Welcome to the Jordan School District Board of Education study session. Today is Tuesday, September 23rd and we are we have all board members present as well as Dr. Anthony Godfrey, Dr. Mike Anderson, and Mr. John Larson, and our board attorney, Paul Vanman. Right, let's jump right in. Thank you for joining us, by the way. Uh let's jump right into our agenda today with a discussion on America 250 activities. It's an exciting um anniversary for our country. So, Dr. Godfrey. >> All right, let's have K Rudo and Carolyn Goff join us at the microphones. It's a uh an important time in our country, 250 years. I will acknowledge that I have clear memories of 200 years of America. Erin, stop looking at me like that. I do too. [Laughter] >> I did too. >> Yeah, absolutely. There's a picture of me saluting and I bought a few things on eBay from 50 years ago just to remember the bicesentennial. But Kay is going to tell us what 250 years is called. And she's going to tell us about the I just threw that out there. Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. Mike Anderson's going to tell us in just a moment. He's going to look it up. What's 250 years? >> Bicees Centennial. You heard it here first. And um it's really, I think, an important moment for us to give some really memorable instruction and some activities that will stick with kids the way mine stick with me. So we have the perfect person to do that and that is K Rudo who has been working with a lot of great people. Um when she gets together with all of her great people, she does things like create curriculum for the entire state of Utah and social studies and advance the study of uh America and its government and the world at large and all kinds of great things. And we are excited to have her talents and the talents of the people she works with dedicated to creating these great interactive experiences for students so they will uh have great memories of this time. So >> it's a perfect >> talk to us about what we're doing. >> It's a perfect time to talk about it with September being American Founders and Constitution Month. And it is um something that I'm very passionate about. I don't remember the 1976 thing, but I remember 1987 when we had the bicesentennial of the Constitution, memorizing the preamble in school. But this is the kind of thing that we want our students to think back on and to remember those great events. So, um, it ties very closely with our portrait of a graduate and our strategic plan. And, um, these are just the three pillars that I feel like it it fits with. and then the engaged citizens. Um, so during this time, this whole school year up until next July, it's the time to honor and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So, we can do lots of things as a district to commemorate this um, great event. So, we could I have a list here of lots of different things that we could do with some links on some of them. Um they could be things done in the communities, they could be done in the schools, um all sorts of different things. So for example, schools or if the district could hold writing contests, we could have art contests. Um we could have patriotic concerts or performances. We have so many great uh music programs and performing arts programs in our high schools. They could choose to do one of their performances uh honoring America 250. Um, we are currently having a book club for faculty and staff, which I'll talk about in a minute, but this is if communities want to do book clubs with lots of different ideas. Um, patriotic programs. There's a list of ideas for schools, volunteer days. Utah has their own web page uh for America 250 with ideas. And one of the ideas that I actually love that Utah is planning that you may or may not be aware of, but on July 5th next year to kind of end the Utah America 250, they are asking communities to hold a neighborhood potluck and come together as neighbors and be together and love each other as neighbors, which I think is great and what our communities really need right now. Um, those are just some of the ideas. We already had our first book club. This is just a picture of some of the people and some of the books that we're reading this year. Um so they're great books about the time period. And um our next one in October is the 1776 by David Mcola. And it's it's a great book. If you haven't read it, I I highly recommend it. Um, signing their lives away is a book about all the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence and what happened with them. And we're reading some historical fiction, which is the Rebellion 1776, a historical fiction. So, um, lots of great things. All those are just some of the books that we're reading. Um, lots of ideas that schools can do. Like I said, we can hold um flag ceremonies, patriotic programs, um concerts, we could have walls representing our veterans or lots of different things to honor this time. Um we have created a student award that is an optional thing that they would do on their own um going into the community and doing it with their families. So, this is not necessarily school driven, but we could send it out um to schools if they wanted to do it as a school award, but we plan to hold something. Um it the link takes you here where you can see the different um things that they can do. It takes you to a little bookshelf that has for each grade what they would do. And it would be grade appropriate for what they're doing. So in kindergarten, these are the requirements that they would do. Um, so you could just see they would get an adult signature saying they choose that is they don't do every single thing. They choose. So they could make an illustration. They could memorize the pledge of allegiance. They could do a service project in the community. Um, anyway, they pick several things, have in most cases an adult signature. They could participate in a program, patriotic program, write a thank you note to someone serving in the military. Lots of different choices that they could do. And then we have a deadline for them to submit everything. And then we are going to hold a awards ceremony. So the deadline is April 10th, 2026. And they're going to scan or snap a photo of their their form and submit it. And then we'll have some kind of celebration in May. We don't know when or where yet because we don't know how big it will be yet. So we will >> at a board meeting with a reception. >> I'm putting it out there. I would love to celebrate students who take this initiative. That's very cool. >> So those um are just some of the options. So, >> so we just wanted to update you on some of the things we're exploring and doing and if you have any suggestions, we're open to those ideas. But, um, we're excited. It's a big opportunity for our students. And, uh, there is a real focus on social studies and civics in Jordan School District and this just gives us another occasion to double down on that. So, >> thank you. Okay, I learned something from the materials. It's also called a semiquincentennial. So, there you go. >> Nice. See, >> got options. >> The packet's already doing its job. Look at that. >> I would also like to point out that a lot of people think, oh, this is just stuff that went on back east. But here in Utah, the 1776 was actually when Domingus and Escalante came and did their expedition. So there is that tie with Utah and of course the Native American groups that were here. They were all here in 1776 and those are things that as a state we can also honor. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you for being here. >> I was just going to say I was a student during the bsentennial so I'm a little older but um I still remember the we did something very similar and I still can remember doing things. So, I really want to encourage everyone to do it and I want to encourage the board to do it. I think that we ought to do some things to kind of lead out the way. So, I I'm super excited for it. >> I saw an interesting book club option on there. That would be fun to do as a board. >> Let's do it. Let's do it. >> Very exciting. Thank you. This is important and we're thrilled that our students have the opportunity. Can I president can I quote from Utah State code? This is the law of the land in 53G10204. The legislature recognizes that civic and character education are fundamental elements of the constitutional responsibility of public education and shall be a continuing emphasis and focus in public schools. the cultivation of a continuing understanding and appreciation of a constitutional republic and principles of representative democracy in Utah and the United States among succeeding generations of educated and responsible citizens is important to the nation and state. Public schools fulfill a vital purpose in the preparation and succeeding generations of informed and responsible citizens who are deeply attached to essential democratic values and institutions. And then throughout the integrated curriculum, students will be taught in connection with regular schoolwork respect for and an understanding of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutions of the United States in the state of Utah. That's the law of the land. >> Where is that found? >> 53G10 204. Right, let's go ahead and move on to a discussion on administrative policy AA453, the use of personal electronic and communication devices. And this is a conversation that we're picking up from last school year when we had um LEAK and JPAC discussions and then we had requested that we receive an administrative perspective on how things are going with our cell phone policy and um and a promise fulfilled to the community that we would revisit this new policy that was put in place nearly a year ago now. Right. nearly a year ago. >> So, we will turn it over to Dr. Godfrey and Dr. Anderson. >> Uh, I'll ask Dr. Anderson to uh interject and he'll uh take it at the end there and and run with it. But I just want to start by saying I'm really appreciative of the parents and students and teachers and administrators who've and all of our staff who've jumped in and really made this work. um after the start of the year and have jumped in and I mostly hear a lot of positive about the impact where students seem more engaged and class seems to go better and there's more student interaction. Uh there are always questions and those listening will hear something and they'll say to themselves, well that's not my experience, but I can think of an example where that's not happening. And we we do know that experiences vary, but we're going to talk broadly about the trends that we see. As you can tell because the policies divided up the way that it is, it's a little bit different at every level. And at the elementary level, there are issues that you don't see at the secondary level. I'll also say this as we talk about policy versus implementation and how things are going. It's important to keep in mind that in conversations I've had and in the last week I've had conversations with multiple legislators. I see this coming back this legislative session. So as you consider whether to make changes to policy, we might consider that. I anticipate there could be some changes coming forward. The governor's been pretty vocal about feeling that it was a mistake not to go bell-to-bell and require that of districts and um we just >> governor the governor. So, um I just say that as you consider a change and I'll also uh Sandy told me not to bury the lead. I think the conclusion here is that it might be good for us to communicate out a refresher on what the policy means for teachers and for parents because this is where parent expectations and teacher expectations can be facilitated with good communication. So that's my recommendation and I have no more rhyming words to that but um that's what I would recommend is that whatever policy changes you may consider that even if we don't make changes we send out a communication kind of a refresher. I don't think the trends have changed since we first started. Um there were more confiscated devices at the start and now there are fewer because there's a higher level of compliance. At the elementary level there was always a question of well what does lunchtime mean? And is a watch not a phone until it gets used as a phone? So can they wear a smartwatch? they they as long as they don't use it as a smartwatch. Um sometimes, have you ever experienced how it will give a bad read and it sometimes parents experience that and they think that their child has wandered off from the school when in fact it's just the the watch is not reading the way that it ought to. Um so it does get tricky. The other thing at the elementary level is if can you have a phone before school when you're on the playground waiting to line up? Can you have it at lunch? Can you have it after school? Um it's less frequent that you see phones, but you still do see them and and should they be having them during the day. Um, so I think there's a lot of appreciation for the policy, but some communication about some of those details would help. Um, at the middle and high school level, there's a there's difficulty with maybe repeat offenders and also the traffic at the end of the day trying to get the phone back to students. So there are various systems that schools have put in place to try to manage that. Um because it's a busy time. So they use office staff to help with that. And sometimes if there's a student who's a repeat offender, there are some schools who will have the student check the phone in at the start of the day and check it out at the end of the day. That's always going to be an arrangement that they make with parents to try to manage the situation. Um, but generally it's going well. I'm not aware of any specific policy change requests, but a clarification about maybe what a watch means and what use at the elementary level. I think that's where there's the greatest um I would say lack of clarity that can be communicated out to parents and teachers and administrators or it can also be an adjustment to policy or it can be both. It can be a communication now, a refresher and a change in policy later when we know more about what the legislature is doing. Um, I do hear about examples where it would sure be nice to be able to just pull your phone out quickly and post something. Take a picture of your hair and nail project here at JATC South and then post it, which is part of what you're trying to do. You can do that with a Chromebook, but some things would just be a little less awkward. classes like digital photography. There's been a need to purchase additional equipment to make that work. And there have been some old powerpoints that have been pointed out to me with a QR code or whatever else that have been pulled up and inadvertently asking students to pull out their phones when that was just kind of a there been there have been a slip back to the old ways sometimes that um was not intended to work around policy but ended up with that effect. So that's why I started this with a thank you because people have jumped in and really worked hard to make it work. There's always the question of consistency at the secondary level because students have multiple teachers and are teachers equal in their adherence to the expectation. Um I don't want to overstate that as if that's a constant problem. There's also a different level of um vigilance perhaps that some students report and administrators report. So that's where a refresher communication from the board could be helpful I think. Um so from an administrative standpoint to give you the summary it's going well. It's made a positive impact. Sometimes the negative impacts of bullying or other things get pushed to after school instead of during the day because kids do take their phone out after school and then it some sometimes it just moves the bad behavior to after school instead of during school. But that's a positive result too. But overall it's going well. kids are more engaged with each other, more engaged in class, and with some greater clarity at the elementary level and working out the kinks with frequent offenders and giving phones back at the end of the day. Um, no major concerns or complaints, especially given how long phones have been building up in importance in our lives and in our school day and how quickly everyone was able to make a pretty dramatic change. Um, so that's where that's where I feel like we are. We got that information from Dr. Anderson visiting assistant principal and principal meetings and administrators of schools talking with principles and assistant principles about cell phone use. So we did get the administrative perspective from all of our school-based administrators. What else would you add to my summary? >> I think this is a case where process is almost as important as the product. I think we hit a good product. I think we've hit a good place. We seem to be getting positive feedback all the way around. Um, schools have indicated that they really appreciated starting out the school year with this policy in place whereas last year we we started it at the end of first quarter. So, starting out the new school year with expectations in place has been a great thing. But, but the process of getting here where we had stakeholder groups and focus groups uh we we heard perspectives from all over the place. We did site visits. We we tested products. Uh we had thorough discussions. I think that was important in getting this right to begin with. And then I I love that we're revisiting the topic because technology is going to evolve. Uh you know, laws may evolve on the topic. So I think it's it's good. Um, and I think the added flexibility in the policy for schools and school community councils to visit particular issues and and add additional restrictions is also important to point out that that's possible. And with school community councils convening, we could see some of that. Although no one has indicated to me personally that they plan on doing that. >> What was that last thing you said? No one has indicated to you. >> I haven't heard any indicators that a specific school community council is planning on doing additional restrictions, but that's possible within this policy. >> Mentioned that there were some um changes that had been requested to the policy. Just a few maybe had come in. I was just curious if they were what group they primarily came. >> Elementary. >> Elementary. I mean parents, was it teachers? was >> oh um I think it's from this is the administrative perspective that we're sharing tonight administrators >> and just that they've also heard from teachers that sometimes parents think well if I give my child permission to wear the smartwatch then they can wear the smartwatch um and they can use it and and that sort of thing. So the the questions at elementary and it's not necessarily a policy change. It could just be a communication depending on what the board wants to do. But um can you have your phone out before after school and at lunch because at secondary we talked about lunch and and and and class change times, but we didn't really specify go ahead and take your phone out at lunch at elementary. Um, so I think just can they wear a watch as long as they don't wear it as use it as a phone or should they not be wearing the smartwatch at all? Should it be in their bag? That's what they're not um that's that's where the clarity is needed and whether we want to get to that level in policy or whether the board just wants to share this is our intent on those questions. Um, I remember when I met with elementary principles initially about this, there was question about on the bus because there are a lot of shenanigans on the bus with phones and there's not really a good way to police that when they're on their way and so we didn't include on the bus in our interpretation because it was once they're at school that the restrictions in place. So, so clarity around lunch before and after school and how you how you manage a smartwatch. I think those that's where elementary is looking for more clarity. >> Secondary, I don't think there's a lot of ambiguity there from what I can tell. The reason for the question is because we did allow for some modification of the policy by the school. >> And so I was curious if the schools didn't know they could modify it in in certain ways, but it sounds like they're just asking for more clarity around around some of the items that that we've specified. >> Yeah, it feels good to have clarity and to have things be the same everywhere. And if there we want to give more clarity on that then we those are where they that's where they have the questions but the school can also do that as as I described they do with the secondary school. So I think schools know they can put that in place. Schools handle watches differently. Some of them have you put your watch in the backpack. Some just say you can wear your watch unless you start using it as a smartwatch and then you have to put it away. And if we wanted to clarify which way we wanted them to go with that, then we could. Um, but the the modification at the secondary level is making someone check their phone in at the start of the day and check it out at the end of the day because they've been a repeat offender. That's not something we outlined in policy, but they knew they could go beyond policy if they needed to. And in talking with the principles, that's usually done in consultation and support from the parents. Parents say, "Yeah, I don't want to keep coming to get this cell phone, so make them check in at the beginning of the day and make them come and get it at the end of the day." That takes takes out of the question. So, >> um, so I don't know. Um, is there any specific training giving given to substitute teachers about cell phones before they become substitutes? Because I I'm it seems like that might be a place where the policy breaks down is in a classroom with a substitute teacher. >> We didn't hear. Sorry. >> I don't I don't know that answer. Um, we talked about that when we first put the policy in place. I think once they've subbed for a bit, they start to get the picture. Um, I've always told subs to ask, "What would your teacher tell you if you were if they were here?" Depending on the age of the student, you'll get varying responses, but uh um but we do try to train um substitutes in everything they need to know when they go from school to school. And that's something I'll talk with human resources about to be sure that's happening. I would like to advocate for some sort of refresher video for parents and teachers and staff. I had put it uh on our request requested agenda items back in uh May because of our meetings with JPAC and LEAK. And currently looking at the policy, um the the we can we gave schools that leeway to implement additional consequences, but not necessarily leeway anywhere else. There's that. And then in 2A for elementary grades K through six, it says devices is not permitted during the school day. So that to me says no lunch for elementary. And then at the bottom in two, let's see to E it says students may use personal electronic and communication devices during school sponsored activities outside of the school day at district school campuses and while on district buses. So some of this these questions are in here. So, I think we need to refresh it for everyone so that they're not continually guessing and because we all forget, right? They we go through the summer and we kind of forget how things go. So, I think we should refresh. >> And and I don't mean to suggest that they don't understand the policy. What I mean is they're saying, "Are you sure you don't want to restrict buses? Cuz we'd really like that." And are you sure they can't use it at lunch? Cuz middle school and high school can. >> Are we fighting that battle? For sure. So, I'm sorry if I characterized it as they don't know what to do. It's that they're >> they're they're that's where the pain points are. >> Okay. Okay, that makes sense. >> I appreciate that because that allows me to explain that a little bit better. >> I do think maybe this is an example of it's in the eye of the beholder. But when I read that, it says