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i talk about jack and i went back and re-read it next year there's some trigger language in the state to say potentially they could lower that threshold down to 10 to 1.
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so we can ignore exhibit f completely irrelevant exhibit g does assume high efficiency heat pumps and it concludes that on average uh tenants will pay 57 on end units we'll pay 57 or more a month for electric and interior units 34 dollars more a month however this uses dte's october 2021 gas rate that rate is now 19 higher if you plug in dte's current gas rate the higher cost of electric versus gas mostly goes away but even if we take exhibit t at face value there's a solution installing just two kilowatts worth of solar per unit will save tenants 613 a year those savings bring every unit in the village to parity or better between electric and gas and two kilowatts solar per unit will only add about five dollars per square foot to construction costs before federal tax credits in conclusion exhibit f assumes inefficient heat pumps and exhibit t last year's gas rates so both overestimate the difference between electric and gas but even taking the exhibit g at face value a small investment in solar wipes out the difference affordability and sustainability are fully compatible there is no reason for the village not to go with heat pumps over gas for the entire project a note about carbon emissions exhibit f shows that heat pumps produce almost out of time enough to say that i have serious reservations about those calculations as well they're really off thank you come on there were there are positives to to putting more than 600 apartments and houses in an area of land which is not being used right now and there's movement toward less carbon dioxide emission better emission total electrification of the townhouses but what is absent here is electrification of the rental units and i agree with him that that the figures really underestimate the advantages of electric and total electrification of the apartments and the houses would include solar i have solar panels on on one of our houses uh in chelsea and um and we don't pay any electric bills basically um averaged over the year and and so the advantages of total electric are in some ways reducing the installation cost because you don't have to put in the the uh the gas pumps the uh the methane pumps uh there is there is no no necessity to install the gas system adding solar panels would decrease even with a modest number of solar panels it would decrease utilities by by over a hundred dollars a month and the payback period for solar panels right now is some people would say five years payback i think 10 years in our climate is probably better a thing our old solar panels had uh a payback period when it cost a lot for the for for the solar panels more than twice as much as they are now uh our our payback uh period was about 13 years okay so getting that back after that point everything is kind of free electricity for for uh for that without having the burden of the um of having paid for the solar panels um solar panels last for 25 years or so usually that's what the old warranties were for it would make everything eligible for the federal and the state incentives and it serves as a good example for the city of ann arbor to to really work aggressively on the a20 project this is an opportunity which is like a low-hanging fruit it's a really good project it'll be very efficient and i don't think you should compromise on on having only one half of it be electrified it would simplify everything it would serve as a great example of the city and servings serve as an example to other developments too if they all have to compromise but we only want to do this we only want to do this it kind of takes away some of that streamlining toward low carbon emissions thank you thank you alrighty it looks like we are out of people in the room so is there anybody that is virtual there is james damore you have three minutes to address the planning commission uh thank you mr leonard uh uh can you all hear me mr jamar can you hear me hello can anyone hear me hello there i'm having problems with ritual one more time can you hear me now we can hear you sorry for the technical difficulty if you wouldn't mind starting over okay sorry about that i mean you can't verify and you can hear me now we can hear you now okay uh thanks uh my apologies if it's stuff i've done in my end um just uh um very quickly i think i would attempt this commentary i never do that um could say the least you can do i'm gonna go into macros of history northeastern clan of which this parcel is part of it and to say that a lot of things in northeast area plan um that ken clark and i can attest that probably shouldn't have been built but here we are um i also say speaking only for myself uh whatever we do here will not present sprawl in the elsewhere in the township i should note that robertson brothers is a uh playing a major uh development lodi township um we need i think we forget that our actions on housing uh we do it only in isolation of ann arbor and on contests of the greater uh southeast region of uh greater southeast michigan the region of detroit we are in a regional market and what we do um we need to look that in the top context that being said a lot of good things are i've seen tonight in terms of the process here and staff has really worked hard in coming up with a good proposal and i would say of all the major parcels in northeast area this is the one that was the most buildable and i see something fairly responsible here but i want to appreciate uh something uh ken clark brought up uh uh uh previous and other speakers as well um and that is that we need to make this uh entire development all electric um we need to move closer to the a20 goals i think you need to hold the petitioner's feet to the fire uh to make this project all electric and moving forward to 820 goals and in terms of addressing the climate crisis this is what i would say is the least you can do tonight it's a lot of work and i think there may be some more give and take but uh by making all electric as other speakers has indicated i think you're uh uh moving forward to set a good example in future projects and future development with the city all right folks good luck and i wish you a good evening and thank you for uh concerning my remarks thank you mr garton you have three minutes to address the planning commission thank you can i confirm i am audible you are audible thank you very much my name is hugh garton i live at 3080 cedarbrook drive about 1.5 miles from the proposed development seven points one under fair assumption electrification of the apartments in this development would produce nearly comparable costs to gas for the tenants two future gas costs are likely to rise more than electrical costs making the long-term bargain for tenants better three tenants are in a very poor position to affect change in their in the future for their own tenements so please consider your duties to act on their behalf to secure their chance at a carbon neutral living arrangement or while the updated plan is clearly improvement it still obligates a very large carbon footprint for likely 30 to 50 years in the future five in a climate emergency the city and by extension the planning board should use all measures at its disposal to minimize the climate impact of new developments six as you've heard modest additional on-site solar would allow for electrification of the rental sites without great financial difficulty and lastly if affordability really is the problem and the council is or sorry the board is determined to move forward with this then the city should be advised that it should use its tax abatement options or other equalization methods to solve this the commission could approve with this recommendation to counsel thank you very much for considering my remarks thank you michael strother you have three minutes to address the planning commission hello this is michael strother i want to comment about the contribution to the rotary i think this is great uh the one thing that i would comment on is that the center of the rotary itself should not be just paved over this is a major entry point and the comments were made previously about this being a traffic calming device i'd like to see some natural plantings flowers and treat this point of entry into the ann arbor area as it would deserve thank you no other speakers have indicated a desire to address the commission alrighty okay i will read the proposed motions motions and i'll read them together the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the village of ann arbor are for a zoning site plan and development agreement subject to the petitioner obtaining a variance for the maximum front setback along duvarn road and the second one is the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the village of ann arbor wetland use permit to allow filling and mitigation of 300 square feet of wetland disturbance and on-site mitigation should i add a piece about the approved yeah yeah goodness yeah let me if if i could read the recommended and do that yeah i have the printed out version from when i did it at 5 15.
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picture day is thursday september 22nd huckleberry has open house on monday september 19th um second grade is at 5 00 pm third grade is at 6 30 i believe with the exception of mrs shaw right and this is shot third grade class and all fourth grade is tuesday september 20th at five o'clock whiskey near house triads for fall sports taking place this week and next week the pto meeting is thursday september 8th at 9 30 in the morning in the seminar room and the open house dates for wisconner are fifth grade september 15th sixth grade september 22nd and 7th and 8th grade september 29th and school picture day at whiskey near is friday september 23rd and at brookfield high school open house is tomorrow night at 6 00. um wednesday september 14th and thursday september 15th are underclassmen photos and friday september 23rd is the homecoming carnival from four to six that's all i have thank you all right so uh last item on the agenda is that we're going to move into executive session for the purpose of discussing attorney-client privilege information and the superintendent's goals second second practices all in favor for everybody who's listening on the tv executive session is just the board we'll be stopping the broadcast at this point and there will be no motions made in executive session so thank you for listening this evening and we'll see you at the next week
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oh my gosh and it depends on state finances etc etc with those kinds of things so i'm not quite sure how that looks yet for chico unified because the complications of adding a third person into that classroom potentially for seven hours a day is certainly financially um it would be it's expensive to do those kinds of things but ten to one it's just an odd number when we kind of build classes around a 24 or 12 to one ratio and all of a sudden have one in there that's a ten to one ratio with some of those things so i think we'll have to wait and kind of see what happens with the state budget if it hits those triggers and goes forward from there with it so that's all i have so questions from you guys about anything yeah i have a question on a change like they're making a rumor about going from 12 to 1 to 10 to 1 who's making that decision when i looked at it and it said it was built into the next year's budget per again to projection or possibility yeah some triggers that if our state budget is at x level of doing well that might be one of the things that they're going to look at putting in place for that uh oh no seriously they know we have a staffing shortage they know where the staffing shortages are and yet they're making financial decisions that are impacting you know what we can and cannot do for our kids responsibly um i i get it that the extra bodies and the lower class sizes are ideal we know that's where the gains are made i will say the state kind of in the final budget came through and acknowledged and gave funding for that additional set of hands in that class that extra aid time in there initially that was not in the initial budget but i think when it all passed through it came through in july i guess so they funded it but i agree with you we still have an issue of just even trying to hire enough people to be providing services not only hiring but if we can hire the the people and these are non-credential no there's some credentialed and some non-credentialed the classified para educators if we have enough money to do in-service for those those paris we can bring them up to speed to be you know strong contributors to that educational program but if we can't if we can't fund the kind of in-service that we need um and i will say we've been lucky the last couple years because we do have some startup funds with tk and those kinds of things so we've actually been providing professional development opportunities for aids oh yeah just as far as classroom management organizations just how classes run and giving them some front loaded time to make sure they understand the structure of the class and those kinds of things also and the the program that cse helped get going where our aides can be helped to to get their profession their credential through leaves and things with the district and the district has been extremely accommodating and used every bit of that leverage um those aids are our primary source of regression oh yeah to help get them credentialed licensed moving to those roles yeah okay i'll be quiet caitlyn um has there been any discussion or just consideration and i feel like there's this is we've had like candid you know passerby conversations about making these classes accessible or making sure that classes are accessible for our staff to utilize those services i mean we have a lot of staff members who have young young kids um and and they might be able to benefit in their job and their role as teachers or or peras or whatever their services are on campus as as far as being able to have suit their be able to afford to put their kids into into into that kind of thing you can talk about the eligibility end of it sure the pera's we do have a few of them already with their children enrolled in our preschool program typically teachers don't qualify because of the income guidelines so that's where we kind of run into the bumpy road for those families but it isn't the income uh guidelines only for the preschool yes it is i'm only talking yes i'm only talking about state preschool yeah okay tk anybody can enroll in correct but tk will be will be capped will it be capped so it's as long as there's demand we have to make sure that there's open space think of it like third grade if we have a third grader enroll we're gonna have to find a spot for them some place and plan for it but state pre-school state preschool is ours we're doing it as we have space available for it i'm not sure who this is a question for whether for you guys or but um would we have the latitude legally to offer some kind of an uh incentive program for teachers and staff to make it easier for them to afford or more eligible or waive some of the eligibility guidelines so we wouldn't get funded for it so would we have to be something that we would have to take out of our general fund and find both facilities for and staff for so i hear given that um it might be interesting to see some objections about exactly how much that would cost given how many staff we have just as a potential recruitment tool since we are having trouble everywhere finding yeah maybe it's not a state preschool program it's just a chico unified sponsored preschool program that we can model you know mirror it to to our state preschool program and quite honestly that was what where we initiate initially started with the program at pv we wanted to use that for staff and have staff students be able to go into the child care development program at pleasant valley high since that time the state preschool has come on and so that is a way to do that and get funding and grow our own from within but we could certainly put together some numbers we'd have to do some survey enough staff to see how many have students that would fall into that age group but we would need to go into it knowing that we're not going to get reimbursed for it thank you yeah and i don't i don't know that it's everybody's problem but most people who have children under the age of four and a half automatically are paying between 1 000 and 1400 a month and those opportunities are dwindling preschool programs are going away just like like uh mr lando said it is an incentive for for staff or for bringing more staff in it would be great to see some numbers thank you so that's all we have is there any other questions i just think my grandmother who had 10 kids and my mom who had six so they have done their part to help populate our statement in preschool and fallen over at the idea that they could ship more of them off to school okay yeah thank you for letting us share we appreciate thank you don't pick up your paperwork yet since i have two of our experts on this issue in front of us the statistics on why we're doing this the advantage for the success later on for these kiddos that we pick up this early you want to give us just a little bitty snippet of actually how important this is for this for their success later on i don't have actual percentages but i do know there's been scientific studies done on like not early intervention necessarily but giving opportunities to all children it helps close the achievement gap there's a lot of different things that it does so i feel really good about what we do our families are really happy and i know that it does make a difference for their entire life all the way you know as we get older too you can tell one of the other things that i was made aware of too because i have special needs family was that the sooner we can get someone a child involved with special services targeted services the more likelihood there is that they will move on successfully without need of any further special education designation that it it is the key and the catalyst to so many things that that make our our kiddos successful as they moved from the the the three-year-old years on to the after third grade where they're you know off into another land the early intervention is like i mean crucial if we can get to it all right thank you very much thank you guys both of you thank you okay so um i see action news is here so everybody has to behave okay so we have business services and the discussion is the architect selection for facilities master plan hello again good evening thank you for your time tonight i'm here to discuss the architect selection process for the updating of our facilities master plan one of the items that we will be addressing when we update the plan is transitional kindergarten we'll also be updating the plan on all of the progress we've made since the update updating each campus on the the work that has occurred on each site revisiting the prioritization of the projects with the community the school sites and the board among many other things cost estimating of the remaining projects developing overall dollar value of the work that's required with the master plan so we we put out a request for proposals for architectural services back in july and on august 17th we received four very impressive responses as you read in the lead sheet they were scored on a rubric and the architects are selected by qualifications not by price so they were all neck and neck and they were all very highly qualified firms we're working with tim haley who worked on our master plan updates before he helped with the scoring he is an architect himself so we value his opinion and we discussed it over many hours and we're bringing forward the recommendation that we go with lionakis architects for the master plan update lionakas has several very successful projects with the district over the years none of the other architects have worked with our district before lionakas has also designed the transitional kindergarten classrooms for our upcoming project at mcmanus so we're assured that they understand the requirements and the desires of the district when it comes to transitional kindergarten so tonight we're asking for your approval to enter negotiations for the master plan update with lionakas i had according to this one community speaker on this item we don't have a name well i guess that means anybody could be the community speaker were we expecting somebody to call in or we don't literally know okay well yeah does anybody have public comment on this all right so what about the board members i actually do have a question about the first of all hi nice to see you thank you it's good to see you too um secondly the bidding process since it is by qualification um i am worried about potential that if flying rockets is the only one who has experience with us so we pick them every time how does a new bidder break in what would a bid like that have to look like for someone else to have a chance sure well they're not going to bid we're selecting them based on their qualifications and then we will negotiate with them so it will be a written scope of work they will estimate the amount of time that they think it's going to take to perform that work and they apply their hourly rates for the individuals in their firm to accomplish the work there will be you know office time there'll be administrative time most of the time we'll be visiting our school sites having public meetings meeting with the facilities committee and coming to the board and reporting to you so there's quite a bit involved our initial mr master plan back um at the very beginning cost about five hundred thousand dollars our most recent update in 2019 was about a hundred thousand dollars we are doing more scope of work than we did in 2019 so i'm expecting it to be somewhere between two and four hundred thousand where we end up um we have written into the board agenda that if we're unable to satisfactorily negotiate with linocus we'll move on to the number two firm and negotiate with them so we have an out yeah i guess my question though is do we have a process by which we avoid linox becoming our de facto go-to every time because i'm sorry i didn't really answer that for you i'm really sorry um we carefully select the architects for every project and dr kaiser and ms robinson have both sat on the committee for selection and i think they can attest to that we we have selected a wide variety of architects for our projects rainforth growl lionakis skw i know i'm forgetting several eagle architects we really have spread our work around quite a bit between those architectural firms we don't have a favorite and for the record um i am quite happy both with our choice here and with the system we've got i just the way you said it i want to make sure it's on the record that we're not leaning that way because we said it made it sound like maybe it was a snowball effect okay thank you i want to affirm if i may that's your points are really valid you know um is there never a lowest responsible bitter process used in selecting an architect no by law it's a qualifications based selection process but when it comes to construction we do the load construction work is definitely a bid yes and so what would happen if you had a school district any school district that always went to the same architect all the time what would is there anything that would kind of prevent them from doing that you know there really isn't anything to prevent that you are required to go through a process you are required to put out the request for proposals receive them have a rubric have a scoring process that you go through on the proposals that were received but unless someone comes forward like maybe an architectural firm that didn't get the job comes forward and files some sort of suit or something like that i don't believe that there's any oversight over that process i would have to add having been on this committee at the state level and and locally that it's a very detailed uh deep dive into what the architect is offering and architects that we have chosen have won statewide awards at the last conference we were at they were being recognized so it is very much on the ability to a have experience with districts and to have the vision that a particular school district is looking for and while i hear that i think the concern is just that processes often last longer than people but i trust our current people implicitly so we really do um attempt to be very transparent with our process and follow a process even when we're not required to we follow a process and i have to say again that all four of the firms were really exceptional um some of the scoring you know there were two ties and the first place was only one point ahead so i don't know that our rubric was really that helpful in this election process really we know lionakas and they know us they know all of us and the three of the others were completely unknown to the district my eyes are always on the pocketbook and if we don't have to teach a new firm who we are and how we operate we're going to save money so that went into the decision um of who to recommend as well absolutely i think we're just noting that there is a potential uh question in the process not this particular one thank you and tom i i appreciate your you're questioning this and which is one of the reasons why we have always been so diligent about having two board members as a subcommittee we sit in on you know all of the interviews all the decisions all of the grading so that there is an oversight and the oversight is your fellow board members and it's it's a very rigorous process all right so can i have a motion unless there's a comment from the audience i asked for that earlier but okay may i have a motion i'll move approval a second okay we have eileen moving and caitlin seconding the choice of lionakas again we do have a second team potentially listed all those in favor signify by saying aye aye thank you okay so jacqueline heating ventilation and ac can't think of anything more telling right now quite appropriate i think this evening so as you're all very aware um just walk into your car every day and your pg e bill at home i'm sure you can tell we have excessive heat the last couple weeks and here at the school district we've felt that certainly the other piece i just want to comment is oftentimes these excessive heat days are in the end of july and early august when we don't have kids in school yet and we've seen you know two i'd say two plus weeks of really high 100 plus degree days where systems have really been taxed to be able to keep the air down so just for perspective i do want to let you know that we have about 1400 units in the school district so it's a lot to maintain um you know if one percent go out that's 14 and that's 14 too many but it is only 14 units and we have three full-time hvac technicians and i do want to shout out to them that they are doing an amazing job right now they are working diligently and they have been flexible and amicable and they're coming in on weekends to make sure that our that our facilities are adequate and safe and secure for our students and staff so i do want to put that out there there have been some times where we've had to utilize some outside hvac companies there's two in chica that we've utilized as well as one from sacramento that has come up to help us out when we've been in a pinch some of our units are so large that we need two of the three hvac technicians on our roofs at a given time so it really limits their ability to hit multiple school sites at one time so real quick jacqueline this is uh we have how many campuses 22 campuses 20 22. i i did the math at 23 and came up with units over 60 units per per campus yeah our high schools have a lot in particular when you compare that to an elementary yeah a lot of each individual classrooms have their own so that that adds to it as eileen talked about earlier this board approved three million dollars in covid relief funding to go for hvac replacement units and a climate control software program energy management system you'll hear it called ems so i want to say thank you to the board in the consent agenda you approved 105 units at four school sites bidwell chico high chico junior classrooms and sierra view um so we will get those pos in tomorrow now that we have pre-approval from cde as well as board approval there's been a couple other additional orders we have some orders in for hvac units for our chico junior gym parkview classrooms pv high school wrestling room as well as rosedale so the challenge becomes when the when hvac unit goes out we have to respond immediately and we do but parts have been an issue from a supply chain perspective as well as the actual units so right now our vendors are telling us it's about 28 to 30 weeks out to get units we have great working relationships i will give credit to john carver and eric german for that with our vendors and they are advocating for us two-fold supply chain obviously when covet happened things shut down it's been difficult for businesses to get employees to be able to make the units as well as there was so much federal coveted relief dollars that was that were pushed out nationwide that we are one of many individuals many you know entities trying to purchase these units so when they do become available they're snatched up very very quickly so we're doing our best to get these in and get them installed to make sure that we have a safe environment for our kids so just i'm sure most people here had some experience like this yesterday perhaps today yesterday the pg e warning went off and the kids were scared half to death they didn't know what it was but it was loud and nasty and um thankfully when they sent the okay you're now out of danger it was 11 30 at night so they didn't send any noise but um do our schools get these pg e blasts as well our maintenance department gets them exactly so we are aware and with the energy management system we're able to control the inflow and outflow of the temperature of the airflow coming in and so we do try to acknowledge that so if we have facilities where students aren't in the multi-purpose rooms or gyms in the evening then we will turn the temperature up as to try to you know play our part in in the statewide flex alert okay great tom thanks do we have any plans to increase the number of uh hvac technicians do we have like a preferred ratio of units to i mean it seems like these heat waves are probably going to keep on getting longer and hotter frankly yeah unfortunately i agree with you i think it's um they are going to get longer um right now we just have the three um the challenge sometimes is it's very seasonal is you have this big rush of of heating and then you have a shoulder season i call it which is kind of that sweet spot and then you get into the heating part and then you have another kind of you know window that's the other shoulder season before you get into the summer again so we can certainly look at funding [Music] these positions are funded out of our routine restricted maintenance budget so as our entire budget grows that budget grows because they do get a three percent um contribution so it's something that we can look at um but it's a pretty tight budget so it would be if we hire another person we'd have to re-prioritize what projects get get finalized in that timely manner and i'm sure you're looking at whether using outside vendors at which point it becomes more affordable to simply hire a new full-time person yeah and that's kind of where that seasonal piece comes in is sometimes it it is advantageous because these three individuals can't be at every school site you know whenever there's a work order that comes in in the month of august so that's when it's advantageous to bring the outside firms in thank you i have a question you mentioned supply chain issues especially with units is there also supply chain issues with parts yeah in the individual parts too and we try to keep parts and a couple units on stock at our corp yard we blew through our extra entire units pretty quickly in the first week of school this year so we're going to double how much we have on on hold at the courtyard going forward i've asked john carver to do that but the parts are just as as tricky as well too so that's what i was gonna ask next was about having having parts on hand cool thanks john your name got slung around were you okay okay just don't want to say i didn't give you a shot all right um anything else jacqueline i just want to let the board know in the community node we hear you um we don't like it with the units go down either but we are trying our best to keep our kids safe in their classrooms we do put in portable ac units and we also put in fans at chico junior gym we actually rented for the next two months a portable ac unit that we installed into one of the doorways in that building so that's much better than the swamp cooler that we had so we are trying to make temporary improvements to the extent that we can all right yes i have more clarification i think for myself um so we just approved the pos for more units and so is is my understanding right that those units now those won't actually be in for lots of weeks yeah we're hoping i mean they're telling us 28 to 30 weeks so it depends it could be a little bit longer and so could be shorter depending on how quickly they're able to secure them so do those represent classrooms that don't have adequate like cooling or airflow right now or is it just that those are outdated units that could be better the classrooms have airflow now and cooling systems now but they're older units so these these dollars and these new units that you just approved are to replace them with more current systems and more energy efficient efficient units and just to be ultra clear for myself and the community all of our classrooms have cooling and airflow when students are in there or if something happens they get moved out of that classroom into a cooler environment when we experience these high heat issues we find an accommodation if the unit for that classroom does go out we find an accommodation either we relocate them or we get them fans or portable ac units so it's not like we have classrooms right now that don't have ac flow it may be down but we have air flow currently and we're fixing those as fast as we can yes all right so that was just informational i really appreciate that jacqueline thank you okay that's the last uh item that we had on our agenda uh is there a board member who which wishes to request to agendize an item okay matt i have a question for staff on this topic um i have heard from in the last month and a half to people about campus security and i think that the um some of the security issues involving teenagers here in chico over the past week have uh heightened this in some of people's minds um when is our next scheduled conversation as a board about campus security it's our october board workshop which i think is october 5th okay that being the case i can wait that long to have this conversation thank you i will uh note that at my kids elementary school you now have to get buzzed in so that's not the case everywhere it is not the case everywhere and in fact only a few handful have that if that many it's the goal yeah all right so uh seeing no other suggestions then i will close this board meeting we will go into closed session and i'll come back out and announce or anything we decide if you want to hang out in the heat you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay the second motion you presented is unchanged the first motion we would recommend the following the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the village of ann arbor r4a zoning site plan and development agreement subject to the following conditions prior to scheduling for city council consideration one the petitioner obtaining a variance for the maximum front setback along duvarn road and two public services area engineering and solid waste review and approval including all outstanding review comments identified in the september 6 2022 engineering review number five memorandum and in the september 1st 2022 solid waste review and any subsequent reviews all right moved by commissioner survey seconded by commissioner lee we are in discussion commissioner uh so one i just want to start my comments off by thanking the petitioner for hearing us we say a lot at the table and sometimes those things are accepted and the development goes ahead with whatever plans the developer had with the significant changes that you've made to the plan the addition of the bike lanes i actually biked up uh to the site to take a look at it both from my bike to just also see uh how it works so there's gonna be a lot of connection that will come through also into the park um the uh decision uh for the petitioner to go ahead and electrify the for cell as well as the inclusion of some solar on the property so lots to say and the contribution for the roundabout to do some traffic calming measures in that space so a lot to say thank you for and hearing and i appreciate the reduction in the parking but i'm i'm still struck by the fact that 83 of the square footage that is given over to the residential is also is dedicated to parking when you do just the the math on it um i recognize that you feel like that is an appropriate amount of parking for it i want to acknowledge that our zoning actually uh sort of uh has zoned this area of our city in a way that makes it car dependent i wish you would consider reducing parking further than the 10 percent you have maybe to about 25 percent i agree with the speakers that have shared and i think they did a better job than the comments i prepared around the electrification of um the rest of the development and i was particularly concerned around um the attachments f and g that looked at those uh heat source um um heat pumps and i and and so i'm appreciative to mr garber for doing some math on that and bringing some information for consideration on how you could achieve it and then mr clark's comment that came in late to us late this afternoon asking for solar in there to mitigate the cost because when you spoke to us earlier you were concerned that having a hundred to twenty to a hundred and thirty percent increase in the utility costs would make it hard for you to lease those units and it looks like the math there's some space in there to get to parity on that and so i just want to start my