School Board Snapshot: 08/19/25 BOE Meeting

The August 19 meeting ran six hours — if you’d like to watch, here’s the link: Full meeting recording.

📄 Full agenda here: DCSD Board Agenda

Key Study & Policy Topics

• Mill Bond Oversight Committee (MBOC) bond update

• Family, staff, and student engagement survey results

• Strategic Plan update

• School finance presentation

• Board budget revision + committee priorities

• Community Connections Plan discussion

• 2025–26 board calendar

👉 Worth noting: The Board is now meeting once a month (not twice) for the rest of 2025.

Spotlight: Engagement Survey

Douglas County Parents' Jen Iversen spoke during public comment, raising concerns about the survey rollout and reporting. Her public comment video is here — the full text is included at the bottom of this blog.

Here is our takeaway after the staff presentations and questions from the Directors.

Concerns we share:

• Rollout was limited. SACs and SAG weren’t asked to help spread the word, something that is typically done on surveys.

• Data wasn’t disaggregated by gender. The district is unable to report whether girls feel safe in school based on this data.

• Some results show a troubling disconnect between staff readout on the presentation and student results. 

For example:

• Staff reported that a highlight was “Students: Noted a safe and secure learning environment.”

•  When asked, “I am safe at school”, only 38% of students strongly agreed and 33% somewhat agreed for a total of 71%.  Not terrible, but it also means that in a class of 30 students, 9 students don’t feel safe.  We should want to do better for students.

• When broken down by protected class,  agreement drops as low as 51%.  

Everyone should be asking, "Who feels safe and secure in DCSD schools, who doesn't, and why?"

You can explore the results here: DCSD Experience Survey Results.

Why it Matters

The District seems to like the idea of the survey, but questions remain:

• Was it truly an effort to understand and improve school climate?

• Or simply a “check the box” exercise to meet policy requirements?

At Douglas County Parents, we believe surveys like this must be more than optics. They should be tools to ensure all students feel safe, welcomed, and included in their schools.

This cannot be the last time we hear about these results — and it cannot be the end of the district’s efforts to build classrooms where every student belongs.

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Our mission centers on empowering community members to actively engage with the school district and advocate for transparent, student-focused policies. A key component of this involves holding the current Board of Education accountable by participating in meetings and providing public comment on agenda items and past decisions.

Link to Video

Douglas County Parents

Comment by Jen Iverson

As Douglas County Parents, a pro-public education organization, we stand before you deeply concerned about our school district's anti-bullying policy. This policy isn't just inadequate—it's a dangerous illusion of protection that's leaving our children vulnerable when they need us most. Let's cut through the bureaucratic noise and look at what's really happening. The district proudly waves around compliance statements about "clear policies" and "confidential reporting mechanisms," but here's the brutal truth their own data reveals: We are completely failing bullied students and ignoring disparities in outcomes

The district set a target that 80% of students should know how to respond to bullying. Sounds reasonable, right? But look at the actual numbers from their 2025 Engagement Survey. Only 71% of students agree they know how to respond—and that includes those who only "somewhat agree." Nearly three in ten students are walking our hallways without confidence in their ability to handle bullying situations. That's not just missing a target; that's abandoning hundreds of vulnerable children and failing the community in creating a safe and positive culture and climate.

But what should break your heart and confidence in your children’s safety is that 11% of students—197 out of just over 2,000 respondents—either disagree or strongly disagree that they know how to respond to bullying. These aren't statistics. These are real children who feel helpless, who've likely already experienced the sting of harassment, and who have zero faith that any policy, principal, or staff member has prepared them to protect themselves.

DCSD also aims to keep bullying incidents below 12% based on the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey. But what good are those numbers when DCSD hasn't even taught kids how to recognize, report, or respond to bullying in the first place? We're measuring the wrong end of the problem. We’re failing to implement the policies with fidelity.

To better understand, I listened to the board meeting from June 18th, 2024, four board members voted to block an anti-bullying board policy designed to protect all students—despite three members fighting hard to pass it. Think about that—you actively rejected stronger protections, leaving a gaping hole in school safety and security. Superintendent Kane, aligned with the board majority, then implemented superintendent policies and regulations instead. But here we are, a full year into implementation, and we still don't have the data to show whether these weaker measures did anything. Does DCSD even know how we compare to state data in bullying stats?

We have yet to see practical action. Where's the mandatory training for teachers to recognize the subtle signs of bullying and intervene? Where are the age-appropriate workshops teaching students concrete strategies? Where's the follow-up support for victims?

Children deserve better than performative box-checking. They deserve a district that doesn't just write policies but implements them with the urgency this crisis demands. Because every day we delay, every meeting we postpone, every revision we debate, there's another child feeling lonely and abandoned, another kid dreading recess, another student whose educational experience is being stolen by  the bullies we've failed to stop. Our most vulnerable students—those who are different, who struggle to advocate for themselves, who are easy targets—pay the highest price when these policies fail.

The data is clear: our anti-bullying policy is failing our children . The question is: what are we going to do about it?