schools may enact additional restrictions with the support of the school community council. To my mind that says you can restrict it at other times. You can implement other restrictions like a p a pouch or whatever creative ideas you have at a school level as long as you have the support of the community. But you read it as consequence. So >> well it does say schools they implement additional consequences. C >> one. >> She's quoting C2C and you're quoting F. >> F. >> I didn't see F. if I didn't go far enough down, but Okay. Yes. >> So, yeah. So, I I see what you're saying that it would be interesting for us to maybe send out a reminder clarifying our intent. >> Yeah. And and I liked what you said kind of in the eye of the beholder and and that they can do more restrictions and different kinds of restrictions, but then maybe that is too broad for them and they'd like us to clarify like and make it more district-wide instead of it's up to each school. Our school doesn't have it on the bus and our school does have it on the bus. And so I >> think then I think that's the distinction there. the school can issue additional consequences, but the restrictions have to come through, be discussed with the school community council, the administrator of schools, and notified by the board. So, there's the difference between a a restriction and a consequence, I think, in policy. That's the way we intended it to be written. I will also add that one common refrain from um administrators was they appreciate so much the the consequences being spelled out for them so that they have they're able to be consistent from school to school. they say actually this is exactly what happens at school X or down the street wherever this is how we we do this in Jordan district district districtwide. They were very appreciative of that. And and I think also with 2F um if I remember correctly when we discussed this policy um the board um it was supportive of a school and community that came with a plan even for devices like pouches that we would be willing to help fund that endeavor if they came with a plan that they put together with their school community. So I think that that's part of it too is um if they come with a plan then the board would help them to finance pouches or whatever other kind of device that if I'm remembering it correctly. So, I was going to ask about that because it seemed like a big step in order for them to make additional restrictions to notify the board. So, I didn't I didn't understand it was for additional finances. So, I would like to clarify that they don't I don't feel as a board member I need to be notified personally if they're going to do an additional restriction. Maybe the whole board feels that way, but if they want financing, I would like to be not. >> I do think that sounds ominous, but for a principal to mention it to their AOS and then the AOS to pass it on to us, I don't think is a huge ask of a principal in my opinion. I don't know. Is that a big ask? >> I think we can notify. Okay. when the examples I gave are more like individualized, not schoolwide stuff, but um if they've already gone through the school community council, then it's probably not not difficult to notify the board of what the council decided. >> As a board member who receives feedback, sometimes I really appreciate a heads up if somebody's doing something different because sometimes I get an email and I don't want to be like, "No, no, no, no, that's not the way the policy is." and then maybe it is. And so I I appreciate that addition in policy, but I'm open to other opinions. >> Would this come via email? Would this be at a board meeting? How would we be notified? >> There's no clarification for that very reason. >> Yeah, >> I don't really care how I'm notified. I just want to know. >> And if I'm going to community council meetings, I probably would know already. So, but >> well, if we send out a reminder, Darren's point, maybe we'll maybe I'll be sending you a list of uh approved changes that maybe we haven't notified of. I don't know. The only ones I know of are the individualized plans. Like, how about we do this, parents? How about if we >> put that phone away in the beginning of the day? >> And I, for one, would strongly encourage the schools to do that. I would love a school to step forward and say, "We're going to go further. We're gonna try it. Um, until someone tries it, we will not have evidence that it's better or worse or just the same. And I would love it. You'd be my favorite school if you decided that we're going to try it. We're going to do a bell to bell. We're just there is no one in our district that we can point to to say whether or not that's better. And I would love someone to try it. I would very much strongly encourage that. >> Well, do you think we could motivate a school if we were to understand what the pricing and what that looks like and say, "Here's what it looks like. Who wants to volunteer?" Rather than asking them to do the leg work to set it up and then get our approval. Personally, I would like them to set it up, come up with the plan. And I I think it would be great if they consulted with other schools or um other people who well other schools that have implemented plans like a pouch a bell-to-bell ban. Um but I I feel like if the the school community takes the initiative, there's a lot more buy in. I think it could take a little bit longer, you know, to come up with something than the district just putting together a plan. But I I think that I I prefer the school community to have the buy in as far as putting together the plan. As we had these discussions, a question that seemed to come back again and again was what is the role of a parent and what is the role of a school? A parent chooses whether or not to purchase a cell phone and what plan and what options are available and a school then restricts that. I don't know in class time that's an easy yes a school can restrict that but it would be difficult for me to without parent buyin push that I really need to see that parents want it and to be honest with you the feedback I saw at JPAC it seemed like parents were happy that we were focusing on education and they felt they felt pretty good now I understand that teachers had a different response and I wasn't personally at that leak meeting unfortunately. But um I I love the piece of including the community for that reason. And so with that, I am wondering um if the board would like to um look at making a change of middle schools having a bell-to bell cell phone ban in the policy. >> Nobody's asking for that. Well, if the Leak Bryce said that, well, Leak's just one aspect of who we represent. >> I agree with Bryce. I would love to go bell-to-bell middle school, but I want one middle school to try it first before we jump and say, "Let's go buy pouches and spend a million dollars." I would just like to see it test tested. >> And before we even get to that point, I would like to see a reason why we're not happy with what we have now. We've just got a report that everything seems to be working fine, everyone's happy in general, why do we want to do something different? I mean, if if someone can come with a case that says, "Here's the list of problems and we're confident that a bell to bell is going to solve them," then yeah, I'd be happy to test it out. But we don't have that scenario as as far as I can tell. >> Haven't even had anyone else to test it out. So, I I'm just thinking back to last year when I had the LEAK meeting um and there were teachers that even without a pouch, they would like um they they I I don't know exactly how to say it, but the suggestion came up a lot of a belltoell um cell phone ban. and um in secondary schools. And another um thought that came up also was how to help even further uh teachers to not have to be the enforcers of the policy. And so I think that comes with training and just helping everybody understand how to implement the policy better so that teachers aren't necessarily the ones who are um enforcing the policy. But that that's why I am bringing this up because after the LEAK meeting um I also received emails from teachers and I understand it is teachers are one aspect one group of people that we represent and there are other groups. I just wanted to bring it up as something the board would maybe discuss or look at. And so I appreciate hearing from both Daryl and Brian in in your thoughts about about that. That's what I was looking for. Like would the board be willing to look at that? >> I would love it if those teachers took those issues to their community council. >> Yes. Every teacher who is concerned that the policy doesn't go far enough needs to go to their community council, have a discussion as a community council, and then that's the next step. That is the secret sauce that of taking the next step. And I just would love a community council to say in our school, we've seen enough need that we'd like to go to the next step. >> And they need to go to their administrators because we're hearing a different message to their administrators. I'm not hearing the same message at leak as we're hearing from our administration. So somewhere there's a disconnect >> and that meeting was last May I think. So it was a while ago and we have started a new school year and so that was at the end of last year and so I don't know if things have changed and I hope that people will reach out and let me and other board members know if if things have greatly improved um or anyway I I would like that feedback also >> and teachers on a bell to bell are still going to have to reinfor to enforce policy >> and probably more >> probably more because they're going to they're going to put their dummy phone in the pouch and they're going to be, you know, still having it and still sneaking it >> and and when I say that they they weren't even talking about pouches, they were just talking about not having phones out and students. So when when they >> not in the hallways, not at lunch, >> not in the hallways and not at lunch time, but they weren't saying with a pouch. They were just saying because I asked about the pouch and I said you can get together with your school community councils and come to the board with a plan and you know we are happy to pay. >> They have the ability to do that not now and not one school has stepped up and said we want to do that now. Now we say we're blanketing it and saying let's do all the middle schools. Let them step up and say hey we would like to test bell to bail and we said that before. We said that we would take somebody who wanted to do bell to bail and they have all the power under this policy to do that. And so let's have someone say this is let let's test it because if one or two schools do it and it works really good and we can see a difference, I'm all on board. But I'm not I'm not for a blanket statement at this point. Is there any risk that a principal would want to do this but would be too concerned to stick their neck out and suggest it and they want some cover from the board? >> Uh yes, >> because I'll say I did speak to an administrator of a middle school who while it was better still expressed some concern about the bullying and the drama. It still happens. it's just before or between classes and then they don't always come ready to learn because they're reeling from what they saw on their phone in between classes. Now whether or not that merits a bell to bell is debatable, but I think there is merit at least in saying do we need to support our administrators by writing a policy like you did a year ago? I think that cover could come in the form of saying, well, let me say this first. This is this is uh tricky territory. Uh these are choppy waters because we've not done this before. But you could say we are going to pilot one in one middle school and we welcome volunteers or we'll assign one or you know just say we're going to we're going to do one. and it's just is it going to be yours or is it not? And then that might provide some cover at that point. Also, if it's limited, if it's a pilot, we have to be willing to spend money that we might not that might not be well spent in the end. Does that make sense? >> We have to be willing to step away instead of saying, "Well, we spent x thousands of dollars on it, so we have to keep doing it." I I think if we're genuinely going to pilot it and tell parents and teachers and administrators and students that, then we have to be willing to step back from the purchase we made and sell it secondhand phone pouches to a neighboring district or something. I don't know if that's allowed. Black market phone pouches, but um so I I do I do think there's unless you have this swell of interest, you may not see a favorite school emerge. But um so if it's something you're eager to try, this is similar to the conversation we had previously when the when the policy was first put in place. If you're eager to have someone try, we can we can work on securing that. So, if you say, "We want to pilot it in a middle school, let us know. Work it out. Go to the school community council. Once you've decided where you want to try it, once you have their blessing, then tell us where it's going to be and we'll move forward." We can do that. We can just wait for someone to approach us. We we can do it any number of ways that you'd like. But I do think it's a fair question to say, isn't it risky to stick your neck out even with the school community council backing you? And I think the answer to that is yes. >> I will say that um I hope our administrators are connected enough to their community because you'll be sticking your neck out regardless. >> Yeah. If you're implementing a pilot that we're forcing upon you, if you it it is going to take community buyin to take away some of the rights of parents. It just is. >> It is. >> I do have a couple of questions to follow up on the administrator's discussions. Sure. >> That I was curious about when we created the policy. I just love to hear how it's going. So, I'm curious, are there times at a secondary level, and you mentioned a few, where exceptions need to be made? Um, you you talked about like snapping a picture to submit an assignment might at times be easier on a phone or um maybe there is a program that is easier to run through a phone like Cahoot or something like that. Um, is is it something that you're seeing a demand for for us to make exception for like if a phone is absolutely necessary in a classroom, it cannot be used for more than x percentage of the period or by and large are you not seeing those exceptions needing to be made? >> I would I would say that using the word demand would be overstating it. Have I heard it mentioned as an idea? I have on occasion. Hey, it would sure be nice if they could just take out their phones and like in American Sign Language for example, film each other and trade it and that sort of thing. The counterargument to that to using it at all. So, it would be more convenient sometimes. There's not a swell of requests, but I've heard that question here and there. Boy, is there any chance? Wouldn't it be nice if we could? The counterargument is once you start to open the door, then someone will barge in. And the other is that now you have halves and have nots. And that's one of the advantages of not allowing phones at all is if someone doesn't have a phone, then they are not at a disadvantage any longer. And then my next question was, I'm curious how this has affected relationships with parents. If administration is having angry interactions with parents who are frustrated that their child's phone was confiscated and now they have to come in and that's a hassle. Is this causing friction between parents and administration? >> The number I heard is that at the most there were 12 and now we're down to maybe three phones a day. um >> districtwide >> in in a given school >> in a given school. >> So a handful of phones uh there are difficult conversations with parents every day. I don't know that phones in particular have made that worse. I don't mean to sound overly cynical, but if it's not a phone, it might be something else because of the clarity the board has given about this. This is the be united part of be curious, be intentional, be united. When we're all united around something, then it makes a lot of that easier. And it's not even saying, well, policy. It's not even blaming somebody else. It's like this is what all of us are doing because it's better for kids. So, I think the way it's been structured has reduced that. But I'm sure there are those in the sound of my voice who are saying, I can think of a few tough conversations that I wouldn't have had if we didn't have this policy. But I don't think it's this huge acceleration of poor parent relationships. Would you agree with that from the feedback? >> Yes, that's absolutely reflective of the conversations we've had. There's all there were always some negative interactions, but for the most part, both students and parents have been supportive and that includes the students. They've, you know, anecdotally administrators have said, "We've re we've observed and experienced fewer bullying instances in school." Um they've said, you know, teachers are reporting that students are more intentive and engaged in class, which again fosters better behavior all the way around. >> That's great. >> Okay. Other questions on Dr. Godfreyy's report before I start getting your feedback on some of the ideas that have been presented. Okay. All right. So, the things that I heard um was possibly wanting to clarify use on buses. Is that something that board members are interested in clarifying through policy? I'll ask that first. >> And because it's listed, do you want to change it or do you want to just communicate what we have in place? >> Are you comfortable that our policy covers that adequately? anyone feel like we need more? >> It it looks like the policy is very straight straightforward on that. Um and so if a school wanted to say kids get a a bus ticket if they have their phones out on the bus, they would bring that change to I mean they their school community council and do it school by school. >> Okay. Is that right? Because it seems like it is very clear about the district is not >> Yeah. >> Um monitoring it on the bus. >> Okay. So my next question then is the playground. Is anyone interested in adjusting policy to clarify phone use on the playground at elementary? >> You mean like before or after school? >> I think so. Or at lunch was another one you mentioned, right? Yeah. So, they can't use any of the devices at any time that they're on school property >> or and during the school day, right from the time. >> So, before or after school might be a gray area. Do you feel like we need to clarify that or are you comfortable with it as written? Um, I would like teach uh I would like school administrators to know that they could make it they could have their own school rule about before and after school. >> Okay. And I'll go there. >> So, so to your earlier point, we'll remind them that if you want to restrict at that point, you can do that as individual schools if you go through the proper process. >> Okay. Next question is smartwatches. Do you feel like we need to provide more clarity in policy around smartwatches? Not hearing any interest there. >> I I maybe >> maybe okay because it is smart watches are very vague, right? And so I seem to remember discussion about this last year when I was listening in um about like you could wear a smartwatch but once you know the teacher sees you using it as a phone or texting then it becomes a phone. So I I feel like there might need to be a little bit of clarification on that. So the way we have it phrased is student use of and then it includes smartwatches. So to me the policy says if you're not using it as a smartwatch then you're not in violation. But um I my next question is maybe instead of clarifying through policy, is there interest in sending out a district-wide board reminder of the policy? And then maybe we can hit on some of these gray areas there. Okay. It's been suggested to have a video created. our board members comfortable asking communications to develop a a video reminding parents and students of our policy and specifically talking about some of those elements. >> They did a really good story on Fox 13 yesterday on this very issue. So, I think they can use some of that and maybe beef that up. So, >> and and I feel like I don't know if it would need to be a separate video or a separate um reminder. Um but I I would like teachers to be included also just to get the refresher. And uh >> would you like a different reminder for employees or just make sure we send this reminder to all stakeholders? >> I I I feel like just to all stakeholders would be helpful. Is it is it feasible that this video could be 60 seconds or less? >> Yes. Yeah. Just a quick one. >> And I would like to include the joke. You may be watching this on your phone. >> I think we got a unanimous approval for that joke. >> We're all ready. >> Okay. >> I like the idea of a video. So, I like the idea of a short video reminding and and we can do a reminder through principles that if you feel you want to restrict further in these areas where there have been questions, policy allows for you to do that. Just work through your school community council. Yeah, >> I I think all of these are good reminders and a good discussion for us to have. So, >> and I would like to see this go to parents and I would also like to request that every student sees it during the school day whether I mean at secondary I know that's trickier. We always default to the like language arts class because they have that class every year. something like that where every student sees this in a class setting, every parent sees it and that also helps all of our employees. I would I'd love it to come to employees, but in case they aren't studious with checking their email, they'll see it in that way. Is everyone comfortable with that request? >> Okay. >> And we have video announcements at the high school where we can show in middle school. So that would be great. >> I just think the shorter it is, the more people will watch it. >> Agreed. >> If it's >> short, quick flashes like they're used to, right? >> And and maybe notify them at the beginning or have the title be a 60-second refresher, something like that. >> A Jordan Short >> to promote >> and maybe you want to thank you for the work they've done so far. I mean, >> yes, certainly. >> Regardless of where we are and where we need to be, it has improved. >> I think so. Okay, next question. There was discussion on potentially um directing a pilot instead of waiting for someone to propose a pilot. Is there interest in like requiring a school to do a pilot at this point? >> I am super interested in it. I don't love telling people what to do, but I am super interested in seeing how it would work. >> So would you be comfortable then with saying when we send out this communication to principles, can we remind them that that is within their power to request? And and I feel like if um if district staff came up with a a plan because you know here I'm I've already mentioned I want the school community council and the school to come up with the plan and I I think that it's possible if we had the readymade plan somebody might be willing to step right into it if that makes sense. Um, and we might not have to force somebody to do it. >> If we said if schools request if I'm trying to get to what you're asking. So if if we said we would the board would purchase pouches and staff would help develop a policy if there was a plan like >> a plan if there was a middle school who wanted to request to implement that. Is that what you mean? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> That we'd make a more specific offer. >> Yeah. So the I I just remember when uh we went and saw Grers's fully fleshed out plan and how it was implemented. >> Yeah. >> It took a couple years for the school community council and the um administration and to come up with that and they had the computer program. They had all they just had the procedure already put together. And I think if if we could save that work for the school, it it might be easier for So what you said like >> can I throw out though Granger did all of that ground work themselves. >> Our board received a plan and approved their request >> and Yeah. And that that and it took like years worked. >> Yeah. So what I'm trying to say is I if there's a school, if there are a group of teachers, if there's an administrator that are concerned that the policy is not going far enough, if they're frustrated, then it is within their power to take the next step. They are not waiting for us to do anything. So if any of them are in that, I would like to nudge them forward. >> Okay? >> I would love to nudge them forward and say, "Look, no complaining. If you're on Cutthroat Kitchen and you don't bid on a sabotage, you can't complain about the sabotage. You can't because you should have bid on it. And I think you can't complain about the policy not working if you're not willing to go further. Stop waiting for the board to go further and go further. So, if they're just kind of in that middle space where, oh, we really this is not working at our school and we need to go further, I want to nudge them further. That's what I want to do. I don't want to force anyone, but if anyone is in that space and are waiting for someone else to do something, I want them to stop waiting and I want to nudge them further. How can we support you? What can we do? But if this doesn't come from you, it's just not going to succeed. >> And you collectively, right, administration and parents both request. So, no complaining about a policy not working if you're not willing to push it forward yourself. And I'm the guy that wants to push it forward. But I I really do think we're at the point where everyone who doesn't think this policy is working has the power to move forward. Please do so. If you're not moving forward, let me say to everyone listening, if you're not moving forward, what we're hearing as a board is that you're content with the policy as it's written. That's what I'm hearing is no one has stepped forward. No one has made a request. No one is willing to go forward. Well, what I'm hearing from that is then the policy seems to be working and there's no reason for the board to push you forward. >> I think also it's a newer policy, right? they've only had it for nine yeah almost a year and so I would love to nudge them slash remind them that there is this option that they can move forward so just that >> maybe big bold >> if you're having issues >> you know if you're not content you you should take that step forward let us know how we can assist >> we'll convey that message >> I think I think it may be challenging for someone to implement another change mid year. So, I wonder if it would be helpful to also remind them before the end of this school year if they want to make the change in the fall before school starts. >> Yeah. Plus, there will be legislation potentially by March that will >> it'll take them long that long just to get ready for any change that that size. >> Yeah. So, yeah, we'll get that message across. Well, I think we ought to as a board bring this back in May, you know, so that we can look at what's changed and all those things so that we're having this discussion at the end of the school year so any changes that we have can be implemented on day one instead of in the middle of a term. >> You think we're that quick? May >> Well, by May, we'll have like the legisl we'll have the legisl >> or March f I mean >> talk again when we know what we have. We may have to talk about it again. >> I just because you know if there is legislation then for sure it needs to come back but um it'd be nice if we were going to make changes that they're made at the beginning of a school year. So >> although I didn't hate implementing after first quarter, it was interesting. It was an interesting approach last year. >> I think that our schools did a great job of of pivoting. >> Yeah, they did. >> It it got a different level of attention. It did >> when it's not in the middle of trying to get everything up and running. >> Yeah. It wasn't buried with all of the other starts. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> This has been a great discussion. I appreciate um the ideas that have come to the table. So, thank you. And Dr. Godfrey, are you comfortable with everything we asked here? >> Yes. >> No rundown needed? No. >> Okay. >> Great. Let's move to our next agenda item. a discussion on fieldhouse followup um with doc or Mr. Larson, Mr. Thomas and Mr. Rostrom. Please join us at the microphones. >> Thank you. Um we had previously provided the board with some information regarding the feasibility of a 35 to 40,000 square foot fieldhouse on all of our high school properties. and we talked a little bit about um some estimated annual operating costs. One of the things that um the board asked was to come back and maybe show some pictures of what is a fieldhouse, what do they look like, uh what what are some possibilities and some options within a fieldhouse. So admittedly, uh you know, Dave and I have toured a few of these in person. uh one of them being the Westfield High School Fieldhouse in Weber School District. And we've looked at a number of field uh floor plans as well. But we just thought we'd start with this. Um Dave, I can't remember the year this was built. It's probably in the last three years, wasn't it? >> It is. Yeah. Just that'd be probably the latest one that's opened. >> Yeah. So, have have you visited this, Darl? Okay. So maybe John if we can go to the uh floor plans there and I'm going to try and squint the best I can. What what you're looking that the the grids there are 10 yards each and so what you can see is there it's a 40 yard by 40 yard grid. It does have a track around the outside you're seeing uh so the one to the left is the is the bottom floor. There's a boys and girls locker room which also doubles as a home and visitor locker room. There's some restrooms and showers there as well. And then to the far left there's some uh public restrooms and some storage and a few there's some coaches offices and a few things like that. If you go to the right illustration that is you know the the center space that is open to below so it's a very high ceiling. And then there's a mezzanine. I think the mezzanine's on the bottom there. So there's a second floor and then to the left of that it was a I believe an observation deck observation balcony that looks out onto the football field. And so they also used that that second floor is kind of a um what would you call that? Not a concession stand but a a press box for the >> there's an announcer box. They also used it for, you know, different team meetings and stuff like that set up. >> They they did, even though it's narrow, they did have a number of tables set up there. I know one of the things that um Mr. Sorenson and Brian Vzy talked about was possibly doing banquetss and things like that. So on that second floor, they did have some tables set up. I know it looks very narrow, but >> the mezzanine >> on the balcony. Yeah. between the football field and the baseball and softball. >> Correct. Mhm. >> Access to both. >> Yeah. So maybe John if we can go to the next slide. I think that that kind of an aerial view. You can kind of see how >> So it's the one with the black roof. >> It is. Yep. So you can see the observation looks out over the football field, but then on the other side there was a there's you can see how they've put a press box right there that John is circling. Okay. Maybe the next slide. Here's another exterior shot. You can kind of see the press box there to the right kind of sticking out. >> Wouldn't it be nice to have a sponsor's name in front of the word Fieldhouse? >> And then the next one acres. >> Yeah, >> that kind of gives you an interior view. Again, those are 10 yard grids. Fairly large. I've seen field houses with a lot of HVAC systems on the roof. Where are they? >> How how robust is it? How cool can you get it? How hot would it be? >> They would on on this particular building, they're sitting on the ground on the on the west end of the building. But yeah, they they can be climatized. >> What is WC on the floor plan? Um, >> well, there's men's and women's. And then there are two WC's. >> Waterlet. >> Water closet. >> A water closet as in like that's a toilet. A >> toilet stall. Mhm. >> Gotcha. Thank you. I was I thought of water closet first, but I'm like, wait, they have a men's and women's. So, it's just a private restroom. Correct. Thanks. >> Yeah. And any of the stalls are actually called water closets. >> Mhm. Is the grass attached? Because when I went in it was like roll there was some big rolls that looked like either grass or maybe it was wrestling mats or >> not. No, in this one I thought the turf was attached, wasn't it? >> Yeah. >> Mhm. >> Maybe they were wrestling mats or something. >> Yeah, they could have they could have pulled mats over that. >> Also had the batting cages. >> They do. You can see the ca You can see how they dropped those nets. Well, on the floor plan, it showed like a track on the bottom field, but pictures it looks like there's no said track with like painted lines. >> Yeah. Not really. I don't believe it was like that. I think it's what you're suggesting. There was just a walking area around the around the edge. >> Yeah. >> What was the price tag on this one >> when they built it? Do you remember what they had that at? >> Sure. >> Just under 8 million. In today's dollars, they're talking >> like 10 and a half. >> 10 and a half. >> But that was also constructed constructed as part of the school layout. So there >> there might have been a >> some economy of scale there for that >> where it was built within. So >> this is at um Westfield High School. Mhm. >> Yeah. It's >> Yeah, >> but it's way west. It's >> It is. It's It's >> It's almost the lake. >> It is. It's a jaunt. Yeah. >> You know how high the ceilings are? I'm assuming there has to be a certain limit in a fieldhouse so that they can use >> What do you think those ceilings would be? >> Yeah, I would imagine 35 to 40. Something like that. similar to a gym or would it be higher? >> Like a high school gym? >> Maybe the peak a little bit higher. >> A little bit higher than in um high school. Got to watch your punts. >> Yeah, there seem to be So, this kind of just showcases what it what it looks like. And so, um, if if classrooms were added onto this, do you have any idea where classrooms would be added on this floor plan? >> Yeah, so this is so this is just an example of a 35 I believe it was right around 35,000 square feet. Um, and you can see up on top like where the mezzanine is. I mean, obviously there could be some classrooms on the second floor. I think you could fit two or at least three classrooms across there if you wanted to. You you could really configure it any way you saw fit. This is just a good example of, you know, the square footage, what fits in there >> and and that the square footage that we're looking >> correct. Yeah, >> possibly. >> This is what we showed fitting on the school sites. That would be reasonable. So, when you start talking about cost and estimates there, one of the things that Dave me mentioned was a new build. we we we believe would be less money, but here you're you know, you'd have to bring sewer, water, infrastructure out to the building. Um depending on where it's located and that could be substantial and then just depending on what else what other features you would want inside of a fieldhouse. >> Sound like 40 yards. As we've talked to the different schools, there was some that just had 30 yards and >> that wasn't quite enough. >> That was Ala, correct? Yeah. 40 yards is really the recommended minimum. >> No matter how many yards they have, we wish we had 10 more. That was kind of the >> Yeah. Yeah. Some locker rooms. There were if you're done with this, there were two other assignments we wanted to follow up on as far as timeline and cost of surveys. >> Any any questions on these photos or just we just wanted you to see what a fieldhouse looks like. >> That was helpful. Thank you. >> So So with this square footage, it could possibly fit two classrooms in on the mezzanine or >> Oh, I think so. Yeah. And you could configure the floor plan to be whatever you'd like. I mean, really, uh, it just depends on what features you would want in there. >> Thanks. >> Elevators, I noticed. >> Uh, correct. >> Is that I mean, how does that work with ADA? >> Do we have to have accessibility? >> If if we had classrooms up there, then we would have to include an elevator on on that particular design. uh they're just kind of showing that mezzanine as storage area on the on the end of it. So it kind of kind of depends how you classify the area. >> So So it's possible with this square footage um there wouldn't be any classrooms in there and unless we wanted to add an elevator. >> Yeah. Or more square footage. >> Or more square footage. Okay. because I think the features that you see in there like the I mean the restrooms, the coaches offices um I I know as we've had conversations about field houses, people have brought up uh a team room um you know classrooms, those kinds of things. So, if you if you added, you'd probably have to add some square footage to it because obviously you're going to want some locker rooms, coaches, offices, um some different, you know, storage is is a thing that you you would absolutely have to have here. And then whatever you decided to include on top, you know, around the edge, >> Mr. Larson. >> Okay. So, one of the assignments was on a if a bond were used to do this, what would that timeline look like? Um, so the the date that the uh bond attorney as well as financial counsel have uh provided as far as the latest date would be August 4th to get moving on this. So, as you notice, some of these don't necessarily match our board meeting schedule, but I just asked them, well, give me give me the steps and where things might be. So, they tried to put these out as far as possible. Uh although that isn't necessarily the recommendation, it would be to you don't want to wait till the last minute. Um, for example, you have on August 20th, there must be a resolution that has been approved by the board that has to be delivered to the lieutenant governor's office. So, meeting that date is very critical there. The rest of it after that August 20th date is really um just moving through the process and the steps for a bond. And there's I'll let you go through the steps, but I hope that answered the question as far as timeline. If you wanted to move quickly, you could. If you wanted to wait a little bit, you could as well. >> The soonest this could happen then would be next year, 2020. >> November November of 26 for a bond election. >> If the money were approved, how long would it take to build? to build. Um, that's a good question, Dave. >> Probably getting the design. We probably need about three months to get the civil work and get the design put together. Most of them are prefab buildings, uh, at least on the upper side of it. And that's what I would recommend if if if the board chooses to go that direction. And then so it's just putting a foundation underneath it. So, but 3 to four months for design, um, 3 weeks to go out to bid and then I would guess construction would be 6 to 8 months, >> one after another then or we'd have all of them going on at the same time. What do you What do you think? >> Well, that would be up to the board, I guess. And as far as it would be probably difficult to have six at one time going, wouldn't it? >> We could do it. I was going to say you guys have built five schools. You guys, >> yeah, >> you you you've you've built a feeder system in a summer. You guys could do that. >> If John wanted to spend all of the bond money in one year, we could do it again. >> We could set the bond in a way that we could make that decision either way, right? Do all six or bid them out three one year, three another. >> Yes. the if when the when a bond election passes at that point authorization's been given for that entire amount. Uh a lot of times you try to issue bonds in slow chunks as construction progresses so that you're not paying interest on something that hasn't even been issued that you didn't even need the money yet for. So, for example, you wouldn't want to I I wouldn't propose just doing the entire bond all at once because it's going to take a little bit to build these. You can do a couple different uh issuances. Um the other thing I I would I failed to indicate is that August 20th date. There's a lot of pre-work that has to go before that to come up with the ballot proposition. So, that that's just the date to >> Yeah, that deadline. That's the deadline. So the other thing we were asked to bring back was uh estimated cost of a patron survey, how much that might be. So what I did for that is I just simply went back to the surveys we did for the cell phone policy. And that was done uh back in March of 24 was when we issued the purchase order for that. So there's certainly been inflation from there, but uh the cost of a survey here uh at that point was a 900 person survey was roughly uh $30,000. That was mixed mode, internet, and telephone. Uh and if you recall, we split that up among staff, um parents, and students. So we can break it up into groups if you wish. And then there was uh the focus groups. I remember some of the board members attended some of the focus group meetings. Um I always found those very helpful because you can hear discussions and hear more more of people's thoughts rather than just a survey as kind of yes no or highly favorable, highly not that kind of thing. But the focus groups uh ran about uh $41,000. My view of that I especially given the conversation that just happened about the cell phones was that was that was valuable to get that input and that was part of the whole structure of putting in a good policy that came out of it. So it was nice to hear the feedback from everybody on that. But it is it is some money. So, those are the three assignments we had >> in your crystal ball because I know you have one. >> It's back in my office. >> If we were to put this out to Bond, lots of We had some dropping off I think in the last year or so. Is this a substantial like it's kind of like rem refinancing your house, right? Like is this going to be a big increase in tax or as we refinance it could um it be costneutral? because there's a big difference if they say my taxes are going to go up a lot. I'm not interested. I'll refinance it. May maybe I'm okay with that. >> So, I haven't done the work on any bonds dropping off. I >> at this point I don't recall any bonds dropping off within that time frame within the next several years because uh we issued the bonds uh the earliest bond was 2017 and it was a uh 21-year bond. So about 38 uh would be I believe the next one. >> Okay. >> So I don't know that these would drop off but regardless even if there was some or there was additional uh growth in the um taxable value of the district. The ballot proposition requires us to ignore existing bonds and only focus on this bond and its impact on the taxpayers as to the increase. That's been the tricky part when uh school districts uh do bonds is trying to explain to people, but wait a minute, we have bonds falling off, so your taxes will actually stay the same even though the ballot proposition says differently. Well, that's the legal document. We're just following the law, but but it requires us to ignore those. >> I I have a question. So, um, in the previous presentation that we had about filled houses, there was an estimate, I think, of $200,000 a year per filled house for like the utilities maintenance and operation. >> Yeah. And so would just in from your crystal ball, do you think we would need to go out for truth and taxation to raise funds for that? because that would be like 1.2 around estimated $1.2 million. And and about when would we need to do that? Just when they're all finished or >> Yeah, when they're finished, we'd have to have that be part of the budget process. So, it doesn't necessarily mean a tax increase, but it it would mean the money would have to be found in another way to pay for that. Okay. And to help clarify that between the last two questions, the the operations budget is not part of the ballot proposition. The ballot proposition is only for the bonds for the one-time money to construct the building. This would be a separate uh item to consider how to finance that. Yeah. questions. Okay. So, I guess the questions that we need to answer are where would you like to go next? I'm curious if board members are interested in further discussion and I will lay out a couple of scenarios. So, one idea that has been tossed around that I don't think we have um dug into too much is at one point we talked about potentially finding sponsors to help build this and allowing them naming rights for the fieldhouse. Is is that have we done anything besides have the idea? >> No. Okay. So, if we wanted to pursue that route, is that something that we feel like the foundation might be willing to partner with us in helping to reach out to businesses and look for a sponsor or is that the best next course for that? >> I think talking with them would be a good first step. >> Okay. >> And then strategizing with them maybe about the best approach. >> Okay. Can I ask a related question to that? Is there a number that if we could get it down low enough too that we could fund this without a bond? So if we could get half the money from sponsors or 60% of the money or whatever that number is is unless it's 100% of the money. Um I mean is there is there a number that a percentage of the funding that you would feel comfortable saying yes if we can if we can raise this amount of money we we don't have to go to bond for it? >> Uh might be a little tricky question because of the combination with the donation. So I maybe what I can how I could answer that is the board has within its annual capital projects budget uh summer projects land and other such things that if the board were to forego those um each year for six years you could finance this one one per year for six years. So if you add the donations on top of that, then you could probably escalate that that time frame and maybe do them in three or four years. Does that help answer that? >> Yeah, I was just curious if I I I've just had the feeling that bonding is difficult. I I haven't been on the board and and and had the opportunity to to feel the pain, but I've just heard that it's painful and it's not maybe it doesn't have a high percentage of of passing. >> But this one, I think, would be a perfect bond because >> every school, >> every school, if you want it, let's get it passed. I don't I don't care either way. Like what I what I don't know if I want to do is take it out of the existing budget because we do have other needs. Like we could probably fund it if we stop the West Jordan project, but the West Jordan project needs to go on. And this is not 100% necessary that we build these at our schools. I think it will put us at a disadvantage eventually if we don't have them. But I really would love to have public vote and say yes, we want to do this with our money rather than try to figure out a way to do it without their support. I I just think asking their them for the seal of approval and we did pass a bond and I think we learned how to pass a bond in the last time and and if the public votes this bond down, I don't think we should build it. I don't think we figure out a tricky way to go around them. I think this is like do you want this or do you not? And there'll be a number of people that don't, but I I'm confident that there'll be a number of people that will support this if we organize it in the right way. >> I will say out of the multitude of people I've spoken with, only 30 to 40% want it. So, I'm not optimistic that from what I'm gathering, I would want to expend a lot more resources pursuing something that I don't think my the people I've spoken to want it regardless of my own personal feeling. >> Do they not want it or