comments uh by just asking again for complete electrification and then i did have one specific question for you which when i read through your your memo back to us uh let me just try to full screen this okay there we go they don't have page numbers but it's before exhibit a you have in red the recommendations from the office of sustainability and innovation around the compost and i just i wasn't clear whether the apartment dwellers could participate in compost so that was just a question as i was re reviewing everything that wasn't apparent to me you can reply i think i think this is the time where we get to talk to so you those questions and again i appreciate your comments and um you know i believe this is a you know kind of a iterative process and i think that that's uh just makes for a better project um in regard to the parking i understand your comments we can certainly look at that um you know we we took out ten percent which you know for us is a lot i think in my mind what's what's really driving the number is the fact that there's driveway parking in front of a lot of those units particularly all of the attached two-story and that just really drives up the numbers now i could you know say you know you can't park in that area but i mean it just seems to be a single family thing to have parking in front of those units really no street parking so the opportunity for guests is in front of the house so i think that skews the numbers is what i'm getting to so we'll take a look at it you know obviously i want to move forward if we can with approval and you know of course we can look at some areas that maybe we could reduce a couple of i think 25 would be way overly ambitious for us to do but i'm willing to take a look at that as as we move forward so i don't know if that's that's clear enough but i understand your concern and appreciate it um you know agreeing with the neighbors on the apartment electricity you know there's i guess the way to answer that is there's only so much we can go with a project and i think we've gone farther than we we normally would have we appreciate your goals at this point this is our direction and this is this is our um proposal so um this is how we want to move forward um we do have an expert on on zoom but um i don't know if we need to go into specifics on it you know in all costs have gone up gas has gone up of course everything has gone up electricity's gone up so to say that we were skewing the numbers because of that everything's gone up in costs um you know in the past year so i think that that's a relevant comment you know additionally you know the the technology isn't quite there yet and we do recognize that we recognize that it's getting there which is why we're proposing the for sale jennifer granholm has a cold climate heat pump challenge recognizing that the technology just isn't there yet and we need to work at it as you know together as a team we're actually involved with that um initial um a meeting on that so you know high-end cold compression heat pumps with variable speeds you know they're there we've done a lot of research on it the cost just are more and i think that there was even acknowledgement of that but for the change in gas and electricity costs which again all costs have gone up so our proposal is to is exactly what we have in front of you at this point as far as the compost we weren't proposing it for the apartments we do have it for the for sale um so again that is something that that's part of our plan at this point is no compost for the apartments but we would have it for all of the for sale so just coming back to the compost is there any um um way you would consider uh doing something in the clubhouse where i understand that part of it may be where does it get collected and then where does it get picked up yes but you have a clubhouse and so just making it available to the apartment dwellers or those who are leasing their home to be able to have a place where they could uh dispose of the compost within the clubhouse building i you you've been very clear it's your development yeah i am not the developer i am just here uh doing my job which is to ask for thanks and ask questions and to clarify and so that that's it so it's up to you where you want to put it but if there would be a place for your apartment dwellers to participate in the in the compost um that just helps with you know our overall stewardship of the resources that we have yeah it is it really is a space limitation so um again we're looking at you know if we look at the parking we can look at at those areas as well see if there's something we can maybe we can expand the existing enclosure to see if we can add some composting to it so i'm happy to do that again i want to move forward if at all possible but we can certainly look at these items i don't think that those are out of the out of the question sure i'm good commissioner ditch thank you for coming back to us with as much as you have come back with um the uh i i did read in your letter that the reason you're not providing compost for the apartment dwellers is because they're not maintaining their own lawns and so you don't and also it's not a service that the city consistently provides to multi-family apartments but i did want to toss in that one of the things that's unique about ann arbor is that you can compost your table scraps including meat bones um i have composted dead rabbits i'm not sure if i'm supposed to do that i've done it i didn't kill them myself so i think that there could be a call for composting and where um where resident where single-family composting is picked up where you can have carts the city can pick up from apartments and so i mean it's possible as long as there's a route and since there is a route and your apartment dwellers could opt to use carts they might not all opt in or whatever it would be great to think about offering them compost it's one of those problems where um because we haven't universalized the service we're not we're not really able to ask people to accommodate in their site plans composting but um as you know because you're mitigating a fair amount of methane on that site we like to try to keep food out of the landfills um and i i want to express just um a bit of i just feel like my head is spinning and i don't know what to do about it because i'm getting different numbers right and i don't know how to adjudicate among those numbers that you know a little bit more solar these costs can be comparable if the barrier and i understand why the barrier for you would be that if it's an increased cost that puts you at a market disadvantage for your rentals so i understand i understand where you're coming from i wish there were a way for me to have a report and this isn't necessarily this isn't on you i wish there were a way for me to have a report um evaluating the different options that would be open to you and telling me if indeed our residents who who often speak to us about these matters if their calculations are correct because you know i i wish that we would had a way to persuade you that it wouldn't be more expensive because we can't require this of you we can only ask it of you you have come really far to meet us and i i just really really wish that we weren't going to have 320 units that are gas powered if if it's financially feasible for them to be electrified and you know we know dte is going slower towards green energy but it is moving in that direction we may do there are many different things that the city may do to actually get us on green power much sooner than dte projects so i just i'm really at a loss i don't know what to do about this conversation and maybe there's no way to pursue it because we don't have the regular regulatory authority and you are doing an awful lot on this plan on this thing i did uh so i just i'm just expressing that because i don't want to be silent in the face of what our sustainability plan is asking for and what our residents are asking for i did want to mention that there is a in the staff report which i believe was only uploaded today there is a mention of the roundabout and the city has applied for uh u.s department of transportation grant for the roundabout and the money that robertson is offering through the brownfield tiff strategy would help the city meet the difference between what we can get from the d.o.t and what it will take to do the roundabout um the the thing that is a little bit heart-sinking is that this would be programmed for the 2026 2027 construction season the roundabout would and that's a little bit heart sinking because it is as unsafe as you say mr clark so it's a long time to wait and this has nothing to do with your development right it's not your fault and you're sort of coming at the end of a lot of added housing and you are offering to help us build a roundabout which is really great um but i wish that in the meantime uh you know the traffic report does mention that a four-way stop would increase the delay for traffic on pontiac and it would be only a marginal improvement for the people on duvarn but something breaking the very swift passage of traffic from us 23 to the intersection of barton and pontiac would be nice and a stop sign you know to wait you know another four years for the construction of a roundabout a four-way stop there would it seems to me be nice to have and i don't think that this is the place at this table to bargain for it but i will just put that out there and i did want to because you wondered what was happening with that and i wanted to answer that so i don't know if anyone else feels the way i'm feeling about the numbers or if anyone wants to offer me some wisdom so i can sleep well tonight other discussion commissioner sovay um for for electric i i think we put a lot on i appreciate all the work that that's been done um i'll just kind of add the comments maybe it's the commissioner to the public that like there there's been a lot of work you know i i believe on your end to to resolve some of some of the electric um my understanding from engineers i work with on a day to day is at this point it doesn't make financial sense to proceed with gas that's their like status quo feedback and so we're proceeding with most of our um you know for our projects in our office with electric um with the caveat of you know certain conditions restaurants are very hard to go all electric with the load and things like that but um so i'll just kind of put that out there like i i understand the amount of other efforts that have gone into improving this development since last time we've seen it um and so i would like to see you know this move forward and so if electric is an opportunity in the future i know we've talked you know in two parts about this it seems in the conversation one is about the systems that you install and two is about the sourcing of energy for those systems right and for gas systems you can't really kind of flip the switch electric systems you can flip the switch from what dte is doing they've converted most of their sourcing from coal to gas now asking them to convert to convert from gas to you know sustainable sources is the next step which from my understanding they're actually a little behind not a head-on uh in terms of 2030 goals so in terms of when the replacement comes and things i do ask you know you evaluate solar and some of those other opportunities you know in the near future and i think things you know like all electric appliances are very easy you know and that really we're talking about the mechanical systems here so um [Music] i know it's not everything we want i think the amount of housing the amount of improvements to connectivity and things you know i i feel comfortable proceeding so i'm just going to put those comments out um on my side of things um i do have uh questions i guess about the methane and if you have any initial comments about like how are you containing all of the um utilities is it like concrete cast double uh conduit like what what is that starting to look like on your end like how are you working through that right so i guess the easy answer to that or not the easy answer the the quick answer to that is um our consultants who obviously are experts at this don't believe that there would need to be any kind of special aligners or special construction methods um particularly for the for the sanitary so that that is what their analysis is obviously we need to get the city departments comfortable with that and if there is you know a a discussion on on maybe engineering controls in you know targeted areas you know we can we can certainly discuss that but the ours consultant is essentially saying you know there's methane and sanitary sewer lines to begin with so and then the homes would have passive venting systems and obviously the existing um venting systems for um for the utilities just that a normal house has so i can have brett stunts if you want a more detailed answer than that but from a from an initial standpoint they're comfortable and again they're the experts and they they have everything they have everything on the line as well they're comfortable with um the existing uh utilities as designed in those areas we're not very high on methane i mean it is very low the readings are very low they think we've got five hits that are above that elevated five percent um and those are areas we can discuss but generally speaking they don't have any concern um with that so if you wanted brett stunts he's on the line um but he'll probably you know he'll probably bore everybody because usually or is me so i'll leave it to somebody else to call him back i just wanted kind of an update because it was like new like in depth context for us so i just wanted to see like what the progress was and yeah you know where you and certainly i mean i mean we respect the city departments and we want them to be comfortable so um i don't there's no issue with being able to resolve this moving forward my initial thought on this was this really is more of a final engineering question and issue to resolve um so i'm comfortable with the the you know the condition i wish it would apply to the final engineering and not just city council but we will have a meeting soon and we'll discuss these things and i don't have any concern that there'll be issues okay um i guess two other comments one um which is i guess i'll join four because this is on top of my mind um the future site plan yes um i asked last time about like their the entry in um to the development jobs a little bit because of the wetlands to the adjacent development and i understand like we're negotiating between wetlands versus vehicular kind of uh conflict points for the future development have you done any schematics and just is there another curb cut out to the street or is it internal connection no it would be the same connections those were really stuck with our connections there's no way to get i mean we could build a bridge but there'd be no need no reason to do that south of our existing entrance on pontiac trail there's just a wetland complex that it's impossible to to go over so um really the future development that you're going to see most of it will be concentrated on on that area if you remember the site plan the very north up to duvarn so that that would be where the future development would be okay and then my other which is maybe more of a note because we've seen all of these developments you know come one by one it's very hard to plan um but you know as you get going being a good neighbor and finding connections between each of these neighborhoods i think really leans into the bikeable walkable that we don't have to go on to these heavy traffic patterns that there are neighborhoods to actually bike through uh to really cut through between each one but right now we're developing isolated neighborhoods that all reach out onto it and sort of reach into each other's kind of backyards and roads so as you get going if you find connection points to engineer and cut across property lines to merge those streets i think that's a fantastic you know movement forward for you know the whole area up here the more developers can work together to connect interconnect plots um would be great okay um the last one i i'll just make kind of a comment to the parking i appreciate kind of the removal of parking again i'll just kind of say um to my justification i don't have too much issue with the stacked parking more recently we like applauded stack parking as a way to count it when we had parking minimums um but because uh those curbs you know to the driveways really land into the street that becomes paved here you know it's like sidewalk chalk and a place to learn how to ride a bike and for toys to spill out from the garage and things like that so at least i try to like paint like the best and worst case which is like it's full of cars and there's no places for people and then the best case which is there's actually a lot of kids using all of these driveways for activity merged together but with that again you know it's partly with operations too and helping all the residents understand either of those things could happen and everybody needs to be responsible and maintain sight lines and safety and speeds um that we have a whole lot of different occupants on these roads and that it really blurs together so again i'm just kind of like making this statement an observation i'm not asking for anything here um but i i'm saying it because i really do appreciate what you've brought back um from those comments uh it sounds like you're you know learning a lot from i think a lot of our goals here and so if anything we've seen a lot of these things that you can kind of take them reflect back on future developments too um and so it's just you know an iterative conversation so it's funny you say that because um you know we have started applying this to other other projects that we're doing and some of the other cities have obviously kind of you know moved toward towards some of these goals as well so it's it's interesting to you know get involved with it and understand it so so please if we don't see electric in these apartments put electric in the developments that aren't asking for them okay i'm writing it down commissioner hammer schmidt thank you um so one specific question and then i have just some some comments i wanted to make see i think i saw on the slide for the second time because i remember seeing it the first time too over 500 ev chargers yes how is that distributed yes so um each unit which you know with 484 has one in it so i mean that's kind of the the bulk of it we do have 36 for the guest parking a lot of that's concentrated in the apartment area around the clubhouse but that is what that's in reference to so each individual garage and all of the apartments will have an attached garage as well so each each garage will be ev ready you'll be ready but not the actual charger that's correct so in the okay so first of all can you do me a favor and on that slide it's incredibly misleading okay it says over 500 ev chargers so that i i read in the staff report so i knew that that wasn't true but i mean that's like completely my fault i apologize so in in the apartments who would be responsible for putting the ev chargers in those garages depending what system obviously they need uh but it would be on the um let's see now i can imagine that you know moving forward if it's there they would it would potentially stay for future for future residents but that would be the the intent we don't know exactly what system they're going to be using so we obviously wire it for for ev ready okay i mean i guess everything also i don't know a whole lot about tax credits from the bill that was just signed but i'm pretty sure ev chargers were included in that so i mean you might be able to take advantage of getting them for super cheap and just having them installed and you know i fully agree okay sorry about misleading it it's just okay it's just the second time i saw it and i was like wait i don't think there's actually 500 um i want to echo you know my colleagues comments about the the listening that you did in the work and the research and everything that you've clearly put into this and you know when i hear you talk about this project and one of the things that i appreciate is that it really seems like like your vision is for this you know one neighborhood that has different price points and different options for people you know it's great to have the apartments it's great to have the for sale units different sizes different price points but i'm also seeing sort of this like a dichotomy where you've got apartments on one side and you have for sale units we have all electric and we have gas we have composting and we have not composting and so i guess i would just encourage you to think about how in practice you can make this feel like one cohesive like village neighborhood um it'd be great if it was all electric but i think we've kind of you know beaten that to death a little bit um i am really happy that you said that the clubhouse is going to be open to all residents yes that's great and then um a couple of things you said struck me that i just wanted to kind of also comment on it they're good things they're good things you said that you were pushed out of your comfort zone and doing this project that's what we want like this like this is it's a new way of development but it's what we need to be doing as like a standard for all development i think you know this thinking about sustainability and and thinking about you know oh another thing like talking about gas versus electric apartments versus for sale like there's health implications of gas like we're not thinking enough about like the health of people that live in places and get around places um you know with combustion appliances if they're not using the fans they're not opening the windows like it can exacerbate asthma so they're just again like going back to sort of this dichotomy there are things that people typically don't think about with development so i think it's great that you're getting pushed out of your comfort zone i hope that you share what you're learning with other developers i'm glad to hear that you know you said that you're looking at doing this in other projects because you also said you appreciate your goals meaning the city of ann arbor we're not a bubble like this needs to be goals for understanding everybody i know you know that yeah i just wanted to call that out because i think you know we're at a point we're probably past the point where you know everybody in the development field needs to be thinking about like how do we do things differently we have a climate crisis we have like health crisis that are stemming from the ways that our cities are designed and our buildings are designed and so this is like the point where we can really push the envelope so i'm glad you're pushed out of your comfort zone i really appreciate all the listening that you've done um yeah i'm i'm excited i support this project but you know i just encourage you sort of look at how to make it more holistic feeling like a real neighborhood um and not you know i just worry that you've got this road and there's apartments and there's for sale units and like how can we make it sort of a little bit more like one neighborhood rather than so i think that's really good um comment we what you don't see is the marketing efforts we're making as far as branding it and how we're going to connect through you know wayfinding and signage and things like that so we're certainly thinking that on the next level it is difficult i mean it's really hard to put pods together like that um but you know having the the walkways through and then having this branding effort or our hope is that that will kind of add to that cohesive you're talking about so i appreciate the comment thank you commissioner mills thanks i think uh commissioners have talked about lots of the different things that were on here and i'm not going to beat a dead horse either but you just talked about marketing and i think that that thinking about the kind of clientele who would rent an apartment that has an e that has a garage that is wired for electric vehicle charging i would really encourage you to think about who those people are they're probably going to be people that are participating in my green power the who want to have um who are willing to pay potentially in the very short term what might be a premium but in the long term given the price fluctuations of the cost of natural gas i do not think actually that those numbers will hold up all we have to do is look to europe right now to see kind of what happens uh with the price of natural gas the cost of renewables is is built in when you construct it you know what the cost is going to be in the future related to that and as you're thinking about it and i don't know at what point you talk to the utilities about your connection i making sure that you're sizing i mean what what i understand in order it's not just the charger in the garage like you have to make sure that the the electrical box can handle right the the draw of of allowing for eg ev charging that's much cheaper based on when we wrote the ev ordinance in the city talking to dt that's much easier early on i would and for this many chargers that that could be a substantial um that could require substantial upgrade thinking about how solar might actually allow additional solar might allow that connection to be smaller could um could be something to just put on your radar similarly if this if the rental units ever do electrify and i agree with the caller that it's much harder like the for sale units have more autonomy kind of in their mechanical systems and so if i had to choose i would i would put the oh the electric heating in the the rental units because of that lack of autonomy there um i would just think about that when you're thinking about what the size of your connection is and can and some of the interconnection costs it's way cheaper now than it is down the road and particularly for whoever the owners of those buildings will be and obviously we're going to own own the apartments so it is important to us to think about the future so certainly you know for a replacement um you know i do believe that that those costs will come down to where it makes sense and so we do want to plan for the future with that so that is no question about it we would we would be having those those discussions early on yeah sizing your ca like making sure that whatever connection you get to the grid there is size for that uh yeah you want to look at those numbers um and and again within the context of marketing like this would be one of the first you the rental opportunities in ann arbor that could you know where you could promise not only bike lanes and connections to the park but um having an all-electric building um the question that i had and i did i wasn't at the last meeting uh i watched it but um the meeting is about the roundabout and maybe this was covered then but the lower i appreciate on the commenter to bringing up the the lower town mobility study uh was that discussed staff that specifically i mean the village village of ann arbor is called out here within the study for inclusion of a roundabout so the the study did call out for inclusion of a roundabout as a way to mitigate the multiple challenges at the pineal trail javon intersection so staff is looking for federal dollars to construct the roundabout and it's applied for a grant that we hope to hear back from in about a year or two about whether we are going to qualify for that grant well i'm wondering if we're talking about the same roundabout because at least the way that i read this like i'm i think what i understood was there this is the discussion about pontiac trail the intersection of pontiac trail and duvarin but my reading of the study suggests that it's it's on barton at the new residential development that's what this reads it says pontiac trail at moore at barton drive or sorry yeah it's on pontiac trail at the new residential development parentheses village of ann arbor located north of skydale drive it's my understanding that that is not around about that public services has requested grant dollars for that the roundabout is uh for the pontiac trail duvarn intersection i'm just i'm just confused since this is a since this is a brand new development like how it's connecting into the streets if we had a plan that came out in march 2022 that specifically calls for it has did this come up at all in your discussion with so my understanding of it is that um having it at the duvarn intersection would slow down the traffic and kind of suffice for what what that plan had called for i'm not a traffic expert either so we do have our traffic consultant on board on the zoom if it's something you know that she could speak to or if i don't know if the traffic engineer with the city but yeah we we've worked out kind of the geometrics of our entrance there's really not much room there because of the wetlands because of the development to the north of us and because of you know polities to the west it doesn't really fit i agree this is a recent study so it is confusing but i do know that our plan as it is existing or designed today is essentially what traffic had asked us to do we had a third lane that went uh that continued north through there that was important but we didn't really have the room to put in a roundabout got it yeah i mean i again i feel bad i i in watching the previous meeting i think there was a lot of discussion or i recall i thought the discussion was about barton um but maybe maybe not i'm seeing some nods yeses and some nods no i don't know it's that one and then sorry and i should have finished the last the left list the last though i can't talk tonight started teaching too early this morning um four locations and the last one on the list is done at duvarn road so i think that this is distinct it seems like it was distinct um anyway i [Music] it's it's it's suggested as this is not an either or there are four locations that would benefit and it's this is one of four in addition to the other so i i um yeah i'm not sure what to make of that it's especially because we put a lot of money into planning and to see this as a recommendation and less than eight months later um to have that very development included where where i haven't seen discussion it doesn't sound like that was discussed is odd to me um so i'm not i don't want to stand in the way of that i would suggest maybe commissioner dish that when this goes on or in between here like i'm just not sure what to make of this commissioner yeah so i think i feel i am still confused so um yeah my understanding is that wait this roundabout that we are talking about now is at pontiac and duvarn yes that was one of the sites in the lower town traffic study barton is unfeasible right we can't get the our right away for it so um and then i think they mentioned in the lower town traffic study possibly there was another one in between but i mean how many roundabouts can we budget for they're expensive so i mean this development gives us the opportunity to get one at duvarn and pontiac if we get this federal grant which it seems incredible to me that it takes two years to even hear about the grant right and so this would be that was what was in the staff memo about the possibility of 2026 for traffic relief that we have needed for the last you know not during the covered year but yeah we need it again so is so i'm not sure so you're you're what you're worried about is well it's that the study the study suggests four locations including the one that sounds like barton is infeasible but that is on the list this specific the in the connecting a new residential development village of ann arbor here is on the list in addition to duvarin and then also moore street and longshore street that kind of connect like the intersection with pontiac trail so i'm just i know that there was discussion south of this i know like clearly improvement north of this makes sense like there that's already a thing but because we're making a new connection here it seems odd to not have that discussion about the feasibility of that at this point because it hasn't been connected yet and so i feel like now is kind of our opportunity to understand if it's infeasible um anyway i see other hands well that's yester clark i just wanted to mention with the barton one um it's a little bit a side note that i i believe that it wasn't that it was in feasible it was that they would impact the level of service which is just the measure of like how many cars pass through and how quickly so um the lower town study does mention it and i don't i don't know if we want to write that off right away it's invisible i view that as priorities but anyway commissioner sovay i might have lightly alluded to this in terms of the conversation with last time about the staggered entries for the development to the west um on pontiac trail so that was our conversation from last time was trying to line those up so at least there was kind of the sight lines and an intersection instead of the kind of staggered and that discussion film last time was a lot about the wetlands and the mitigation and the clearances and the right-of-way available so we did have a discussion really at that intersection of the entry along pontiac trail for this development relative to even slightly shifting it what a roundabout would look like the amount of footprint for it the extension for a bus stop bike lane sidewalk all along that area so that was part of the conversation last time was that intersection if that's helpful and a lot of it was maybe in the lower town study not understand the extent you know of the survey for the wetlands you know from that high level that was then taken into account once they actually got onto this parcel and was were able to do the full survey and were able to deem it not feasible relative to the wetlands so that's what that's what i took away at least from the last conversation when we talked about that intersection and that's my understanding too my our traffic consultant is online if you wanted to have her speak so julie kroll sure why don't you why don't you ask her um i texted her so she said yes we can get julie kroll there she is can you guys hear me we can okay great um so i i couldn't see the name tags on the commissioners but the last one that just spoke was correct and so that is why we can't put a roundabout there um bret can i share my screen again in a moment you can hold that might be helpful if we can see it okay so um this is how the driveways are um our property is here on the the top of the this is our site access this is the north sky development to the south uh it's not south but it's the the east or the west side um so when we had looked at trying ideally to align these driveways that's when you could we could have potentially looked at a roundabout the problem was we have these wetlands right here and there's significant fall between this driveway that's proposed here and the existing driveway here so that's really where we have the issue so from a planning level you know ideal world that would be great but when we got into the engineering and started designing the access that this really was not feasible to relocate this driveway and this one had already been constructed so mitigations that we put in here to help kind of offset and provide pedestrian connections um we have new pedestrian connection we're putting in some additional signage here um a rapid rectangular rapid flashing beacon will be installed here to promote connectivity but um the roundabout really really wasn't a feasible option because of the wetland issue thanks i i was you know it that really helps in having the picture helps i'm i'm i will confess that i'm still confused a little bit because based on the the lower town study it doesn't suggest that this would intersect at skydale it suggested that that the intersection the roundabout proposed roundabout would be located north of skydale so but i i seeing where the wetland comes up to the road like maybe that is the explanation i just want to make sure that we talked about it especially because this is a new like a relatively new planning document uh so um [Music] and again all of these improvements i think it's a mess here right now so all of these improvements are important if there's any other opportunity i just want to make sure that we've exhausted all of the uh the permutations here and and not decided that like oh this one roundabout is the right thing rather than thinking kind of holistically about that but it sounds it sounds like there's lots of things that that were considered here so thank you commissioner weich oh sorry commissioner i don't know who is next oh if commissioner weish has something that commissioner lee you haven't spoken yet sure actually um one of the things that i actually wanted to voice was one of the commenters um i think it was ken clark uh regarding the figures um it's figures it's on page 38 of the traffic impact study report it's figure 9 through 11 and it's it's really since we're on the topic of the positive offset on that it does reflect a center turning lane and when you look at it that that isn't the case so um just wanted to make sure that that was revised uh i don't want it to mislead um since it's basically talking about a potential conflict if people are turning into that lane but that that's the wrong assumption so just wanted to make sure that that was updated um oh and i'm gonna now that i've kind of talked on that i'm just gonna talk overall um i appreciate all the efforts um and i also appreciate all the public's comments on this this is obviously we have to talk about our priorities and in the climate emergency that we are in so um my comment last time was talking about strengthening non-motorized transit and i think a lot of the improvements that you've done have done that so porosity making sure that we have you know again pathways through i'm going to echo commissioner salve's comments with respect to coordinating with other neighborhoods i'm sorry to hear you didn't get uh were able to connect with the north side glenn but if you could keep trying that would be great right right so no i would love to see you know again greater connectivity um i like the addition of the cover part uh bus stop as well as again with the new aata or triple ata millage and the uh potential improvements in the next five years that we'll see we want to increase the likelihood that people are you know leveraging taking buses and so providing for that porosity in bike lanes as well as connectivity to leslie park is really important um again the traffic impact study if you could just make sure that that is actually it's page 38 and 41.
