as our least happy kid.

5:26:31Dr. Rob Anderson And um I think that holds true to families who care about and love their kids. And uh I know that there's been lots of community feedback on our plans, questions, um concerns, and I actually think that that's right. I think that that a smart, educated, responsible community should do that. And I also understand everybody loves their kids and would do about anything they could in their power to protect their kids because that's what I would do as a dad, too. So, um I understand I don't take personally um the questioning the the the the pushing back. I think that that is is actually okay. It is my job as superintendent.

5:27:15Dr. Rob Anderson It is our job as staff to come back and answer the questions which I believe we've done today uh to valid to to to share with folks. Here are the numbers, here are the sources, here's where some of that maybe there is a disconnect. Um, I do know this that that um that families love their teachers. We love their teachers. They love their schools. We love their schools. And it'll be my job and the job of everybody at this table and everybody down this row over here to make sure that we if this plan is approved that we take care of all of our families and all of our kids just like we're doing right now.

5:27:57Alex Medler One last piece, one last point on this. I just I I couldn't agree more. Um I've worked in policy for uh close to 37 years and early learned that whenever I felt the strongest that I was absolutely right and the other people were absolutely wrong that that was absolutely an indication that I was wrong about both. Um and so I I am grateful for the input that we've got during the engagement process when about 800 people gave us 7,000 pieces of data. And I am grateful for the 600 plus emails that I have received and the 200 people that testified.

5:28:28Alex Medler And I still remain like many of us on the board committed to doing what's right for kids and right sizing it so that we can be focused on kids. But I really believe that the things that we have been talking about over the last few weeks and that we'll continue to talk about as a community, they raise challenges for us in implementation. They raise challenges us for the final decision- making and how how we shape it and that we can do that as a board in a way that is very kid focused and that can honor all the fantastic observations and points that our community have made in those uh you know 1600 hours of input we've got. So, I I'm grateful for it, too.

5:29:07Alex Medler And I and I recognize my original assumptions are challenged regularly by that. And I've learned a lot from the input myself that I've received. And I really appreciate the your team's uh ability to like dive in with us deeply into those questions uh today and before. So, I really appreciate that.

5:29:26Nicole Rajpal Jorge then Melania,

5:29:29Jorge Chávez thank you. I want to start by thanking um all the parents who came to raise questions and share their thoughts. at our last meeting. Um the ones who are here today, um I think it's, you know, they're doing their job. They're advocating for their kids. They're advocating for their teachers, their community. They're raising important questions um that we need to answer. Um that's our role. And so I want to thank the staff for being here today and for systematically going through and addressing all those questions and being transparent and trying to share information, as much information as possible. Um so I think it's really important.

5:29:59Jorge Chávez I don't know when this video will be available, but I hope that will be soon and that will be publicly shared because I think a lot of questions were answered today. So, I really appreciate that. Um, a couple uh random, not random, but multi-topic questions. Um, I I want to reinforce uh the point of the transition to the degree possible. Um to Alex's earlier point, you know, if we could allow students to return to their their neighborhood school and facilitate as much as possible, then that should be a part of the process for these students um to facilitate that. It won't be easy, right? Any change, but to the degree that we can, I I think that's really important.

5:30:36Jorge Chávez Um our estimates show savings of three and a half to$4 million that will be reinvested in students. This is a really student- centered program or change across the district. I think that's really important. But I seem to recall there was also an additional million in savings from administration um changes, central administration changes from last May or June that I think weren't addressed here. I'd like to hear more about that and how that fits in this big picture. Um but before that, I I also want to say um this is really a district-wide student centered program.

5:31:10Jorge Chávez since I joined the board and before that on the district accountability committee um you know going back eight years now uh we were discussing about the problem of declining enrollment and what it meant for the quality of our ability to serve our students right and so I was hearing from parents who were concerned about resources for special education access to advanced and gifted programming um the ability to have specials a librarian in your school because books matter so much in the lives of our kids um and that we weren't able to do that for many schools or that there's increased mental health needs for our students at at the elementary level.

5:31:40Jorge Chávez We don't have counselors in our schools or school psychologists and that as our schools get smaller, we can't serve those things. And this plan proposes to reinvest those and make those more equitable and more accessible across the school. At the core of why I'm here is our strategic plan, right? We look great. We're doing great. We can do better. We're missing kids. We need to have the ability to differentiate to serve our kids across our school and to make that equitable so it's doesn't matter where you go to school that you're able to get those resources. So, I really appreciate that focus on this plan. It's it's a difficult change. It's a necessary change.