do they just not want to pay for it? >> Because I feel like there's balance. >> It was all in the same conversation. I gave all the information I had. Well, I gave financial and fieldhouse information and asked the opinion. I did get some some people were very enthusiastic. Yes. Other people said, well, what about the arts? Could that be incorporated or just focus on education, academics, please? So, um I thought I would have more people who would be interested in a bond. That's how I framed it. I did say bond uh for a fieldhouse and I just didn't get that enthusiasm from the majority. >> That's why I would propose we move forward with the survey. it's worth the money to either say we've asked and no one wants it or no, there's considerable interest. That would be my proposal is the next step for me is to move forward with an official survey where they go out unbiased, ask the question, are you interested and would you pay for it? If your taxes had to go up to pay for these, would you be interested? That to me is the next vital piece of the puzzle. >> And we did this with the last bond that did pass. Is that correct? We we actually did do a lighthouse survey. >> Yes. >> And they were saying that they wanted swimming pools and everything. But >> they did. >> You and I were in that same meeting. >> So >> until they know how much they cost. But >> regarding the timing of a focus group and a survey, how has that worked historically? Do you have a focus group that helps you decide what to ask in the survey or do you do a survey and then hold a focus group after >> they have a survey and they choose respondents to participate in a focus group so that they get a representative sample. Okay, these are the three pieces that I gathered from this discussion is a question of do we have people who would sponsor field houses? Are we ready to survey or do you want to stop the process? So, let's just go ahead and ask are are board members interested in reaching out to the foundation and requesting that they try reaching out to some sponsors to try to gain support. >> So, are we there now? >> I I instead I would like to know what the foundation thinks. You know what I mean? as far as so instead of telling them we want you to find donors, I would like to know if they have any strategic ideas for us and um how we can possibly work together to find donors or I don't know or if if they want to take that >> upon themselves. Does that make sense? Or if we have to give something up to get those donors. >> Yeah. So more of a conversation, not a direction. >> Direction. Yeah. I'd like a conversation more than a direction. >> Great. And are board members at a point where they're interested in preparing a survey? >> A I'm going to be specific. Um a >> lighthouse survey. I mean, not specific to a vendor, >> but a >> we'd have to put it out and go through the purchasing process. That's why I don't mention a specific vendor, but just say a survey. So what I mean by that is a cross-section. It's not a district-wide survey, right? They >> scientific sampling. >> A scientific sampling. Are board members ready to invest some money in that process? >> Who would develop the questions on the survey? >> The company we hire so that we have a neutral professional question. >> And would we know those questions before they go out? Generally, we see them before. >> I just want to make sure the questions are asking what we want to know and aren't just aren't too vague or broad. >> Once once we go through the process of engaging with the company, then we can work on all the specifics of what we want it to look like, what we want the questions to be, we want to be sure they're asking likely voters, people who voted in an off year when there was not a presidential election. I mean, we'll we'll ask all of those things and they can narrow it down so that we're asking the right questions of the right people. >> When we did the the cell phone survey, did we provide contact information or do they have their own database of of contacts? I guess the reason I ask is I don't know that we h or maybe we do have contact information for all taxpayers or just parents and students in the district. they would pay to get access to the information they need. So with with cell phones, we're able to simply provide that information and say here are the parents and students, choose, you know, uh the sample that you need. It will be more expensive to do this type of survey because they'll have to pay for the contact information to then go out. But we've done the same thing. We've paid for email addresses and and we've done similar things, but that's part of what the service that they offer is going out and getting that because they'll need to say, "Okay, um likely voters who vote in this type of election, who have grandchildren in the system, uh who have no children in the system, who are business owners, who are parents who have athletes, parents who don't have athletes. I mean, they'll they'll have to get all these different groups to to see what the level of interest is. >> I'm curious if there's any hint of legislation that might throw a wrench in what we're trying to do here. >> Yes. >> Yes. There are whispers and shadows of legislation that may uh restrict the types of buildings and the plans that districts can build. Is that correct? Yes. >> After listening to the education committee this last week, um, Senator Wilson, am I saying the right name? >> That's correct. >> Thank you. was pretty open that he had a bill file that is open right now that is um in regards to the way that buildings are managed and controlled >> which is crazy to me because many of these bonds that they're complaining about were passed by taxpayers and they are the ones >> they did not talk about bonds so he was talking about the regulations of the regulation of school buildings. There were ideas tossed around like um who is responsible for inspecting a building for safety and who is responsible for um so they discussed how expensive it is to build buildings and ways that they could mitigate that expense by going to a statewide system where a district would have a set of floor plan options and um and vendors who could build it. >> So, they're going to adopt Jordan system. >> Yeah, they're very >> they're already doing that. >> Very interested in in utilizing DFCM which oversees all of the the universities and quite frankly usually are beyond cost that we've seen in the past. >> Yeah. If they restricted us to university uh spending, then we could build much more expensive buildings than we build right now. >> They have a bigger field house than we're proposing. >> Put these two in charge of building buildings and those universities wouldn't have had to make those other degree cuts. But just by way of this was interesting timing, there was mention made of filled houses among the committee and they're feeling that schools are getting a little bit um outlandish in their design. >> Some of them have >> and some have them. So, and that's why they're talking about it. So, >> but I think the ones we're proposing are are are nice size. Toss. >> They're not TSM halls. >> And we want to get the biggest bang for our buck, right? Add classrooms and make sure we're using it for multiple uses. >> So, let me just see if I am understanding the desire of the board. you were interested in the next step being um approaching the foundation to receive ideas on sponsorship and bidding out for a survey. >> I would be interested just in the survey at the beginning, not the focus groups. I'd like to see the response of the survey before we spend an additional >> like a districtwide survey first. >> Well, just whatever survey, >> not a cross-section not a focus group included with it. Is that what you're saying? >> Right. >> So would we do that as a bid option for under what you're proposing? Like this is what it cost for the survey. This would what this is what it would cost to have the focus group and then based on the results we may decide to >> do that second portion >> because if we get like >> Suzanne was saying 30% positive and 70% negative I don't want to pay for a focus group if I already >> agreed. I agree. >> Yeah, that makes sense. My concern is if we do an internal survey, we only reach parents. >> I think he's >> No, we do we do a cross-sectional survey. >> Okay. >> And then separate whether or not we want to do a focus group afterward. >> Yeah. If you have 70% that don't want this, then I I'm ready to >> So, are you comfortable with a bid that gives us options? So, then we can look at price comparisons. >> Yep. >> Okay. We can we can arrange it like that, right? >> Yeah, sure. >> Um >> the price would go up for the survey alone because there's a risk that all they end up doing is the survey probably where if you commit to the whole package, it would be less, but then maybe you have to spend money you don't need to spend on a focus group. So >> the only benefit that comes to my mind now of a focus group is if we're going to delay this a few years, would the focus group give us information to know when is the right time or what are the right attributes that they're looking for to feel good about a fieldhouse, but I'm not sure if that's worth the money. And maybe we need more than one depending on what happens. Right now we're trying to find out, do we even pursue this? >> What what we may find out, let's say that it's 55% favorite and you decide you want focus groups. What we may find out is how to message this in a way >> that gives clarity around what we're really trying to do. That's what I feel like those who have attended have come away thinking, "Oh, wow. There's a lot of confusion around this. This is how we really need to message things. So even and even if you had 70% in support and 25, you know, 75 in support, 25 against, you might still say, >> okay, but what is that 25% misunderstanding or what? So if you are messaging it, then you have some sense for where the confusion might be or where the issues are. And personally, I feel like the survey should only go to people who potentially are paying taxes. >> Yeah. >> Right. Okay. >> Pretty soon. >> Can we provide tax information? This is approximately what it would cost. Can we provide because I think that's a vital piece of the puzzle to say >> it will it will it yeah it will increase the average property tax in our district x number of dollars per year >> or by no more than x number like if we can get some sponsor that could >> I would assume that that we would work with them to say here's what the tax impact would be now ask your questions >> well we could give them a range are you comfortable at this range this range or I think it's a very different survey when that we say, "Are you interested in field houses?" "Oh, yeah." "Are you willing to pay for them if it costs you $240 a month or a year?" "Oh, no." Uh it's kind of like saying to your kids, "Do you want to be in the car for 12 hours?" "No." "Would you like to go to Disneyland?" "Yeah." It's, you know, how do you describe it? what you know you want to give good information so they know what they're >> what >> you don't want to taint the survey but you want to provide >> realistic information >> are you sure you want to go to Disneyland we're driving yeah we still want to go >> so that's why we hire professionals but >> I think the the lingering question we have to answer is what is the interest level among the taxpayers who would pay for them we have to answer that question however we gather that information. We have to answer that question. >> Okay. So, in summary, we are comfortable as a board beginning the process of bidding for a survey and we're comfortable reaching out to the foundation to just solicit ideas on potential sponsorships. >> General feedback. Mhm. >> Can I ask one more thing? Um, outside of all of them, we talked about the operating costs. I would be interested to know what our groups are already paying to outside vendors. For instance, a baseball team told me they're paying $40,000 a years for batting space. So, I would like to know the savings that by building this, what savings are we making with our the people who would be using this? Um just would be an interesting >> and even rental potential. >> Yeah. And maybe Yeah. Possibility of >> rent. Interesting point. >> I think we could cover the operating cost in our existing budgets of those athletes and people who would be using it, especially if you rented it outside. >> If they're paying $40,000 to rent batting cages, >> that's a >> that's going to be a different budget. That's what a coach told me. I don't know if that's true. >> I I about fell over when they said that. I think they were trying to convince me that if we build batting cages at their school, then they would save a lot of money. But >> does that mean does that mean hypothetically we would charge the baseball team to use the fieldhouse so that we don't have to pay for it as a district? The the maintenance like where do you shift the cost? >> I don't know. I'm just interested in >> But we would charge the Pee-Wee League if they wanted to. >> I see. Okay. >> I'm just interested in what that price really is and what they're I do know they are spending money to go outside and >> and not just them soccer and other people are renting outside facilities that they could now not have to rent. And whether or not we charge them or not, >> what I wouldn't want to do is provide them the the building and they charge the same rate. we're not going to get some. You know what I mean? So, I just want to make sure that that we understand that we're saving these programs some money and I need to see lower fees or that money needs to go into operating. >> Let's summarize. Dr. Godfrey, can we request that staff reach out to the foundation? Um, also to begin the bidding process on a survey that has different options included. And um, I don't know how you would gather the information that M or Dr. Robinson, sorry, Dr. Robinson just requested, but could we get some maybe look at what we're spending for rentals that could be done in house in a fieldhouse? >> Certainly. >> So, cost savings and potential revenue. Those two. >> Yeah. >> Well, can I throw one more over? Would this board be interested in possibly swapping some of our property for a sponsor? That's a whole new ball of wax. Rather than having the foundation go out and look for a donor, >> would this board be interested in pursuing a property swap for filled houses? >> I would if we feel the property we're swapping is excessive. >> But would you be interested in them pursuing that? >> I'm interested. >> I'd be interested in the conversation. >> So, I would add that one more. >> Okay. is that staff pursues the option of a property swap for field houses. >> Interesting idea >> at least to bring that to the table, >> Scott. We're property rich as a district right now. Is that my is that correct? >> I I think right now our portfolio is really strong. Yeah. >> He's trying to say we do okay. >> Yeah, we do okay. >> Depends on how many people move in that open field. Yeah, we >> So, in preparing for a a bid or a quote on this, one of the key questions is going to be how many respondents do you want to pay for? We did uh I would say at a bare minimum 300. We did 900, although 300 each group for the cell phone. Are you comfortable with 900? The more you have, the the better results you have, but it does cost more. If you're comfortable with 900, I'll just stay with that. But I know that's going to be the key question everyone's going to ask is they bid on that. >> My initial thought is I don't know that we want to go less if we're serving a broader demographic. >> Okay. I want this to be thorough enough that if it is no, then we say, "Hey, we turned over every rock and >> want anyone to accuse us of not using a large enough sample size in choosing not to pursue this. >> You want more than 900." >> Do these companies send a recommendation? Okay, you're asking for a sampling of 60,000 households. Well, I know it's much more than that, but I'm throwing out a number. So we would recommend 10% or whatever >> or is this up to us to come up with? >> My recollection from the past was they they said 300's your minimum to have any statistical analysis on it and from there you can build up it. What it does is it just reduces your error rate because they're going to give you uh we feel like the population is of this opinion plus or minus 4% or plus or minus 5 or 3%. So you're just narrowing that field. >> We're not throwing it out to everyone, right? Where these are likely voters. >> Yeah. Yeah. They'll >> have a lot of >> they'll pull that data and have that uh available. >> I am not interested in going below the minimum recommendation and and I would suspect that the minimum recommendation is going to be more than it was last time. I I think if you go with 900, you're going to be fine, but I just want to be sure we kind of feel that now. Okay. All right. Thank you. >> I would like to clarify. I'm not super interested in revenue generation information right now. Cost savings, yes, but you know, because this is first and foremost for our students. So I I feel like that would be an extra added bonus down the road. And so >> yeah, >> I would like to >> I agree with Erin. Yeah. >> So as you're gathering data, I mean you would need a crystal ball anyway to find that out. Who would rent this? >> We'll calculate what it would cost if we were to rent it out per hour >> and then we can ballpark it, so to speak. And I would view rentals as subsidizing the ongoing expenses rather than revenue. >> Absolutely. >> For sure. Yeah, good point. Maintenance fees and Yeah. >> Okay, great. Great discussion. Um, anything else to add before we move on? All right, let's tackle a boundary change update. Um, we will turn it to Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I'm just here to give a a just an update on our process thus far. Happy to answer any questions along the way. So far, we've re fulfilled the requirements for official uh notice to our patrons. Uh we've done that through Parent Square, which is our regular mode of communication. We have to do it that way. And we've also mailed 16,229 postcards to Housetops. We've done both of these communications in in different ways. We've sent uh the non-impacted areas uh a certain uh set of communications and we've sent the impacted areas those that would be moved under these proposals uh different communications so that it would not you know uh over 14,000 almost 15,000 uh housetops are not going to be impacted even though the boundary does does the boundary change does exist in their areas. Um there's only 1,259 impacted households in this in this boundary change. Um we have we with that we gave information for how to access the surveys. So far we have hundreds and hundreds that have taken it over 300 for the Midas Creek area, over 900 for the uh Northwest area. and we've held two open houses. Um, one at Midas Creek Elementary for that area and then one at Copper Hills High School for the Northwest area. What was the number of respondents for the Midas Creek area, did you say? >> Midas Creek as of yesterday, 316 responses. And the openhouse attendance, um, we had eight parents that showed up for the open house at Midas Creek and around 20 participants at the Northwest area openhouse. and we're in the process of going out to all school community councils for those impacted schools. Um some of those meetings have already started and our administrators of schools have been helping us in going out there and getting the word out more talking about the process and just giving them the same information and um that's been going on. The survey will stay open through October uh October 2nd. That's a Friday and and coincides with the end of our parent teacher conference period for the fall. So that's where we are. Um, next on the timeline that's required to do is uh a public comment and public hearings. Uh, we anticipate those happening the end of October and into November with a potential board action in November. Any questions that I can help answer? Can you give us um an idea of the feedback that you've received at the open houses? Yes. Uh feedback's been first of all appreciative of the of the way things have been communicated. We've given more runway and this uh in this boundary change than we typically have in the past just because we started the process so early. This was a discussion we held back in June and decided to implement in August. Um, responses have been mixed and when people are opposed, it's typically because, well, I live really close to the school and this would take me from being able to walk or drive and access it easily to a longer drive or this is our, you know, the school that our kids are used to. We don't want to change. We love our school. We love our principal. We love our our teachers. And, um, people don't like to be changed. And that's a good that's a that's reflective of the quality leadership and the quality teachers that we have in our in our school community. So that's that's good. There have been um there were some patrons that showed up were very excited about the move and that said it made sense and we're wondering where they could make it happen. So, and th those were opportunities that we had to share with them the two uh periods that we'll have for public comment and we encouraged them to attend and of course take the survey and several had not taken the survey that came and so they they scanned the Q they were waiting for the open house and getting information and then they scan the QR code right there and took the took the survey. Several parents brought their students as well. So, >> do we have a date for a hearing or for hearings already scheduled? I might have missed that. >> Yeah, on on the timeline we proposed was uh a public comment period in our November or sorry, our October 28th board meeting and then the public hearing which is required by law would be scheduled for the November 11th date. That's again we can shift that. I know there are there we have to oblige with notification laws but so there is some wiggle room there but that's our anticipated timeline. >> So with a hearing we don't limit the number or the amount of time that we can hear from constituents but we can still say a three minute time period. Right. >> That's great. Thank you. And you're suggesting that that happen during a board meeting. So, it just might be a longer board meeting if there's a lot of feedback. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Thank you for that clarification. The public comment um is different than a public hearing and we have to hold a hearing and and yes, you have to you have to hear everybody that's signed up to to comment. You can limit the time they comment, but you have to hear everybody out. Does anyone I don't foresee a problem, but I just note that that is on a holiday for Veterans Day. Is that >> Does anyone see a problem with that? >> People don't generally celebrate. >> I'll be out of date. >> I celebrate. I go to the zoo or the aquarium for free, but I'm okay. >> Yeah. I think alternatively it would be the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and many people might be gone who might otherwise comment >> or we have always have the option of choosing a date that is not a regular board night. That is what we did for West Jordan Elementary. >> I I'd rather do it on a regular board night. I'll I'll forego the aquarium early. >> Yeah, >> we do have the November 18th I think we have a board meeting the following week. We we because of fall break and so forth, it looks like we have board meetings on the 11th and the 18th, I believe. >> Oh, >> so potential vote could be on the 18th. >> Potentially. Yes. Okay. Any other questions? All right. Thank you for the update and for the effort. I'm Are you starting to hear about school community councils being established and meetings on calendars? >> Yeah, there have been there have been meetings already held. Um, a lot of schools are taking advantage of this week uh for parent teacher conferences. That's our secondary uh conferences this week and they'll be using that time to vote for their school community council membership. Elementaryaries um are the next week and the first week of October. So after that time period, um that's when we start training. That's when the state will hold trainings and really the the bulk of community council meetings get underway after that. Some have already started though. So, my only just slight nervousness is that most of the schools affected in my area have not yet scheduled their school community council meetings and I am on board for the timeline as long as they have in fact met and had an opportunity to hear the presentation from the district. >> Sure. I think we'll be okay, but maybe we can reach out to principles and nudge in that direction. I can do that. I I don't need to make your workload longer. >> No, we're happy to do that. And and just to clarify, the information given at the school community councils will be the same information that has already been available on the website, the same things that we've emailed out and that we've mailed out. They'll just have more of an opportunity to answer questions in that environment. specifically, you know, those are the folks that are really tapped into the communities and and have often times are the ombbudsman's for uh you know, community questions and so it's a good opportunity to engage with them. >> I appreciate that extra step and what I am hearing right now is we want lots of opportunities to hear about this and understand the process. And so that's one extra step that I appreciate you taking, but I think it's really valuable to the community. Okay. >> And thank you for the building capacity workbook. It's been phenomenal. >> Thank you. >> That's helpful. >> Okay. >> As I've fielded questions, I have never had a question that that document has not answered. So, it's been very helpful. >> That's really good to hear. I will add the feedback we've got. Also, we we updated the website. There were some patron comments that said, "Hey, we would like to see what would happen if if this didn't go through, what would the what would the long-term projections look like?" And so, that was great feedback. We added it on there. Several people were very appreciative of that, so they can see they can just kind of compare and contrast what it would look like with or without a change. >> Thank you for being so responsive to that request. Um, I I got an interesting phone call from a constituent who said, "Can you tell me the pros and cons? Like, what are you hearing?" I thought that was a really good sign that people are saying, "I don't see an immediate drawback. So, can you help me understand what people would be upset about?" So, I've really appreciated this process. I know it's it's new territory that we haven't tried before, but you've done a great job communicating and I appreciate that. Thank you. And I'll pass that along to those that have helped. It's a team effort. So, thank you. >> Okay. Are we are board members okay to go on to the next agenda item of about 30 minutes? Okay. Let's Yes, I saw that. Uh let's go ahead and begin a discussion on administrative policy AA419, the student conduct, dress and appearance. And just by way of um background, we had some questions arise at graduation and a request was made of the board that we revisit um our policy in regards to graduation um dress and appearance and that we receive recommendations from our administration when it wasn't right in the swells of graduation. ation season. So if you're wondering why this is showing up now, just to remind you that's the reason. So let's go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Godfrey. Thank you very much. Uh looking at Roman numeral 2, section D of the policy, we have some minor changes that may accomplish some of the things that we talked about. Um the this is these are some of the questions that I recall hearing. What about the flowers that are around the the cap? What about >> writing >> the rare lettering on top of the cap? And I think that the policy has moved forward in a good direction. And one of the things that we talked about doing in the swells of graduation season in the spring was to have a meeting, whether virtual or in person, with all of the people who end up being behind the scenes at graduation so that they can talk about the various things they've encountered. There's a little laughter in my voice because it is surprising sometimes what you encounter, but it's also very emotional. It's a big deal. It's important to people and I think having clarity from school to school will be helpful. So, there are two proposals that have come from Mr. Sorenson's conversations with high school principles and assistant principles. when it comes to graduation, they're minor. D5 just gives some clarity so that we're using the active voice instead of the passive voice. And we're saying that graduates can wear graduates may wear uh schoolisssued and or approved tassels, sashes, pins, hoods, cowls, mantels, cords, insignias, or medals signifying achievement, honor, participation, membership, or recognition. Um, number two really gets to these questions that we talked about. Graduates are expected to wear the prescribed cap and gown and we take off the without alterations because alteration can be viewed as wearing a pin or it can be misinterpreted. Now, um, I don't know that anyone is a big fan of the writing on top of the cap. I don't think it happens frequently but it also is really important to some who do it. Uh the without the without alterations is taken off because then it gives the flexibility to make decisions about what is said earlier in order to maintain the dignity, decorum, propriety and respect of the commencement ceremony. So it kind of puts it back in the hands of administrators. If there are flowers around the bottom of the cap, does that take away from the dignity of the ceremony? I think that they would not keep that from happening. I think they would allow that and that would be more clear if it said without if it didn't say without alterations, that would be allowed for. But really, this comes down to what the board wants to see and does not want to see at graduation. If you want to be sure that the writing is not on top of the cap, I think we ought to say no writing is allowed on top of graduation on the mortar board. And we just need to make that clear. If that's something you do not want to have happen, if you don't want flowers around the cap, then we should say there should there should there are to be no flowers around the cap. Sometimes that's the way someone wears another lei that has important significance for their family. And I know we move toward lays being worn by students. So these are the proposed changes that we intended that we make to reflect what the board asked us about because what I recall is not the board saying we do not want the flowers around the cap or we don't want the letters on top of the mortar board. it's that is that a violation of the way it's written. So if you do want that restricted, let's let's just clearly state that um the the decorum and dignity that's that still gives the the administration the leeway to say that's so outlandish that you can't you can't wear that. that mean that means you don't have to outline everything but if there are instances of problems that we want to address we ought to address those very specifically. So this is our proposal but we're very open to more specificity if there are if there are things you would like to avoid. I have a thought. What do you think about the sentence in order to maintain the dignity etc etc. What if we empowered administrators a little bit more by removing in order to maintain the and just said dignity decorum that is expected of all participants. What I'm imagining is by removing a cap and gown without alterations. What if we have someone who cuts off their gown here? You know, it says in order to maintain, but it doesn't say without alterations. I think it's to me it's a little more clear as dignity decorum is expected. I >> I like that because then it's not limited to that list that follows. So I I think that's a that that's a suggestion that would help. >> Not that I want to give ideas to graduates >> by saying cutting off your gown, but >> Right. Well, I don't Yeah, we asked ourselves that. What does alterations mean? I need that hemmed. No, I mean it means that they're, >> you know, are you cutting it up? Are you doing something >> spreading the bottom shredding it? >> I mean, it's not punk rock to show up at graduation to start with, so you can't punkify it very well, >> but it it's we couldn't picture what that meant. >> Instances of where people have really modified it. anyway >> is modifying the gown, unzipping it because I went to a lot of graduations this last year and it was really interesting to watch some schools that how they wore the gown and I was really concerned when I saw at least one school that a lot of people didn't have it zipped and so does that need to be written into the policy that that because I've I believe it should be zipped up. If that's something you want to see, then we should say the gown should be fully zipped up. My my dad was a university professor and it always bugged him when people put the mortarboard on the back of their head too so that it's like basically vertical like no it's supposed to be horizontal. But >> I get the point. I get the point about the >> the gown looks like a cape instead of a gown. You know what I mean? It just it's very different when it's zipped up and when it's not. And so if we need to write that wording in or administratively, can you ask them to do it? If there's one or two, that's not a problem. But when you're seeing a whole school, it's a bigger problem. >> I don't know. >> I don't want to put that in the policy that to zip up the gown. >> I don't think that takes away >> my opinion. I don't think the unzipped takes away cuz honestly when I was graduating high school, I bought out a very nice outfit to wear. But then I realized that no one could see it because I had on a gown, right? And so like having it unzipped, I think, is fine if that's what they'd like to do. They still have tassels and other things that are kind of keeping it in place. That's just my opinion. But so as I try to remember some of the questions that were raised last year, I recall that um one administration decided to limit the number of lays that were worn and we received some feedback uh that they felt like that was inappropriate. I don't they probably were specifying on the cap, but I don't remember that specifically. It's I'm old. So, um but what I'm curious about is I think that it is um difficult for administrators to have so much leeway that then they're put in the line of fire of saying, "I'm sorry, this is too many." when you can't see the stairs that you're walking up because your face is covered in lays. That's that's too many. I hate to to put that all on them. And so I'm curious about um something about impeding like safety or um being able to see the face visible. I don't know. That's tricky because some might choose to wear masks. But um I'm just curious if there's a way that we can provide a parameter that an administrator can say, "Hey buddy, I'm sorry." That's now a safety issue. We can't We got to make sure that you can walk up those stairs without tripping or whatever. I don't know. Is am I the only one concerned about this? >> When we wrote the policy, we talked about the principle of distraction. if what you're doing is distracting. You're so much different than everyone else that that's where I think the line is. But I don't know if it's a policy line or an administrative line. But I was told by one person, the administrator said they couldn't wear a lelay because they're Hawaiian, >> which was kind of bad because I bought the lay for them, you know. Um, you know, and so >> because they were not Hawaiian. >> To me, that's maybe how it was administered more than the policy. And so >> that's why we want to do the big meeting where we just say, "All right, yep. All the graduation enforcers, let's talk about consistency." >> Yeah. >> Because the the the limit on the number of lays or do you really qualify because is this a reflection of your culture? >> That was never a schoolwide policy. We followed up on that. There was no school that had that as a policy. But there may have been individuals one person >> who made that decision in a moment before someone walks out and said, "Hey, you can't wear all those or whatever it was." >> That's always going to happen. You're not going to have perfect. >> Yeah. >> But but I think the meeting and then any additional clarification you want to give to the policy will help get us closer to a positive experience and a clear expectation. Can you have the meeting before we adopt the policy because they might have some ideas to >> this is the reflection of what our conversations have been. It's just those slight changes. >> We have some ambiguity in the wording and I feel like we're even maybe making it a little more ambiguous. I think it's difficult to say what is a dignified manner and what is an alteration. So, I see that we're going to now take that away and say, "Okay, you can wear the prescribed cap and gown, and if it's dyed hot pink, then okay, because alterations are now okay." >> But that's not the prescribed cap and gown. I think you could make an argument. If you cut half of it off, that's not the cap. That's not the gown you were prescribed. >> But if I bedazzle my mortar board, is that what it's called? >> Mortar board. >> Mortar board. Yeah. I just have this picture of tiling every time you say that. But >> yeah, if you spray paint it pink, that's not the gown you were prescribed. You Sorry, you can't wear that. I I >> But if I dazzle my mortar board, is that the prescribed gown or capping gown? >> I I don't think so. That's not the That's not the mortar board you were prescribed. If you add flowers to it, you're not changing the mortar board. You're not painting it. >> So, I could see an exception made there, but >> meaning it's removable. >> Yeah. Whereas if you paint something, you can't remove that. You've permanently changed it. >> I mean, I know we're kind of picking at straws, but >> I think they want some clarity or support, right? So, >> well, I don't know. >> They're the ones that are proposing to take out less clarity. >> Oh, >> if we take out without alteration, it allows for the flowers around the cap and it allows for letters on top. And my feeling was that my recollection rather was that the board members were cons that I heard from were concerned at the the policy not being followed not that the flowers were worn but that it didn't match the policy. So if the feeling is they shouldn't be wearing flowers around the cap, we should say that. If the feeling is don't put letters on top of the mortar board, that needs to be stated. And I don't think we need to talk about spray painting it pink. That has not been a common problem. And I think prescribed cap and gown would cover us there. But there is uh it is common to have the flowers around the cap. And it is not um not impossible that we would have a handful here and there putting letters on top of the mortar board. I want to say mortar board as much as I can. We're all learning. All right, board members, are you comfortable with those changes? >> Yes. >> Um, I guess that we'll need to come to a business agenda for a formal vote. >> Yes. Should we just bring it at the end of of October for the formal vote? >> Okay. >> Thank you. All right. Let's go ahead and take a 12 minute break. Oh, 15 minute break. Have to hop back in, but I think it will be a shorter business meeting. Does that sound okay to everyone? >> Yes. >> All right. Great. We will adjourn. to the Jordan Board of Education um meeting for Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025. We are excited to have a full room and I'm especially excited to welcome Sunset Ridge Middle School. Um, lots of friendly and familiar faces here tonight. All right, we're going to Oh, sorry. First of all, let me introduce My name is Nikki George. I'm the board president. Um, joining us this evening are our board members, Lisa Dean, Suzanne Wood, Aaron Barrow, Brian Barnett, Bryce Denford, and Daryl Robinson. We also have our board attorney, Mr. Paul Vancoman, our superintendent, Dr. Anthony Godfrey, our associate superintendent, Mike Anderson, and our business administrator, John Larson. So, we're happy to have each of you here. Whether you're joining here at home, welcome. We appreciate your interest. We are excited to get started this evening um with our pledge of allegiance um which will be led by Adriana Garcia um who is an eighth grade Kenzie Shaw and Riker Densley and seventh grade student body officers at Sunset Ridge Middle School. So we'll turn it to you Would the audience please stand in honor of our flag? Color guards, attention. Color guards, advance. Color guard halt. Color guard, present the colors. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Color guard. Post the colors. Color guards dismissed. The audience may be seated. Thank you. Well done. All right. We'll now enjoy our reverence by Riley McKith from the Sunset Ridge Middle School PTSA. [Music] Life is nothing but moments. That fight you had with your best friend is just a moment. The time you up all night finishing a project is just a moment. The night you watched the sunset with the boy you thought you'd marry is just a moment. The championship that you lost is just a moment. The road trip you spent with your friends singing to throwbacks is just a moment. Every moment that passes with time. Every up and every down is and everything in between is just a moment that passes with time. You may remember these moments and you may not. But you, what you will remember is the people you spent them with and the way you felt. The way she made you laugh, the way he made you cry, and the way they made you feel like you were on top of the world when you were nowhere but with your best friends. All of these moments and feelings and people combined to make up a bigger moment that we call life. In all of eternity, our life is just a moment. Appreciate the moment you've been given and the people you've been given to spend it with. Because no matter how beautiful or tragic a moment is, it always ends. So hold on a little tighter, smile a little bigger, cry a little harder, laugh a little louder, forgive a little quicker, and love a whole lot deeper because these are the moments you'll remember when you're old and wishing you could rem rewind rewind time. Not a single thing lasts forever. So you better enjoy it before it's gone. Hi everyone, I'm Nicole Stradley. Um I'm a ninth grade at Sunset Ridge Middle School and we are amazing school in West Jordan. This year we are celebrating our 20 20th year of being a school. We started off the school year year with a fun back to school night including hot dogs and a DJ provided by PTSA. Um we had one of the best turnouts we have had in a long time. Um we also got to meet our new principal, Mr. Glenn. We are so excited to have Mr. Glenn at Sunset Ridge. One other thing we did to celebrate our 20th anniversary was a spirit week. We had fun dress up days including school colors, um, sports day and crazy hat day. We ended our week off with a spirit assembly run almost entirely by our student body officers with getting to know our new SPOS's and fun games to get students involved. Since our school was created, we have been part of schools to watch where teachers and students strive for excellence in um, school and community. We strive to include everyone and help raise them to excellence. We have been lucky to go um I have been lucky to go to Sunset Ridge for 3 years. Um um some things that make our school great is our teachers. Um they do not only care about our grades but also about us. They check up on us and support us in all we're doing and make learning fun. Another thing that makes our school special is our student body. They look out for each other. Just the other day, I saw kids spill his papers all over the hallway. Everyone around him stopped and helped clean up his papers. Even if they were rushing to class, they helped. It is those small things that make that um like this that show me that our students care. One of our greatest prides at Sunset Ridge Middle School is our performing arts. With an incredible dancers and dance co, an incredible band program that continues to grow year after year, an award-winning orchestra that can't be beat, and our musicals are always a force to be reckoned with. This year, we are performing Xanadu. I'm so excited to see how it turns out. And of course, our choir under the direction of Miss Patty, Mrs. Rogers. Please enjoy as our newest choir, Songirds, performs Where the Light Begins. [Music] It is holy. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it takes a long time. to open our eyes to learn to see the light of the The vual flame in the house of the Lord. We can't hear the light of the in the fling. We can keep the Take my [Music] Perhaps it is perhaps [Music] in the dark in the house of the The love so we can't keep from singing the light of the flame in the house of the heart. We can't stand crying out. Perhaps this day the begin the light begins. I begin [Music] it is always. [Music] [Applause] What a treat. Thank you so much for that. That was beautiful. All right. I'd love to take a minute to um ask all those who are here from Sunset Ridge parents or administrators, would you please stand and let us give you a hand? Thank you for supporting these students. And then any student that is here um from Sunset Ridge, will you please stand? Love to give you a hand. And before you sit down, we want a chance to shake your hand as well. So if you would please come to this side of the dis and then just walk your way down. We also have a little pin to give you to thank you for being here tonight. Good job. >> I said you want to stay for three hours. >> Good, bad, and ugly. [Music] about >> what do we do? >> Uh Mr. said wait. [Music] Are you waiting? >> Oh, okay. Like a day girl. Thank you so much, Sunset Ridge. That was so fun to have you and we are thrilled to have you stay all night tonight. But if you need to leave, we are not offended if you want to slip out. And we will see you next time. Thank you. All right, we'll now move on to our resolutions of appreciation with Miss Dean. Whereas dedicated service to Jordan School District was faithfully and effectively performed. Whereas they consistently and conscientiously executed their responsibilities with integrity, honesty, and loyalty. Be it therefore resolved that the Jordan School District Board of Education and District Administration declare appreciation for the outstanding service that was performed in the cause of public education and hereby express our sorrow at the death of these valued friends. Frank Ray Goodman, teacher. Jireen Marjgerie Hall, secretary and training specialist. Colleen Lesley, teacher. Jason Norman, electrician. >> Thank you. Um, all right. Let's now move on to board member recognitions. Do any board members have something to share? >> You know, I do. Okay. Okay. So, I would like to thank Hidden Valley Middle School for having an annual sunrise salute every September 11th. And it is so great singing with members of the community. And I I this event, it creates a feeling of unity and patriotism and it really helps our students to become more engaged citizens. And anyway, I just love attending this. And then um also Smith Entertainment Group, Utah Jazz and America First Credit Union sponsored a new Jordan Innovation Learning Lab at Juniper Juniper Elementary School. And um it was really fun to attend the ribbon cutting. There are um things where students can create stop motion animation. Um, there are these special cardboard cutters. I think that Dr. Godfrey knows what they are called. What are they called again? >> I don't remember. >> Oh, sorry. >> Cardboard saws or >> something. A chomp saw. Chompaw. Chompsaw. And um there are also 3D printers and little programmable robots and just a lot of materials. And I I am so grateful for the the sponsorship of these groups. Um this innovation learning lab will create opportunities for all learners to become more curious thinkers and creative problem solvers. And then um a couple weeks ago I saw in a gem which is a Jordan employee memo that there would be a home visit training on September 3rd and I decided to attend um because it really interest me interested me and I was so impressed with the attendees and the care that they have for their students and um I really appreciate the district providing this valuable training because I think it really will help our our teachers um our educators create a culture of belonging and also help implement effective communication to the families in our district. And then last, um, I was invited to participate in the West Jordan High School People of the Pacific AVA ceremony in August, and it was such a great honor to participate. And I love seeing our students learn more about their own and each other's cultures and traditions. And I want to thank all teachers and adviserss that work hard to create a culture of belonging in our schools. I'll go next. I was also able to attend the Juniper Elementary uh ribbon cutting for the Jordan Innovation Learning Lab, and that was really fun and special. and the sixth graders there at Juniper who got to uh be involved with that was a lot of fun. And I love seeing events like that with our community business partners and how that is also teaching our students to be engaged citizens and I'm just so grateful for those businesses and all that they contribute to our school district. Excuse me. Um, but I also got to attend the fall family fair put on by language and culture services. And I would just like to thank Michelle Love Day and her team for putting that on. It was so much fun. It was at the Vidian Center in West Jordan. And there were so many tables set up um so many resources for our students and families in Jordan School District. And it was such a lovely site to see. and all of the performances that went on. It was a really fun event. So, if you haven't been before, which I hadn't been, I would highly encourage you to attend next year's fall family fair. And um just kind of a I I want to give a shout out to all of our bus drivers. Um, for those of you who are not aware, I am a part-time crossing guard for the city of West Jordan. And I love standing on my corner and waving to all the bus drivers that drive by. Even those who are driving Jordan School District trucks or vehicles, I'm waving at them. And I'm sure they're like, "Who is this lady waving at me?" But I I just so appreciate um everyone who supports um our school district, even if they're not in a classroom, right? The school bus drivers who are getting our kids safely to and from school. I love and those behind the scenes uh staff workers. So, thank you to everyone. >> I got something. Um, so my family asked me to babysit three of my grandsons, which means everyone in the whole wide world was busy except for me. So, um, I think that never happens. And who would trust three grandkids with me? So, um, it was just so happened it was on the same night as the family fund fair. So, I took them over and I've gone as a board member, but never as like a grandfather or father. And it was they had a blast and they walked away with uh handfuls and h hand handfuls of stuff. Um and they like stuff and so I just wanted to thank them. It was nice to see it from a different perspective. I try to go to that every year but usually as a board member and it's a lot different than talking having them talk um to people and stuff like that. So anyways, I wanted to thank that. And then I was taking my wife on a date and um she said I could pick anywhere. So I took her to the Jordan Learning Center and we had hot dogs at the new center with the virtual academy and she was surprised. But it it is a phenomenal place that they gave me a little tour around and that is the best looking Walmart I've ever seen in my life. I mean you cannot even tell um that that was a once a Walmart. I don't think you can tell this building was a nursery or that the administration building, the ASB was once a gym, a a grand central. I guess our district does such a phenomenal job at taking space that the community isn't using and turn it into usable and and excellent. Um, if you haven't gone there, you're going to it's going to blow your socks off. It was just so cool. And then just one more. I I I got to go over to Foothills and do the color run, but I wore clothes that they wouldn't throw chalk at me, so that was good. But anyways, we have a great district. There's so much that's going on. You could really be busy almost every moment doing something. And I just appreciate what everyone's doing to make this ship sail. >> I'll add a few of my own. Um, it's been a fun start to the school year and I got to attend a few induction ceremonies for NJHS and NHS and it occurred to me how frequently I am um announcing athletic success at schools and um what an honor it is to be able to announce the kind of academic success that we are seeing at our schools. Um, those of you who are familiar already know that NJHS and NHS are our honor societies at our schools and it is for students who have academic scholarship but also leadership and service um are values that they strive to achieve. They're constantly looking for service hours and um finding opportunities to contribute to their communities. What a great example of what's happening in our schools. It was really a pleasure to see especially at Sunset Ridge I probably 50 students who came up and received an induction into this good group. So what a pleasure. Um also I just wanted to give a thank you and a shout out to our school community councils. those who are willing to put their name out there and the time that it takes to manage the funds that we are given through our land trust programs as well as the um goals and progress and achievement of our school buildings. I love the communication and partnership that we have with our community through school community council. So, thank you to those of you who are putting your name on those ballots. I know it is uncomfortable. I know it intimately. So, I feel for you and I appreciate you. Um, I also wanted to give a quick shout out to Copper Hills HOSA chapter who are um committed to their blood drives. They do several every year and they just had their first blood drive this past week. Um, I it's fun to see how many students are willing to come out even for something as small as a cookie, but I think it's probably motivated by a desire to serve their community. Um, they do a great job. They break records consistently in our district district and recently received some accolades across the whole Northwest Terri uh Northwest region of ARUP. So, that was very cool. And then because I am so grateful for the volunteers who make these magical events happen at our schools, I wanted to shout out to Analopee Canyon Elementary who just held a fun run. Also, Mr. Dr. Robinson and I have both been getting messy. Um, it is so fun to see the amount of coordination and work that goes into those events and the generous support that provides for those fundraisers that our PTAs hold that um give us opportunities to have our students out in the community on field trips um things like school plays um other things like teacher appreciation. There's so much that is done through volunteer work in our schools and I'm so grateful to rub elbows with some of those people who um have that heart of service. So, what an exciting start to this school year. Any others that I'm missing? Okay, then let's go ahead and turn it to Dr. Godfrey. Super superintendent recognitions. >> Thank you very much. Um, I have done a podcast in the past on that Copper Hills blood drive and I love that we do things uh in that vein. Um, we I also want to celebrate some of the same things that you have celebrated. First of all, the innovative the innovation center is really exciting. We did a podcast episode there. I could not resist the chopsaw. Um, I couldn't remember what it was called, but I had a really good time with it. And you kind of want to pull out every drawer and see all the things they have. And when I was there, they gave me this 3D printed shield magnet to give to each of you. So, I will pass these down. This recognition comes with favors. So, um, I'm going to send those down your way so you can each have a magnet. Um, I made a guitar pick when I was there. It was really, really fun. And uh I appreciate the partners who made that possible. The Smith Entertainment Group, Utah Jazz, and Mammoth and America First Credit Union. They had a lot of fun with the things we had printed for them as well. There's another one right there. I think there are seven. Hopefully there are. If not, I'll get you one. Um and then, um wait, there's one more in my pocket. How about that? There you go. There it is. And then um when you have donors like that that say we generally want it to be in this, you know, in this area and that we want to provide this sort of experience for students, we just have incredible people who I felt very confident turning that over to saying they'll know exactly what kids need and what's going to be really exciting for them. So, uh, thank you to everyone who made that possible. And then we also have the Jordan Learning Center that opened. Uh, certainly there are finishing touches and we're waiting for big screens to come on the slowboat from China, but they turned this around in a miraculous time. And when you go in the Jordan Learning Center, which as Mr. Robinson indicated, used to be a Walmart, you cannot tell where the produce section was. It's all um remodeled in a way that is very welcoming, very exciting. So, I have a pin commemorating that for each of you. And it's the Jordan Learning Center with the gold J's arranged like the Walmart logo acknowledging the previous use for the building. So, I will pass those down as well for you to each have a pin. and we are going to arrange for uh an early field trip for the board to walk through even though everything isn't completely finished. Everyone's moved in and so we want to give you an early look and we'll be reaching out to schedule that with you and then we'll do a ribbon cutting when more is in place just like we do with a new school opening but that will be later this year. So, thank you very much for supporting uh that effort in making the Jordan Learning Center possible. It's everything I hoped it would be and the the central location will really mean that thousands of families benefit from this every year. So, thank you very much and thank you again to those who made the innovation lab and the learning center possible and all the hard work that staff did to put that in place so quickly. >> Such exciting things happening. Thank you for the update. Um, we sure appreciate your vision. Dr. Godfrey sees an abandoned Walmart and his visionary mind doesn't just see an abandoned Walmart and we're very lucky to have his leadership in the district. Okay, we'll now move to the public comment section of our meeting. Just a few reminders ahead of time. This is something that our board values is being able to hear from our residents, students, and employees. Um, but a few reminders. The board does not take comment on personnel issues or statements regarding the character, professional competence, or physical or mental health of an individual during board meetings. If you have concerns to that end, we would invite you to email board members individually. You can find our contact information on the district web page. Um, also those wishing to have comments heard by the board are asked to list the topic they intend to discuss as well as their name. Hopefully you saw the sign up document on your way in or through email. Um, we ask that comment be kept age appropriate. The board does not discuss issues that are not on the meeting's agenda. The board may ask staff to follow up on issues raised or may address them at a future meeting, but please remember that silence by the board on an issue does not suggest support or opposition to the message that's given. The board will now begin taking public comment on items not listed on the agenda. In-person comments will be heard first, followed by comments received electronically. And please remember that all comments, whether emailed or in person, are to be kept to a limit of a maximum of three minutes. So, we ask that you please be respectful of that time. Um, I will call you to the podium and then once you get up, please make sure that you state your name. So, we'll now hear from Colleen Leair. Um, and she will be followed by Jeff Rifleman. My name is Colleen Leair and I'm part of the community of residents who live near the land that was formerly occupied by West Jordan Elementary. To begin, I'd like to quote to you from your August 26 meeting. Mr. Thomas, could you speak to the West Jordan community that expressed a lot of concern about what we would do with West Jordan Elementary? And they were concerned that we would allow high density. Can you tell us the provisions that are in this agreement about what the intent is for West Jordan Elementary School? Mr. Thomas has replied, "I know in speaking with Ivory that that was one of the first things we brought up as we started our negotiations, the concern with the community and what they expected and what we kind of anticipated might go there." And Ivory was quick to say, "Look, we certainly want to blend into the community. We want to complement it. We're not going to go in and put high-rise buildings or apartment buildings." They specifically told us that they would look at different types of products, perhaps some patio homes and some things that would work well within the existing footprint. So, there was no intent on their part or for highdensity housing of any kind. End of quote. There are no provisions in the agreement with Ivory specifying the type of structures to be built. Such clauses can't be included. But knowing that Ivory intended to build patio homes, which they refer to as cottage homes, should have raised concern. In my talks with Ross Dinsdale, Ivory's current vision is indeed to build cottage homes on four to 5,000 square foot lots. I don't know what your definition of high def density is, but our community thinks that stacking two to two and a half town homes, town home type structures on the same 10,000 square foot lot currently required for one home is pretty close to high density. From the board's discussion, it's obvious that you were aware that West Jordan community members have been very concerned about the future of the land. However, there was no attempt to contact our community, and we feel that we have been betrayed by Jordan School District. Flyers should have been sent home with school children at Majestic and Wesland. A banner should have been hung on the schoolyard fence. How can there be public input when there is no public notification? Our community wonders why ivory was so sourced and why the land wasn't surplus to give the city and possibly other developers opportunity to bid. The district could then have used the proceeds for the purchase of the desired land. Now, we recognize that some folks like to live in so-called cottage homes, and that's fine. But most of us in the West Jordan Elementary community moved here because we wanted to live in a single family area with a nicesized private yard, space between neighbors, and an elementary school within easy walking distance. Our school is gone, but we ask that you at least help us keep the flavor of our neighborhood. It's our understanding that the 60-day due diligence period extends to approximately October 26th. We hope that you will reconsider the land swap as it presently is constituted and withdraw from the contract. If not, then please use any influence you have may have with Ivory Homes to convince them that townhouse type homes on tiny lots do not blend into or complement our area. On September 9th, our community packed the West Jordan City Council chambers to express our concerns. And if Ivory proceeds with their current plan, that same group will fight them every step of the way. We hope that you'll help us. Thank you. And you might I don't know how many other people are going to um speak, but you might just ask for a raise of hands. Who else is here for that? Because there are several other people. Thank you. >> Okay. Next, we'll hear from Jeff Rifleman. followed by Eric Smith. >> Good evening. We meet once again. Three minutes goes by very quickly, so we have enough to say again today and probably next month and the month after. I reached out to this board last month raising concerns about the failures how the district has handled an assault in a locker room upon my client's child. I asked if anyone you'd like to discuss this after the meeting last month and a few of you said hello. Thanks for coming out, but no one addressed or wanted to understand or hear more about the issue. A few of you reached out and responded to my email, which I assume all of you received. If you didn't raise your hand, I'll be glad to send the email out again. So, I take it you've all received the email. of those who responded. As I stated, I will maintain confidentiality as to your responses and your requests. As one of you have stated that under advice of legal counsel not to discuss the issue directly with me tonight. Again, I invite each one of you individually and collectively to contact me confidentiality for more information on this assault. And I renew my request that this board establish a committee or focus group to address the systematic failures in the process, training, enforcement of discipline, and specifically Title 9 in this district. A student was the victim of hazing, bullying, lwdness, and sexual assault in your West Jordan High School locker room about a year ago. A decision after about a year was made and confirmed violations and imposed some sanctions. Although I believe that they were minimum at best. Suspensions, exclusion from three games, no contact order, and locker room monitoring were some of the sanctions and remedies. One of those games was a junior varsity game of which none of the students that were sanctioned would have participated any anyway. They were also supposed to be excluded from related activities which they were not and we'll get to that in a moment. The sanctions not been meaningful enforced once a person ser was served uh was the JV game although all perpetrators are varsity players. The student who was assaulted has been forced into the same weightlifting class and locker room as his asalants. In fact, they said, "We'll make accommodation for that child where he can dress in another locker room, but the asalants get to continue with the team." That should speak volumes as to how the school in particular has addressed this issue for this child. Remedies were promised but remain unimplemented. Just to be clear, there are violations of the district policies and opposed and discussed sanctioned remedies. New information. The sighting of three alleged perpetrators in the juvenile court with allegations of sexual battery, hazing, illness have been made and are being pursued at the juvenile level. This information was brought up to the district and no further action has been taken regarding the alleged perpetrators or this issue. They walk the halls freely, the classrooms freely, wait room, locker room, and football field without any safeguards offered to the victim. The principal who serves the vice there's a vice principal who serves as a Utah high school athletics association's lay onto the school and appears to have a conflict of interest. His communications consistently minimize the seriousness of assault suggesting boys will be boys and this was nothing more than horse play. >> Can we please wrap it up? We're at the end of our time limit. If he won't enforce the sanctions and this district will not enforce sanctions, this board will not look seriously at these allegations. It says a lot about what the academics versus athletics are support in this district. To sum it up, the district's own discipline policy states its purpose is to maintain a safe learning environment, teach appropriate behavior, and instill self-discipline. But today, there's a student who cannot safely attend class, use the wait room, enter the locker room, or participate in the activities he once freely enjoyed prior to this assault. and the district and the school support that he is continuing to be ostracized and not been able to participate. This is not safety. This is not appropriate behav behavior. This is not accountability. This merits immediate attention, not a cursory threeminut discussion with you all and not a not a cursory we looked at it. Let's move along attitude. Parents, students, and this community deserve better from you representing the district. I urge you to act decisively to restore the trust, enforce your own policies, and put student safety above athletics and image. Once again, I invite you to respond to my email. We'd like to have a focus group. >> We go ahead and end. >> We'd be glad to look at this appropriately and ask that you respond appropriately. I prepared for you what I was asked by one of the people responded. Any policy recommendations? So, I policy recommendations I'll pass out. These are only cursory. They're initial, but we'd ask the district seriously. Again, a child was physically assaulted by three other teammates in a locker room and they got suspended for three games, one of which doesn't count. That's the best you can do. I would not have my child attend any school in this district until you rectify this. >> Sure. Thanks. All right. We'll now invite Eric Smith up to the podium and followed by Mr. Smith will be Richard Packer. Hi, Eric Smith. Thank you for the opportunity to address the school board this evening. I live near the um the land where the uh former West Jordan Elementary School uh was and so I wanted to share two things with you for your uh awareness or consideration. Uh first the um a substantial part of the playground of that uh land is functions as a retention basin for water for rain, snow, melting, runoff and uh I don't know if you were aware um or whether that's been shared with potential uh buyers of the land who would be looking to develop that property that there's a substantial part of that land that depending on the year it will be either very soggy or will be up to about a foot of water there. So you can kids can go out there with little RC sailboats and a little submarine and and play out there in in the water that's standing in a very large portion of that playground. uh to build upon something like that um depending on how it's done could cause flooding issues not only to those that uh would be the new residents but surrounding properties as well. And I just hope that that has been disclosed to um potential parties that are interested. The second item that I wanted to bring up relative to the that same issue is that um the u there's been at least some in our West Jordan city leadership that has uh said that there was um discussion that the city would be given an option to purchase the land first. We don't know if that as a resident I don't know if that happened. Um obviously you know any kind of details where to learn more about it. Um I don't think this is necessarily there's a the forum for it but um would like to know what's happened with that because at least some have claimed that they don't know and there are leadership and they're saying they don't know and as residents we don't know either. So I just wanted to pass that along. So thank you very much. That's all. Thank you. All right, we'll now hear from Richard Packer, followed by, excuse me, Sean Matthysse. Uh, Captain Richard Packer, US Army retired. Uh, my darling wife Lori is a district employee with the Native American program, which means that I am a volunteer with the Native American program. She also uh runs concessions for West Jordan High Lacrosse, which means I carry lots of food items for West Jordan uh high school lacrosse. Uh our forever home is three houses north of the easement on the West Jordan Elementary lot. All four of our children attended the elementary and my darling wife was uh worked a few different jobs there in our time. I want to start with a expression of gratitude to the district and especially to the maintenance team for continuing maintenance team for continuing to uh take care of the grass uh shovel the walks bring in fresh uh fresh wood chips for the park and the years of uh use the extra years of use we as a community have gotten out of that area. Uh another expression of gratitude is along the wall here. This is from the 2022 23 school year at West Jordan Elementary where the children wrote their names and little notes of gratitude to the cafeteria staff for feeding them. And that hung in the uh cafeteria gymnasium on the west wall and we went and saved it just before the school was taken down in the hopes that one day it might hang in the next West Jordan Elementary. Um, the last time I stood before this body was in 2022, I believe it was the first meeting where the board considered whether to shut down our school. And since that time, uh, myself and, uh, speaking for our community, we have a Save West Jordan Elementary Facebook page where we've kept up over the years and shared information about our space and what goes on there and what can we can do to make it better. Since that time, we've gone through uh as a community all the stages of grief where now uh I don't know that I'm really advocating for anything other than that was my first opportunity to speak and this is my last. So, whatever responsibilities and math went into making these decisions and why we don't get to have our school and now our community space anymore, I would just like to be an advocate for the loss of my community and feeling like the worst has happened where no longer we no longer have a school and now we no longer have our community space and next we will have highdensity housing is what it's sounding like. So again, thank you for what you do. Thank you for letting us be part of the district family, but this hurts. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right, Sean Matthysse. Good evening. Just want to talk about some of the items that our district is endorsing. And I I've brought this up to a couple of the board members who and Brian, thank you. He took some action on it. But there's more that needs to be done. Let me describe to you one of the top places that our district is sending our children who are in facing difficult times. We sent them to a website that when they log in, the popup says, "On a desktop computer, or laptop, press escape button three times to quickly escape." or if you're on a tablet, press anywhere three times to quickly get out of it. That alone should have brought red flags. Let's just describe this website which is one of the top places we send our students. We can join clubs there. We can join the club moms are overrated. The title of this club is your mom garbage. Could you do better without her? Well, then come on down and we can have crappy moms together. Or I can join the join the calling all teens with strict parents. Any tips for sneaking out? We have security cameras. Or perhaps I want to join the Satanist or pagans and Wiccans club or the 21 plus club or the Satan club. I mean, do you enjoy Satan? Talk about Satan. Meme about Satan. Just have good satanic fun. Remember, this is the top place we're sending our students. Perhaps I can go explore and I can find partners in my community. No log on qualifications. I can have anybody connect with anybody anywhere in the US or the world for that matter. Or perhaps I can go join a entertainment for roleplaying, a whole place where I can go and have my sexual fantasies role played until they get too graphic and we take them private. I I've shared this with a couple members. Beyond that, and because of some of the children in here, I won't go beyond that, but it gets worse. Luckily, this was a top link on our counseling center site in the top five or so spaces. Um, Brian, luckily, he took some action and I think got the link removed, but it's still in our top brochures. Here is the Jordan School District mental health and crisis resource for students and families. The number two one is this website, the number two spot [Music] or our suicide crisis outreach. It's in the top four places with a link to how to get here. Um, I won't give the site. Nikki has the site. She and I have talked about this on the phone. Um, it's not just a problem here. The Utah State School Board also had this. Um, I contacted represent um, Amanda. She also got it removed from the state school board. There's more to be done though. We've got to protect our children. This cannot be a top place we send our students. Um it's just not what we can do. Um so I'm I'm asking this board to take a little bit more action now. Um Dr. Godfrey, I'm specifically in the administration. Who allowed this? Who put it there? And what can you do to get it removed this week? It doesn't need to take months. it just doesn't need to be here. And thank you. >> Thank you. That is the end of the list that I have of those who had signed up to speak, but I just want to check. Is there anyone else here who intended to speak but didn't see the sign up? Okay, go ahead and please make sure that you introduce yourself to us when you come up. Hello, my name is Trevor Kitchenen. Um, I'm a a manufacturing engineer and I live in 7176 South 2470 West. I have a lot that my backyard is the school and so I'm personally very affected by the changes that are happening in the West Jordan Elementary lot. Um, a little bit of background history. We specifically chose our lot and our home for the purpose of being able to have our kids walk out of our front door, go down the walkway we live right next to and our kids would safely be able to go to school every single day. Um, after we moved in about a year later, that school was decided to be removed. and we have had to make the decision to send our children to our a charter school instead of the public school because the public schools are in our opinion getting very crowded for the education that we wanted to give our children. Um the other reason that we moved into this home was so that we could have neighbors with similar sized homes and similar viewpoints similar living styles and we were hoping to move into an area that could have a lot of families that would move into this area. And then we were surprised with 2020 and price houses skyrocketed. And so from a a young family perspective, I understand the purpose and the need of lowcost housing. However, looking into some of the details, I have some co-workers and again I'm an engineer. Engineers talk about all sorts of stuff at work and I have multiple co-workers that have had situations similar to what we are dealing with where a lot in the middle of the neighborhood was sold and town homes or medium/highdensity housing moved into this area. The main issue that we have in our situation is that the lot that we are talking about is in the very center of our neighborhood. And when you're when you're accurately designing out a floor plan for how to densify a neighborhood, you put the lowest density in the middle and the highest density on the outside mostly for egress safety and traffic concerns. Well, we are doing this in inverse. And what my co-workers have personally experienced is the entire neighborhood gets flooded with traffic when leaving to and from work. And neighborhood and streets are just flooded with cars. And because I live right next to a walkway, there's a very high likelihood that people in this community would be parking near my house and walking through the walkway to get to their town homes because that could be a shorter distance than parking further down. And since I live on a culde-sac, I only have one spot on the street. And so this the decisions that are being made and what outcome happens in this lot has a very very large and direct impact to my my living standard, my comfort and my personal privacy. So as as decisions are being made and things are being discussed, I would very strongly recommend that if the if lots have to be built on this house in in this area, m make sure that they are similar to the existing homes in this area so that we can maintain the the ecosystem and the environment that all of us moved into and planned on when we bought our homes. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Larson. Do we have any emailed comments? All right, seeing none, that will conclude this section of public comment time. Um, again, we are so grateful to those of you who made the effort to come. We appreciate your feedback and we are not offended if you don't choose to stay for the whole meeting. So, feel free to stay. We welcome having you, but we don't want you to feel awkward about leaving. Okay, let's go ahead and move board members into our general business. I'll now accept a motion to approve the consent agenda items. I move that we approve the consent agenda items, board minutes, and LEA specific licensing. >> Second. Okay, we have a motion by Miss Dean, a second by Miss Wood. Was that Sorry, I should have looked over um to approve our consent agenda items, board minutes, and LEA specific licensing. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> I. >> And any opposed, please say nay. That passes unanimously. We'll now accept a motion to accept the consent agenda. >> I move that we accept the consent agenda items A through D. >> We're on C didn't or did we did C get lumped in A, B, and C? >> Yeah, we just took all of those in one motion through D. Is that >> I'll second? >> Okay. So, we have a motion to accept consent agenda items A through Did you say D? Okay. Sorry, I'm hearing C now in my mind. All right. Um, a motion to accept consent agenda items A through D um by Miss Dean, a second by Miss Wood. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none. All in favor, please say I. >> I. And any opposed say nay. Right. That motion passes unanimously. I'll now accept a motion for bids. I move that we accept the bid for instructional support services. >> I'll second. >> Okay. We have a motion by Miss Barrow, a second by Miss Dean to accept the bid for instructional support services destiny software. Is there any discussion to this motion? >> I just had a couple questions because I'm curious about the software. >> Please. >> So, I was just curious how long we've been using this software, if we foresee any shift coming in the years, and if we had to shift, would that be a heavy lift or is that a pretty seamless process? Don't know who's here to speak to it, but >> Norm Emerson is here from teaching and learning and can speak to that. >> Awesome. Thank you. Yes, my understanding is that the Fallout Destiny system has been in use really for kind of as long as anyone can remember and to make a transition in the future would be a huge change. Um the majority of the districts particularly the larger districts in the state uh do use the flet destin destiny system. There are of course other library management systems out there and resource management systems but um really to a large extent I think there's consensus amongst librarians and others that that the destiny the flet product is is pretty much the best one at this point. >> Cool. Thanks. >> Sure. >> Before you sit down, can I ask another one? I'm curious about um what kind of student privacy protections are in place with this software. Is that something that we check in on as we renew? >> Well, we've never had an issue with that. Uh one of the things that we discuss in our training sessions with both the uh elementary as well as the secondary uh librarians is is always the need to have that for example that computer monitor situated in a way that you know people can't look around the corner and see what's going on. And so because of that, um, I'm not aware that we've ever ever had an issue having to do with privacy that's ever arisen out of use of of any of these programs. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you so much for your help. >> Okay. Any other discussion to this item? All right. All those in favor of approving the bid for instructional support services flet destiny software, please say I. >> I. >> And any opposed. Right. That motion passes unanimously. I'll accept another motion. I move that we accept the bid for special education private school placement service services. I'll second. >> Have a motion by Miss Dean, a second by Miss Barrow that we accept a bid for special education private school placement services. Any discussion? All right, hearing none. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> I. And any opposed? Okay, that motion passes unanimously. Um, I'll accept another motion. >> I'll make the motion that we approve teaching learning classroom management software. >> I'll second. >> Hey, we have a motion by Dr. Robinson, a second by Miss uh, Miss Wood, sorry, that we um approve the bid for teaching and learning classroom management software. Is there any discussion to that motion? >> I do have some questions about this. Um I don't know who's here to speak to it. There he is. Man of the hour. >> Yes. >> So I >> three minutes on the clock. I was curious why uh you and your team have see the need to provide GoG Guardian and Bloxy for schools when a lot of them have already been purchasing these systems and when we've already purchased uh the Google education plus software which does similar things. >> I'm I'm feel like there's a lot of the same stuff going on. So >> you're not wrong. Um, and we're we're actually not purchasing it for the schools. This is a building level decision if they want to purchase GoG Guardian or Bloxy themselves. We've made those available as part of three options for them. Um, but we're pushing all all the options available, but we've done training on class tools from Google that's been purchased in the past. We feel like that's a viable solution. Yet, there are reasons why schools have chosen potentially to use the other tools. Um, one I might mention to you, Bloxy specifically is one that you can install in a computer lab where the class tools from Google is only available on Chromebooks or computer labs or PC. So, they can't use that kind of software in those labs. So, there's a variety of reasons why a school might choose to use a different tool. Any other questions? Just to clarify in my mind, every school now has access to the Google program, right? >> Correct. That's something >> this is schools choosing to go above and beyond that level of protection >> for a variety of reasons. One of the things that we mentioned when we talked about class to class tools from Google is it requires a launch from a Chromebook device. Not all schools are willing to have teachers on Chromebook devices right at this point. So that would require that they use a different tool. That's kind of a building level decision if they want to do that. We're certainly trying to make every option available for them to have a free option based on what we've already purchased as a district, but that's still something that they have building level decision-making ability. >> So the device has to be a Google computer or specifically a Chromebook. It could be any Google computer. Yeah. So, there's a variety of different devices. >> The one that we primarily have in most of the buildings though is Chromebook. >> So, that's a device that a teacher could use any Chromebook. Doesn't have to be a brand new Chromebook to to launch class tools. Um, but still, like we said, we wanted to make a variety of options available. You'll see in the bid that it um they have the choice of what they want to use. However, if they choose to purchase GoG Guardian or Bloxy, that's funds from their building level decision. >> Well, there's no funds coming from us necessarily. This is more just a vetted stamp of approval. This is what we recommend. >> Yeah. And these tools, some of the schools really like the tools that they're currently using. So, they in order to kind of give their teachers a voice are making these an option for them if they choose to do that. But we just want to provide a variety of tools so that classrooms and schools can have the tools that they feel most comfortable with without having to feel like we're forcing something upon them. >> So the price tag, if I understand it right, could vary depending on how many >> Yeah. So I mean we part of the reason we did the RFP is so that we could guarantee pricing per user. So let's use GoG Guardian as an example. A school that chooses to purchase GoG Guardian, it costs $1.50 50 cents per student, not per user. Um, if a school uses Bloxy, the price is a little bit higher. Um, it's $2.25. Um, but that also would cover computers in the computer lab, too, if they chose to do that. So, you might see a school do a variety of things. A school could say, "We want to purchase Bloxy for our labs, but then use class tools from Google for our students and our teachers, which would be a very minimal expense for that school." or others might choose to go a variety of different ways. >> Any other questions? Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> All right. Um, all those in favor of approving the bid for teaching and learning classroom management software, please say I. >> I. >> I. >> And any opposed? Okay, that motion carries unanimously. Okay, seeing we have no special business items this evening, we will turn to the superintendence report. Dr. Godfrey, I just wanted to report that we had four cabinet members or four administrators rather go to Atlanta to 3D headquarters. This is just a followup on my previous conversation with the board. We also visited a local high school of about three a little over 3,000 students uh in Atlanta that was that had 3D in place and we were very impressed and uh we plan to continue to learn more and we'll be talking with the board about a letter of interest that allows us to continue to pursue it. It's not an obligation at all, but just signing a letter of interest that allows us to continue down that path with 3D. But I was very encouraged by the model. I think it makes learning very meaningful. We had a panel of students. We spoke with a panel of teachers. We met with administrators. And um the more I learned, the more I liked it and the more I thought that it would be a good fit uh to to try in a feeder system. Um so we'll start looking at potential sites. We'll look at a letter of interest and we'll keep you informed along the way as to what financial obligation might be involved. and and um but I just wanted to report back that that was a very fruitful trip. I'm also impressed with the level of support as I indicated earlier from Junior Achievement. They're really dedicated to this and the folks at 3D headquarters were impressive in their knowledge and their elacrity, their eagerness to help. So, thank you. >> You said Granite is considering it. Who is the other district? Granite is the other district that's considering it and they send a representative as well. So, >> um I would anticipate if we move forward that each district would have we would have a feeder because we don't have 9th grade in the high school and they would choose a high school to participate and Junior Achievement would support those two schools in different districts as a start. And we are considering a 2027 fall of 2027 start to give plenty of time to prepare and choose where to place that to um budget for any resources. Again, I believe that would only be preparation time for teachers, whatever that looked like. Um but we learned a lot more about it and I'll report out more uh as time goes on. But I appreciate your support in exploring that idea. It's it's very encouraging. Thank you. Hey, committee reports and comments by board members. >> I have a comment. I wrote it down because it's a long one. I didn't want to miss anything, but I did want to publicly express a concern I have related to the content that's consumed by students in the in Utah's public education schools. The content in our classrooms is controlled by the legislature through state statute as well as the Utah State Board of Education, another elected body, through constitutional mandate and of course through LEAs or school boards um through policy. curriculum is vetted and voted on by school boards and then there are also guidelines and policies that guide teachers use of like YouTube videos or other content. Now, having said that, the executive branch of government, Governor Cox, emailed a video to all the superintendent requesting that we find a way to share it with every high school student in our jurisdiction. Allowing content to come directly from the executive branch of government, in other words, the governor, to the classroom, in my opinion, is an extremely dangerous precedent. Content from the executive directly to the classroom. That's a dangerous precedent. Now, some may say that this particular incident, it had to do with the the Charlie Kirk assassination. Some may say that this particular incident was harmless. It was done in good taste. He was dealing with a crisis or any other excuse. But in principle, it's inappropriate. It breaches the separation of the branches of government, which are there for a reason, aren't they? They've been there for a long time. The separation of the branches of government primarily to prevent power and control in any one branch of government. So, just to summarize, the governor doesn't have direct constitutional authority to dictate classroom instruction. And he didn't dictate it. I I don't want to say that. It was a request. And I think it was um I I think he was he was using his influence. He was using the influence of the governor's office and that and that is a concern to me. Um, so while his request may not have been illegal, it risks undermining the independence of the state board and local school boards and sets a precedent for political messaging in schools. Parents and community members may perceive this as partisan or political influence in schools. Um, so that's it's just been something I've been thinking about. But I did want to I guess publicly express that and uh not sure if we want to take any action modify policy. I mean I I was just thinking you know what if a prominent member of the community or you know Carl Malone or Elon Musk or Bill Gates some influential person asked us to to get a particular video to our students in the classroom. Of course, we would all say, "Sorry, we're not going to do that." And maybe, you know, an argument could be made that, well, the governor isn't like those people. He has he has a different um ability to reach students in the classroom. But I I don't know. It's it's a concern of mine. So, thanks. finance community would like to answer a question raised by one of our members regarding the information we sent out in our summary of our meeting. One of the things I don't think board members realize they're signing up for when they run for the board is that this body is a taxing entity. We have the power to tax. And because of that, we get approached by communities, cities liking wanting to offer a deal that we will discount your taxes if you develop in our city. And it puts us in an uncomfortable position, but it is one of the realities of being a board member is you have to make decisions about redevelopment agencies or taxing entities that are trying to say, "Wait, we want a commercial base." And there's the trade-off for school districts. We would receive much more much higher property taxes if we had more of a commercial base. One of the challenges that Jordan School District has always faced is we are primarily residentialbased. And we re we receive fewer taxes from residents than from businesses. The neighboring districts, which have much more of a a business backbone in their district, they have more money than we do because businesses are taxed at a different rate than residents. And so one of the tradeoffs that we have to face is do we give up taxes to develop our commercial base? so that we receive more