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um overall again just talking about the imbalance imbalance of housing to jobs in ann arbor and creating reduction of vmt also is considered through the lens of providing more trip generation locations closer to job attractions so i think in that uh we this is doing well i would love to see obviously all attempts towards creating you know electrified uh opportunities for specifically the apartment rentals as well but again overall i think you've done a magnificent job of grappling with the concerns we voiced last time so i do feel that while we tackle some of these smaller nuances um that those could be done you know while you guys are on your way to city council so thanks for again everybody's feedback on this is very important um this is a massive development so we want to make sure to get it right and leave no stones unturned so thank you for grappling thank you with our comments last time commissioner weich i just wanted to come back to something that was in my notes that i forgot to bring up in my initial comments was thank you for including um the consideration of the bike share so actually just piggybacking off of commissioner lee's comment and then just wanting to put a recommendation to as you think about that bike share electric bikes as well as electrified cargo bikes uh so that if the residents that are there in the least or um units they can then you know take trips to the grocery store without having to make a car trip um that is going to be um a good outcome yeah and so make sure you put that into the mix cool we'll do commissioner lee i have one kind of side practical question um are there going to be any kind of fail safes or redundancies what happens if there's a massive power outage in the area are you planning on offering for the for sales this is kind of a larger just question of grid resilience in general we just had a big power outage last week tuesday i think um that we saw so just with respect to um are there any considerations that you're making of i mean from generators things that nature i mean which actually require connection of natural gas but uh for for electric i think it's something that we have to consider uh regarding fail-safes just given our grid in in the condition that is in so whether it's solar batteries that are retaining you know backup power um whether it's so so my question is has consideration been given to that from the for sale electrified units it's something i think we all need to graph yeah no i think that that's another concern that we've had so um that was that was certainly something we've we've talked about and i don't think we have an answer on how to how to address that so it's part of the the learning process as we move forward i agree it's a concern thank you commissioner abrams hi um i'm kind of reluctant to speak because i feel like i have a different tone but maybe it seems like there's enough support for the project that i won't sync it so i i just want to say like i think i'm frustrated that it takes like nine volunteer commissioners and amazing members of the public so much time to just what i think is like it's like pulling teeth or like dragging the development community through the mud to try to get you and i don't mean this directly um at you but so many of the developers that we see come come here towards us like to kind of i think just be responsible for a shared problem like it's not the climate crisis is not our problem like the commission's problem or the city's problem right it's everybody's problem and so like we're not i don't know it just feels like we're not even asking for really radical stuff we're not asking for uh passive house standards or asking to you know talk about the embodied carbon of the project but like i think as anybody who works on putting you know uh anything to do with building construction we are responsible for a massive amount of carbon emissions and i just think we need to do something about that and so it doesn't it just seems like something that people should be voluntarily doing particularly if it is going to in the very near future make financial sense even maybe by the time this is actually under construction so it's very yeah it just feels very frustrating to me and so i while i also you know i'm appreciative of the of the things which are in the project i think we set our standards super low so um that's how i'm feeling and um yeah so you know and like i i want more housing in ann arbor i think i'm frustrated that in order to get it i think we have to make so many concessions to other things that are really important to us so that's all thanks um i agree with you um i'm i'm frustrated with this too i guess part of what i think is difficult is that um ann arbor has declared this climate emergency and that we have to acting on an emergency is different than acting in our normal lives and i think what we're trying to do is sort of get people to act like it's an emergency and i think what's happening is that people are taking small steps which is what we tend to do as human beings like really if we stop and think about our daily lives we don't want to have like a massive amount of change in our daily lives right you just you it's it's comfortable right to kind of keep going forward as normal and i think what we're it feels like this is burden is somewhat on our shoulders because we are part of the process of making these things happen and we know that we don't really have a lot of control over it but we are trying to push and inspire people to be able to take somewhat of a bold step and i think part of my frustration as well is that i see other people doing this in other places and so it's not like going to the moon or going to mars or going to neptune or something like that it's it is happening so that's the thing i think that is hard it's not necessarily it hasn't happened in your company right and so that's part of like what's so uncomfortable is like whoa who are vendors how does this work what happens when the power goes out there's just there's all these unknowns and for a big organization it's like whoa how do we how do we handle this you know this is this is this feels uncomfortable and um [Music] and i think we have to feel uncomfortable with where we are i think that's part of what's so hard and this may be a little hard you know i don't know here's a chance to tell your kids you really did something and it's hard for all of us i think to be able to really look at our lives and this is getting personal in a way that we don't usually get personal but it's like this is it we're like teetering in a lot of ways with what we're doing and we just can't do business as usual and so um it's we're in this really awkward position where we can't really make people do things we want to be able to inspire people to do things and we also want to kind of push people along too um and uh it's it's tough place i think for us to be i think we're all uncomfortable with the position that we're in in terms of what we can really ask people to do and you have done a lot there's been people up here that have just stood up there and said oh sorry this is my gig and so i i really do i want to acknowledge the things that you all have been doing because i think that's really important um and that you know taking a modest step is still taking a modest step some people don't want to take any step at all because it's just it's the margins are thin it's hard to get through our system it's really expensive i get it you know that um that's that's part of the that's part of the puzzle of how you're making all this stuff work right so i feel kind of hamstrung i feel frustrated i would love it if people embraced what we're asking them to do but i also understand that it's also difficult to get big ships to turn yeah and i think that's that you know the development community is a really big ship and there's been there's just procedures and ways that people have done things and relationships that people have with how they do business and that this is a big change so um [Music] i feel like i i can't really do a whole lot in terms of what you know what the tools that we have in front of us um but i share the frustration of just that i feel like we need to be acting like we're in an emergency too and that um the more people stick their toes out of the comfort zone and sort of test things the more that it's easier for us to be able to say to other people hey it's okay you know other people are trying this and and uh and we really need some good local examples basically of this like working out okay uh for people right um so we hope that you can be that i understand that you're kind of saying this is what we're doing too um and that you can't make all decisions there's a lot of other people behind you as well right um so that's all to say that like this is kind of a big opportunity for us here too because it's a lot of houses i mean it's a lot of houses um and and i think that's a good thing for a for for a lot of reasons and it would just be amazing if you all stepped up to the plate in that full way to be able to really um take it on and show that it can be done because i think it can i think that there's just been enough other places that are making it happen and i think part of what why it's happening in other places is that it's the north star from the beginning of the design process and when that happens then you like you are you're designing everything around that so that then adding the electric isn't you're doing kind of passive house stuff and you're thinking about orientation and stuff like that that is kind of driving a lot of design too and it's harder to tack things on kind of further into the design process and so i think the the places the other places where this is happening that's part of how it's happening is that people have that orientation from the very start and that it's a lot harder after you get this far into the um regulatory process to just you know say oh we're doing this other thing here too so um anyway i i'm i don't know if this changes anything in terms of you know how i'm you know what i'm going my on my diatribe about but um i'm i'm frustrated with this too i i i feel like again there's a lot of good things about this and it would just be like amazing if it could kind of really take it to the next level all i can do is just ask and hope that you would be inspired to be able to be that that group that would be willing to stick their necks out to really think about what that means in terms of what it looks like to be able to to do that well i feel you i feel you both um i understand exactly how you're feeling i appreciate it obviously um you know it's awkward for us too because there's there's policies but there's also you know we're not asking for a pud but it is a large project and and there's a lot of stakeholders involved so you know we we do see this as as as for us going you know above and beyond i know it's not enough for you i get that um but but we do think that you know what we're proposing certainly gets uh moving forward in in a direction that a lot of other developers wouldn't do on this site and you know that that that to us is important and and we're doing this really you know outside of of maybe what you know you can force us to do so um you know i i feel you i understand what you're saying i do appreciate it um and you know we'll look at some of these these other items um but but yeah we do need to move forward with our with our project anybody else okay um i guess we are on to a vote correct all right so it's both both motions as read this is the approval of the zoning with the two conditions to resolve all engineering and solid waste comments prior to scheduling for city council as well as the condition of the variants as well as the issuance the recommendation of the issuance to the wetland use permit as a reminder because this is a corresponding with a legislative decision rezoning the site plan will also progress to the city council for consideration commissioner mills yes commissioner gibrandal yes commissioner yes commissioner abrams no commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes uh motion carries thank you we appreciate all your feedback thank you okay i think we are on to um item 10 for public comment uh this is an opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes about any issue that is any issue actually and we'll first call on individuals here and then remote to speak during the public hearing press star 9 if listening by phone or use the raised hand feature viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and then our meeting id 977-6634-1226 to unmute press star six city staff also callers that have raised their hand you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak please move to a quiet area for either method please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone present that would like to speak thank you sergey randall planning commission ken garber again i'd really like to address my comments uh mr lofrin um you've seen how much we care in this community um about our future our present i mean the climate crisis to many of us is something that keeps us up at night it's all we think about in our spare time and we're seeing our city climate action plans basically go up in smoke in real time not just tonight but in previous meetings with previous developers um you know um so i just like to ask you would you meet with me and others of us who are concerned about this and see if we can work something out dr langmore here we have a lot of smart people here in ann arbor uh dr langlord's former chair of biophysics at the university of michigan um co-founder of successful biotech company we had a pediatric neurosurgeon dr garton call in earlier today you know i'm a comparative dummy um ken clark another smart guy um i really think that that this can happen um and would be compatible with economic feasibility of your project i mean that's ultimately your decision but we really appreciate an in-person meeting to discuss it i really appreciate meeting with you definitely thank you um and thank you commission for really thoughtful discussion tonight there's not much more left to be said [Music] so i'm at a loss for words which may be at first so thank you [Applause] is there anybody else in the room that would like to speak [Applause] anybody remotely we do hugh garden you have three minutes to address the planning commission yeah i want to thank the global developer and the planning commission for the thoughtful efforts into this protocol and i want to ask the members of the planning commission to make an effort to speak to members of city council between now and the time this comes to a vote about your feelings it seems to me there's a very strong opportunity for the city council to move with its funds and its efforts to support the developer if the developer can find a way to get to the point that we all wish they would get to they said this is if this truly is a matter of dollars and it can be put in a dollar number per unit well we're going to vote soon enough for a large sum of money for climate action that's what that money should be for here's a great chance to spend that money in a way that will will guarantee us the carbon reduction that we want so please use your efforts to speak to members of city council i certainly will uh like we should be able to craft a plan if we're just talking about you know 40 to 50 per month per unit that's not that much money thank you thank you no other speakers all righty we are on to item 11 which is commission proposed business anybody have anything commissioner lee um i forgot earlier when we were doing commission reports about transportation one of the things that came up was there's a uh there's a i'm sorry what's the right word for it we're uh we are looking to basically eliminate right turns on red in downtown so i just wanted to uh the discussion came back about setbacks visibility and also kind of like pedestrian thoroughfare i'm sorry oh okay gotcha and so i just wanted to give you guys a heads up that that was passed um we supported the motion it's gonna go to city council but as far as kind of like from the land use we talked a lot about tc1 as the idea of the zero setback um and the interaction with the right-of-way so just wanted to give you guys a heads up that the downtown elimination of turn right on red is moving forward so that's it thanks thank you commissioner weich mr leonard did you decide about the michigan planning conference um i'm sorry i didn't get back to you yes i heard i think from you and commissioner clark we could support your attendance thank you for reminding me that would be helpful for a motion from the planning commission to support the attendance of commissioners clark and white to the planning conference this year okay commissioner dish and seconded by commissioner mills so do we do a little vote here uh voice vote would be fine all in favor say hi um now i will do what i can to find you a place to stay [Laughter] alrighty we are on to item 12 which is adjournment moved by commissioner white second invite mr abrams we are done 8 55.
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um okay are we ready thank you uh it is now 401 now is the time set for the regular meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind board meeting uh we have a call to order uh succeed do you have the role i do um brittany buchanan she's not here yet lynn davidson present linda bobe linda will not be attending mike gordon president dean howard i understand dean will not be attending either uh we understand uh pv's on his way so he's still leonard from phoenix okay aaron wonder present um myself and david nigro uh present so that makes five uh so we do have a quorum um if anyone on the phone it's okay if you happen to drop off or have to drop off let us know because we'll lose quorum so we need to know we can move on to oh britney is uh now joining us um so we can move on to 1.02 1.02 call to the public call to the public for agendas items um leticia did we have any in-person submissions no okay and there there were no um electronic submissions uh either so we can move on to 1.03 information item summary of the acdh's task force language acquisition dr kendra benedict and dr jennifer scarborough hello instead of dr kendra benedict she unfortunately was not able to attend the meeting tonight but we do have michael olivier who was also a part of the task force along with the both of us so he'll be joining me tonight thank you for allowing us to summarize our experience and our involvement in this task force so good evening board members superintendent reichman assistant superintendent martin and assistant superintendent cooper i'm learning your new sign name thank you for your time and for the opportunity to share about the task force focusing on language acquisition this task force started gathering data approximately in february or march of this year and we worked diligently until our final report was submitted in june the task force was comprised of members from different representatives from different fields around the state asdb had three representing members so that would be dr kendra benedict myself as well as michael olivier michael currently is involved with our curriculum resource department or the odd at the time that he joined the task force he was joining as the supervisor of the preschool department and that would be at the campus of ptsd the three of us participated however we also had many asdb staff members who were involved in this task force however their representation in the different subcommittees was as volunteers so they were representing community members as you read through the report you will see their names and you will see them as asdv staff however in this capacity they were representing representing the community members because they are subject matter experts who happen to work at asdb so we had both skills represented asdb specific membership that was represented as well as the community asdb did have strong representation within this task force so the three subcommittees that i briefly mentioned were data and demographics systematic connections and third assessments review today we're going to briefly discuss the recommendations of those three subcommittees those recommendations are to be presented to the public we have received input and feedback from the community and then they will be proposed to the legislature the legislature is currently deciding what to do with those recommendations i'll get to the recommendations from the first subcommittee data and demographics they had 10 recommendations but primarily their recommendations were to focus on the validity and reliability of data we want to look at data from students around the state as well as the importance of identifying those students and having a way to track their data there are many agencies that work with these students around the state and their identifier within database programs varies between agencies we came to the realization that there is simply no centralized place of repository for this data so that was one of the primary recommendations to the legislature they also wanted agencies to begin sharing data it's also important to have continuous tracking for these students from birth until the age of 21.