5:32:11Jorge Chávez At times, I'm thinking, are we doing enough in terms of that change, but this is a measured response and I think we're going in the right direction. And so, I appreciate the the opportunity today to kind of go through these data and really understand kind of what our decision-m processes look like and where the information is coming from. Thank you.

5:32:32Dr. Rob Anderson Thank you, board member Chavez. I appreciate that perspective. I would say that the million dollars you're referencing is a million dollars that I allocated at the end of the budget process last year um through reductions, central office reductions to ensure that this year and moving forward we had have those resources to ensure that students weren't in multi-age classes in programs that aren't designed to be multi-age. Uh and so those but you know through through this plan as as the other Dr. Anderson shared, maybe I'll be the other Dr. Anderson, Dr. Neil Anderson shared um that that this plan eliminates the need for those additional resources.

5:33:10Dr. Rob Anderson So that that pool of three and a half to$4 million is a pool of four and a half to$5 million recurring. And that's important because uh as as as Bill has shared, that is something that when you invest, it's not a one-year fix. It's it's dollars that we can reinvest year in and year out. And the dollars are flexible to make sure that we're doing as much as we can to lower the overall class size average, eliminate some of the the class sizes that were on the higher end, um, and reduce that range from low to high to ensure that we're getting a more unified and better experience.

5:33:49Dr. Rob Anderson board members, you know that during the course of the of the first month of school and the and the summer leading up, the most feedback that we'll get from our community is typically from elementary school parents worrying about class size. Parents start worrying about class size for the next year in January of the previous year and start advocacy efforts that are well known in our community. Start emailing folks because we need to be able to try to get this, you know, we're two students away, we're three students away. those are that's that's that's an effect of small schools um and lacks lack of ongoing resources to be able to address those things.

5:34:25Dr. Rob Anderson So um I'll say that that that those dollars are recurring and those dollars will be repurposed for what it is our community very clearly told us that they've prioritized. Elenia and given our last conversation, we'll make sure that's transparent that we're doing that, right? And and Alex brought that up and I think that's super important.

5:34:50Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I've had several people say, well, you can say you're going to do that and not do it. And I said to them, I'm going to say, Rob, you're going to do it and you're going to go, yeah, I am right. That that's our job as a board. Um I didn't mean just me. I meant as a board, sir. Um, I think there's another cost to waiting that um is additional to what Alex brought up and that is a cost to students who are not getting their needs met because the resources aren't at their school. And these are people that I've heard from year in year out before this.

5:35:29Lalenia Quinlan Aweida um my kid cannot take advanced math because we don't have advanced math because we don't have three rounds or my kid needs more literacy intervention but the literacy interventionist is only there two days a week. So those there is an opportunity cost or a cost to our students to do nothing. And while I'll echo Jorge, and Jorge was echoing me, that I wish the cuts were deeper, I'm not going to say that they're not doing what they're intended to do. Um, because I've heard from a lot of parents who their kid is doing wonderful, and I am so happy to hear from them. I will continue to talk to any parents who want to speak with me.

5:36:17Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I I love when kids are doing wonderful, when they're operating at grade level on the middle of the bell curve, but my job is that when that child has a need at either end of the bell curve or they have a tragedy in their life and they need counseling support in their school, whatever it may be, my job is to make sure that resource is there. So, while I will continue to say to every parent, I'm glad your kid's doing well. My job is the moment your kid's not doing well, the resource better darn well be there in their elementary school. So, I I'm signaling my support for this. Um, I'm very clear on it.

5:37:00Lalenia Quinlan Aweida I'll continue to talk to anybody who wants to talk about it up until the vote, but I am signaling strongly my support because that is my job to make sure those resources are there.

5:37:18Nicole Rajpal Anna, thank you.

5:37:22Ana Temu Otting I uh do want to thank um everyone here for the time that you've taken to answer all of the questions that uh we've had. Um, I recently had a conversation with a friend uh who lives in a neighboring school district and uh their children are just about to enter uh into kindergarten and they did research over five different schools of which one was going to be the best for their their kiddos. And um they asked me, "Well, well, how many schools did you look into? Did you research?"

5:37:56Ana Temu Otting And it was a very uh very big moment of pride for me to say, well, I live within BVSD and I want to make sure that we are able to continue that promise of ensuring that the the quality of education um within our school district is there. And as a BVSD alumni, I um there is a a very big group of students and of community members that are not here. Uh we have a very huge privilege of being able to be civically engaged and advocate and ask the questions and want to have the amount of detail and specificity of really understanding and knowing what a budget what um classroom capacities is like.