taxes in the future. And so we had a recent meeting with South Jordan, who is another taxing entity, and they have a redevelopment committee that reports some of these tax increment projects. And so all of those acrement acronyms have to do with the fact that cities approach us to offer a deal so that people develop commercially in this city. we give up taxes initially to receive much more taxes in the future. That's the meeting we were reporting on. Every city has done it. Um, every city has come to Jordan School District and asked for help in promoting the commercial base of that city. And so we were just having a report on South Jordan's projects and where we stand with each one of them. Now, with regards to the baseball field in Daybreak, South Jordan approached us seeking one of those tax increment proposals and we turned it down. It just was not in our advantage. It was not in our favor and we said, "This is too much." And we turned it down. So they took advantage of a recent law in Utah that says if you have a transit hub like a bus stop or a track station then you can develop around that and be it's kind of the same idea but you can develop for you know you can you can commercially grow for less taxes now and the trade-off is that they would be increased taxes later. That's how the baseball field was funded is through a TRZ pro project. It is a Utah law that allows you to develop around a transportation hub which because of that track station right there by the ball field, they qualified. So they qualified for a tax incentive, lower taxes now to develop so that they can charge more taxes in the future. So, those are what those acronyms stand for. >> Do we lose out on those taxes that they've lowered, >> like the baseball part? >> Uh, we always lose out, but in the end, it's just a trade-off. Do do we increase taxes later for the loss today? And, um, you can we can debate the TRZ all all you want, but it's something that kind of we had our hand forced. We we didn't have our hand force. We were we were a voting entity, but um they pursued vigorously that project and we it was approved. >> We had one vote, didn't we? Or something. Okay. >> One vote. So, does that answer your question? >> Can I ask a clarifying question? Um, in those tax increment situations, do do the developers or the or the businesses get taxed less or we or they get taxed the same amount, but the school board just doesn't get the same percentage. >> They pay less. >> That amount goes to the city or someone else. >> Yeah. They pay less of a tax >> tax. They pay less. Okay. Um, now just so you know, years ago when they we had numerous cities coming, we said, you know what, let's come up with a criteria to let them know what ones we would favor. And so we came up with a 13 I think there's about 13 bullet points saying here are considerations that that when is it advantageous to us to partner like these? And so it got to the point where people would come in and request them and we would just sit put our bullet points out there and say, "Talk to us about this. Don't sell your program. I'm sure it's a wonderful development, but tell us about these questions that we have that we've set up as our standard as to whether or not these are to our advantage. So we have this is not something we ever thought we'd be skilled at, but we have really developed an ability to say here is when it is to our advantage to move forward. I say that correctly, Mr. Larson. Would you add anything? >> Um, great explanation on the the overall process. I I think I would clarify that um the HTRZ itself did not directly fund the ballpark. It uh now it could be argued indirectly maybe but not directly. And then um I forgot the other the other point, but there uh each the city when the city brings these proposals, they're the ones negotiating with whoever they're talking to. we negotiate with the city. So, there's two agreements, us with the city and then the city with the entities. And each of those agreements can look different. Uh they're all going to be some different fashion of of assistance of some sort. So, one one agreement may say, "Well, we'll help you put in the sewer line or the infrastructure." And another agreement might say, "Well, we'll refund you the taxes." Uh so it can take different forms but either any way you look at it, it's still assisting that group and kind of incentivizing them to build in this area. >> That's a report from finance. >> I'd like to report on the Jordan Education Access Committee. Um thank you to those who went to the family fall fair. They supported that event and they're actively supporting our affinity groups. I wanted to share a book that we're reading, Lenses of Humanity. I don't know if you're familiar with Kyle Reyes from UVU. I just want to read a few questions on the back cover that I think will give you a flavor of the book. Invite you all if you're interested to um read it. It's called Lenses of Humanity. And the three questions on the back are, are you finding it difficult to positively engage with people who view the world differently than you do? Do you feel the heaviness of our societal and political divides? Have you seen evidence of the erosion of humanity? If you say yes to any of those, here's a recommendation. That's it. Quick update on facilities. We met last Thursday. Um and our in our previous meeting pre prior to last Thursday, we we had met with an organization uh named Call to Action Foundation who had come to us with a a housing proposal wanting to utilize some of our vacant properties uh build homes or apartments on them and offer them kind of as lowincome housing. options and giving our our employees kind of first dibs on them. That was kind of the their pitch to us. After we discussed it as a committee, there were some big concerns on our side. I don't if you're interested in those concerns, you can talk to me or or Scott. Uh some of them are listed in in the minutes, but the facilities committee wanted to recommend to the board that we not participate in this proposal. So that's our recommendation. We also talked we we we had some updates on the Marv Jensen uh property. We're still waiting on Salt Lake from Salt Lake County. Is that still current? Okay. And then uh let's see one item that we talked about we'll be discussing enclosed today after this meeting and we did talk about developing a long-term uh building plan or long-term housing plan. and Daryl is going to draft give us a first draft of what he's hoping to see on that document and then we'll try to take it from there. So, thank you. Um, so Salt Lake County Parks and Wreck. Um, just a couple things that I thought were notable from the past meeting was that this past summer the my county wreck passes exceeded 90,000 and it's it's possible that it's exceeded a 100,000 by now. But and another thing is that senior and adult um wreck passes have use has increased and that was one worry was that these having a bunch of kids at the rec centers might drive other groups away but it has had the opposite effect and more people have been participating in Salt Lake County wreck and then the Jordan Education Foundation the board met on September 4th Earth in the Jordan Learning Center. And it was really fun to tour that building and um see that. And Christmas for Kids is coming up in December, December 6th. It comes sooner than you think. And so, and the foundation invites anyone who would like to participate by donating their time or financial resources to help kids. um well to help serving students. Um you are welcome to do that and you can see how at the Jordan Education Foundation website. >> Sorry, one more thing from finance committee on um board docs or board books is a document that I would strongly encourage you to look at. Um it's called the preliminary results for the 2425 fiscal year. We have listed every one of our funds, all of our eight funds, where we are, where we should be, and if it's off, what our plan is to get where we want to go. I would suggest you read through it so that you can see exactly where we are in each fund. Uh it's very well put together. Mr. Larson did a phenomenal job. We went through a discussion to say here's the goal, here's where we are, here's where we should be, where we're off, here's our plan to get where we want to be. So, please be familiar with that as they complete our ACT for the year. Um, that will be very helpful in knowing where we are in each one of our funds. So, I wanted to point that one out. Uh just a quick update on now I need to be really specific. The joint legislative committee, not the JLC, a building in Jordan district, but the joint legislative committee um met. Um just a reminder that September is legislator month in the classroom. We have extended an invitation to all of the representatives that cover Jordan School District areas and um are slowly seeing some responses to those, but would definitely invite any board member to reach out to their own legislator and ask them when and how they would like to visit a school in the district. And certainly that is not limited to the month of September, but um an important interaction as they consider legislation coming up that can impact our students. And then um looking forward this upcoming weekend to the leadership conference that will be held at Bryce Canyon. that anyone else. Okay, great. We do have one additional item for study session that we need to revisit. So, having come to the end of this agenda, we will adjourn the business meeting and reconvene our study session. All right, welcome back to the Jordan School District Board of Education continued study session. We began earlier and then had our business meeting. We're now back to finish our study session agenda. We still have all board members in attendance as well as our superintendent, associate superintendent, business administrator, and board attorney. We have one item left on our agenda, which is item 1 F, district enrollment trends. So, we will turn it to Dr. Anthony Godfrey. >> Thank you. I want to start with a caveat. This is I'm going to present a scenario to you that is not going to happen. I know it's not going to happen and I can tell you why, but I want to show you the general trend that it shows. And I think this is good context for the discussions we'll have in October when we have updated enrollment numbers to review and to talk about boundaries. Uh, I want to describe this um from a school perspective before I talk about a um district perspective. When you're a principal of a high school, you look at how many seniors do I have graduating and how many incoming sophomores do I have and what's the difference? Do I have a bigger senior class leaving? Then I'm going to have a reduction overall, of course. And if I have more sophomores coming than I have seniors leaving, then my school's going to get larger. >> And I wanted to look overall at where things stand in the district in terms of what would happen enrollment wise if we um aren't looking at individual schools. Instead, we're looking overall as a district. Where do things stand? Um, historically we have had diminished kindergarten enrollment. In 201516 we had 3,715 kindergarteners. We currently have 3,275 and that's not an October 1 count. That's just what we have enrolled right now. Now I see some taking pictures of this. Remember this is this is the these are the numbers that we track. And the next numbers I'm going to show you are the ones that aren't going to happen. But if they were to happen, this is what things would look like. Now, there was a point where when we did a district-wide boundary change, we looked at the overall percentage of seats in middle school that we were using. Some of you might remember this. And we looked at the number of kids. say it's at,00 kids. Of course, we had many more than that, but our capacity was a thousand. So, we said no matter where we move students, our capacity is exceeded. It's not about boundaries. It's that we just don't have seats anywhere in our district for these students. Right now, our middle school capacity um is and I'll I'll send you these updated numbers after October 1, but our our high school capacity is in the 80s. So, if there were no boundaries and we just said, "How many seats do we have? How many kids?" It's at about 85% of our capacity is used. In the middle school, it's in the lower 80s. In elementary, it's in the mid70s. So, if you moved everyone around, we'd be in the 70s in terms of capacity. Now, you don't get to move buildings around. We don't get to move students around as far as we might need to to balance things out. And I would also note for those who are listening that we have 5 and a half elementary schools worth of portables that we move around to follow the surges in enrollment wherever they may be. So with all of that in mind, I want to show you on the next slide what would happen if our kindergarten class stayed the same size. So, our kindergarten class for this year right now, sorry, we're we're going to format that so it's large enough, is in red. For 202526, we have 3,275 kindergarteners. In 12th grade, we have 5,137 seniors. That's districtwide. So you can see the difference between 3,000 kindergarteners and 5,000 seniors. Does that make sense? The newest class we have coming in. Also, the number of kindergarters we have coming is a big mystery because first graders we can count the number of kindergarters. Second graders, we can count the number of first graders and so forth. But kindergarteners appear out of nowhere. Um, so >> are there >> actually we look at our birth rate, we do other things. uh that's an exaggeration but we don't have the reliable data that we do with other grade levels. Also I want to state this very clearly. The reason this won't happen is that we have a lots of kids move in and if you compare kindergarten numbers over the years and track that number you'll see that the number grows over time from kindergarten to 7th grade for example you'll see a thousand more kids that move in. So that's another reason this scenario won't happen because we have kids move in. It's not our only students aren't aren't only here with us from kindergarten to senior year. But I did want to show you that if you just assumed that a kindergarten class was going to stay the same size that it did for for right now and every year we were going to get the same number of kindergarteners and nobody moved in, we would see a dramatic reduction over the next few years in our enrollment. So unless people move in or we have more kindergarteners, we may not see that number increase as much as it has. And we've already seen that difference. We haven't seen as many students moving in and um we haven't seen as many kindergarteners as you saw in the previous slide. So again, we're in the mid 80s high school-wise, low 80s middle school-wise, and mid70s elementary wise in terms of the percentage of the overall seats that we're using. So I just wanted to give that overall context before we move to talking about individual schools and because it's I do the same thing. It's easy to quickly move to the hot spots or the areas that we've been hearing about or and and look at individual schools as opposed to where we are overall. I'll say it like a sixth or seventh time. This isn't what's going to happen. We're going to have more students than this. But is it's an interesting exercise to just see absent other factors. If we had the same size kindergarten, it would be a pretty dramatic drop in enrollment over time. >> Amazing. is we have 67,000 seats, >> right? >> We have 67,000 seats in all of our buildings and we're going to be down to 42,000 occupied. >> And 67,000 seats is an interesting way to look at it because you can configure seats differently. You can move 9th grade to the high school as as neighboring districts have done. You can move sixth grade to the middle school. You can you can shuffle that a little bit. And for a while, Granite had different grade alignments in different areas of the district. I understand they've now made all of their high schools 912 and all of their middle school 68. This is an exercise. This is just a thought exercise. Again, not a projection, but just kind of a a way of looking at things. And I appreciate you bringing up that number. It's what's our capacity. And so then the decision is how much do we move students or do we close schools in one area and build them in another area? Do we look at alternate alignments? Do we look at alternate calendars? How do we creatively use or shift the space that we have? And so I only share this to so so that you have that context with the opportunity to maybe consider looking beyond individual school boundaries and the balancing of neighboring schools and just look at this as a broader context >> systemwide what's our teacher to student ratio >> um oh if we look at >> lowering class sizes. So >> wanting to lower the class size. Is that what you mean? >> Currently systemwide. So K through 12, what's our what's our teacher to student ratio? >> I know. >> Uh the staffing ratio is about 26 or if you averaged it out because it's lower in the younger grades. >> It looks like it's 20.8 >> systemwide. That include high school. Well, >> I want high school. I >> high school is staffed at 26. >> John, do you have that off the top of your head? >> Well, let's say 27. Let's just say 27. >> 27. Yeah. >> That's a drop in 476 teachers. >> If this fictional scenario that is not going to happen were to happen, >> we're going to lose 700 or 476 teachers in those same 12 years. I'll also say that we hired about close to 400 this year. So >> what's the average salary? >> The average cost is 90,000 with benefits and salary, >> but I look to Mr. Larson in my peripheral vision for >> let's say 90,000. The salaries of those 400 teachers is $42.8 8 million >> if you take in all the salary and benefits. >> So major changes coming to Jordan school district. That's a difference of 42 almost $43 million in terms of less money for salary. >> But this is never going to happen. >> Huh? >> Going down a theoretical rabbit hole. >> That's right. Now, so what I'm saying is we have to watch for growth factors, people moving in. We have to watch the birth rate to offset this fictional. But you see why why I point this out. It's that absent these other factors, there's a there's a there's an overall downward downward trend. And if you look back at the other at the other slide, you can see along that top line, first grade, second grade, third grade, they're all in the 3000. and 10th grade, 11th grade, and 12th grade are all in the 5,000. >> Yeah. How many seats are in five and a half elementary schools worth of portables? >> Five and a half. How many portables does that equate to? >> About 250 students, >> 250 >> portables. So 250 portables times >> 25 >> depending 25. Yeah. So, call it 25. >> What is that? You already know. >> 250 portables. And we have not built one >> since the district split. We have not built one. I made it my personal mission. We are not spending money on another portable. We're moving them where we need them. Am I right, Scott? >> You're absolutely right. >> Was I right to do that, Scott? Thank you very much. If this trend continues, >> not not not this exact scenario, but there's just a declining trend in enrollment, >> could a could a possible outcome as opposed to a reduction in teacher staff be a reduction in teacher to student ratio? I mean, could we look at it like that or >> letters? Because you're also our income's going to drop as well. >> Yeah. we can get income based on enroll students >> and and I think something that we can think about too is it it >> just based on my own observation I don't know how much there is to this I think that um at you know at 7th grade there are certain groups of students that come from charter schools to go to a middle school and then at 9th grade there are certain groups of students who come from charter schools because they want to participate they they want to participate in um more classes or have well I I don't know I can't tell what the reasons are but that's just something I think possibly happens too is that at seventh grade sometimes charter students join us and then again another group joins at ninth grade >> but you also have more charter schools coming up and more people going to home school which couldn't deeply affect these numbers. >> Yeah, there are lots of factors at play and traditionally that has happened. Seventh grade and 10th grade are times when we see folks return, >> but we're just seeing less of that. We're seeing >> fewer people move in. We also, as I talk with with charters, there's a level of saturation also with the number of charter students. Um but with as you pointed out with the incentives from the state not to register in public education >> um that's a factor as well. Slowed birth rate is something you hear about on a national level. So it's just I I I give you that perspective just before we get granular. I wanted to to to take a big view. So, I don't want to be critical of other districts around us, but some of them are our same size with significantly more schools open and now they're faced that they have to close schools in massive numbers. I mean, part of the problem with Alpine splitting is that they're going to have to face that, you know, and being smart and strategic on on not overbuilding and and and closing when we need to will not only help our district now, but in boards to come be if we were really smart right here. This is going to help our district significantly. >> And so I really appreciate this larger view of something that's totally different than when I joined the board. >> Yeah. >> You know, and so we do have to change our mindset and and really get smart on on long-term building. And that's what I'm trying to talk about with that long-term building thing. part of that long-term building is is looking at, you know, where we need to and we ought to be almost looking at that yearly, you know, >> and and to the point about the staffing ratio, it does give us an opportunity to think through what do we want the district to look like? What do we value? What what what uh what makes sense in terms of the way we staff and and that sort of thing. Because not that long ago, we were on year round just out of desperation to just find a place for, >> you know, >> kids. And it does give us a little more flexibility when you're not just trying to find space where kids can fit. Then then you have more choices available to you. But you also have to be thoughtful about what resources are coming in over time and and what this means. So, it's just something to be watchful on and and to think broadly at the same time that we look at those very important neighborhood decisions. >> Six years ago, when we opened up those six schools, we were growing at a middle school a year, >> right? >> We were adding 1500 students every single year. We were growing the size of a middle school. It's amazing how quickly things change in six years. >> Yeah, it really is. and back. >> And if it sw if it swings back and when it does, we're the district with space to grow and place space space to build. And >> um I'm sure there are builders out there who would say, "Oh, we're we're we're going to be growing fast and this isn't what's going to happen." And um so that's that's what we have to watch for is one of those factors that are going to um to reverse that trend. So >> thank you. >> Very interesting. Thank you. Okay, we have reached the end of our study session agenda. Um we do have some close session items. So I will take a motion. >> I move that we go into close session for character and competent of p of individuals property potential litigation negotiations and security. >> Second. >> Second. Okay. We have a second by Miss Dean. I mean a motion by Miss Dean. A second by Mr. Barnett that we move into close session. I will take a roll call vote. Miss Dean. Yes, >> Miss Wood. >> Yes, >> Mr. or Dr. Robinson, sorry. >> Miss Barrow. >> Yes, >> Mr. Dunford. >> Yes, >> Mr. Barnett. >> Yes. >> And I am also a yes. So, that vote is unanimous and we will move into close session. Thank you for joining us tonight.