The Falcon School District 49 Board of Education met in October. Treasurer Kevin Butcher was absent with prior notice. Athena Espiritu from the Pikes Peak Early College and MyAvion Walker from Falcon High School were also present as members of the student board of representatives.Before the regular meeting, the BOE held a ìFantastic 49î event and recognized Kristen Billingsley and Bryan Mickelson, teacher mentors from Evans International Elementary School, and their fifth-grade students for their International Baccalaureate exhibition project, which focused on poverty. The students partnered with ìWe Help Two,î a fundraising organization, to help provide a new prosthetic limb for a boy in Kenya.The board also recognized Tammy Kosley, secretary at Skyview Middle School, who was praised by a parent in the district for her excellent service with students and parents.The BOE also recognized Cyndi Little, D 49 statewide assistive technology, augmentative and alternative communication team coordinator, for her dedication and hard work with families and students to ensure they have accessibility to education. Little recently developed a way to modify reading books to help students improve their primary literacy skills.Board updateTammy Harold, secretary, attended the ground-breaking ceremony for the new wing at Rocky Mountain Classical Academy. She said this meeting is her last because she is term-limited. ìWe have started a lot of processes and innovations,î she said. ìI ask that we as a district take time to focus on them and do what we are already doing well to continue on this path to excellence.îDave Cruson, director, thanked the districtís gifted and talented program for the work they do and the way they ìlift upî the students.Marie LaVere-Wright, president, attended the 20th celebration of Sand Creek High School.Chief officer updatePeter Hilts, chief education officer, was involved in a site visit in another stateís education system, and the representative there praised Brett Ridgway, chief business officer, and his team.Hilts said the Colorado State Board of Education has changed its accreditation reporting methods, which could negatively impact schools if parents opt their students out of standardized testing.Ridgway presented at the Association of School Business Officials International conference in Denver.Open forumChristianna Fogler, headmaster at RMCA, asked the board not to approve the accreditation of schools policy because the ratings are not an accurate portrayal of the school and other iConnect zone schools.Don Knapp, executive director of the Pikes Peak School for Expeditionary Learning, and Frank Fowler, principal at Imagine Classical Academy, also asked the board to vote against the accreditation policy.Action itemsThe board unanimously approved
- The use of video and audio monitoring; bus scheduling and routing; video cameras on school district property; and school transportation vehicles
- Revision of job descriptions for kidsí corner staff; associate principal at Bennett Ranch Elementary; project manager for the Department of Defense Education Activity grants
- Updates to policies: concurrent enrollment; accreditation; and prioritization of facility improvements
- Extension of the charter school renewal date to Feb. 8, 2018, from Feb. 1, 2018, so the BOE could vote on the renewals at their regular board meeting
The board unanimously voted to accredit each school based on the state accreditation model, but left off the in-district designations, which the D 49 administration will work on and bring back to a subsequent meeting. The board is required to accredit all district schools by Oct. 15 each year or be out of compliance with its accreditation contractual obligation with the state BOE.
Discussion itemsLou Fletcher, director of culture and services, said the United States Department of Justice is still evaluating the districtís request for termination of its October 2014 agreement with the DOJ. The agreement requires the district to report monthly, semi-annually and annually to the DOJ regarding incidents of harassment and discrimination to ensure they are appropriately addressed. Fletcher said the district will continue its efforts until the DOJ releases them from the agreement.LaVere-Wright said the only thing that will change when the agreement is terminated is that the district will no longer have to send student information to the DOJ.David Rex, district accountability advisory committee chairman, provided the committeeís annual report, and said the committee is trying to ensure that all mill levy override 3B project requests are turned in by January for the board to review.Matt Wilhelm, project manager with Wember Inc., provided an update on MLO 3b projects, including the following: masonry is going up at Bennett Ranch Elementary; work has begun on the addition at Sand Creek High School; the Falcon High School groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled; and bids for construction at Vista Ridge High School have come in under budget. Work should begin by late October.Sean Dorsey, Sand Creek zone leader, provided a performance update for his zone and said primary literacy at the elementary schools is about the same as the districtís average. Horizon Middle School has updated its status from an ìimprovementî rating to a ìperformanceî rating, he said. ìWe had some pretty stunning growth across the board,î Dorsey said.The new leadership organization at SCHS is going well, and the day-to-day operations are running nicely, Dorsey said.Ron Sprinz, finance group manager, said the district has the preliminary numbers for enrollment across the district, which gives his department a snapshot of where each zone is, capacity-wise, regarding the budget and enrollment relationship. ìSo far, we have underspent by $1.7 million in our budget,î he said.Ridgway updated the board about a situation resulting from the El Paso Countyís addition of nine new voting precincts throughout the county. In 2015, D 49 switched to a director district model, which requires that each BOE director live within the director district they plan to represent. Voters can only vote for candidates within their district of representation. The new voting precincts need to have the director districts appropriately defined, he said.There are four proposals for how to define the new precincts, and the BOE needs to vote on something at the next regular meeting, Ridgway said.LaVere-Wright said the board needs to consider if the districts line up with population projections to provide consistency for each director districtís representation. She suggested sending out information to the D 49 community to get their feedback, possibly through a survey ó the other directors agreed.The next regular meeting of the BOE is Nov. 9 at 6:30 p.m. in the board room at the D 49 Education Services Center.
