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of course uh every utility as you probably know has increased the rate in fuel is dramatically higher than at this time last year dr bozeman and his team do a tremendous job of trying to control those costs and take action to keep us immune from the fluctuations in those in those rates and then probably most importantly for this year we have we increased funding for capital projects at the building level by 500 000 that's partially due to the increase in cost of those projects but also for probably the first time ever we've been able to meet every request of building principles after dr bozeman and his team vented those requests and brought them to us we were able to fund all of those in addition to that set aside 1.5 million dollars for district-wide projects primarily the 1 million dollars of that for paving projects across the district we have a tremendous amount of square feet of pavement a lot of which has a tremendous need to be replaced or at least patched and sealed and then a half a million for district district-wide hvac projects and you'll see the effect of those on this next slide and i'll point to the obvious fact right away that we are spending more than what we are bringing in in revenues um in 2023 and that is over the last that you probably heard me say this at least three times if not four that we intend to come to you with this budget proposal knowing that our operations fund ended last year i believe somewhere near 13 million dollars and that we intended to start drawing down that balance gradually and only on items that we could consider one-time expenditures such as capital improvements district-wide paving and hvac projects and those kinds of things and so those expenditures you saw on the last slide the additional cpf and the paving and the hvac projects represent that gap of about 1.7 million dollars between our anticipated revenues and our expenditures this views me uh before we move on to that next slide are there any questions this is the end of the operations fund slide any questions on this portion of the operations fund um do you mind just giving us an overview like you did earlier on the larger percentage increases the professional services and property equipment just like you know as you shared with us for the other one so on the salaries line you on the last slide you showed that i think i think we're really salaries and benefits were up 7.6 but on the summary slide salaries are 13 up and again this is a result of the actions you all approved back in june uh to dramatically adjust our pay scale to make sure we were competitive with uh with districts around us and in districts across the state and districts that are like bcsc so that's the routine point uh right at benefits are actually expected to decline this is primarily due to by what i'd say would call years of just over budgeting usually from health and dental side on operations only i made an adjustment to the methodology for how i budget from the operations fund this year to be more accurate and so that's just a correction there's no there's no real change dramatic change as a matter of fact that benefits line also includes the four percent increase in health on the professional services side this is primarily driven by dr bozeman's budget for this is everything from trash services to elevator inspections and um gosh i'm drawing a blank here all of the services from an operation site hvac maintenance and filter replacement all those kinds of things um that is what that line represents and that 16 increase is no new services it's entirely an increase in the expected cost of those services as as all of those entities have had to react to the inflationary pressures that we've seen as well okay the next line on the repair and maintenance side that again is reflective of inflationary measures no major changes there communications line is is flat uh supplies and utilities as i mentioned before that increase is entirely made up by the fuel and fuel and utilities increases and then the next line property equipment that is the cpf projects that i mentioned before the additional 500 000 for building level projects and then the 1.5 million for uh district-wide paving and district-wide hvac projects thank you you're so welcome is the uh annual look at the opera or um sorry the bus replacement portion this also falls out of the operations fund but we always look at it separately and as a matter of fact the state requires us to advertise our bus replacement plan separately we do plan to replace 12 buses at a cost of 1.8 million 1.4 million of that coming from the operations fund and the remaining coming from the operating referendum fund and again that's the additional um somewhere in the neighborhood of three buses that we're able to purchase thanks to the operating referendum fund and you can go on to the next slide thank you so this is a important portion of um the both the education fund and the operations fund for those of you that haven't seen this we've been doing this since 2018 i believe and um when the state required us to move a lot of expenditures that have been built into the education fund or prior to 2018 it was called the general fund and move those over to operations and so we take a look at everything that was you know prior to that 2018 time frame everything that was um in the general fund that moved over the operations and that included utilities property liability insurance sros some of the non-school level administrative costs and then the custodians being the largest portion of that that was about just under 11 million for this year and then there are also expenditures that used to be in the in the operations or the cpf side of the budget that moved over to the education side any of those things that are directly related to the classroom some of those we mentioned earlier software but also the actual people that work directly with schools of technology and the equipment as well and that was just over under four point million so the net difference between that was just under seven million which is eight percent of the education fund budget the state puts a soft cap at fifteen percent if you transfer more than fifteen percent of your education fund budget to operations you have to uh you have to file a report and get smacked on the wrist by the state but we have not been i don't think we've even exceeded nine percent um in any of the years since that occurred so this is an important slide the next largest portion of the budget is the debt service