GILPIN COUNTY – The Gilpin RE-1 School District Board of Education met on April 1,  2025, in the school boardroom to approve revisions to 20 policies and evaluate the performance of the superintendent.

The Board also discussed the scarcity of new teachers graduating this year and the importance of responsibly incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education.

There were no presentations by staff or students. Neither principal was present, so there were no principal reports.

In the superintendent’s report, Superintendent David MacKenzie gave an update on the capital improvement projects. He said that the ADA improvements should finish up by the end of the school year. The sewer project is resuming after a winter hiatus and will push to finish by this fall.

MacKenzie also reported that his visit to the UNC Job Fair on March 25, 2025, showed a sharp decline in participation, reflecting a decrease in college graduates with teaching degrees. He said that there are going to be a handful of retirements and resignations this year, so the district will need to continue to look for replacements.

Under New Business, the Board unanimously approved updates to 20 policies recommended by the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB) that involved some Title IX implications.

One policy that was singled out for attention was the Staff use of Technology (GBEE), because of the inclusion of guidelines for using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the classroom. Board member Tami Velasquez commented that AI will have a pervasive presence in the future and students will need to learn how to use it responsibly.

The last order of business was for the Board to evaluate the performance of the Superintendent. The Board used a survey with responses from each member, to rate the superintendent in seven categories. This survey has been used for the last couple of years. Each member rates the supervisor in each category on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being exemplary.

The seven categories, along with his composite score on each:

Strategic Leadership (4.1), Continuous Improvement (4.4), Communicate and Collaboration (3.6), Instruction (4.5), Governance (4.5), Resource Management (4.8), and Ethics (4.2).

Comments from individual board members included appreciation for the Superintendent’s ability to manage district resources, overcoming the startup issues regarding implementing the Powerschool student content management system, and communicating with the Board on complex and sensitive issues.

The Board gave the superintendent an overall rating of 4.5, which is considered Accomplished Plus.

The next RE-1 School Board meeting will be on April 15, 2025, at 7 p.m. in the school board meeting room.

The agenda and documents for this meeting are on the RE-1 website (gilpin.k12.co.us) under the Board of Education Agendas for April 1, 2025. The CASB policy updates are not available for public review. There is a complete video of this meeting including the evaluation of the superintendent on the GCSD YouTube channel. The superintendent evaluation segment with board member comments starts at 57:20.