5:38:46Ana Temu Otting And I as a first generation citizen having immigrant parents, I know what I remember the moment where my mom could no longer relate to my own educational experience because it wasn't something she went through. And I know that as a first generation citizen, we have that responsibility to all of the kids that are immigrants in our district that are first generation, second generation that don't have someone that has been through a K through 12, has gone through to higher ed. We have that responsibility to make sure that we give them those resources within this district because for a lot of the uh a lot of those kids, they're they're fleeing.

5:39:32Ana Temu Otting They're going out of traumatic places and we have that responsibility as a district because this is where they call home and they are our neighbors. They are our students. Um and so to me I am taking that that responsibility um very heavily and I know that the next step in this is looking at dual language and I want to make sure that we are as intentional as thoughtful and as engaged when we are talking about this other um subset of programs that we have within our district um because I do want a dual language to come to Broomfield.

5:40:07Ana Temu Otting We do have a changing landscape uh in that area of our district and I want to make sure that we are being as thoughtful and as engaging and also as considerate as we can for the folks that aren't here that can't speak for themselves that don't know how to maneuver how to email the whole board all at once. Um so I am very grateful for everyone all the answers that you gave the questions that you took today. Um, and I am just still really thinking through and grounding myself in who I was as a BVSD student. Um, again to immigrant parents, as a first generation citizen that in high school I had to navigate on my own applying to colleges. Um, looking for scholarships.

5:40:54Ana Temu Otting um really a lot of all of the other programs that that students have to navigate through that a lot of our students uh our immigrant students, our dual language students sometimes have to do it on their own. And I want to make sure that we as BVSD are able to grow those resources um so that a lot of the maybe negative or not best experiences that I had as a BVSD alumni, we're not passing that on to the next generation. And so I I'm just grateful that we are being as intentional here. Um because the end goal is for me to, you know, later on see another Anna that graduated BVSSD and then goes and sits on the board.

5:41:36Ana Temu Otting Like that is my goal, my dream of making sure that we are passing along an excellent education uh to our students and to our community members.

5:41:51Nicole Rajpal Thanks board members. One awkward thing sometimes about getting to ask my questions last is that it seems kind of tonedeaf because you were all giving your closing remarks. And I have actually a practical question that is short and I apologize for that. Um but sometimes this is how it shakes out. So, on your slide, you did reference a 15-minute neighborhood. And this has come up a lot, and I've asked different Boulder City Council members what they think a 15-minute neighborhood is, and it turns out that they don't all agree. Some think it re it is walking, and some think it might include bikes, and some think it includes vehicles. And so, I'm curious when you um what is a 15-minute neighborhood to you?

5:42:34Nicole Rajpal Because you say we do meet that.

5:42:39Rob Price All of the above. Yeah. Yes, but I mean that's the way we understood when we read their comp plan that

5:42:47Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video a school within 15 minutes.

5:42:49Rob Price So yes, we feel like we have provided that.

5:42:53Nicole Rajpal Thank you. Because we can get to our places 15 minutes on a bus if we need to. It doesn't doesn't mean we have to be able to walk somewhere because you can't really walk an elementary schooler cannot walk a mile and a half in 15 minutes as it stands. And that is our walk radius. Thank you for clarifying that. Um, thank you staff for answering these questions. Thank you board members for bringing really thoughtful questions forward. Um, and to DA allowing the delay in process or our our schedule of regular board meetings to help this happen be you no I see you.

5:43:27Dr. Rob Anderson Are you sure the I want to make sure that we are on the same page on the resolution before we do anything else. So, I want to make sure we've addressed the board member Medler's remarks from earlier.

5:43:40Alex Medler Sorry about that. I felt like closing remarks. Yeah, I don't know what the right time is to do it, but I would propose to add to the resolution language that Jorge just reiterated for me, which is facilitating the right of return for families who've been enrolled in one of our focus choice schools through this process when the focus choice school moves that they don't have to open enroll, but that if they let us know during the open enrollment period that they be reenrolled in their neighborhood school uh as a a right rather than a part of the open enrollment process.

Right of return amendment, closing comments and adjournment

5:44:11Alex Medler us and I'd like to see that incorporated into the resolution and I'm curious to know what the rest of my board members uh feel about that. Uh I think it's the right thing to do and it will help us fight declining enrollment and I don't know whether to you know pursue that discussion now or make a formal motion on the 22nd.