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hi good evening at this time i'd like to call this regular meeting of the dysart unified school district to order let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of tracy sawyer synthol madam president i would request that the governing board please come to the front of the stair area where we have a special guest to start off our meeting this evening we would like to ask kindergarten student levi layton i do want to point out that i am taller than levi even though he's standing on a step um levi is from western peaks elementary school he's in kindergarten and for those of you that were at our last meeting you saw a video of levi proudly saying the pledge of allegiance outside of his house and i want to thank his mother for sending us that video and talking about how proud she was of the great things happening at western peaks and so tonight we would ask that you all please rise as kindergartner levi layton leads us in the pledge of allegiance levi right there here you hold that and we're ready whenever you are i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america enter the republic for which it stands one nation under god in the symbol with liberty and justice for all [Applause] all right levi we're gonna ask if we can take a picture with you real quick okay so hold on just a minute is great job today thank you very much [Applause] laughs that was probably the best pledge we've ever had in one of our meetings and levi can i tell you that when i saw your video that not only made my day that like made my entire week it was so beautiful it's such a wonderful job so thank you for being here tonight okay next we will move to item imb recognitions and celebrations be one choir performance dr dean madden president members of the governing board at this point i will turn this over to dr croto who will introduce the outstanding ashton ranch middle school choir good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dean cabinet and guest uh tonight is my pleasure to introduce to you the ashton ranch middle school choir uh the choir is led by miss kathleen treat um and we are definitely excited to have you here so this treat the floor is yours [Music] ah [Music] they were standing in freedom's glory [Music] never standing in freedom's world [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we celebrate [Music] hey [Music] is [Music] across our nation while freedom brings our voices [Music] is [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so that was wonderful thank you so much this time we'll move to item b2 city of el mirage never give up recipient dr dean thank you madam president members of the governing board cabinet members and our community this evening we are pleased to recognize one of our own teacher ricky castro from dicer high school who was recently awarded with the never give up proclamation from the city of el mirage mrs castro would you please come forward so that we can say really nice things about you come on down miss castro was given the never give up proclamation by the city of el mirage for going above and beyond every single day with her students the city of el mirage recently has started giving the never give up proclamation to citizens in their community who go above and beyond to do great things within the community of el mirage former dysert high school principal amy hartjen wrote the following about ms castro ricky is the type of teacher every student dreams of having she is passionate about her students finding success as a special education teacher many of ricky students get frustrated since school can be a struggle so she works with her students to find the strategies that work best for them ricky is always willing to go above and beyond for her students she spends the time getting to know each and every students on both a personal and educational level she believes that all of her students can learn and uses her relationship that she builds with them to get her students to really push themselves to grow academically we want to say thank you ms castro for doing an outstanding job with our students and we are pleased that the city of el mirage chose to recognize you and we'd like to ask you to come to the middle so that we can put you even more in the spotlight which i know you're enjoying as we would ask the governing board to come down and take a picture as well and could we give an outstanding round of applause to ms castro thank you [Applause] madame president that concludes our recognitions this evening okay then we will move to c addressing uh the governing board c1 audience with individuals michelin this is my check okay this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.01 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to studying the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record first we have michelle hill my name is michelle hill and i'm here to speak tonight as a former employee i served dysart for 20 years as a teacher a coach and assistant principal the reason i have not spoken earlier is because of fear fear that you would smear my name fear of losing my job fear of others being targeted because of their affiliation with me and i am not alone as many of my former colleagues would not come tonight because they fear all these things as well as they should since i experienced firsthand your targeting and retaliation as a result of my former boss speaking up in support of social workers in january the very next day we received calls from the district office that were directly from the board about their concerns these concerns lacked detail and were anonymous you violated policy 2.20 board communication with the public and the board welcomes the opinion and input of employees and the public on all matters it is apparent that you don't value the opinion of others in the district employees when the day after marshy spoke you began calling countryside with anonymous complaints you also did not follow the policy because you didn't follow the problem-solving procedures of addressing concerns directly related to administration just like dr dean had his video yesterday about guiding problem solving the governing board policy instead of perpetuating fear by calling school sites directly february 14th i was offered the opportunity by dr croto to be the principal at riverview elementary the next few days my staff at countryside and the staff at riverview were notified of the changes for the next year i hired my assistant principal and was given my salary for the upcoming year on thursday the 17th i was notified that while reviewing the agenda for the upcoming board meeting the christine pritchard told dr kellis that the governing board would not vote me in as principal at riverview they would pull my name out and vote me separately i was told that they did not have to give a reason and i was placed at luke elementary as the assistant principal i refused to sit by idly and continue to be targeted after earning that position after 20 years of service to this district how can these decisions be made without outside public outside of the public meeting this violates governing board policy 2.8 ethics recognize that decisions should be made only after discussion at publicly held board meetings it also violates 2.0 the board is definitely responsible to delegate operational and managerial functions of the district to the superintendent and employment is a managerial function support the employment of people best qualified to serve as a staff member it's quite telling the 30 staff administrators left as well this is not the only governing policies that were violated the governing board shall act as the general agent of the state of arizona and carrying out the will of the people of the district in the matter of public education although not directly stated the employment of the superintendent is part of the public education infrastructure on may 11th for one hour and 26 minutes the community spoke regarding dr kellis's employment 89 of the community which included teachers parents students city council members pastors and mayors pleaded with you and you ignored the will of the people of the district you violated your own policies and to my previous statement regarding fear not one single administrator or district office employee spoke up in support of dr kellis because they witnessed the retaliation i endured by three of the staff governing board members [Applause] thank you next we have haley carvalho my name is haley carvalho i addressed the board two weeks ago about safety concerns in the dysart district i came before you and pleaded for help for my child's campus and for all of the other campuses in the dysart district to be brought up to bare minimum standards of safety however i was not the first parent to ask this in june of this year other parents came before this board and asked what was being done to protect our children teachers staff in schools and nothing has changed they made their plea to you 90 days ago that is three months time and a lot of that time happened over summer when work could have been could have been done on campuses while students and staff were off the community in uvalde is mourning greatly but they have also responded and with significantly increased security measures in that same amount of time is it going to take a tragedy like uvaldi for dysart to take swift action to upgrade security measures now on all of the campuses or are we going to keep living on borrowed time hoping that our current poor security measures will hold the months or years our schools are waiting for updates i might have only come before the board two weeks ago but it was my only option to feel heard because in the two weeks prior to that i searched for answers for safety for our schools and many phone calls were not returned and in the two weeks since i came before you nothing has changed on my child's campus and not a single person has contacted me the start of the school year is starting to feel like a lifetime ago when you are playing with the lives and safety of our children spouses sisters brothers mothers fathers and friends the thompson ranch incident happened almost a month ago plenty of time for actionable change every day i send my kids to school and i hope that they come home and it's not the day that security measures fail i will not rest i will not stop and i will be back here every two weeks reminding you that we have to do better i will come and read the names of children who are lost to senseless acts of gun violence in school shootings every two weeks if i have to to keep it at the forefront of this board until we get every campus safe i have been asked by countless people when i have gone looking for resources support and answers why don't just keep my kids out of dice art if i'm so unhappy with safety measures the simple answer is i could pull my kids my kindergartner and her brother who goes to preschool two doors down i could end the stolen glances and the friendships that they have each formed with each other and with their friends i could take them out put them in private school pay someone to come teach them in my home my husband and i both work but it's not about that even if i take them out the kids and the staff and dice are still to serve safety this is so much bigger than my kids and all the kids and staff deserve to go to a safe environment every day i won't stop fighting i won't stop showing up and i can't let go of this until i know that there are better precautions in place because we're living on borrowed time you can sit up there and thank each other and thank whoever you please for their response and crisis but you only get to thank the aftermath because you got lucky it wasn't a worse situation i'll see you all in two weeks [Applause] madam president mr musee and mr yeager both followed up with ms carvalho but we'll ask them to follow up again um so that they can explain the sweeping changes that were made this summer with safety thank you thank you next we have sharla kolasar hi my name is charlotte kolasar i addressed the boards two weeks ago as well about safety concerns in the dysart district the school year started 35 days ago and we have gotten lucky for every single one of those days the school has been in session there are campuses that have subpar safety measures but most of them are severely lacking we understand that you cannot give us the safety game plan and we are not asking for intimate details of logistics but we are asking for transparency and for quick preventative action you are asking us parents to ignore our most basic instinct which is to protect our children you are asking parents to not show up and to leave it to the district and the police to handle things in the event of a catastrophic incident you are asking us to blindly betray our primal instinct to protect our kids but give zero transparency on how you're going to do that how you're going to give the school's preventative safety measures you commend the aftermath of the response but we can only rely on favorable results by luck in the words of one of your own board members the acting superintendent was contacted and minutes went by before he was back at the district office and set up a command center how much time was lost because you were assembling a command team seconds are precious and we can't get them back everything you guys talk about is after the initial threat the clock starts the moment they step foot in our school every minute every second after that that they're on campus can cost lives those minutes and seconds cannot be extended we can't get more of them we are tired of safety by luck we want our schools protected with purpose how many of you board members have video cameras at your own home we want to prevent the threat from ever stepping foot into our hallways prevent the intruder from seeing our children prevent them from starting that clock you are asking us to rely on response time after the threat is already at the door instead of being able to see what is coming i understand you might have started the conversation long before two weeks ago it had to of columbine happened in 1999.
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[Music] reach is part of our signature programs in the madison school district and if you're in reach which stands for rigorous enriched accelerated curriculum it benefits your student because students get to work at their own pace and receive differentiated work at their level and they are challenged i love working with this group of students because i can take them beyond the curriculum with higher level thinking learning opportunities and hands-on projects it's just so fun seeing their creativity they can really explain their thinking in class my favorite thing about reeds is the atmosphere because i'm surrounded by kids who are like the same level of giftedness as i am my favorite part about reach is that you get to build friendships for years and years and it's just very fun because it's more challenging
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[Music] all right good morning wildcats it's friday we're gonna have some fun today it's a homecoming preview next week is homecoming week we got a lot of events planned every day students are excited hallways are getting decorated the den doors are looking great oh look a special guest right here i bet he's excited about homecoming well okay what are you most looking forward to next week [Music] this guy all right so we have dress-up days every day next week make sure you participate there'll be competitions in all the dens oh we got a couple students here already uh what are you dressed up for what day of the week is this uh royalty day and what day will you dress up royally monday monday you got it who's your favorite royal girl would you rather be a king a prince a princess a dutch a duke a duchess a prince i'm obviously clean [Music] there you go she's ready to go for monday all right homecoming all right wildcats i'm here with lam troll lamp what uh you're in school are you i'm a junior are you excited for homecoming most definitely all right let's see what you know about homecoming what's our theme this year candyland very good what illinois college invented the tradition of homecoming a college in illinois what college in illinois university of illinois yes university of illinois yeah they invented homecoming what's the point of homecoming to have fun sure sure have fun for our students also we like to welcome back who do we want to come home alumni sure alumni next saturday the class of 1962 is going to be taking a tour here how long ago were they in high school if they graduated in 1962 60 60 years ago yeah yeah [Music] all right we're about four weeks into school fall setting in feels like fall today but we all want to think back to those summer days being tourists on tuesday you can dress up as your favorite tourist or how you would on vacation here we are are you a tour yeah where are you at right now um west chicago community high school where would you want to be if you were dressed up like this where's your favorite vacation spot and i thought we go to like hawaii never been love to go thanks sophia miller what year in school are you i'm a sophomore you're a sophomore hopefully years ago but you got breakfast ready for the day excellent and you got that at a local place here in town dunkin donuts club is doing a scavenger hunt next wednesday at 6 00 p.m where you are gonna go around town to some various west chicago landmarks you can sign up for five dollars in commons you can get a team together and do that yep all right great [Music] all right wildcats i'm here with phoebe and what year in school are you guys senior are you excited for homecoming yes wednesday night in the stadium what do we have going on what movie are we showing rock and roll wreck-it ralph do you guys remember his uh like saying or anything about wreck-it ralph i'm gonna wreck it i'm gonna wreck it to go along with that theme on wednesday dress up as your favorite movie character where your favorite movie t-sh what do we got right here what do we have here we have the mandalorian amanda lawrence she's dressed up as a mandalorian big star wars fan art yeah of course okay i believe the mandalore is a tv show though not a movie we'll give it we'll give you credit for that we'll go with the star wars thing movie madness wednesday dress up on thursday we got class and of course classy and classy yeah color slash shirt day what do we got here freshman in blue junior and yellow junior and yellow senior in green you're in green i believe the sophomores are red staff will be in purple you can still buy these shirts for ten dollars monday tuesday wednesday thursday morning uh in commons and during your lunch periods hi wildcats i'm here with amanda amanda what year in school are you a senior you excited for homecoming yes what event are you looking forward to the most next week um potter plus potter flop friday afternoon in the stadium juniors versus seniors you are a senior i believe we're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the last time the juniors won will the juniors win this year or the senior the seniors we'll find out i'm coming home i'm coming home tell the world i'm coming home oh what year in school are you i'm a junior we got a lot of things going on next week with homecoming what event are you looking forward to the most honestly i have to say the football game all right great friday night football game you'll be in the squad cheering them on hopefully if i don't have to work you know what to wear on friday it's wildcat gear blue and white we got it here we got student council shirts wildcat pride shirts soccer we go gear get out your blue and white for the pep assembly in the stadium parade afterwards food fest powder puff game that night in the stadium let's have a great week wildcats [Music]
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you called a role today is a regular board meeting of september 8th 2022 at 5 30 pm members of the board in attendance president andres quintero i've been informed that he will be late present member linda chavez president member ernesto bergerano here members of administration superintendent dr bauer present okay uh the board of trustees of the alamo union elementary school district uh does hereby acknowledge that the district's schools and facilities sit on the traditional lands that the mu ohlone people and the board of trustees further acknowledges with respect and reverence the weka ohlone people tribe of the san francisco bay area uh for their stewardship of these lands uh so at this time would you please join me in the pledge of allegiance so if i please find the nearest flag and uh you know so with that i pledge allegiance to the flag thank you so uh with that said uh we will move to uh item 1.02 discussion and or modifications of the agenda the board may change the order of business including but not limited to an announcement that an agenda item will be considered out of order or that consideration if an item has been withdrawn postponed rescheduled or removed from the consent calendar uh for separate discussion and possible action is there any uh any move to modify the agenda okay okay seeing uh seeing no requests from the board to modify the agenda we will move to item 1.03 welcome an explanation to the audience any person may address the board on any item on the meeting agenda persons who wish to speak on an item on the agenda will have an opportunity to do so when that agenda item is introduced and presented during this meeting if you wish to speak on an item on this agenda please use the raise hand function on zoom as described above when the agenda item is called there is a limit of uh two minutes for each speaker the board has the right to limit total public comment on any agenda item to no more than 20 minutes persons who wish to speak to the board about any matter within the jurisdiction of the district but not on this agenda we'll have an opportunity to speak during item 5.01 on this agenda stated below so uh uh carlos uh please uh go ahead and give an explanation to an audience thank you he's muted uh i uh carlos was saying to us trusty fam that he was having technical issues so um let me see carmelina and explain the okay please let me know if carmelina can do so no yeah i can't hear i can hear carmelina okay please let me know when carmeline is finished thank you mm-hmm oh uh marabelle is the translation finished yes it is uh okay thank you marvel uh so with that uh we will move to item two closed session to uh item 2.01 uh the board will recess the closed session the vorgo recess to closed session at approximately well now it's 5 37 p.m open session will resume at the conclusion of closed session uh let's see here uh item 2.2 2.02 announcement and public comments regarding items to be discussed in closed session uh superintendent bauer would you please announce the items to be discussed in closed session items in closed session 2.03 conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation 2.04 conference with legal counsel existing litigation as stated on the agenda 2.05 conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation 2.06 conference with labor negotiators as stated in the agenda on the agenda and 2.07 public employee appointment employment as stated on the agenda okay so with that uh jose uh we will now take a public comment regarding items to be discussed in closed session uh are there any uh let's see is there is there any one having it uh jose anyone having remarks for uh on item 2.02 hello mr board vice president at this time we have no requests for public comment okay going once going twice okay so with that uh the boardwalk that's right president i just wanted to uh let you know that i was here at the translation was taking place so okay just wanted to make sure the minutes reflect that okay uh you know um let's see here um board board president quintero uh arrived during the translation in item 1.03 so uh so with that we will re so with that said we will uh recess to a closed session and uh dr bauer do you have a approximation of when uh when we will be finished uh when how long will closed session take i will say about an hour okay so with that uh the board will reconvene to open session at 6 40.
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to be able to ensure that these students are acquiring language throughout the spectrum so that was the recommendations primarily from data and demographics next the findings from the systematic connections there were three primary recommendations this group focused a lot on medical professionals such as audiologists and making sure that those groups are sharing impartial non-biased information to families to parents and guardians of these children making sure that these professionals are providing all language approaches and technology options another recommendation is making sure that upon identification of the for example the failure of a newborn hearing screening that families are provided immediately with all resources available and that staff are provided screening and that they are able to be trained systematically so that they're providing similar information for families across the state with that said these agencies that work with children across the street across the state need to improve partnerships ongoing and work in collaboration with one another as children reach transition age those transitions should be more seamless and efficient and information needs to be accessible for all families which ties back into that need for a centralized repository for data which was one of the findings of the data subcommittee once that information is accessible it should be accessible to the public so that is why everyone needs to have access to whether our children are achieving the intended outcomes are our children thriving are they acquiring language or are we hiding that information right now that information is not easily accessible the final subcommittee was the assessment subcommittee and so i'd like to have michael come and give some details on those recommendations good evening i'm happy to talk about the assessment subcommittee but first i do have to express my pride in how many asdb staff members were involved in these subcommittees they showed a great deal of commitment in their areas of expertise and to the benefit of our students the assessment subcommittee had a variety of individuals involved in the first part we were looking at what assessments were available out there and there is a wide variety of assessments available depending on the agency or the group and the preference of assessment varied so we really needed to whittle down which assessments we were going to use there are too many assessment tools to just leave it open to the provider's discretion we focus first on birth to five and what assessments are being used for that group and then separately from ages five to twenty one we needed to look at both asl assessments as well as spoken language assessments for students who are using spoken language we narrowed that down and we recommended a total of seven assessments and i excuse me has seven recommendations and i'll summarize those briefly the first is to establish a statewide assessment team that will provide all of the assessments across the state and of course this is going to necessitate legislative funding in order to establish this program and they have asked that asdb take the lead on this so we don't want it to be a school by school or a case-by-case basis on what assessments are being used and how that's being done we want it to be systematic we also want to make sure that we have a qualified assessor to administer the assessments for both spoken and sign languages for our birth to five children we recommend they be assessed twice a year and five to twenty one be assessed once a year as jennifer mentioned earlier we also want to make sure that all of the information is available publicly of course redacted appropriately so that names and identifying information is not available but overall we'd like to see how our children are progressing and that information should be available for the public to view we want that assessment data to be centralized we want the assessment training and qualification process to be centralized as well to make sure that those assessments are being done appropriately so that's a summary of the assessment group's recommendations and i will let jennifer close this up as you may have noticed the recommendations from those three subcommittees did develop somewhat in isolation however they are not all unique there is a lot of overlap which is nice to see that that at the end result of all our work we are seeing seeing a lot of parallels and so we are seeing um a lot of the same things within this field the experts have seen some commonalities some common needs and we have come to an agreement about a lot of these items it was really nice to have that common sense of agreement there was not a lot of disagreement the experience overall was a wonder experience and at the end while it yes was a lot of work looking back these recommendations are something that we feel strongly about and that we are satisfied with we're very happy to be a part of this experience regardless of the amount of work involved so now i'd like to open it up to any questions that anyone on the board may have are there any questions nope seeing none thank you so much for your work and the work of the other asdb staff is a very useful information i think for the board and for things the agency may do in the future so thank you thank you next up is 1.04 information item superintendents report superintendent reichman good evening president nigro members of the ascb board of directors assistant superintendent martin assistant superintendent cooper and the asdb community welcome to our september 8 2022 board meeting i am thrilled that we are meeting in person i know we've done several meetings in person already but this one feels different to be in person so i will start off with my report but first a short story this short story starts a long time ago in a village under a glass dome and this village had been there for a long time many generations had lived there people were born there grew up there married there had children there and died there they didn't know what it was like outside of the glass dome they assumed that if they left the glass dome that they would die a terrible death so they had a law that said if you seriously break the law then one possible punishment would be to be thrown out of the glass dome and perish fortunately for many generations nobody did any serious law breaking activities until one day one man severely broke the law and the community decided to throw him out of the glass dome they expected that man to die so the village people were curious to see what happened to him and they all headed over to the glass window and looked out and watched the man that man as he was laying on the ground and began to look around he was afraid he thought he was going to die at any moment but he laid there looking around and nothing was happening so he started to move he got up stretched his arms and legs walked around he could feel the grass and still nothing was happening there was no danger there so he started to dance and then he looked over to the villagers and say come out of the glass dome come join me and dance with me the village people were appalled they were shocked dismayed how is this possible they couldn't believe their eyes so they met and they talked and made a decision they went and got some black paints and then started to paint on the glass dome and they painted moving up and up and up until they could no longer see the man and then they went back to their lives their everyday routines now that man his violation was what you may think he an innovator how does that story apply to asdb well it applies to us last summer in august we were looking forward to coming back to a sense of normalcy back to school back to normal back to itinerant services back to normal early intervention back to normal we believed that we were starting school the students would be back the teachers would be back in the classroom itinerant teachers back in to public schools working with teachers and our early intervention teachers going into the homes working with parents instead of using zoom we would be back to normal back to life pre copied we really believe that and then a time has passed and we're slowly realizing that we are not back to pre-covered life our students are coming back to school and their lives have been disrupted for more than two years so think about their experiences not knowing if tomorrow they were going to school or staying home [Music] having to use zoom trying to get an education remotely thinking maybe next week we'll go back to school in person their routines were disrupted we found out that our students social emotional growth was compromised was disrupted and that is not just us and this is true of students in every school across the nation students are returning to school not remembering how to behave expectations of appropriate behavior they haven't learned appropriate behaviors so we are having to address their social and emotional growth before we can address the classroom learning that is one thing that has changed the second change is is become harder to recruit qualified teachers professional staff and staff and it's not just us this is a nationwide problem other schools are having challenges finding qualified teachers and professional staff it just so happens that arizona is the fourth worst in the country with vacancies we at asdb have more than 110 vacancies in our agency and we are learning that those gaps in our professional staff are starting to affect our students our ability to provide the best educational support to all of our students that's the second change that's happening the third is our enrollments of students on both campuses continue to decline the number of students we have in our schools is less than before and we have to make some decisions that's another conversation for another day but i did want to let you know that there will be some critical decisions that we have to make looking at our student enrollment numbers the fourth thing that has happened this year is we are right now going through a sunset audit if you recall arizona has a law that requires all state agencies to go through a sunset audit every 10 years the last one was 2012 which means this year we went through the 2022 audits we started last spring the arizona auditor generals or the ag contacted us or the otter auditor general contacted us with a list of questions and we collected the information and provided it to them and have been working with the auditor general ever since last week we just got the preliminary report from the auditor general and we are now reviewing the report now what's within that report is still confidential because it is a draft it is not a final report so i wanted to let you know that this information within that report highlight aligns with our strategic plan so it will have impacts on our strategic plan and the agency's plan for the future and i will talk about that more later in the strategic plan president nigro asked us to provide an update on our work with the strategic plan i have asked assistant superintendent martin and assistant superintendent cooper to provide that update but i do want to say that first of all when we looked at our az merit scores from last year you may recall that not only are our students behind that come to our school they come to our school because they're behind and then the additional disruption from the pandemic caused even more significant delay and we are seeing regression with our students again that is consistent with what we're seeing across the nation second i'd like to second thing i'd like to mention is we used to collect data for students we served in the public school up until arizona department of education provided us with that data for students that we serve through our regional cooperatives in 2018 the arizona department of education informed us that we they would no longer be providing us with those az merit scores for those itinerant students that data belonged to the school district it did not belong to a sdb to ade we have not been collecting information from the school district and we started doing that recently so assistant superintendent martin will be commenting on that a lot of changes have been happening in our environment that will have an impact on our plan for the future now i want to wrap up with one final thought our agency leaders wrote a letter to you and they gave it to me they asked me to share some of their thoughts with you in that letter they talked about the importance of collaboration they work every day collaborating with students with parents with school districts with the community stakeholders they do that every day and they recognize the importance of the collaboration with you the board of directors they also recognize that if we collaborate that has to be based on common common trust mutual respect and can connegiality excuse the interpreter it is very important to do that to have those and then be able to collaborate so with all the environmental changes that were happening and changes happening within the agency it becomes even more so important for you the board of directors to support our work to support our leaders they do have two recommendations for you the board of directors one recommendation is to establish a training on cultural awareness cultural sensitivity and on accessibility how to run a board meeting that is more accessible to all board members those are the two recommendations that they wanted to share with you so that wraps up my report to the board and i'm happy to answer any questions are there any questions for the superintendent uh superintendent my my question uh relates to the data that we used to get from the co-ops as you mentioned as late as 2018 we used to get that we don't anymore because ade won't give it to us what's the i know that when we talked about the lea transition a few years ago we thought we could have been the igas to get that data from the school districts is there a plan to amend those igas to get the data going forward and retroactively so we can establish a couple of baseline years for our strategic plan purposes this is superintendent reichman i'm going to turn it over to assistant superintendent martin to respond to that question thank you superintendent reichman um president niko governing board members um thank you as well as superintendency as community so i heard that ask loud and clear in our last board meeting about the need for data we came around the table