fund mr west asked about late earlier and you can see the second to the last line at the at the bottom before the total um the current uh proposed go bond that is pending your approval at the next meeting we don't have any debt rolling off this year but we have several things rolling off in 2024 and even even larger amounts in 2025 as i believe that's when central the central middle school rolls off any questions about the debt service fund no we don't seem to have any it's always a pretty straightforward one the high school referendum um ends in at the end of 2029 we'll make our last payment in 2029 and there is uh uh there they're very little change between now and then we should see payments pretty consistent between now and the end of that and the next slide is the referendum operating fund operating referendum fund and the only changes to this budget are for the inflation taking take into account inflation for school resource officers a portion of which is paid from the operating referendum fund and a portion from the operations fund and bus purchases and so we build in a slight increase for bus purchases and then we'll have a full year of stem lab teachers at least 50 of the cost of stem lab teachers for a full year and uh full funding for a wellness coordinator position um that you all approved or you'll met met her back in june i believe and then also contracting with mental health providers from a referendum operating fund as the counseling accounts grant ended this last june or this june at the end of june and so we're ready to start paying for those costs from the operating referendum fund starting in 2023 what questions did you have about the operating referendum fund yes we had mr stoner mr phillips can you talk a little bit about the relationship between the the tax rate and how it's affected by the referendum sure so the the operating referendum as it was approved in the um in the election was a rate driven approval by the taxpayers and the voters and so 15.6 cents per 100 of assessed value is the is the approved rate so everyone will see on their tax bill that additional 15.6 so whatever the regular rate between operations and debt service the two debt service funds whatever that totals to you will just see the additional 15.6 cents on your on your tax bill does that help yes thank you all right that covers those questions and this is just a repeat of the first slide showing you a summary of the overall budget the next the next screen the next slide just shows you our cash balances so at the beginning of this year we were up in almost every fund with the exception of um debt is down a little bit over where it was back in 2017 2018 but everything else is is up which is probably appropriate considering the fact that our payrolls are larger than they have been as we've been able to adjust rates um but that operations cash balance at just under 13 million is one that it will draw down next year and we'll will be a little lower than that at the end of 2023 um with your approval of our investments in the facilities and the next slide just shows you again reviews um what our next step is is the public hearing on the 26th at the beginning of the meeting i'm happy to answer any other questions that you might have the cash reserves slide mr phillips at what point do the cash reserves become so large that the state begins to tell us we need to draw them down that's a good question they they have not asked many questions about that in my time in this role but they haven't asked us to start identifying of your cash balance how much are you holding back for future capital needs and so i do think that they have they are paying close attention to make sure that school districts aren't carrying too high of cash balances i do anticipate they may look at that more closely considering the fact that our 10.8 increase in assessed value is low compared to some parts of the state and some of my colleagues and what they're seeing um 20 and maybe even some cases close to 30 increases in assessed value and so i would anticipate it'll be a hot topic at the state house this coming this coming session about assessed values and property taxes but um you know i do i do think it's important to point out that you know a regular payroll for for us now is is in the neighborhood of of three million dollars every two weeks and so when you sometimes you look at these dollar amounts and say wow that's a that's a lot of money um well the rainy day fund is of course for a rainy day and so we don't include that but you know the others only get us through um if you took education and operations fund which is the only the only two funds you can spend any money on salaries that only gets us a few you know two or three months of of um of payrolls if some catastrophe happened in in the last 12 years we've had two two major catastrophes that have happened from the great recession and then of course the pandemic driven driven recession where we didn't get any property taxes in june that we should have gotten that here so i do think we need to handle these responsibly and i think we're doing so by addressing the the operations fund balance being a little high um i hope that it helps answer your question mr steven thank you hey hey chad i have an accounting policy question so who who dictates operations versus education fund rules is that state or federal it's entirely state and so they have a list of all these the categories that we use for accounting and and it cross walks over to tell you whether or not it's a it's an operations expenditure or an education expenditure and you can pretty much you can pretty much say if it's in the classroom or at the building level that doesn't have to do with operations so basically take custodians out and utilities and the building itself then it's education fun otherwise it's operations and and then an easy one what's the depreciation schedule on our buses how many years dr bozeman what was the depreciation schedule for buses right you'll you'll appreciate that way more than i will but though i do have a over 12 year old car all right other questions thank you very very much for a very thorough presentation even though you're in a little square on the screen you we appreciate it thanks mr phillips all right next on our agenda our items for approval and i'll turn to you dr roberts thank you dr chev we do have a number of items a little bit larger than normal this evening so we'll start with the minutes of the regular score meeting from our last one on august 22nd you have a list of supplemental