5:44:31Nicole Rajpal So, I'm going to jump in here because I know we've had this conversation several times, particularly most and most recently when we updated board policy JCC and JCC-R. I really do struggle with this proposal because it kind of gets into the nuance um and my challenge with using guarantee when we talk about guaranteeing open enrollment spots and we guarantee opening having sack spots and we guarantee having preschool spots in which I mean we can never guarantee those things and and because I recall what it was like to have students in elementary school when all the vast majority of our schools were at capacity and open enrolling and guaranteeing out and guaranteeing them a spot to return whenever they wanted would have pushed classrooms over thresholds and would have created conditions in which we couldn't try to we couldn't always do what we're trying to accomplish now which is having manageable class sizes and not going over in rounds.

5:45:30Nicole Rajpal And so I do struggle a little bit and um with that idea and I know what you're what you really want, Alex, is for that to be a permanent solution, not part of a one-time resolution. And so I also would question the utility of putting it in a one-time resolution versus making a change to a policy because this policy, the resolution does not change any of the policy language included with it. It is just addressing the changes for next year alone. And so I think you're trying to accomplish two different things because I know you've asked before for this to be a permanent change. The resolution is between now and next year. It is a one-year only. It is not a permanent maneuver.

5:46:13Nicole Rajpal So those are my two comments on that and then I'll entertain. I saw Lenius Hankup and other members of the board.

5:46:22Lalenia Quinlan Aweida Uh, I would be in favor of doing it the one year only and then bringing it forward to the board for discussion if we're going to do a policy change. I understand your point of doing it in this particular case. Um, and I would never want to just say, okay, we're going to change the policy without having the standard debate that we would need to have.

5:46:48Nicole Rajpal Alex.

5:46:49Alex Medler Yeah, I really appreciate that point and I appreciate the previous deliberations the board, this board and the previous one have had on this topic. I will add that in this circumstance, we're talking about choice schools that are moving and so people enrolled in a school that was one place uh and now one of them is actually moving pretty far. And so um and it's not very many students that we're affecting and I'm not suggesting that they have a right that someone else doesn't have. If you move into our neighborhood in July, you get to go there in August. If you move in, if you return from private education after open enrollment period and say, "I'm here now.

5:47:22Alex Medler I live in this neighborhood and you show up, you have a right to go there." I'm suggesting that the parents who've enrolled in a private school that's now being relocated 6 miles away from where it was when they chose it should have the same right as someone who just moved in from California to go to their neighborhood school and should have the same right as someone who was enrolled in a private school. So, the idea that we're giving an enrollment preference to people who are homeschooling and private schooling over people who live in that neighborhood and who've been enrolled in a BVSD school, that's that's upside down for me. And and I feel strongly that we're trying to we're trying to reduce people leaving the system.

5:47:57Alex Medler So, the fact that they would have to give notice actually, you know, 5 months earlier than the people who move in or those that return from private education is also worth taking into consideration. So, it's not a special privilege. It's actually a delayed access to something that other people we privilege ahead of them. And by doing that, we reduce the number of people who feel compelled to leave our district. Um, they've already exercised choice because they didn't want to be somewhere. And we have a lot of people with the ability to, you know, to leave. So, I I think this is a great time to do it. It's different than normal.

5:48:31Alex Medler I love the opportunity to discuss it as a broader policy change because I just think it's the right thing to do for kids in our community. But um I don't apologize for bringing it up through this vehicle because I feel like the the relocation of those focus schools makes it even more compelling to me that we should do it at least in this case.

5:48:49Nicole Rajpal So are you saying that it would only apply to students that are currently enrolled in Community Montessori in high peaks because that's very different than saying like any student that open enrolled to a different school and now wants to go back. Let's say I open enrolled into Uni Hill and I have questions about what's going to happen and so now I want to go back to Foothill or go back to somewhere else where there might already be at capacity challenges like that's my wondering like who who does this apply to

5:49:19Alex Medler so thank you that's let me clarify I do believe in this case it is basically the people who have open enrolled in a Community Montessori in high peaks um the people who have are enrolled in our other affected schools are being assigned to their catchment zone and have an enrollment right to enroll in the place we're assigning them. No one who's being assigned to a catchment zone has to go through open enrollment to go to that school uh a year from now. The ones who've been o that are being relocated because they've chosen a focus school that was in a location and location is a big part of why I chose Community Montessori when I sent my kids there.