with jay johnson him and i talked about you know how could we track this data down we talked about several um avenues um one was going directly to ade to request that data um we did go down that road and we're met with a staunch no so we looked at how we could make this happen and i'm going to bring jay johnson up in a little bit but we reached out to districts so we've got a couple of things going on one was the start of the school year two was we have data that has not is not allowed to be released just yet until after the embargo date by the state which is sometime i'm believing in september so we were able to collect quite a bit of data we had a very good response from districts and i believe after we get past this embargo date districts will be a little bit more inclined to release that data the regional directors were out on the pavement they were instrumental in getting that collected so a lot of work has been done the goal was to see my directive i gave to jay is let's make this happen before the september 8th board meeting and he took that challenge and ran with it so we collected quite a bit the goal is once we get past this districts are typically used to sharing student records student information they again overwhelmingly they they shared and that was shocking to me this time of the year so i'm gonna let jay johnson come up and talk about the work that he did with his directors in the regions and what that looks like good evening everyone first i want to thank you for allowing me to speak tonight president nigro board members superintendent reichman assistant superintendents cooper and martin it's always a pleasure to come before the board to talk about the great work that we're doing in the itinerary program before i get to the data that our regional directors and myself have been able to work with our school districts and charters out there i did want to share a positive note from one of our audiologists that sent an email early this morning about 6 30 in the morning because he gets up quite early and the email was stated good morning it's pretty amazing to see the many elements of progress that are presented tonight at the board meeting regarding itinerant services i just wanted to say thank you it's nice to see not only a voice to the representation of the work that is being accomplished in the itinerant programs but also the need for the data to be brought forward to this team so i wanted to mention that to you that they're keeping an eye on the work that we're doing i do want to mimic what um the superintendent and associate superintendent mentioned and in a recent email from ade they stated and confirmed that the state testing data for students that we serve in the itinerant program is the home school district's data not asdb's data each separate school district can share or not share that data as they deem fit so that was a challenge that was already thrown in front of this the directors and i to really look at how can we make sure to build partnerships with our school districts and charters throughout the state currently we have about 201 school districts and charters leas in the state that we currently work with as of today 101 have responded to our request for state-level data on the students that we serve in the grades three eight and ten this process all started as superintendent associate superintendent martin suggested on saturday july 23rd we started really working with those schools to get information out we started emailing and contacting all of our special education directors that following monday on the 25th of july and our request was to receive the data by august 12th so we'd have time to put that together for our board report for tonight finding about the embargo date that we're unable to release any of that student data we currently possess but we'll be adding additional data as the semester moves along the regional directors and i work together on a spread shared spreadsheet to collect the data that we wanted to have answered the questions from all districts we also met weekly to discuss the challenges and brainstorm how to collect the assessment data we've been documenting our attempts including the following information which district has responded the contact person title the date the time and the mode of contact we've had whether it's in person by phone or email and of course the outcomes of the data that we've been able to collect so far the goals that we shared with our lease number one was that we wanted to collect the student achievement data and the goal to use the data to drive our continuous improvement in services with the partnerships of all of our districts and charters we also want to share with them we want to outline what the data we're looking for in the terms of the three grade levels and the students impacted and last we wanted to share with them the districts who did not respond to remind them of the importance of the data and of course contacting the special ed directors and reminding them how we can build that partnership moving forward this timeline of course was at the beginning of the academic year as we all know just started at the beginning of the school year many of our districts were overwhelmed with getting their own staff started additional students on their campuses and now that the school year is underway we plan to reach out to the leas again who have not replied to us at this point we plan to personally reach out to those districts and explain the need and how they can assist us with that data all along there have been challenges that have been in front of the regional directors and myself as we can move forward with this work the first challenge was of course the timing of the request posed the greatest challenge and it was right at the beginning of the academic year many of our lease had staffing shortages hiring new students enrolling and day-to-day tasks that they were doing the lea simply did not have the time or the capacity to gather the data needed another challenge we found was a various contacts within the lea in the terms of who collects that estate assessment data and sometimes our special education directors did not have access to the data in their own districts or charters but then referenced additional staff members that we were connected to for those data specialists in some instances they were guarded with the data we have a few districts in our state that are waiting for the embargo date before they'll release it to us and they also didn't feel it fell between in the partnership of services as part of the asdb itinerant programs some leas see the itinerary program as a need to know partner for this information so again we're going to continue to work together as a team meet weekly as we already have to make sure we brainstorm how to collect additional data on the remaining about a hundred districts out there that we have not heard from are there any questions relative to this work uh thank you mr johnson i know um trying to coordinate with a couple hundred school districts on this this must be very difficult and um you know i understand there's going to be some complications um you mentioned that you have data from about 101 of them you know if you need anything from the board if you need us to amend an iga if you need to take some other action please bring it to the board um and we'll consider it uh you know it's important that we get that data um and again if it's not here today that's okay but i want to be sure that we're working towards getting as much as we can we in terms of the children that we serve between 5 and 22 there are 354 on the campuses there's 108 in the itarians so it's the vast majority of the students that we serve that are school age or above preschool and we need to know how we're doing that's what we put in the strategic plan i think if we had realized i mean we would have addressed it a little bit earlier had we realized that that we were no longer getting the state i think when we made the strategic plan we're like well we we saw this data before so we thought it was still there but in any event uh if we can keep working on that anything that you guys need that from the board please bring it to us at the next meeting and we'll you know we'll certainly consider it we'll be happy to do that thank you for the offer thank you all right um are there any other questions for superintendent reichman gordon um annette you mentioned uh in the end of your report about um trainings about board member about board meetings and accessibility could you reiterate that a bit and just explain how that would work or what the plan is for that please so if you all recall at the july board meeting at the end linda bove recommended to the board and i think the leadership team at asdb caught that recommendation that you all be involved with some sort of training that focuses on cultural awareness and sensitivity and also focuses on accessibility and how to be more sensitive to access and to make sure that everyone has equal access and it is designed and we design the meetings in such a way so that all participants have equitable access and participation within each meeting there are those types of trainings out there and we also internally have those kinds of trainings we have deaf awareness orientations we just talked about developing a blind awareness orientation so we internally within the agency are trying to figure out how we and our staff can become more aware and more sensitive and more equitable and how we interact with each other so that is what i meant by that comment okay thank you um also in your report you mentioned that there's going to be braille literacy classes that are will be offered to families uh what kind of participation are you anticipating or have you have you heard so far i am not sure of that information that is a training that we do provide to parents or we will be providing to parents but the best person to answer that question would be lisa yancarelli so we um have had a request for braille literacy classes for our families and so we are working on developing that a survey will be going out in the next few days to survey families on the best format for that class whether people are available to do the class in in person or whether we need to offer it virtually we have we will be contracting with dr penny rosenblum to teach the class she has taught the class in previous years for our agency so i'm not sure the level of interest that we will have but we will um we will conduct them this this semester it will start october 13th and um whether that's in person or virtually it depends again on the response from parents and then we will look at offering another doing another offering in the spring semester and and grow from there so the course will offer basic braille the great basic braille code but then also some literacy strategies and how to make for example story boxes to go along with literature how to encourage your child to use braille things you can do to you know to increase literacy within your home thank you you're welcome um there any other questions for the superintendent uh thank you and uh superintendent argument accessibility going to extend to the the forms that we present for the board meetings that will make sure that they're accessible i know the forms that we have on some of the documentation that we have today i'm looking at it now don't necessarily have um graphical descriptions in every graphic and and things like that to make it accessible to screen readers president nigro i'm not sure i understand your your point my point is if we're going to be talking about accessibility we should make our documents accessible to those that use screen readers to access pdf documents and other documents electronic documents are you um speaking of board materials yes board materials i think currently our agenda is in braille and then the other documents are attachments with it to the agenda they're attached to the agenda so they are pdf formats they're pdf documents um so if we're discussing accessibility i would have to do more research honestly i'm not aware of the accessibility of pdf format yeah there are um some tagging here you can run an accessibility report which i just did uh some of the graphics that we have and some of these reports don't have alternative text which again if we're going to talk about accessibility we need to make sure that everything we put up here is going to be accessible if that's going to become an issue all right i will follow up on that all right thank you we can move on to 1.05 assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction superintendent martin to give you president nigro board and update one of the things i think superintendent reichman threw out is how we would use look at you summons using this azmerit data and how that will drive schools where we're at is kovit you look at any school that's dysfunctional it's the culture that's the heart of that dysfunction covet has did a number on culture and that culture disconnects teaching and learning and it's a tremendous impact across schools so we'll be there's a lot that we're looking at doing in in the schools we'll look we have a lot of data points we'll be unraveling azmerit data will be used to validate the interventions and things that we've tried throughout the year we'll be using data throughout the year benchmarks performance-based data mtss sel data social emotional learning data so there are a lot of points of data that we have to collect as well as some other changes that we'll be doing instructionally inside of the classroom right now we're with the principals and i um we've got a lot on the table we're looking at framework we're looking at a lot of different things and that will bring in a lot of different data points so this will be throughout the year something that we will have to try tweak try we'll go back between research and practical base back and forth so we'll use this azmerit data as a way to validate its post at that point how we did throughout the year and that will inform the focus of our changes of going into the next year and things that we will further tweak um so that is something that once we have schools and positions that are filled we have a lot of things now that are in holding patterns because we just do not have the people power to get some of these programs off the ground so one of the first things that the principals ask is that we start with our portrait of a graduate and this is what we want our students to look like when they walk out of the door this is then we'll plan backwards as to how to make that happen so we'll look at we'll look at installing grit making sure they know how to work hard and we'll also look at installing agency agency and the standpoint of students have to be able to know how to ask for the help that they need that agency will also be in the community as well and as well as we have to have places opportunities for these kids to go once they leave here otherwise we're teaching them to work hard just to be tired so there has to be some type of opportunity so we use a lot of data points to look at and reimagine where we are culturally so a lot of what we have to address is we have to reconnect teaching and learning we have to re-establish that culture but a lot of it right now is we have a lot of other work to do with positions to fill so questions there any questions for assistant superintendent martin tv hi this is uh thank you president nigel this is pb chance i do have a question for assistant superintendent martin i noticed in your report that you mentioned the sunset audit discussing a draft report and i understand that that report has been delayed after meeting with the auditor and it seems that asdb has to submit a response to the auditor by had to submit by september 1st but i don't see that document is that response to the sunset auditor going to be submitted to the board for review or or where can we see that there's uh those are two separate things so we had to respond to the jlbc by september 1st which we did um they had some questions that were kind of above and beyond what this the sunset auditor has the deadline for replying to the draft audit has not yet passed that's going to be i believe it's next week and this is pv jans okay so where is asdb's response will the board see that response at some point the response to the jlbc or the response to the auditor general both um superintendent reichman has possession of the september first correspondence um i don't think there's any issue with her emailing it to the board that's the response to glbc the other response is not yet complete i'm assuming that you'll it'll be circulated when it is the state auditor did request that superintendent rickman distribute the draft report to the board on a confidential basis the information that is still confidential at this point so i'm sure she is ready to do that we just got that email a few days ago okay i appreciate that update thank you i just want to make sure that we are up to date with that process my second question regarding azmerit i understand using data for making appropriate decisions regarding what is in the best interest and benefit to our students i do just want to caution regarding the azmerit it is not normed for esl students and that includes our deaf students who use american sign language as our first language and those who may have spanish or other languages spoken in the home and we do have students whose family are immigrant families and refugee families and that has an even greater impact on those students so i just want us to bear that in mind if we are using azmerit data we may have an intention for we have our an intention for all of our students to be bilingual and it is not necessarily fair or appropriate to consider their progress based only on that on that testing all of our ieps regard require that our students be bilingual and if they're not bilingual then they're not performing well and that's not necessarily a fair assessment of our students and their skills and their intelligence that's not necessarily a fair assessment of how asdb is performing either realistically how we approach the data how we consider that i'm wondering if there is any other assessment tool or evaluation tool that the board could recommend to the leadership team or the administrative team for example the drp as one other possible assessment another metric to monitor a student's progress without that sense of setting them up for failure thank you for that tv uh yes i agree with you um it it is a it's a data point um it's something that when we tweak and go through this picture and develop our metrics we should be able to see how our students are performing clearly and if we do not have those right metrics in place all throughout the year we should also be able to see that clearly as well so at that point when we get azmerit data in it's kind of like a you know this is what we have and is there any validity to it is there something that we can validate from that test data with us our picture is going to look a little bit different so fully aware of that but open to any ideas of any assessments um anything you recommend i'm open to any resource so thank you thank you this is board member chance and my recommendation would be perhaps for the specific subject areas we ask those teachers what they suggest as appropriate assessment of knowledge and skill and we may also consider what gallaudet or rit ntid used to assess some of their students knowledge and skills and see what we can glean from those institutions rather than reinventing the wheel at the same time that would give us more accurate data and testing that is more appropriately norms for esl students and that is one thing that i really do want us to keep in mind is that all of our students that we are evaluating have ieps and that means that every single one of our students is going to have at least one disability at least one disability that will impact their learning and their acquisition of language whether they are deaf or blind or deaf and blind deaf plus other disabilities blind with other disabilities all of them will be impacted by that and so our teachers are our experts they i would like to ask them how they measure our students and assess our students and perhaps we can use additional tools that already exist such as the drp i talked to my son recently and he was frustrated because he said he um he gives up really quickly and i uh if he's if he's frustrated with something and so i wanted to talk to him about that he sat down to take a test and he couldn't understand the test and he felt frustrated and he gave up and he said his peers feel the same way and that test is an accurate representation of his skills or the progress that he's made and i think that's a pretty common occurrence with our students so how can we address that so right now i just wanted to at least make sure that everyone's aware of that and let's ask the right people in the right subject matter right subject better experts for their expertise so thank you great point um i have been working with ntid we are we'll be coming around the table around research and around practices for our schools the principals and i have a trip to gallaudet to pick apart their schools we are probably looking at november or the spring we have to set that date there are some other things in there that i i haven't mentioned um but the goal is to learn to glean to pick apart so our trip to gallaudet um is to to visit their schools to pick those schools apart um i've gotten superintendent reichman's um okay and blessing to move forward with ntid when i started i reached out to ntid um on a whim and i was contacted back and we would have conversations in the evening email sometimes phone on the weekends and we they have agreed to work with us so a lot of what i'm looking at is there's a lot of people we have to bring around the table teachers are a huge part of that that input that we'll get and there's a lot that i will be recruiting teachers from from schools from all different levels so they're a huge part of that also i think for me i'm trying to look at this picture not from the inside and we have to look at this differently and so for me i have been engaging with researchers about this issue of what do we need to do what are our best our breath what works and it's a complicated picture but so we will be um engaging and bringing a lot around the table as well as structures that we will put into the schools to make sure that our teaching and our teachers are supported and the the learning and teaching is happening with fidelity so some of those things i won't speak on just yet but this has been for me listening learning seeing taking in data and input from just about everyone and so i can kind of see the picture of where we are and where we need to go i don't currently think we have an answer for what we have to tackle and it is going to look differently so i have challenged the principals to look at this picture differently look at how we can reimagine and reinvent and recreate these schools how can we make them go um so that is what we've been picking apart um and they have answered that call and that call is usually on the weekends at seven at eight o'clock at night when i have an idea and they respond so that's to let you into some of that process that's what i've been picking apart um superintendent reichman has been great also i've been bouncing things off of her as a sound board so um that you know schools are multi-layered there's a lot of work that we need to do but i've never approached any school thinking it cannot be done so that's where we're at thank you president nigro thank you this is uh board member dance just one follow-up question first of all that's great news uh assistant superintendent martin that's a very positive thing to hear the progress that you're making one thing that i do want to recognize is how much i appreciate your willingness to take a back seat and to listen and to gather the information before we start jumping to conclusions or test action steps i want to thank you for your willingness to listen to the staff that we have and the resources that we have to offer i do want to acknowledge that and thank you for that one area that i did want to mention for consideration is that when we talk about language acquisition is there any discussion of testing or evaluations that can better assess not just the literacy the english reading and writing for our students but the spoken language acquisition and the american sign language acquisition or the braille literacy of our students yes and no um yes where we have been is looking at we have to get serious about our language programs in the schools i think that will drive a lot that's an area that we have to pick apart dissect this is a discussion we're having this is not a discussion that we've got into very deeply but it is a component that we have to work on as well as looking at different ways to assess our kids because again our kids learn differently and we've got to be able to understand how they learn it doesn't mean that they can't learn and we have to be able to assess that so yes that is an area that we will get into um i think right now there are so many other pressing things and big items one is hiring one is having the staff to start moving forward and when we start to unfold this that language piece is a huge piece of the schools and the schools will look a little differently but the goal is to equip them to do what they're here to do and that's to impact teaching and learning so thank you thank you so much on a related note but slightly tangential um i was wondering if there were any discussions being held or thoughts about student recruitment and or retention for example we have deaf kids who are acquiring language and doing well who then transfer either out of state or to other schools and they are not staying within our campuses is there anything that we're doing to retain those students to then be good language models for their peers at the campuses rather than transferring out to other schools for the deaf who are offering students out of state services for example are we competitive with other schools for the deaf across the nation who allow and recruit deaf students how do we keep those students on our cam on our campuses is that a conversation that we're having indirectly meaning i think in order for us to [Music] be re-established we have to be known for being great at what we do we have to lead by showing the community not just local but national who we are um it is engaging people um from for ntid for instance to let them know what we're wanting to do and where we're wanting to go so i've always had the philosophy of when you come over and take over a school no one wants to go there because it's failing but when you build it and you you re-imagine it i've always had the problem of people wanting to get into the school so i do believe that if if you put a program together and you build the school that kind of sells itself i'm not a great marketing person or salesperson i do believe in what i do and i do push the people around me to do better not just for me but for the students and community we serve so my goal is to how can we build this school how can we reimagine this school to make it to where people actually want to come here to where it is recognized on a different scale um so that's my goal going into it um so i have not had those those direct um conversations but i know that i can't at this point promote anything um the way we currently are and this is not to say that we have a lot of dedicated educators we have a lot of people who are here for the right reasons i've met tremendous people who are hungry for wanting and ready for the change and again we go back to this cultural thing from from covet so again we build it we do it well and i think it speaks for itself i've had schools where i've had waiting lists and i've had people lobby districts to make that school a place where they can get into so that's the work that i'm focused on doing right now and i'm sure there's people better than me who can do the marketing part but yeah thank you well i think you did a phenomenal job just there of that marketing pitch um that's kind of what i was hoping you would say and i am hoping that the community at large as well as the board will see and hear your comments that your ultimate goal is this concept of if we build it they will come so we want to make sure that we have the right supports in place the right beliefs the right attitudes in place that we need to build the system in order to have them come so thank you for your comments uh thank you we can move on to 1.06 information item assistant superintendent of agency operations and support services assistant superintendent cooper good afternoon reichman assistant superintendent martin members of the board the asdb community and staff members each of the directors have provided to you their departmental reports there is no additional information that has come forth since those reports were provided to you last week as superintendent reichman mentioned in our last boarding on july 7th there was feedback that was received on the strategic plan pillar 4 effective resource management and i wanted to go ahead and give an update on those items more specifically with the average cost per student by program which is outcome measure 4.4.4 it was mentioned that the early program preschool cost may have not been included in a separate line item in the chart i do want to confirm that the information is in the chart and the cost will be reported similarly as to how the spending by operational area report is provided on an annual basis also with outcome measure 4.4.6 which is our fiscal stability and efficiency it was mentioned that there does not appear to be much progress on that report that does appear to be true however based on a review of the information a revision will be made to the chart to better display and communicate the goal of the metric and so what that would include would be including priorities that we will be funding what work has been done towards those improvements and reporting how that money is received as well as how it is going to be spent also in the strategic plan is objective 4.2 which is our long-range master facility plan in order to provide a quick overview of that master facility plan work session that our director of operations albert duff will be conducting on october 20th i would like to also lay that foundation by providing a high level overview of our current reality and why the need for a master facility plan a master facility plan actually establishes the framework for the orderly growth or the consolidation and development of our capital improvements on our campuses and it will be developed in a five section document consisting of our educational programs where we'll be reviewing what programs will be continued into the future exploring those programs as assistant superintendent martin has briefly talked about in trying to ensure that we're better serving our student population it will also address our current facilities which should be in conjunction with our demographic study and our educational programs will also be evaluating the potential buildings that may need to be renovated demolished as well as constructed for new buildings also as i mentioned with a demographic study we'll review the demographic study that our vendor lacroix milligan associates did a couple years ago reviewing that looking at the enrollment trends as superintendent reichman had also mentioned and then also that fourth piece would be the actual implementation plan and so we'll be working with an architectural design firm to help us build that infrastructure for renovating and demolishing the new construction and then we'll also be working with various legislatures looking at funding opportunities to help us with those support needs to get those resources we'll then also make sure that we're evaluating those plans based on the initial planning process this will involve the work with each of you as board members we'll be looking at establishing new policies and procedures and making sure that we're continuously improving that master facility plan this will then also be shared as we've briefly mentioned in prior board meetings with the sunset audit we have received an initial finding we're working on working on that recommendation addressing that and that is specific to the master facility plan and again as as i mentioned our director of operations will be providing more information in that work study session so all of that will align with our agency strategic plan um it's been quite some time that we've needed to evaluate that infrastructure making sure that it's meeting the needs of our changing environment and also looking at where we are under utilizing our facilities some of our programs are outdated as assistant superintendent martin also mentioned so we'll be up tying all of that together with our resources looking at the master facility plan tying that into our educational programs as well so i did want to mention though however we do have different reporting requirements different than how our school districts do so it does put a strain on the agency's budget when we're looking at budget limitations the capacity in terms of addressing how our departments are growing looking at how we're causing inequities among the various services that we have and looking at new potential and more successful educational programs we have also through various conversations have talked about the lack of funding when it comes to the resources needed and how we are limited when it comes to that one of the areas that we have not quite addressed within our budget development is the need to focus on deferred maintenance each year we do as part of our capital and building renewal submit information to the state in terms of what renovations we're looking at doing how those average and median age of our buildings are just specifically on the tucson campus the average is about 40 years excuse me 48 years i believe just looking at that the phoenix campus the average age of those buildings is 38.
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school shootings have been on the rise for the last 23 years dysart has been a district since 1920 we have been a district for over a hundred years the district has had plenty of time to plan and make safety upgrades but the reality is you have chosen not to many board members said at the last meeting that safety is a priority making it a priority means helping remove red tape helping move things along and not waiting until the after the election cycle if you want to run on a campaign run on the promise that dysart will be the safest district in arizona let's protect our kids now not by the end of next year today thank you thank you and madam president we will also ask mr yaeger and mr musee to follow up again with miss colesser thank you thank you next we have larry leblanc good evening my name is larry leblanc a tax paying resident and voter i would like to take this opportunity to give a nice shout out to all of the school board members for their dedication and ability to function without interruption in spite of failed of a failed recall attempt to thwart the cohesiveness of your teamwork trying to remove a majority of you very few signatures were gathered showing that good will always prevail in the future perhaps those trying to fester failure may consider crossing the aisle and becoming a team player to ensure that the future of our next generation is guided towards success great work all of you to address the superintendent and staff we the people share your good fortune to have such a responsible team on this governing board the right to choose our leader is something that most of the world has never been able to do god bless america [Applause] thank you next we have janet leblanc hi good evening my name is janet leblanc a tax paying resident and voter john quincy adams one of our founding fathers for those of you who don't know but should once stated that duty is ours and results are god's i'd like to thank the board for doing their duty and i'd like to thank god for the results of the failed recall of three of our board members when reflecting on john quincy adams's quote when we as citizens do our god-given civil duty to our country god's results will always reflect accordingly truth will always prevail so a sincere thank you for doing a tough job of civil duty that many do not want to do or will not do as a concerned resident for the future of our kids and the directions of our schools i ask that you please continue to directize our schools in the direction it was meant to go according to our constitutions both formed and directed under certain principles may your continued due diligence be a shining example for the other districts throughout our state so that school rankings in arizona turn from one of the worst in the nation to one of the best thank you for all you do keep up the good work and may god continue to bless america through the awakening of our constitutional duties on another note i would like to request to follow up with the curriculum that will be used for constitutional day september 17th thank you [Applause] madam president we'll have dr sai follow up thank you next we have mike albertson good evening thank you chair superintendent staff and the public i am here today because uh interesting situation has happened at shadow ridge and maybe some of the other schools of which the only way a parent can see their child an event is if they sell their privacy rights and give them way to go fan at shower ridge high school there's no option to pay five dollars at the door you have to use go fan in order to go into an event to see your child this is started i believe under the premise of kovid for a non-paperless transfer of funds method um in speaking with representatives from the finance department this was initiated back as an option to cash where parents that would go to a game did not have cash and they were turned away well now you're trying to wear away parents that are protecting the privacy of themselves and their physicians and their children and any information that they have on their phone is you give away when you add one of these apps to your phone if you look at the app on gofan you're essentially giving away everything on your phone if you are misguided and misled by saying that they have the right to share it and that that doesn't mean they sell it go fan shares it with their brother go buddy go buddy sells it it's do not mistaken that they are not selling the data any shared data is sold every single bit of it the number one target for these apps and these data mega data firms that are going after this data are girls age 14 to 18.
