Tanesa Backus

The meeting commenced with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Craig Brinkerhoff and an inspirational thought by Derek Farns. A significant portion of the recorded session involved public comments concerning the potential boundary adjustments between Dry Creek Elementary, Harbor Point Elementary, Sage Hills Elementary, Saratoga Shores Elementary, and Springside Elementary. Speakers from the community, particularly parents associated with Springside Elementary, voiced strong concerns that the proposed options would lead to severe overcrowding at Springside, projecting enrollments over 1,000 or nearly 1,200 students, which they argued would negatively impact educational quality, student safety, traffic flow, and specialized program availability. Community members requested the Board reconsider proposals to ensure equitable enrollment distribution across all affected schools, emphasizing fairness over administrative simplicity or reliance on unconfirmed future school construction. Board recognitions were also issued to the Lone Peak High 6A boys state swim champions.

This document outlines Windsor Elementary School's Reading Goals for the 2025-2026 academic year. The plan focuses on developing confident and capable readers by setting clear, grade-level specific objectives to improve reading proficiency and ensure significant student growth. Key priorities include increasing the percentage of students achieving benchmark proficiency and making typical or better growth in reading, as measured by Acadience testing, across all grades from Preschool to 6th Grade by May 2026.

The board meeting featured presentations on several key operational areas. The first segment involved a report from ESS regarding substitute staffing usage statistics for the current school year, noting peak usage periods between January and March, and April and May. The presentation highlighted an overall fill rate of approximately 98.3% for July to November 2025, an improvement from previous years, attributing this to responsive feedback mechanisms with ESS, including improvements related to incident reports and expedited processing for returning retired employees. Financial overview data showed an increase in annual spend with ESS, rising from $5.5 million in 2023 to $8.9 million in 2025. Contract details confirmed renewal through May 31, 2030. The second presentation detailed the results of an employee sentiment survey conducted using the Parseek tool during late October, focusing on feedback regarding an important transition, with over 1,200 unique respondents.

The study session featured a presentation on connecting with the community, focusing on the implementation and framework of community schools within the district. Key discussion points included addressing physical, emotional, and mental barriers for students, and ensuring student success through integrated student supports, expanded learning time, family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership. Specific successes detailed included implementing an asset-based team framework at Cedar Valley High School, providing parent English classes through Alpine Adult Education, facilitating a vision clinic in partnership with Tabitha's Way, running food pantry drives with Community Action Services, and hosting new student breakfasts to foster belonging and communication.

The initial portion of the session involved required annual training for the school community council, presented by Sam Richer, focusing on the timeline of important dates, the submission of stakeholder and land trust reports, and the planning cycle for the 2024-2025, 2025-2026, and 2026-2027 plans. Discussion continued regarding standardized rules of order and procedure for school councils and clarification on allowable and unallowable expenses under Trust Lands funds, emphasizing the need for expenditures to be specific and directly improve instruction. Board members also discussed possibilities for reporting Trust Land fund usage to policymakers and analyzing best practices for fund allocation. The latter part of the meeting included recognizing accomplishments of students and employees, including artwork displayed in the district office from various schools such as Dry Creek Elementary, Lehi Elementary, Lehigh High School, Meadow Elementary, North Point Elementary, and River Rock Elementary.