5:49:53Alex Medler The they uh deserve to have the same right as anybody who is at Douglas that wants to go to the school that they're assigned to. Right? So they're assigned to a school but they don't have a right to go to it because they made a choice and they made a choice of something that we offered them somewhere else. So yeah, Community Montessori high peaks parents who would like to return to their school of residents who notify us within the open enrollment period. I say we enroll them and treat them like somebody who moved into that neighborhood uh before the open enrollment period.

5:50:24Nicole Rajpal Can we put the resolution language on there because I want to um this gets to the be it further resolved implementation of JCCR the second bullet under there

5:50:43Dr. Rob Anderson as you're pulling that up board members and thinking about preparing for next week I think um you know the question that I think we have to answer if this is something that the board would would want to take action on. We can bring two resolutions. The resolution resolution as it stands with the adjustments here and then a res resolution that adds this language. Uh the question just to clarify, are we talking that these students would have to notify us prior to the open enrollment window closing?

5:51:17Dr. Rob Anderson If you were to do that, then what you would do is it would clarify you would um you would allow us to know and understand more accurately what seats are open and open enrollment and then we would not like take those opportunities away from other folks holding it back because we didn't know. Um and so and so that would be like above your priority preference. It wouldn't necessarily be part of of open enrollment. It would be, listen, if you tell us by this date you want to go back to your neighborhood school, we're going to treat you like a resident student. And uh and we could write language that that would that would would allow that to happen. Um we could communicate to those families directly.

5:52:01Dr. Rob Anderson I'm looking at the team um to say this is your option or your choice by this close of business, this date. You need to let us know um if that's what you're going to be doing. and then those families would make that choice. But what they wouldn't be able to do is try to go into uh use their priority enrollment preference and open enrollment uh and then if they didn't get what they want say I want to go back to my neighborhood school. It would it would it would have to be prior to that. I mean I'm I'm just thinking out loud as is making sure I'm hearing what it is you're asking.

5:52:36Nicole Rajpal But wouldn't then we give that right to guarantee before open enrollment to any

5:52:46Dr. Rob Anderson So they're already going to have the opportunity. They're already everybody who's impacted community Montessori um families, high peaks families are going to have this priority choice preference. They're already going to have that, right? What I'm hearing board member Medler say is if they want to go back to their neighborhood school, right, then we should treat them like anybody who would come from some other choice besides BVSD, home school, private school, online school, whatever, where we give them that opportunity. The trick is is if you give them the opportunity and the preference, right, they don't have to use their preference on their home school. They would use the preference on something and then if it was filled then they could use the home school.

5:53:26Dr. Rob Anderson So, so I'm just trying to understand if it's to get back to your neighborhood school, I think you would do that prior to the process, which makes the most sense to me, but then when you do that, you give up your priority choice open enrollment.

5:53:41Alex Medler Yeah, you'd wave that. I I agree that the way you characterized it. And just let me be clear, if you're in any of other our other affected schools, you are guaranteed enrollment in the place where you're assigned. The only people who are not guaranteed enrollment uh in the place where they are assigned by residents are the people uh who chose Community Montessori and high peaks. So this is giving them the same right of everybody else to attend the school that they're assigned to after we've made all these changes.

5:54:21Nicole Rajpal Yes. and it puts them above the priority for anybody else that's been disrupted in this process and that's like the the lottery. So, can you um can you draft language that the staff could then incorporate like what because we cannot if you have pro per if you have if we follow Dr. Anderson's plan of bringing forth two resolutions and this is just a cumbersome exercise on like we have to approve one or not but we might have to vote on two. Um I would need language that we can understand today to be able to bring that forward on a day where we are f acting as final decision makers. I don't want to deliberate over words on a day where we have to make final action.

5:55:09Nicole Rajpal So, can you put forth a pro um proposed language to accomplish what you are um trying to accomplish

5:55:18Alex Medler uh right now? You want me to?

5:55:20Nicole Rajpal I do want that right now.

5:55:21Alex Medler Give me two minutes. adding the new one that's no longer the final clause. All right. If I may, um, what I'm proposing is a motion that says that students enrolled in High Peaks or Community Montessori, uh, sorry, families of students enrolled in High Peaks or Community Montessori that prefer to enroll in their assigned neighborhood school rather than attend their focus school in its new location and who notify the district of that decision prior to the open enrollment. uh end deadline or we can insert the date will be enrolled directly in their assigned neighborhood school according to their residents. These families will not have the priority preference to apply to another school through the open enrollment process afterwards for the for the year the 202728 school year.