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thank you very much we'll see you back then pictures okay [Music] i'm waiting for our colleagues to give him a minute or two get here all right um the first uh i'll we'll go ahead and reconvene at 7 37 p.m in open session the first item is uh item 3.01 a report of action taken closed session um dr bauer do you want to go ahead and give me a second assad do you want to go ahead and report out yeah the actual seeking closed session okay that was uh can everyone hear me uh we cannot hear you so we have to speak a little louder or okay having the same problems earlier okay is this better that's good um i'm just definitely going to give you anything okay i'm trying to am i the only one or i can hear good i'm trying to get close to the mic over here so you can are you on english we can't hear anything at all i could hear him i can hear him just let me know when you can hear all right a lot of clear okay i'm just going to stay close to the camera to make sure that the mic is picking up everything i'm saying clearly the the first item is the the board approved uh settled the settlement agreement with former employee id number three zero zero one five two in the amount of fifteen thousand eight hundred and four dollars that was by a vote of five zero second item that i need to report out is the public employment public employee appointment of our manager of transportation that is latoya lee and that was also a unanimous five-o vote all right and that that's the end of your report correct that's correct all right perfect um all right so that uh concludes that 3.01 is there any public comment with direct to this item hello mr uh we're president at this time we have no requests for public comment okay uh all right uh moving on to item 4.01 the frc report is for information only secretary you want to go ahead and introduce that item yes this uh was the item that trustee chavez requested i believe in the summer about the a report regarding the family resource centers so i asked both somos mayfair who runs two of our family resource centers and catholic charities who runs the other two to prepare a full report for the board and they are here tonight to present this to the board so thank you trustee chavez for bringing this to the board uh this is a great opportunity for the family resource centers to provide the board with um a report of what they uh they do and um their contribution to our district so i believe i hi dianeira i think dianida is ready either catholic charities or somos can go first i to me it doesn't matter are we i see victor victor are you ready yes we're ready would it be possible to have somebody share the petition or would you like us to take that on as well i think i'm i'm gonna have to ask maribel i'm not sure if that she has the right maribel are you able to pull up uh somos the two presentations that were sent to us i can pull them but i don't have them up already so i don't know if victor has them or i can if you can give me a moment i'll look for them do you have them ready victor yeah i can i can share my screen i think that will be faster maribel okay make sure that we feel and i'm gonna go in uh presenter mode can you see the full screen okay well awesome uh well uh good evening thank you so much for this opportunity to our dr bauer our alum olympic school board district um board members the community and staff uh we are here today my name is victor vazquez part of somos mayfair co-executive director i'm here with um angelita uh echeveste from uh somos mayfair as well and also andra portillo will be on as well and we wanted to share with you uh what the family resource centers provide not only to to adam rock families and to for us to look at some opportunities as well so one of the themes that you will see from our family resource center is that we really center on building power by doing services leadership and advocacy and today we hope that you could see our unique approach the impact that we provide for the community and that we look into the future to find opportunities for collaboration so a little bit about our mission uh thomas mayfield our mission is to support families children um connect our neighbors to uplift their dreams their power their leadership and to address some of the injustices that we face today we hope to see a tribe a thriving mayfair in our community but as the years have progressed we're also looking into our impact in san jose so somos mayfair was created in 1997 as originally as a mafia improvement initiative in over 25 years we've worked on various aspects of our community from neighborhood improvements health literacy arts civic engagement family and early education community leadership organizing and economic opportunities for our families and so about a year ago our beloved former executive director yanis fontaniya transitioned to become the vp of community programming at the sobrato philanthropies and around that time my colleagues abu ramos and i became part of the co-executive directorship model and we want to just make this opportunity to share with you that our commitment to alum rock families is still the same and we're even more excited to actually partner with you all to see how can we bring back resources to our community and to work with partners like catholic charities as well to support the families of alamo so staying true to our mission of family leadership and addressing the needs of our community or unique model blends family services leadership trainings and community organizing and over the last year as we've been dealing with the pandemic our family resource centers have been able to support our families in many different ways over 15 000 families were provided education and outreach around colby over 42 000 ppe kids that include hand sanitizers masks clean supplies were distributed in the area we have partnered with our with catholic charities to provide a bridge to kinder programming to over 255 families excuse me children and we've been doing the bristol kinder program for for about 10 years we have also worked together to secure funding for the painter elementary cooperative model over 800 thousand dollars along with first five in alam rock because we believe that early education is key to the development of our families as part of our parents who are involved and engaged and advocated for the resources and policy changes they need in order to remain in the in our school district in their local neighborhoods we've we supported our families with eviction moratoriums renters rights education and kobe relief as well recently we worked with the city and various of our partners to ensure that alan mark families east east san jose families were beneficiaries in the community the google community benefits packet that includes 220 million dollars back to east san jose and alan rock families overall our leadership development model has helped train over 158 parents and families and has also supported in the development of small businesses in the community up next i would like to introduce you to angelita our director of programs who speak a little bit more about our collaboration as part of the chavez and pioneer elementary family resource center good evening everyone i am excited to be here sharing this space with you uh both as a worker for someone's mayfair but also as a very very proud lucha mom lucha parent leader with that said our family resource center is somos family resource centers we're really here to support families access the basic needs that they need so that they could thrive if you could go on to the next one victor i will not be reading the slides as you have that information in front of you uh the travis family resource center as you are aware um we are co-located with uh dr baestetos and the now the early learning center we're really excited with the absolutely amazing opportunities that we have to support all the little people as i refer to who are soon entering the various schools within alam rock we have started looking at distributing or providing the asqas qse assessments to all the children who are currently there we work in strong collaboration with the department of social emotional learning dr amazan and dr they have it has been an absolutely amazing past year looking at the demonstration sites coming together in different spaces both um what is it uh both plan and unplanned formal and informal and thinking about thinking um about how we could better support all children we know that the school district is great at what it does the academic support the services that it provides you could go on to the next flight vector um and we the resource centers want to provide the needs that they need at home so that children are more ready their bellies are full they have the the home that they need and that they deserve so that they could focus in school the painter for the flash co-op has been an absolutely amazing success this year as you're all aware last school calendar year we were able to offer and extend the the preschool co-op which is a great opportunity for parents because as some of you or all of you may be aware high quality child care is a huge need it's a huge need in our community and so that's one of the one of the very what is it one of the absolutely amazing things that the co-op does the other piece to that as we are aware they provide the opportunity so that families can volunteer and give back into the cost um for child care for high quality preschool access you could go on to the next one victor and i will pass it on to andrea we do apologize our director of learning and leadership development was not able to make it with us today but um and i will be sharing next thank you angelita hi everybody um i'm andrea portillo i'm the community organizing and policy director with somos meifer also an air usd alum so excited to be in this space with all of you um like angelita said amelia our learning and leadership development director is not here so i'm just going to talk a little bit about why you know why we do leadership development and why it is a really key uh core piece to all of the work that we do at somos and so really you know the goal is to provide tools and learning spaces practices convenings to really sustain communities and and provide the tools and the opportunities for folks to engage in programming to engage within whatever spaces they're engaging with the tools and the knowledge and supports that they need to really thrive in those spaces so we offer a lot of different opportunities for community learning opportunities skill development classes and all through our free community mayfair popular university or university mayfair where again community can come and learn gain tools knowledge skills and really take all of those skills and thrive within whatever program whatever space that they are a part of within somos mayfair and really we really want community to be leading and guiding us as we're going through and doing the work that we're doing and so a big part of that is ensuring that folks again have the tools and the resources that they need to thrive to take on leadership roles um and to continue to be leaders in in in their community i'd like to share something sorry victor um the other piece that i want to add about our leadership development is we're aware that parents our caregivers who are involved in a child's school and that come to the spaces uh are engaged in various different ways that really supports our students it really empowers them to know that you know my mom my dad my abuelito is here with me and they care about me and and they they're going to advocate so this is um one of the beautiful additions to our family resource center and so i will step out and then have on that take forward with the other beautiful edition of our resource center great thank you and another big piece big pillar of of the work that we're doing is really community organizing and advocacy and so really families um are involved in solving a lot of the issues that we know our communities uh are going through um we know that housing is a really big issue for for our community uh we know that the school district is also impacted with in terms of housing and the displacement that we're seeing in our community and so community is a part of you know identifying solutions advocating for different systems for policies here within the look at the local level at the state level and we do all of that through our organizing work and so we have three organizing teams um that are part of uh you know our family resource centers um and our first team is our vascinosativos team again they focus on issues around anti-displacement and are really you know doing a lot of um future thinking future looking work in terms of housing really trying to find solutions that address the most you know the most the needs of our most impacts our second uh organizing team is our journey saktivas team they are a group a youth group who in the past had mainly focused around preserving art and cultural identity within the community creating and preserving art and are now shifting to really be embedded in all of the advocacy and organizing work that we're doing and so they're learning a lot of cool things like podcasting and storytelling um and really trying to to find different ways and unique ways to have their voices heard throughout all of the work that they are doing i think we really want to uplift the voices of our students of our youth that are also impacted by this very same issues that their parents are impacted by that their families are impacted by so really providing them with the opportunities to continue to learn and to be integrated into the work of the of the frcs and of the organization and then our third organizing group is our puja team really they're advocating for resources and supports for families and children currently they're working on a campaign to expand voting rights for all in the city of san jose and are exploring the creation of a racial equity toolkit that can support just how parents are engaged in in the spaces that they're in both within the school district within our frc's really supporting parents to be those leaders um and to be there to support their children and in a way that they that they see fit if i could jump in once again and then after this i may be done victor you know oftentimes i'm asked why am i at somos and i've been running family resource centers for about 20 years but the difference between somos and all the other resource centers that i've worked in various different counties is that we do not tokenize communities we we work with community we uplift their voice uh earlier today um i saw some of the facinos activos with some community members talking about you know what does it look like to purchase our home like what does it look like to um like how much would the down payment be if you have a dollar dollars enough if you have no dollars like that's enough um and so that's the power and the beauty of what this resource center does it's it's community engagement community um empowering leadership development and it's really guided um from by and for like it's by m4 community and the other token that i absolutely love at or tro like i don't even know how to say that it's the gem actually is that a lot of our family resource center providers actually live within the maker community they were at one point or another families who needed services and with that i step out victor so for the interest of time i want to share with you that we don't do our work alone as you already know we do this as part of our community and we have various partnerships that we're engaged with i will skip that you can take a look at that later on but there are a few initiatives that we're also working with other organizations around child care development housing development a universal referral system in the neighborhood uh jobs to grow job development and we're we're still continuing to do neighborhood-wide advocacy so as we look ahead i want to encourage you to think and and and to partner up and think about what are the opportunities that we have to bring resources back to this district in this community what are the ways that could also expand ownership models for our community members or families whether it's for housing or business development the third aspect is are there opportunities for us to continue to support with parent trainings and education and lastly as we're part of the new quetzal family resource center there's a great opportunity to think about how do we bring financial literacy and also business development to our families as well in addition to housing and home ownership we want to make sure that all of our efforts bring back resources keep families in this area but also provide a greater opportunity for them to to be more in power and also economically economically strong as part of this neighborhood platform that we see so thank you so much for your time any comments yes uh all right uh uh uh thank you very much um victor and angelita and andrea uh appreciate all the work you do that's it thank you uh yes i do want to express my thanks to stimulus mayfair and catholic charities for all their work and supporting our children in the alum rock district i mean you both of your organizations have been a wonderful community partner so i wanted to express my gratitude for that thank you thank you board president same here as a parent who went through the bridge to kinder program and now my daughter's in eighth grade um you know and having been an ex board member of somos just continue to be proud of the work um being done out there i think what one of the most exciting things for me uh is seeing the youth you know the youth on mics and speaking up um and taking leadership roles everything you're all doing is great but you know it really just makes me excited to see youth um taking on those roles in our community uh so thank you all for what you do day in day out victor and tahoe you know thank you for taking the uh ship on and you know continuing to direct it um and and learn right we're all growing as leaders in our community we're all learning so i really appreciate um your leadership victor you're here please tell saul um you know and being willing to learn right things change as we go we didn't have pandemic years ago then we did and now we're kind of out we're not really out so um just continuing to show up on behalf of our community in the way they need us right and that gets to change that time so thank you again uh any other comments or members of the world all right uh i'll finish off the comments here thanks for the work that's being done in the community much appreciated um dr bauer did you anything else to add to the presentation i would like to just thank somos for dreaming with us and and all fours family resource centers are wonderful and each of them it's unique right and because they do really focus on the need of the community and i'm just gonna highlight one thing about the painter co-op effort because that is a first in our community co-ops are very well known in the west side of town the north side of town and they they're nodding because they know exactly what i'm talking about this is a first for our families where we engage the parents in learning how to support literacy with their young ones and this is such a critical element that somos when we sat with first five long time ago victor you were at the table you know what i'm talking about when these were just plans um these lovely people have made it a reality so i'm forever grateful forever grateful to bring something so unique and so needed in our community so thank you so much for that uh all right um any further comments or all right so i'm assuming that we're we can move on from this item and uh thank you for the presentation uh board president we have catholic charities oh sorry about that um yes uh who is here say anita you're here right all right the floor is yours sorry about that there we go no worries no worries such an excellent presentation it's almost that no sorry about that no worries at all thank you and good evening um it's a pleasure to join you all this evening and to be able to present the work that's taking place at the family resource centers and also commend our colleagues with someone's mayfair and the collaboration the warm welcome that catholic charities has received and and coming into uh the space through family resource centers and being able to offer services so it's been a such a wonderful experience we began in 2020 a little before the pandemic hit and so it feels like it's been a lifetime ago just being going through the pandemic and and all of the things that that brought um but it is our absolute pleasure to um to serve the families and work with community and work with the partners and uh partner with all of rock so we have a brief presentation for you as well around some of the services that were provided our uh programs within catholic charities fall under the division of children family and youth development and our uh program are um are named the children's initiative and um i'm gonna share a vision for the children's initiative because i think it it's uh it speaks to what we hope to accomplish and continue to do in our work at olim rock and that's we envision a valley where every child has the opportunity to learn from cradle to career and lives in a neighborhood free from fear where families can afford to live in a safe and decent housing and eat nutritious food where enterprising workers can earn enough to make ends meet and save for the future where immigrants are welcomed and where we who are the imprisoned who are imprisoned physically and mentally ill elderly and vulnerable can find healing and hope and um we have this vision and we work towards it on a daily basis through our work and uh we believe in servant leadership and also um working alongside community members so that we can pivot and leverage resources to meet the needs um that are out there so we are committed to serve all families break down barriers and one of the things that has been highlighted throughout the pandemic um even more so is that we need to be able to come together and leverage resources and collaborate with one another and really figure out how to break down um the barriers that uh prevent us from referring to one another and that's even within our own agency to bringing in more services with immigration with benefits support with uh work development and so we're working to be able to continue to bring uh those services to the families of alum rock and also to uh be able to refer out to our partner agencies when there are more needs um our mission and values are on here i'll skip past that just to leave a little bit more time for our our team that's going to go into the specifics of the work uh our two locations are in cureton um family resource center and harvard uh harvard we were actually able to have a grand opening and um i'll leave that um one of our our one of my colleagues will be sharing a little bit about that but with cureton we actually were planning right for the week that we went into um into the pandemic and everything closed down and so we weren't able to do that but because uh the school and the leadership at the school were so supportive we were able to just hit the ground running and uh beginning offering services with the soft opening and really letting families know that the the resource center was open and that we were able to provide services to them i'll turn it over to um my colleagues raquel and rose we're going to speak a little bit about that thank you denny we're excited to be here and kind of present thank you maribel for managing uh our slideshows for us um with that this is a picture that we were able to have because hubbard um i'm sorry i'm raquel i am the frc supervisor for hubbard and we were fortunate enough to be able to have that february of 2020 our grand opening um and then shortly after we went into pandemic right and things definitely shifted for our frc um but it was a very memorable day um and being you know able to have that and that excitement was really good and it was a good opening to for us in the community and with the school move on this is our site for investment in children and we know that the return on investment in early education and onwards is is something we have to continue to advocate for and invest in our children invest in our families and our communities and um we're extremely pleased that we were able to do so through the funding with first five in both family resource center which is listed here additional funding from bella vista and ctf which is a digital inclusion fund through the city of san jose that we were also able to offer funds to both family resource centers to do some digital inclusion and workshops but one of the things that we believe in is embracing funding and being able to convene with other partners to leverage um and also create alignment of what we're working towards and so that's something as we're looking to towards the future we hope to continue to bring additional resources um and be able to meet the needs that are out there and um pivot when we need to and be innovative to respond to the needs and so um we're we're pleased to be able to do that and hope to continue to advocate good evening my name is rose hackes i'm the program supervisor over at pureton family resource center and as dr bauer mentioned you know our sites are so unique and you know we're here to meet the needs of the community and in addition to that these are some of the partners that we've had the privilege to work with this last fiscal year really helped make all of that work possible next slide please so our frc program services and covet response included parent and family education nutrition and wellness and economic development under those categories there were so many programs and workshops that went into this here's a photo of um our program with our acws which are associate community workers they're volunteers in the community who are very strong leaders you may recognize some of them because not only are they leaders at their school in the community but also part of various committees within the district here in elm rock next please so some of the numbers for our essential distributions are here to give you a second to look at that but the distributions included diapers wipes formula feminine hygiene products ppe including hand sanitizer disinfecting spray and wipes and masks and along with that we also were able to continue to do holiday toys even during those really crucial um you know holiday years during the peak of covid um again another wonderful collaboration with the bomberos next slide please food security as we know you know is always such a big um a big hurdle right we want to make sure that we're continuing to offer food security and these times especially these are some of the numbers again you can take a look at um 4050 households 14 000 individuals this last fiscal year what's not represented here and i did want to share is that prior to covid curatin in collaboration with second harvest food bank and parent volunteers in the community we're servicing uh distributing food to 150 households on a monthly basis when covet happened which was right after we moved in and we didn't have a grand opening you know that was kind of right around the same time the school was shut down completely we stepped in along with um some of the other frcs in our region so we were really fortunate to have that support and we then also collaborated with um san jose conservation corps they would occasionally send us volunteers as well our acws just anyone that could step in and help and those numbers increase from that 150 monthly to for about two years during that peak of covid we were serving 700 families per month and we also did uh continue to do dinner in a box for a much smaller number of households but you know just being able to offer these services has been such an amazing part of our work next please some of the program highlights that we've had this year you know we've been very fortunate that even during this time with all of the partnerships and the support that we've received um we were able and again let me just point you back to that first photo which is our staff and some of our acws again you may recognize some faces um we had our groundbreaking last summer we were fortunate enough to move forward knowing the importance of being able to have an outdoor open space we then worked with the california native garden foundation and planned to have a native garden which again groundbreaking in that middle photo the photo to the right there is showing some programs that we had in person we were able to have a safe outdoor space where we can gather our families and children were very excited to be able to come together again we know how important those social in-person connections are we're having a story time there and um it's been great and partnerships with the school and being part of the staff meetings as well right that communication is key thank you next flight and i'm going to pass this back to reggae thank you rose um so it's very similar to some of the other frcs um a huge success over the you know past two years during the pandemic have been our school partnerships we've been able to really collaborate with dr valesteros to reach out to other schools so that we're able to really support children's and families needs um we've had this last year we had i want to say a handful of referrals and families that we worked with with our quadrant schools and then at hubbard we were able to really do some ages and stages questionnaires with all of our tk class our students there and support families in that way so school partnerships have been really important over the you know the last two years and have grown um on top of that we were able to do the ages and stages questionnaires and really help families connect them to resources they needed right whether it was internal referrals or outside referrals to different agencies we were able to support with those needs we supported also again with someone's mayfair the bridge to kinder program and that was super successful really exciting to see the faces and the kiddos and be able to come out and do that and also plan the dental vision hearing screenings for those kiddos and then community events we've been really successful the last few years with going out and supporting during community events um you can scroll up i think the next one is also community events that we talked about um on as our bridge to kinder slide so that's specific to our partnership with almost mayfair and serving 80 children this is just within our because we have split the schools so hubbard supported over at dorsa and curtin supported over at avellante we were able to also get 160 backpacks donated from council member carrasco's office to give those two kiddos after the end of the bridge to kinder program and we had 22 parents um participate in our workshops during summer which is definitely always a harder challenge because families are busy and on the go so really having them still and and the nice thing is that they continue to cont to join our workshops and our infant music and movement classes and things like that so it was a really good partnership and it's nice to see those families continue in in the frcs and find some ways of being involved and then like i said community events we helped at multiple community events this last year went out and tabled i think for hubbard it was a little harder because we're right in the middle of campus so sometimes having in-person things was hard so we're excited to partner this year with uh dr sarmiento to have uh on campus back to school night resource fair so it'll be exciting to host our own but i do enjoy going to the other schools meyer constantly will you know when they have their trick-or-treat events and their um they had an easter egg one this last april we went out and tabled and supported and so i'm excited to be able to host and do and help support that at hubbard um so those are really good events that we've been able to collaborate and partner with and support and then these are just some pictures of when we were out helping at the copita when we did tabling there at national night out um which are really exciting ways for us to connect with families right and to support in any way and just kind of have fun with them even even though it's during hard times the last two years it was nice to be out there and connect and see faces and see people and really be able to let them know that we're here for them so these were really exciting um this last year was really exciting i'm gonna pass it over to rose hello again so happy to be able to share some of these amazing photos that we had from our events um again because we have that garden space outside we're able to host um you know really important events for our community one being via el nino and and even when the school had its closure you know the school community was used to being able to come together and celebrate these events you know as a community and so we did it on a smaller scale out everything outdoors we had you know reservations we did little time sections so that people would have their time and not be rushed to be able to participate contribute to the youngstad and then come and see it all put together um again even during covid when the school was closed you know working again with the with the staff with leadership it's just been an amazing opportunity so we're really grateful for that next one please more photos of our garden as it's growing um and you know families came out and helped plant again native garden and plants that they use um herbs edible plants you know things that are that are really important to our community that they recognize that they can utilize it they can see the from you know planting it to harvesting it and then having that space again and that collaboration with this time with the palo alto junior museum and zoo very exciting to be able to have them out and miss anne brought an owl and um it was great you could see the children having that interaction in person is not comparable to having that all be done virtually you know they we had had the program virtually the year before and in the spring months she was able to come out you know they got the okay to do that um completely different experience for all of us i mean we were just as excited as the kids were next slide please i wanted to point out that we also collaborate with the san jose um state students who come out and volunteer and really support on all different levels from planning to prepping to working with the families hands-on we also i don't have a picture of our student this year but this is our second year also working with pristore and they have a wonderful program where they send the students out once a week and it's an intern essentially and they learn amazing stuff all that hands-on experience and that opportunity to come out to different organizations and do that work and then here we have again miss anne and then this time she has a falcon so we're very fortunate to have that space again each space is different you know we're doing the most work we can with what we have in the community and meeting the need right in with our community