contracts in your packet as well as field trips slash professional leaves and school fundraisers quite a few school fundraisers in your pack at this time as we get the school year started claims in payroll we have payroll dated august 13th and august 26th a total of a little over 3.1 million dollars for that time frame we had a pre-run claims report for august 2022 of a little over 2.7 million dollars in claims dated september 12th today for just about a million dollars uh we have based upon the project the geo bond 2022 geo bond hearing public hearing this evening we have three resolutions for you to approve a project resolution of preliminary bond resolution reimbursement resolution each of these legal resolutions that are required by law additionally you have in your packet an approval of the guaranteed maximum price for educational improvements at the last meeting dr bozeman and during the cabinet reports walked through that process since that process is a little bit new to the school corporation and gave you a number for gmp for parkside additionally we have some other educational improvements that include athletic improvements that were listed out for you additionally we have two title grant applications that mr edwards is getting ready to submit that he needs approval for title one part a and title two part a and then lastly the approval for a lot of days for e-learning day so the calendar question for you tonight specifically for the recommendation was to comply with state legislation of taking the five allotted e-learning days down to three and they'll be reflected in our calendar so those i believe yes a through l are the items that you have up for your approval all right thank you so i'll entertain a motion of approval for items three a through l as they've been presented to us so moved thank you very much and do i hear a second thank you miss deyhoff dwyer are there any particular questions about a through l all right hearing none i'll call the vote all those who approve items 3a through l as presented to us if you'd signify by saying i i and those opposed right there you go they passed unanimously thank you doctor it's doctor please turn good evening i request approval of the hr recommendations as presented thank you very much so i'll entertain a motion for approval of those human resources recommendations so moved thank you miss dayhoftwire in a second second thank you dr bills any questions for dr pleek all right hearing none all of those in favor of those human resources recommendations as presented to us if you signify by saying i i and those opposed there you are they've passed unanimously all right this is an opportunity for colleagues to offer their input comments for just to end the evening with any for you sure yeah okay thanks dr um thanks first of all to mrs wilden for her reflections on the events of september 11th thank you to mr west for your participation during the public comments section of our meeting and lastly thanks to mrs volts mrs johnson and the students of smith for your thoughtful presentation on restorative practices thank you mr afghan nothing this evening mr stenner echo what mr grimes contributed i also thought miss wielding you expressed our appreciation with the students very well thank you for that dr bills nothing tonight all right and miss wielding i'm okay i just again thanks for the thoroughness of our budget presentation and a lot to think about um i do appreciate that there's consistently a very proactive planful effort that we as an our administration presents to us so i appreciate that thoughtfulness and planfulness dr roberts the only thing i would add is is the mention about the students earlier when we were doing the pledge of allegiance the voices that all of a sudden we were able to hear coming from that front row of our kids was very very neat gratifying to hear that so appreciated that statement from miss wilton that was quite fun actually it's all it's always been the same right it sounded like that when i was doing it in elementary school all right our next regular school board meeting is monday september 26th 6 30.
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so at this time if there are any questions or comments here please approach the podium here and just jot down uh your name thank you I don't have to do my Vanna White impression really nervous so my name is Angela bradyham I have never addressed a board before but I feel the need to do so I've been sitting on this for a week now and my gut tells me I need to speak so forgive me if I get emotional because I really love children and I really really have a passion for children with special needs so a week ago Saturday no 2020 in the spring um my daughter came home and said Bound Brook Bound Brook Board of Ed is hiring for a P3 ABA I've been an ABA educator since 2006. it's just where my passion lies I don't do gen Ed I don't really do much inclusion unless it comes from self-contained to I push for inclusion so I was um home I had been an educator like I said since 2006 my husband and I started a successful business we both no longer needed to work I was home I was bored and I missed my special ed population so when my daughter came home and said that to me I was like yes I want an interview yes I want to go for this and it ignited so much passion within me that laid dormant from being home so I had several interviews with the special ed Department with different superintendents and I was hired so I started in September of 2020 I started in the Le Mans Annex Building I learned very quickly that something was off with my situation in the Lamont Annex Building everyone every classroom had two teachers except for mine I had 11 students with special needs and it was just me and it was hybrid that was tricky I had never done hybrid before especially with children with autism day one was our intro in the um cafeteria over here where you kind of meet everybody but when you're new and you're coming to a big District you kind of don't know who you reach out to for what I know I have a principle of my building but I'm also special ed so therefore I believe I would reach out to Mr DeMarco and Mrs trelis and at that particular cafeteria meeting Mrs Fisher spoke up and said if you need anything always CC me on everything so I'm coming off the 2020 school year where everything was thrown into boxes and everyone went hybrid really quickly well if you know anything about special needs it's not a curriculum you build those curriculums specific to each and every child now I had 11.