5:57:24Nicole Rajpal Do we know is that possible for us to manage in school mint? Like does can school mint wave for flag anybody that has said they wanted to wave their right and then decided to try to open a role again? Like does the system allow for that to happen?

5:57:47Dr. Rob Anderson Check on that specifically. Um but I believe there It would be helpful if there was a little space in between the notification and the end. Um, December 10th, whatever something um that that would give us the opportunity to identify.

5:58:12Alex Medler Oh, microphone. I take as a friendly amendment any prior deadline before that that uh would give us enough time to implement the open enrollment system and code these families appropriately. Again, for my colleagues on the board, this is not a large number of families that we're talking about that I anticipate. Um I don't know how many from high peaks, but for community monosuri, I don't think it'll be that many. But uh I I I think it it probably wouldn't be that administratively burdensome if we have a few days to figure out how to code people.

5:58:41Alex Medler We've we code them for lots of other things previously like everybody who came from a charter school with a legacy admission got coded separately as coming from there and had separate enrollment preferences applied. So I'm assuming our system is robust to this kind of change.

5:59:02Nicole Rajpal Alec, I will leave it to staff to double check like making making sure that any proposed language is accomplishable and um sort of like between the last proposal and today that like you're double-checking to make sure you can accomplish it and that we're not putting something forth that we can not manage effectively or that creates undue I mean challenges to what the team has laid out or the system itself.

5:59:34Alex Medler I would like to see the resolution brought forward. I think everything we're talking about creates undue burden on tons of people. So, I wouldn't apply a different standard to this proposal.

5:59:51Dr. Rob Anderson I'm just checking with our team. Do we have the the proposed language that board member Medler shared? Okay. If we can get that, then we'll verify that we can make sure that that happens. We'll confer with staff on what the date would be um in terms of when folks would have to make that decision decision prior to open enrollment. So then we could code those folks as resident as you know resident students and then um and then move forward. Then board members will have two proposals for you to ready for your um deliberation and um and and vote on the 22nd.

6:00:31Lalenia Quinlan Aweida Rob Price, just you added the semicolon and comma. You just got to make sure you delete it from the one above it.

6:00:36Nicole Rajpal Thank you, Lolia.

6:00:40Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video Slightly confused about if we have two proposals coming forward. Um, so then one would have this resolution, the other wouldn't.

6:00:50Nicole Rajpalspeaker unconfirmed · check the video One would have that bullet. Okay.

6:00:53Unidentified speakerspeaker unconfirmed · check the video The whereas or it's a bullet here. Sorry, I can't.

6:00:56Nicole Rajpal And one wouldn't. It's kind of like Lalenia when we voted on attendance boundary changes and there were there was a motion put forward for one then there was a vote that first one happened at that time to not pass. Then we moved on to approve the motion for the second one. That one passed. Inverse could happen here, but you have to kind of go through whoever makes the motion on the first one. There's discussion on the first one that gets voted on. If it does not pass, then you go on to the second one. So, it's just like a operational thing for for Does that make sense? Yeah. Any other discussions board members? Deann,

6:01:43Deann Bucher as a final comment, I just want to say that um that uh I wasn't part of the the board decision that said we're going to move focused schools outside of the central Boulder. Um that was something a decision you made before. Um, and I take issue with the fact that we are taking people out of a school and putting a focused school in. Um, I don't think that that is the focus of what BVSD is. I don't think core knowledge should be the focus of what BVSD is. And I think that decision will be damaging to the students at um Douglas who are going to get the message that those kids are more important than you.

6:02:33Deann Bucher And so I take it I take um I take that as uh my truth. And um Alex and I had a funny discussion on the phone the other day where we were we were trying to argue about whose district was impacted the most. Not that it mattered at all, but um my district was and the borderlands between Boulder and Louisville um impacted pretty hard and uh the students are going to have to adjust and I'll be looking forward to what kind of um what kind of help we can provide in order to maintain the communities that are more important than the school. itself. So I I hope that we can identify ways to keep the communities together even if the schools are um split.

6:03:29Deann Bucher So that's all.

6:03:40Nicole Rajpal Well, board members, it is approaching 3:00, the end of the school day for some of our elementary school students. Looks like we have no way to pick up. I know. Um, thank you team. Thank you board members. I look forward to seeing you all in a week. With that, today's meeting is adjourned.