there really was that need of being able to get out into a space and have that fresh air in those interactions so we really appreciate having that opportunity next slide please as we wrap it up we do want to thank you for your continued support because all of this amazing work everything that we've shared with you couldn't be possible without this collaboration here's our contact information as you know vinnie our program director karina who's our program manager couldn't be with us this evening um i'm again the program supervisor over at cureton and raquel who is the program supervisor for at hubbard um please feel free to reach out um questions comments just reaching out you know we would really really enjoy being able to continue this conversation with you and getting to know you a little better yeah and invite you to come out and visit any time any time you're all welcome you're all welcome um just to close up and and and reiterate some of that i really want to um thank the volunteers without their support we wouldn't be able to have provided services these past two years to the incredible team and staff and um and going through a hiring process and bringing staff on board through a pandemic definitely wasn't easy but they did a wonderful job and also to our school staff and our and our janitors uh to put together that a grand opening in such a short period of time update the space really fast turnarounds to put together that outdoor garden space and and work out all of the irrigation and all of that and such a quick turnaround time we're so grateful to the janitors and secretaries and administrators for all of their support through uh these last couple years and and hope to um continue to partner and and build upon this so thank you all for your time this evening okay uh i hang on uh you know there's been some technical difficulties on the part of the board president so i will uh you know uh preside over the meeting uh until uh those technical issues resolve so uh first up comments from the board hang on uh uh have we taken probably a comment on this item yet okay so since there was there was board comments previously um i want we go ahead and take a public comment on item 4.01 this time jose do we have any comments from the public we have no public comment at this time mr board vice president thank you so uh going once going twice alrighty so uh the first hand i saw was uh christie chavez excuse me mr board vice president uh we did get one hand uh right before you count it down okay okay so all righty so i see dilsa yes miss elsa you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin uh miss dilsa you have the floor uh my name is elsa gonzalez um i am a proud parent of the alan brown school district but i am also a proud um organizer and um worker with one of the organizations almost begged for i just wanted to tell a little bit about my story and why collaborations likes almost with and um catholic charities and the overseas and with the umbrella districts make such an impact in our communities ten years ago when dr power started um it was the same time i started participating as a parent i came into someone's looking for help looking for guidance i didn't graduate i wasn't dropped out of high school and i was a pair of three kids know that we lost you there goes up it looks like she dropped out of the meeting okay i'll give her you know give her five seconds to see if he can get back on i apologize for my that has been in our schools i was able to an experience to get a knowledge and value me for my experiences for what i brought to a table and i could say um proudly that this had changed my life in many ways i graduated high school i got certified as an office management i am that um organizing and policy manager at thomas i have been collaborating together with the school district to bring changes just as a community license um our ethnic studies curriculums um and many many more why because this collaboration that says this collaboration uh-oh so looks like we have five more seconds the heat is testing everything isn't it oh boy sorry okay you have 14 seconds left dozer i apologize can you hear me now yes we hear ya okay perfect my daughter was the one the first one to go to bridge to kinder now she's a hovenectivo and i'm really excited to say that my son my two-year-old most likely is going to go to that co-op painter okay thank you dozer okay jose i guess it's uh back to board comments so uh trustee chavez uh yes thank you very much they anita raquel and rose for the presentation and for the time and talent and efforts that you give and care you give to the alumni community thank you very much it was very enlightening all the message and all the work you do okay uh first uh clerk herrera thank you uh again thank you for all that you do i can't help but to think uh being the eldest in my family translating for my mom helping her fill out all the paperwork you know back then we didn't have a frc's and so you know it just makes like i get the chills it makes my heart happy um that our families our parents especially can go in there and take care of that for themselves um and then the children can go and play and do what they you know get to do as they grow and learn so thank you all for the important work that you are doing um life-saving you know sometimes i know people walk in that door with you know sometimes things that really um change you know and save somebody's life and or also you know as you talked about prevent um unhoused families and just you know just so much impactful work for our students so that we can go to school and learn and thrive within our community so thank you again and um you know i look forward to continuing to see how we can continue to partner and grow because anybody that makes money in our silicon valley should be putting in money to program so let's just make it grow thank you again i see more president fonterra i want to thank you for the partnership um i'm really appreciative of the work that all of our frcs are doing um i think uh uh board clerk alluded to this um looking back into the past uh into the frcs where people from the community if somebody was lucky to know somebody that knew how to get access to some resources then they were going to avoid having all the way to my teammates because that's the one place that they were able to get services because somebody knew something over there i'm using that as an example because that was my family went all the way for example all the way to patinas but for some reason i was in one place they knew where they could get some health care or something like that and that can be avoided and that is avoided today because of the hard work that uh rfrcs are doing and the resources that are being put forward so thank you for that uh the effort that you're putting forward the services you're providing to our community all right uh looks like that is it for uh uh comments from the board so uh let's see here uh it looks like the oh the uh superintendent bauer thank you thank you so much board vice president i just wanted to thank catholic charities because that garden is really enchanting and it has grown just like the love of our community has grown for you guys you know it i saw it when it was just like a plan and now when i walk when we walk the sites um we picked and it's like i couldn't believe it it's just amazing and that just a test of what i said earlier that each frc is different if you go to hubbard it's going to be one thing in puritan uh painter and chavez they're all different because that's the strength of the offer of what and this partnership is all about it's it's the the glue that was it was the lifeline i have said this in many forums the frcs were the lifeline of our families in the east side of san jose during the pandemic and we could not have done this alone as an alum rock school district our staff did amazing but i think we all did amazing together so thank you so much catholic charities thank you so much somos for this fantastic partnership thank you for the opportunity all right so i'll i'll just wrap up with uh you know it really goes to show that in our community you know partnerships are crucial uh you know uh alum uh you know uh east side san jose has long been an underserved region of this city and uh you know you know uh it certainly does for lack of a better quote sometimes we need the village's help in order to raise our kids and so uh again i want to express my appreciation to uh both somos mayfair and catholic charities because uh you know quite literally uh many many of our kids and many of our families uh would not have made it uh through these difficult times if not for your health so both of your organizations have uh my deepest gratitude okay so on that note we move on to section six comments and uh communication uh so ida oh item 6.01 alum rock administrators association we have do we have someone from the alum rock administrators association i think lupita was going to us at 10 but i don't see her and did you um i'm sorry i was i was a little distracted were you able to do 501 a vice president oh oh i'm sorry i i am so sad you know i thought i thought we okay so item item number section five public members who wish to address the board uh so uh public member item 5.01 public members who wish to address the board on matters not on the agenda request to address the board provides members of the public an opportunity to speak about any matter under the jurisdiction of the district but not on this agenda if the subject you wish to discuss is already on this agenda please provide your comment when that item is called during the meeting those who wish to speak on a topic within the jurisdiction of the district but not on this agenda should use the raise hand function on zoom as described above when this agenda item 5.01 is called the brown hack prevents the board from discussing any item not on this published agenda but the board may refer the staff to follow up on any formal written requests that are brought before the board at this time there is a limit of two minutes for each speaker the board has the right to limit total public comment on any agenda item to no more than 20 minutes written matters may be placed on a future meeting agenda so on that note jose any members of the public yes mr uh board vice president we have uh two speakers first speaker is miss tanner miss tanner you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin alrighty miss tanner you have the floor uh thank you and thank you dr bauer for getting us back on the schedule here i want a new year um i am grateful for the staff that i get to work with my colleagues are fabulous our new administrator is making a huge difference and so all that's great i also want to do a shout out to tara bickford because she has been responsive to so many issues and never gives up and i really appreciate her so i want to give her that shout out unfortunately there's also challenges some of them you may know about some of them you may not i t i know you know there's issues but for us on the teaching end printers are not set up in any of the classrooms throughout the district with the new network some people think that's new news i think it's old news because we're into our fourth week that's an issue the hover cams that were district issue are incompatible with the new network so we're having to do something that's not as friendly for what we need in the cloud in the classroom and i think that's a district issue it's not just me what else do i have for it when i call the help desk nobody answers and that's really frustrating because when i call the help desk i need help with my students right now so that's one thing another thing that you probably will hear more about is air conditioning and my i totally don't know how teachers do it without air conditioning i have a whole new appreciation for them in my room it hasn't been working this week so i'm having to share a room with the ymca and that's really challenging the other thing i want to bring up is subs for providers we need our preps we only get 100 minutes a week to plan prep and correct and communicate i appreciate your time thank you much now that that was just a cough to clear my throat so please don't take any offense you know the the the hot weather has been dry so uh okay next up jose thank you miss tanner our next speaker is miss sandra rivera miss rivera you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin all righty sandra you got the floor thank you so much good evening board my name is sandra rivera i am a tk teacher at cesar chavez early learning center and i come before you tonight with a few requests the first one is the clock in my classroom i know that this is kind of insignificant but i now have three i have the old school one that's connected to the bell system that hasn't worked forever and then about a year or two ago i got a large one put up into my classroom and that one has stopped and so i'm now on my third clock that i got off of a buy nothing group that's about the size of a small dinner plate and trying to look at that across the room is not conducive and so i now have alarms on my phone we would like working clocks in our classroom the second thing that i'm asking is the internet i don't know what system upgrades that the district did throughout the summer however this year trying to do all of my curriculum on the internet is virtually impossible at least every half hour to hour the internet keeps crashing and so i can be in the middle of trying to teach a lesson and i can't advance and i have to turn off my computer and restart it and reconnect to the internet or i'll be in the middle of testing a tk student and have the same problem happen this is really problematic and this is the worst it has ever been so can we please look into why the internet connection is so bad the last thing that i'm going to ask for is that with this individualized testing our tests that we're required to do for tk are not aligned with the preschool frameworks i uh i ask with all of my might if we can please start looking at the standards that we're asking for our early learners to make it so that it is something that is aligned with their learning thank you all right thank you uh jose next up thank you mr rivera our next speaker is miss brenda sindejas mesendejas you have two minutes please admit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin okay brenda you have the floor hello everybody on this board um the reason that i am here today i'm really disappointed in your board president andres quintero who is at our democratic meeting right now speaking defending gary creman a man has been accused of certain things and he's over here lying that he has technical issues but he's making public comments in our democratic meeting it is disrespectful because your teachers are here these are the people you represent and for to be in two meetings while you are getting paid a stipend to represent our market school district teachers educators children and our parents is disrespectful and i'm not gonna stay quiet when these things happen you were voted to represent and listen to our parents to our teachers on crucial issues that are going on in ellen rock and i i don't appreciate someone going into another meeting and speaking and then having over here someone else take over the meeting because he thinks that these issues are more important than where he's actually supposed to be representing and it is not okay i'm here with all the teachers with all our staff because there are a lot of things going on our district and i know that takes time to fix it's some things aren't going to be uh fixed in a month or two and i get that but this is why you guys are elected to listen and work together not to leave meetings to go to other meetings that are probably more political right i'm just very disappointed shame on you andres quintero all righty thank you very much uh okay next up jose next speaker is mr victor vazquez mr vasquez you have two minutes please admit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin alrighty victory have the floor i just want to take the time to also invite you to our new site we've officially opened our somos mayfair headquarters at the kitsa affordable housing development on the corner of king and alam rock and i want to take this time just to invite you for you to see our new location it's going to happen this saturday starting at 11 11 30 a.m with a with a small ceremony and around two you'll see what our team is doing with that affordable housing development and uh the opportunities to also uh connect those families back to alum rock and at two o'clock if you're interested in more now later on afternoon opportunity we're going to unveil a new mural other side that was curated and designed by our hobbiness activist group uh school of arts and culture and local color so you're some of your former students or current students that have been working with us and i just want to take the time to invite you this saturday uh we'll start at 11 a.m uh 1695 alum rock at our new headquarters or if you are interested in afternoon mural unveiling at 2pm i'm going to go ahead and send you an email with the information that i described so you all invited thank you so much have a good evening thank you victor all right jose is there any um further comments from the public at this time we have no more requests for public comment okay going once going twice alrighty uh so uh we now move to section six um okay yes i'll i'll go ahead and i i want to apologize i have more right further from i never told you i had uh technical difficulties i let you know i was going to step out for a while as i did and so the accusations that were leveled right now i just want to make sure to set the record straight that i i did not have to lose i was stepping out because i need to take care of something um and so it's unfortunate that um that it was uh there's a lack of miscommunication there i'll go ahead and jump in uh we've uh gone through uh um item 5.01 members of the public we've uh gone through uh uh a.r.a teams teachers correct uh not terrible so we're starting with 6.01 uh well you had uh we had mentioned that lupito was going to be here this year to speak on behalf of ar all right i see you here uh go ahead the floor is yours okay good evening hi my name is lupita gutierrez i'm a very proud principal of adelante dual language academy um good evening board of trustees dr bauer and alum rock staff alum rock community i'm very proud to be here to represent the alum rock administrators as the acting as a president-elect excuse me so um it's a privilege to speak to you tonight and represent a group of vibrant educators and administrators who work tremendously hard in service of our schools and community they are exciting developments taking place across alum rock and our administrators continue to work and serve their respect their respected sites or departments so i have some things to report some wonderful things that are happening at our schools we started the year off with a lot of beginning of the year in person events such as bienvenidas now we're having our back to school night so we're very pleased to welcome our families back onto our campuses and onto our community and help as volunteers very happy for that we are also um started our sports leagues our cross country has started and so has the girls softball and at adelante in particular we've started a valet for corico which we've not we've not been able to do it's been on pause for three years and fortunately we were able to find an instructor and have started with the middle school group who will be performing at the olim rock back to school night in san antonio so very proud of that on september 15th we also have a large demand of students that are interested in participating in the lower grades and those will be starting in the next couple weeks we've also began our after school intervention programs through our extended learning opportunity programs i know that we've started some homework clubs and some academic interventions throughout the district and so we are very pleased that those funds were available to us again this year to help support all of our students learning and we're also having a lot of in-person um activities such as our parent coffees which i know we are having one uh tomorrow morning so very pleased to announce that so all is going well and i just i'm very thankful that we are trying to do all the wonderful activities that we did in the past and so happy to report that as our ara representative thank you very much thank you all right uh moving on to uh teamsters is there anybody that sees jersey andres you sound a little soft out there uh is there anybody from teamsters here 6.02 no for president okay thank you is there anybody from uh 6.03 california school employees association anybody present i apologize i think maribel uh so yadida right maribel uh she apologized yeah hello we hear you the floors okay guys i'm here from teamster javiera your friendly neighbor um i'm just happy to we have a good agreement uh with you guys for the new um increase in our salary for all our brothers and sisters and we're so happy to work with you guys and keep going in the good team all right thank you very much uh do we have uh anybody here for area 6.04 jocelyn floor is yours thank you did i just want to be sure i didn't skip over csea was there someone here from csea i mean that's up to you but i'll go ahead i believe they just went earlier no they haven't i just don't thank you jocelyn i don't see sharon and she told me she was gonna try but i don't see her all right well i will go ahead and uh good evening um it seems as though no matter how hard we plan each year over the last few years starts off with its own set of challenges the last couple of years we dealt with the covet and distance learning along with the teacher and substitute shortages who knew that we would be facing triple digit temperatures spanning almost a week and pushing our air conditioning systems to their limits and beyond i want to give a special shout out to the mot department for doing their very best to repair the acs when when they have been giving out i know it's been a strain on everyone and i want to thank dr bauer too for acting on the request as quick as they come in because you know first thing that uh the teachers do after notifying their site administrators is to let me know because we're trying to get it all resolved so thank you for the hard work that's been done and hopefully by tomorrow we'll have some relief in sight in the classrooms i would also like to share the gratitude that i have heard from the majority of the teachers that the district is implementing the masked mandate inside our classrooms while kovin may be coming a part of our new normal it is certainly not eradicated and whatever we can do to protect our students and staff from exposure it is our responsibility to do so research is clear that the best precaution is to wear masks especially indoors so thank you for putting that in place this year i realized that we have many new teachers staff and administrators new to elm rock this school year and i want to take this time to welcome all and extend my wishes for a great school year i would also like to remind all teachers and and administrators that we have a mutually agreed upon collective bargaining agreement that defines the terms of our working conditions this agreement is a result of many years of ongoing negotiations a give-and-take process resulting in language that we have agreed upon i'm stating this tonight because i've been hearing from several different area site reps and members that they're being told by various administrators statements like oh it's a union thing or it's because of your union why don't you talk to your union and see if you have to follow that thing as if we the union are being faulted for procedures and processes that were mutually agreed to in the collective bargaining agreement the first time or two that i heard these comments i brushed them off however after hearing echoes of the same words from multiple sites i thought it best to point out to all that alum rock union school district hasn't worked that way in the past and we don't work that way now we respect and abide by our collective bargaining agreement while we may not like every term and condition that's contained therein we follow it and the intent of the language that's contained in it it is our expectation that our members and district administration respect and abide by it as well while i know that most of you do we need everyone to take ownership and follow it it works best for everyone that way on another subject i recently learned from cta that our district applied and was awarded the california community schools partnership program planning grant from the state of california this year was uh in the amount of 200 000 and from what i understand it may be even more in the future on this is this grant is to be used in the development of the community school implementation plan and i've just been reading up and learning on community schools and have learned that it's both a place and a set of partnerships between the school and other community resources with an integrated focus on the academics health social services leadership and community engagement its integrated focus leads to improved student learning stronger families and healthier communities it is intended to focus on the needs of the whole child children as we know are not just supported in academics but are learning in but are learning in environments that make them feel safe valued engaged challenged and healthy both cta and near advocating for increased funding for the community schools and for their successes as an area leader i am only at the beginning stages of understanding the planning around developing community schools but i do know that one major key to their success is the long term commitment to shared decision making by teachers students parents and community along with the district in fact cta is providing training is providing training to the union leaders for the three local school districts in the area that were awarded this planning grant later this month and actually this weekend there's a cta conference that uh i will be attending a strand that focuses specifically on community schools so with that in mind it is my hope and expectation that when this planning begins area will be involved at the ground level of planning and continue throughout its implementation i would also before signing off this evening i realized that that regardless of the order of the agenda items that you're all responsible for staying until the end but i do want to point out that having closed session at the beginning is is a hardship on teachers and the community who i mean right now it's already i don't know probably almost nine o'clock and many of our teachers are headed for bed and so i i understand that this was an exception this month and i hope that we can go back to holding open session at the beginning of the meeting when not all of us have to stay on if we don't want to while some of us do anyway but others you know need to get up at the crack of dawn um to be ready and bright-eyed for the students as they arrive so thank you all right uh superintendent can you comment thank you thank you for president i want to thank jocelyn for highlighting the award of the community schools and jocelyn you know that earlier on when we were in the planning of just trying to write these i believe miss dalton highlighted for us that cta was training teachers regarding this particular grant and we're very excited because this particular grant aligns with one of the buckets in our strategic plan which is to focus in the whole child in the whole family so as of right now we have not had any um formal meetings for any decision making jocelyn and as usually as usual we're going to engage all of our stakeholders in that particular process so thank you for highlighting it and i just want to let everybody know that um just like any um other effort and process that requires input for our stakeholders we are committed to here to inviting and hearing and and considering and coming to a consensus in all of those matters um i'm very also wanted to [Music] inform that we have resetted our bonds program and you're going to be seeing throughout the district some minor improvements first the major improvements all require dsa approval and that takes a little bit of time um i had a conversation with someone today about you know our very very um needy air conditioning systems so i'm looking forward to being able to um work and uh repair some of those things that that have you know they have been around for just a long long time uh i totally understand that and i'm looking forward to providing our community and specifically our students with the environments that they um that they need and last but not least there's an item on the agenda uh around a facility's master plan that aligns with that those needs that the teachers expressed tonight and um a lot of the kinds of things that we need to do in our district were paused because our bonds program was paused and then you know we're going to be blaming the pandemic for a lot of things you know but we are in a new reality and i think that now we need to go fast forward with a lot of the very important decisions around our bonds program and the facilities master plan is going to be brought to the board for consideration tonight and i urge the board to support this effort because that is going to allow and give us the blueprint for the major work that our district needs in the near future and as usual if there's going to be a process where we will include stakeholders so that we're able to hear um different views and and come up with a consensus for board consideration thank you so much and happy new school year all right uh item 6.06 uh uh for christmas communication uh what remember travis i want to thank dr bauer for bringing uh somos and um presentation and i look forward to the seeing the invite and and going and catholic charities and it's great that they're doing all this uh for the alan rock community thank you uh board members thank you i just want to welcome back everybody the students the teachers um those who have been with us and those that are new uh i was able to meet some of you in person and see some of you at the back to school event it was a great turnout thank you staff district staff for coordinating that we had a great time um having the taco truck out here yummy food and uh good um attendance there also um first day of school uh was wonderful i was able to visit some schools you know want to make sure we took the sufficient time and i just rushed through them so we didn't get to be able to go through all of the schools but i look forward to doing that in the near future the rest of the schools and also maybe visiting the gardens and things like that the magical places that our district has um so just want to highlight those things and um you know thank each and every one of you i mean i it was hot you know it's like man you know do i can't imagine i know there's families and communities that have are used to this uh weather but we're not you know which is a reflection to um some of our uh buildings not being equipped um so thank you dr bauer and thank you staff for doing your best to you know manage the needs um getting messages out to the families you know um as parents ensuring that we had our children and send them with the frozen you know water bottle everything that it took to take care of our needs of our children and staff to have a healthy place to learn this week so thank you all and thank you dr bauer for continuing to look into the matters that come your way and then the other staff thank you uh board rest president okay thank you mr president uh first of all i wanna uh you know welcome our families and our kids back uh you know this is our the 92nd year of the alum rock school district so uh you know i know the last couple years have been tough and uh it looks like this year has started on a very challenging note uh especially with this weather here hello okay i'm uh so um i want to thank everyone uh in this district for their uh efforts uh you know the kickoff of the school year is never easy especially in these times uh i wanted to express uh you know uh was it excitement that uh our bonds program is uh being restarted again uh over the summer we've uh started uh the repavement of adelante and shepherd and so we're hoping to continue on that track uh hopefully leading to air con you know as we uh progress with our bronze programs getting to yes air conditioning which is a topic very near and dear to my efforts uh with with the district since my uh time on the bond committee you know in in times of climate change uh we need to ensure that we have healthy and safe environments for not just our kids but also our teachers and our classified staff and our teamsters uh to make sure that uh you know our kids are able to learn and learn uh learn so safely um uh in terms of covet i uh you know wanted to make the announcement that uh new updated boosters are available so please get your boost booster so we can turn the uh turn the page on the pandemic uh you know uh i wanted to note that yes i uh you know i am excited to start my a new cycle of school visits starting tomorrow uh i've uh you know uh you know with meyer elementary and renaissance at fisher so i look forward to uh visiting our kids our teachers our families uh to tomorrow uh you know i uh you know uh we you know as representatives at the residence it's very important that we're out there uh i also want to encourage uh you know if you're able to please come out to the moon festival at yerba buena high school uh our painter vietnamese dual language uh immersion program students are going to be performing on stage and so uh it's my honor to be part uh you know part of their uh part of their show also and i look forward to being able to introduce uh our program to all of san jose's uh vietnamese community uh let's see here and uh with that uh and please uh please come out to back to district nine on september 15th i look forward to to meeting more of our kids and our parents and uh our community that evening also so on that note thank you mr president for the comments remember uh i just wanted to tell you you sound a little soft um am i am i not coming in clear right now you're coming in sounds fine to me oh okay all right um is there anything for the comments from the work all right see none then i'll go ahead and wrap up this section with my comments i'm very excited for the uh beginning of the year um the fun and excitement uh you know it's a very very um infectious i guess you should be careful during those during these times of the pandemic uh pardon the pun but um it is uh you know you get you feel the energy coming from the students as an educator myself i i feel it at the beginning of the semester which we just recently started a couple weeks ago and so i'm very excited for for where the work that are being done by our staff our teachers i especially want to be uh thankful for all of our staff who were uh very um were able to adapt fairly quickly uh during this heatwave we've had uh obviously we have 25 sites uh dr bauer remind me 22.
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um so ideally we want to make sure that we're looking at improving our capital improvement processes working with the legislature just looking at various resources i don't want to steal the thunder from albert but just wanted to at least provide that framework get us thinking be prepared for that meeting which is scheduled for october 20th and that actually concludes my report and i'm open to answer any questions at this time thank you uh miss cooper i do know in your report so the agency received about 3.3 million dollars for some capital improvements where where did that come from that came from the state legislature in terms of our general fund operations that is derived from the capital improvement plan that i had briefly talked about okay great um and has the agency done any estimates as to what it would take to take the buildings on both campuses and restore them to you know a useful life of one let's say if we're at a useful life of an average of 48 here and 38 on the phoenix campus about how much would that cost in total i will defer that i can see albert is actually coming to the stage i'll have him specifically answer that question okay board president nigro yes actually we do have that information as well as our replacement value for those buildings as part of our insurance process as well so all of that can be discussed and it's pretty detailed and i don't want to take up too much time so that way we can discuss that in the work study session right but what's the number off the top of my head i'd have to go look but it's well over 100 plus million dollars okay um thank you are there any questions for miss cooper i do this is board member chance one member one thing i wanted to clarify when we say the average age is 38 for the phoenix campus and then the tucson campus the average age is 48 years old when was the last time that a new building was constructed on either campus definitely before my time however however uh board member pv that would be 2007.
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that's the number one group that they're looking for when you require every girl at that school to sign up on go fam to go watch your friends play basketball go to a football game anything they are being targeted their date is being sold even if you say oh you don't have to register the whole app yeah you do if you have to register your name your phone number just to buy a ticket they're registering every young student at that school that has to buy a ticket is have their data shared and for sale on the market and i think the stratifications that can be done with the data looking at are these football tickets are these cheerleading tickets is this for the band that stratification is very important information that is being sold through gofan but more importantly this is a right of a parent and children for privacy and everybody that goes to an athletic event at shadow ridge is forced to do this the worst part that i saw a year ago was a father that drove two hours from yuma from a different competing school showing up and then thank you madam president we'll have dr croto follow up thank you next we have amy husted hello dr dean madam chair members of the board just a few comments to let you know that you're not alone that 36 404 voters were not wrong miss bridgeard 33 206 votes were not wrong miss chafin it was proven again that the democratic process is well and working as it should be with the epic failure and waste of time that that recall was it will be proven again in november when this community the dysart community the dysart parent and the dysart taxpayer turns out to re-elect don densmore and seat jennifer drake on that dice it has been said ad nauseam that this board is not listening i beg to differ this board is listening and this board is taking action that has long been coming when you do not do your job you lose it well ladies some of you are doing your job and you're doing it well the loss of kellis may hurt it may not i personally believe it will not but i recognize that to some it does if my protector as he has been referred to had left then i guess i'd feel uneasy too but in my opinion the protection was from the accountability they should be forced to face and the truth is he chose to resign and maybe that's because he was being held accountable too in any case we'll never publicly know that because that was done in executive session and anybody that is speculating it was a forced resignation doesn't know that truth it's simply speculation as a dysart parent since 2004 i'm acutely aware of the struggles of this district and the improvement that is consistently promised but never seems to be achieved no matter how much we increase the budget increase pay or overrides past there are some amazing teachers in this district but there are also horrid spiteful and petty teachers in administration in this in this district they show themselves daily on social media in public and on the secret pages plotting collective attacks on the three amigas some of those comments are made by board members who sit right next to these ladies with smiles on their faces in a public records request i discovered that two of the board members received advanced copy of a speech to be given by the leader of the recall while the other three received a long-winded diatribe about morality and ethics and underhanded threats to their personal and professional licenses the chosen candidates of these teachers and board members are often seen campaigning in the echo chamber of the self-righteousness and indignation but let's be clear there's an agenda there's a political agenda there always is it's evident and if you are in your ignorant if you choose to believe otherwise the endorsement of a candidate over another does not mean you lose your voice even if you if you wish to represent all of dice art you would do well to remember that dr dean just a quick word of praise every email and voicemail that i have ever sent to you over the years that i've been a dysart parent has been responded to in a timely manner thank you thank you thank you next we have marcy hessler good evening dr dean madam president and governing board i'm marcy hessler and i'm here tonight just to do um some clarification work from a board meeting uh two board meetings ago when a statement was made that it was never voted to get rid of um social workers and that is a true statement because the vote was four to one that evening of january 12th however i do want to remind everyone that in december there was very heated negative conversation about social workers and their roles and their necessity which prompted the january 12th comments and some of the votes were changed as far as transparency and all of that we keep promising it but we do know that there are games that are being played as well two weeks after january 12th you voted to cut the social worker calendar because it was fiscally responsible to do so and in doing so you lost a large amount of social workers that who resigned or left the district and now the remaining i believe we're still in single digits for social workers working in the district maybe we're at double digits by now but i know social workers that are working two to three campuses because of the shortage of social workers because of the actions from last winter and spring so you're asking the remaining social workers who took a huge pay cut who were totally totally dutiful in returning and coming back to their schools now they're covering two to three others i do know the social ratio of social workers to students is 250 to 1.
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we have 22 sites and clearly there's uh issues that are going to arise with some of our mechanical coverage luckily it wasn't too many but when they did i'm appreciative of the fact that our our staff were able to move uh jump over to a lab uh and then uh keep on going right there and without missing a beat and so especially i want to really extend my thanks to all of our staff who stepped up and have been able to keep the education our children going even during these difficult times uh you know not the heat wave uh so thank you for that i just want to reiterate the best back to school night september 15th please come and join us and participate uh should be fun uh with that said uh i'm uh very very uh disappointed in uh the tone that um i uh i'm in an adult and i'm a dually elected member of this board and i have the right to step away for a few minutes if i have to take care of something that's not more business and i apologize uh if in fact there was a miscommunication between myself and the war vice president i think that uh the voters uh have voted for me multiple times the residents know who i am and uh you know that i'm here for you and i'm here to push uh alum rock agenda which is to ensure that we get the best education of quality and dignified interest for all of our children regardless of what any individual might say and so i want to thank you um i'm i'm an extremely um you know i find it very difficult to the words uh because of the results of what happens when people politicize our meetings and attempt to take our meetings in a particular direction it's very dangerous people get afraid they no longer want to participate they don't want to run for office because they see what happens but i'm very proud of the fact that regardless whether it's fighting criminals that attempting to uh attack our district and uh hurt uh the taxpayers the students the teachers everybody here i've stood up firm i'm gonna continue to do that day in day out i'm very proud and i won't be uh intimidated by anybody by any political machine uh that attempts to go ahead and push against me i've had the support of the of the people for a long time and i look forward to continue to work in benefit of the people all of our time and time so with that said i'm gonna unless there's comments from those who haven't spoken then i'll go ahead and move on to item 7.01 which is a public hearing regarding sufficiency of instructional materials uh i'll go ahead and open up this public hearing right now at 909.
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okay so that means that's at least 15 years to start do you know if there's any chance to even compare to a comparable school district when do they typically build or renovate their buildings how often do they recycle or refinish these buildings typical recycle or re refreshing um programs are based on the individual aspect of the building so for example roofs plumbing systems whether that be the shell structure each have a different refresh period so for example you typically want to refresh plumbing every 40 years electrical every 15 to 20. so school districts tend to build that out in long-range planning is something that we do internally and something we add to our capital and building renewal process specifically what we're talking about here that's a little different is master facility planning which is tying that directly to the educational programs as we know that we have a big educational change need as assistant superintendent martin mentioned so rather than just doing a typical refresh we have to really kind of take a step back look at it holistically and ask okay what programs do we currently have now as well as the ones that we want in the future or ones that maybe need to be consolidated or changed and then meet the what i would say put the cart before the horse in that aspect of that we want to make sure that we put the horse in front of the cart which is allow us to make sure that our educational programs drive our need for our facilities rather than make our educational programs fit into the facilities we have now so each one of those going back to the original question though you could see typically most of those schools would refresh about every 30 to 40 years to completely demolish and put in a new building you definitely do want to not you do not want to go past 50 years on a building for any life structure you just see that becoming a dangerous point as you can see the average age of 48 years as well as the median age for 48 years on the tucson campus we are at a critical juncture for that tucson campus and the phoenix campus is closely approaching okay so you may not be answer be able to answer this question but who has the final authority to decide whether a building or a institution needs to be demolished or renovated who has the ultimate authority to make that type of decision we are in cooperation with adoa and so we work with what's called the general services division so the general services division would provide a recommendation for a building to be closed or demolished or potentially renovated as they do in what's called their quadrennial so every four years they do an inspection of the building or are supposed to in the ten years i have been here that has been uh one time that they've done that so they're not as proficient as with that reporting aspect as they should be they would provide information in that report based on each one of those core functions of the building whether or not it is in disrepair in need of repair replacement or at a point of condemning the building they would make that that determination the only person who has the authority to close a building immediately due to safety reasons would be the state fire marshal and the state fire marshal performs typically an annual inspection of the buildings for safety and life safety aspects but their scope is fairly limited only to life safety and not necessarily general condition or what we would call quality of use within those buildings or the purpose of that building so it's it's multifaceted i would say ultimately at the end of the day it is up to actually us here in the room to make the final determination whether or not we want to demolish a building or request to build a new building so we get to drive that discussion okay how many buildings on the tucson campus and how many buildings are we looking at from the phoenix campus that would be considered condemned or in need of significant repair that's something that we would go over in more detail during the master facility planning and work study session as of right now none of our buildings are condemned we do have quite a few surplus buildings that would definitely need some a lot of maintenance or repair in order to bring them up to a standard that i would say would be acceptable for occupancy but none of our buildings are currently condemned okay so you had mentioned that that responsibility really falls on everyone here in the room and so that would include us as board members as well my question is where's the board been for the last 20 30 40 years because some of these buildings obviously are quite old based on the comments that you've made how did we get to this point um i believe and granted i wasn't here so it's pure speculation at this point the last major build happened in the early 1990s which means that the information came from the 1980s demographics with that in mind that particular growth that we saw in the late 70s and early 80s drove the board as well as members within that group of leadership to make determinations to expand buildings from that period of time on we have seen a decrease after 1980 of our student population on both campuses and so with that in mind or shall i say the tucson campus because the phoenix campus really didn't start until really about the mid 70s so with that in mind i would say that they thought it was one and done and it just fell off of everyone's plate and i do not know exactly why or how that became a problem for the board as well as leadership at the time but i'd rather focus on today and that we have some amazing experts here in the room one of our contractors that we're working with uh is actually named john dickinson he actually builds an architect for deaf and blind schools so he's someone that we will be partnering with during this process so we have not only experts in the room but also other contracted experts to help us but as stated it really does derive from and grow from the educational programs and it's something that i'll point out here as a little prelude whenever the first campus moved in 22 1922 to the tucson campus there were four buildings built a dormitory for the girls dormitory from boys an administration building and a maintenance building and i'm gonna ask and see if anyone's willing to raise their hand of those four buildings once missing out of a school a school education so we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past so we will be going over the history of asb construction shall i say in our work study session and that will help us strive to avoid those past mistakes and make sure that the education building and the needs of our students come first and so i'm excited to work with assistant superintendent martin on those education programs and supporting that with new buildings or renovations to our buildings and i'm pretty sure looking at what we had from our cip meeting our capital improvement plan meeting with adoa they are excited to partner with us as well and we'll be actually lending a hand in the master facility planning process thank you just wanted to make sure that we all are understanding as a board the weight of that responsibility to recognize that the unfortunate reality on our campuses is that they have kind of gone under the radar for several years and that it falls on us to look at the buildings that we have and i do think that there is value in not looking for quick fixes so i appreciate the time that we're dedicating to work together to figure out how we want to tackle this issue obviously it's very complex and multi-layered i'm looking forward to the work study session on the master facilities plan thank you thank you um and i note that in the you know the mid-teens we had uh certainly more pressing issues with the superintendent's selection and superintendent search and after we did that we have long known that facilities is an issue in fact it was a key part of the strategic plan um you'll note that no progress was made on that um primarily due to covet that was disrupted so that's where we are today at least how we got here the last six or seven years but um that doesn't negate the uh the prior several decades of um poor capital planning um the superintendent uh assistant superintendent cooper we will need maybe 10 or 15 years of enrollment data for our next for that work study session um so uh that's probably and then also the demographic data that you talked about all right so moving on we're going to go to um actually it's 5 30.
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we have far exceeded that so for the 250 50 000 that you have saved you spent a lot of chunk of change trying to get dr kellis to resign whether you believe it's a forced resignation or not he was still paid out so i don't put anything past anybody on this board was that 250 000 that was saved was that given to dr kellis thank you [Applause] thank you next we have jennifer drake good evening my name is jennifer drake and i just wanted to take a moment to share my deep appreciation for the current board members and all they've done to raise the standards and expectations in our schools in the last few months i have seen a drastic shift a shift towards parents and the community inclusion at many levels a shift towards holding staff accountable for academics and a shift towards streamlining a curriculum review to match the board's vision i just want to share my gratitude for this and to note that i'm pleased at the recall the two of the dedicated governing board members has failed for this i want to thank the community for seeing through through everything through the recall and i just want you to know that you do have a lot of support from the parents in the community i also want to say romans 12 21 do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good thank you for all you do thank you [Applause] thank you next we have gisele norberg hi good evening dr dean madam president board my name is giselle norberg and i am a surprise resident and a parent of two who did graduate from dysart i'm here tonight because of the position that you hold you were elected and that position should include you digging deeper into pretty much every item that is on the agenda it is your duty to ask the tough questions and to hold the district and the teachers accountable if you're not doing that then you are not living up to what the expectations are of those that voted for you from what i hear around town and as you can tell with everybody here in the room the new interim superintendent has been doing an excellent job and there have been significant improvements common sense would dictate that the questions in inquiries of three specific board members was the correct course of action and the subsequent results are proof of that action for the three of you that are doing your due diligence and have been taking the heat for it there is a huge group of people in the city of surprise and beyond that appreciate your hard work i know what it's like to be yelled at and called out names because i've been on boards too you know you have a specific vote or action and not everybody is happy with it i can tell you to rest easy each one of you tonight and every night because you have done what we elected you to do and do not ever let the negativity of those into your heart mind and soul we know and you know that you digging deeper and doing your due diligence is not an easy task a volunteer task at that you are doing what is in the best interest of the most important people and that first is our children and second our teachers thank you and keep up the good work thank you thank you that's everyone quick recess i'm just going to finish this piece up i just want to comment we um do have the opportunity during call to the public when there is a specific criticism made i know we all take a fair share of criticism but there's certain things that um rise the level of response and i do want to take the opportunity to respond to ms hill's comments miss hill the conversation you referenced being had between you and dr kellis what he what you are saying he shared with you is a lie and i would welcome him to speak to that at any time he would like to but that is completely untrue action taken action can only be taken through a public vote on items on the agenda miss hill was not on the agenda for a promotion therefore the board could not take action if you were told that your name would be brought forward yet it did not appear on an agenda then that speaks to an issue with the with district administration at that time if employees are being promised promotions outside of a board meeting then i'd like to know about it because it's unprofessional and inappropriate we have a request for a recess and i'm going to grant it i was on the phone okay this time we like to reconvene the regular meeting we'll move to superintendent governing board updates uh dr dean do you have a student update tonight madam president we do not have a student update this evening okay the next we'll move to superintendent update madam president we do have a superintendent's update this evening so i would like to just uh let the board know that there are great things happening in our schools every single day i want to say thank you to our teachers and staff our administrators for all of their hard work the incredible instruction that's going on in each of our schools and it's a pleasure um to to lead this great school district and it's a pleasure for for myself and our cabinet members to see how awesome our teachers are each and every single day in our schools and so um thank you um to our staff to our to our teachers to our chairs and to our students we're off to a great school year the athletic seasons are underway our high school athletic teams are in full um full competition mode now as a matter of fact valley vista high school has a thursday night varsity football game that kicks off in 14 minutes at valley vista high school if you don't have anything to do after the board meeting and we finish early enough we encourage you to head that way also our k-8 schools have their athletic seasons underway on our middle schools they start next week in a brand new conference that we put together with the dysart schools deer valley and peoria school districts and so we're excited about getting that going and the last thing on my update this evening is just to remind the board that the school year is already moving very very quickly fall break is actually right around the corner and is just four short weeks away so we are into the thick of the school year now and look forward to great things and that's my report this evening thank you any comments from the board i just have a quick claim um i had the privilege and honor of visiting growing minds uh preschool and those kids are so darn cute it was like 50 of levi's and i went to western peak and to willow canyon it was a great day thank you anyone else i do have some comments i'd like to share on may 5th 2022 driven by anger and very personal agendas an application for the recall of myself and miss schaffen was filed with the maricopa county superintendent of schools to invalidate the voices of our deiser community members by canceling their 2020 vote through a recall election for the sake of this district and the students we serve i am thankful that that this recall failed early in the process due to their inability to garner enough interest to prop prompt an election having said that i want to thank the many teachers parents community members who offered words of support and appreciation for my board service in the 2020 election 36 000 36404 dysart community members spoke when they elected me to this governing board for my fourth term the failure of this recall attempt exhibits loud and clear that even when given the opportunity to change their vote i am still the person that this community wants to represent their voice in this district aside from the very public and unfounded attacks on my character from members of this recall group equally as disheartening has been learning of current board members collaborating with this group's various hate-driven efforts which served only to perpetuate division and destruction as opposed to maintaining professionalism and focusing on the work they were elected to do people associated with this recall effort have also been linked to sending hate letters to my home filled with rage attempts at intimidation as well as obscene sexual references to my children i'm sure these individuals find pleasure in this but unbeknownst to them their recent efforts have been wasted as letters are now being filtered directly to the surprise police department and i no longer have access to their contents to put this in perspective and better understand the caliber of individuals i'm referring to harassing an elected official via the u.s postal service is a class 5 felony due to concerns for the safety of my family and my well-being the surprise police department has suggested they increase their presence in the vicinity of my home and they are taking these actions very seriously although necessary it's unfortunate as it requires them to take time away from their other pressing issues within the city it should be noted that when these actions began a few months ago i did provide one of the responding officers with a list of names of individuals that i believe have the capacity to engage in hostile behaviors and i intend to fully co cooperate with the police in pressing charges for these egregious acts it is my hope that the failure of this recall attempt has sent a positive message to the community which speaks to my integrity the message is this i stand behind the decisions i make because they are based in principle decisions based in principle do not fall victim to the attempts of intimidation of threats of a recall it is my hope that this community can have comfort in knowing that i will stand firm for what is right even in the face of adversity i had no doubt that the residents of this district were intelligent enough to quickly recognize that a recall effort was driven by anger and personal agendas rather than merit there is no found correlation between a likable board member and student success this community wants individuals on the board who have a proven track record for taking action to drive academic achievement and support student success obviously the residents of our district recognize that reality the failure of this recall attempt illustrates it beautifully and for that i am most thankful in recent months a board member spoke of a common denominator when referencing board and district upheaval and it was a very insightful truth except the definition that that intentional jab that the phrase common denominator aimed to target was false the common denominator of 2007 and 2022 is my steadfast determination to advocate fiercely for dysart students not adult issues when the hate-filled personal agendas of special interest groups attempt to interfere with the operations of this district and the betterment of our students i will be persistent in voicing concerns advocated for needing change and protecting this district from the unscrupulous behaviors of those who threaten its stability and the welfare of our students individuals driving this recall attempt proclaimed a mass exodus and tried to ignite fear by saying the staff would be leaving in droves to date our vacancy rate is 8.4 percent which is far from illustrating any mass exodus this district is thriving aside from filling our vacancies with highly qualified and deeply motivated new staff in just short four short months our current administration has re-emphasized its focus on academic accountability which has already resulted in increased fidelity and program implementation specifically in grades 6-12 writing instruction our administration has put forth tremendous efforts in renewing its focus on increasing safety standards district-wide making vast improvements in protecting our students and staff and most recently the valued work of our teachers staff and administrators was illustrated with board approved monetary increases because their work ethic is second to none so despite the efforts of some to cause this district to stumble conversely we persevered and will continue to do so because that's what's best for our students in our dysart community in conclusion i will continue to have hard conversations ask tough questions and fiercely advocate for our students and community despite any external pressures to do otherwise furthermore i won't cower to the harassment and attempted intimidation of special interest groups that expect board members to do their bidding my decisions may not always be popular but i can sleep each night because i know that every vote i cast is based solely on what is in the best interest of the children of our district those who know me know that to be true because they know my heart thank you dicer community for walking alongside me as we continue our important work in this district and for standing firm with me in representing that we are dysart that's all i have [Applause] next we move to motion to approve consent agenda did you just like emotion no but i can do it though i move the board approve consent agenda items as presented second motion made by christine pritchard second and by joe grant motion carries next we move to action discussion item g1 board identified meet and confer iba process standards dr dean madam president member of the governing board members of cabinet in our community as i stated during the update the school year is moving quickly um and it is that time of year when we begin to assemble our iba team for the iba process for this school year part of that process is the board approving our iba standards and i'm going to turn that over to dr polling good evening madam president members of the board cabinet and community we're asking for the board for review providing input and taking action for the iba standards to be utilized during this year's meet and confer we're recommending the use of these district standards to guide the iba process legal affordable alignment sustainable viable efficiency necessity judicious and fair and with that i'm happy to take any input thank you um are you able to i recognize fair right off the bat but are you able to um differentiate between this list as opposed to our previous list yes absolutely a previous list used the word equitable instead of fair and this year i'm bringing forward the word fair okay so that's just the one that's the only change okay yes ma'am can you um speak a little bit to the where the decision originated in regard to why we're changing from equitable to fair yeah we're recommending the word fair just um i would hear different comments about equitable and it could just mean different things and you know some people thought it would mean something different maybe equal what is equitable and you know fair would is just that um the definition is a proper balance of various interests and it's an interest-based approach and so it's our recommendation but certainly if the board would like to use equitable go back to that it's just fine as well um definitely want to hear the thoughts of the board personally i liked equitable i think there's definitely a clear difference between equitable and equal fair in my opinion sounds very subjective and a lot of that's not fair but you can say what's equitable or equal or not just my my personal opinion on that piece but i'll open up to the rest of the board in my opinion fairer is really more of a synonym synonym for just judicious so i'm not really understanding how those are differentiated from each other so it um for judicious judicious you know a looked it up and really wrote down you know sound judgment and wise and that's more where judicious is coming from and with fair it means free from favor and a proper balance of various interests i kind of like fair because i like the definition of um a proper balance of interests that is what equitable is though it's isn't doesn't equitably mean like everybody knows it's the way that it's so you can have things that are equal and everyone gets an equal amount of things but equitable is like kind of doing it in a fair way i hate to like define it am i dividing it correctly and doing it in a fair way so some person somebody might have more of something but if it's for whatever reason and but it's still um fair in that regard of how it's divided then um that's kind of what equitable is can you come up with a relevant example dr dean i can come up with a very relevant example so for example let's say that mr hicks and i were trying to see over a fence to see a baseball game mr hicks is uh a bit taller than i am and if neither of us could see over the fence mr hicks would need a smaller box than i would need to stand on to see over that's an example of an equitable situation it's equitable i get what i need he gets what he needs as opposed to equal being we would both be standing on the same size box and if it was his box i still wouldn't be able to see over the fence but it's fair because ultimately you both see over the fence agreed yes that's what i mean by it's kind of fair is worked into that but it's the way that it's done so that's my opinion madam president i would state that we're we're okay either way um whichever term the board would like us to use um fair or equitable uh it works um you know i think one of the conversations related to the word fair was that it's a it's an easier understood definition for folks but fair and equitable can be interchanged as we've done a couple of times in our conversation so but either way we're we're okay and able to move forward okay well just for the interest of time i move the the board adopt the iba standards as established for the 2022 2023 meet and confer process with the exception of changing the word fair back to equitable second motion made by christine prichard seconded by don densmore motion carries next we move to request for future agenda items anyone have any agenda items they'd like to submit um i would like to request an agenda item for the event admissions and concessions going forward we got it anything else next move to adjournment i move that we adjourn the meeting motion made by christine pritchard seconded by joe grant thank you very much
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