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so very good thank you thank you thank you guys okay we have no speakers no no visitors okay now i need a motion from the board to go into closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or legal council of the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting a volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity and litigation when an action when an action against affecting or on behalf of the district has been filed in this pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the district finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the meetings of the closed into the minutes of the closed meeting second mike and terry thank you mike davenport aye terry pavisage aye joanna vazquez drexler aye christopher espinoza aye cheryl fuller hi jenny heggstrom aye and nancy krepko hi thank you we are going into closed session we will not be taking any action other than to adjourn when we come out so anybody who's not i would like to say something before we go ahead i just want to say thank you to everyone who came to the block party on saturday and i want to thank the folks at north for hosting us and the cmg staff did a fabulous job so my kudos to them and it was a great event and the weather man stayed with us the whole time and i just want to say thank you thank you to all who came and um those who didn't missed a really fun day [Laughter] about how many people came here i don't know maybe a couple hundred steady all day maybe 300 you know i don't know i i we didn't really keep track of the number of people but um uh the food trucks i think were uh were uh successful i mean i think everybody got something to eat and uh they were happy and the kids loved the games the games were a big hit and then the band was pretty good um you know so i think there was fun time for all and i just wanted to say thank you and uh i'm sure you'll he'll hear more about things that are coming up but north you did a great job great job and we all enjoyed the north south game so we did so downers grove won and it was a close game until close to the end yeah but no it was it was a it was really a fun game and uh we'll see south plain uh homecoming this week and uh then north following just the next week so uh it'll be a good time in downers grove and the weather hopefully will be fabulous so that's my closed session will be in here let's take a few minutes to clear the room over a few minute break you
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we will be here again in the terrace room of the administration building so thank everyone for being here tonight i'll call this meeting adjourned you
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five of them or six of them online five of them are six of them in the classroom I forget exactly right now but I had to scrounge for materials and so I was emailing the people I was told to email that was day two of school um I was in the classroom with my aides and I was called out by the principal to the hallway and I was dressed down immediately and told I was never to email Mr DeMarco again that this was her building and that everything fell back on her okay I'm a Rolls person if I'm a teacher I'm in my role there's administrators above me I respect it so moving forward there was a teacher in the classroom next door she has been here for 16 years she had um five children I believe and three or four adults in the room and she was a great lead for me by day two she was like why do I have this assistant teacher with these kids like why don't you have this assistant teacher I said I don't know so I emailed the principal the principal then called me out to the hallway asked who told me to write that email that this is her school and she assigns staff accordingly this continued to such an egregious extent for the whole school year now remember I didn't I do have a privilege I didn't need to work I did this for passion and I didn't need to be treated that way and I endured a lot in those 180 days we went hybrid we came back kids decided to come off of hybrid and come to the classroom it changed the numbers so now we don't have enough room in our building so what classroom has to pack everything up and move across the street to Lamont my classroom during spring break so I pack everything up I go build something beautiful over at Lamont and I needed to take a day off on May 17th May 18th we had a parent observation of a new student and this parent had already called the child study team several times he was a very involved parent so knowing this um whenever I would be absent that principal would bring my students back to the annex with no materials because she didn't trust the staff that I was working with knowing that my students were called back and that this new student needed consistency and that they needed to be in that classroom for the observation the next day I had emailed the principal listen can we just do it like this this is what's going on I received an email back that this principal was very taken back by the way I addressed her I wrapped my brain with that email I showed my husband that email I showed my mentor that email I did not know what this woman was talking about when your classroom was quarantining for covet it had to go virtual well I had these special needs kids who you can't just throw a substitute in with them and expect it to be effective and have me just sit at home so I wrote at that time it was Dr Gallagher an email putting the best interest of the children first like if you ask me that was uh toes on the line email when I was fighting for those children with a superintendent and he understood what I said and allowed me to go virtual with all 11 students to teach them because that's what was needed and that's what was effective the next morning I went back to school I got brought to the office I got dressed down again and I was told at this point to never email her my building principal ever again so now I cannot email the super uh the special education department as per my principal and I'm a rule follower I cannot email now my principal at this time this is a terrible situation so when I add all this up not to mention Bound Brook is really good with Multicultural sensitivity training and I went through a lot of it that year so when all this is happening to just me and I have to look around I felt like I was being discriminated against and I know looking at me that that sounds crazy I know that people who look like me don't really get hurt when they say things like discrimination but I've been doing this since 2006.
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I have brought non-verbal verbal children to verbal I've given them sign I've reduced behaviors guys I'm really good at working with students with autism the people who were my age the people who were my co-workers cried when I left my supervisors at the time had an exit interview with me and I expressed to them I feel like there's discrimination going on I know it sounds crazy but I feel like there's discrimination and they offered at that time for me to open a case and go forward with discrimination one of the biggest things about me is I really am a reflective educator and if I open a case like that I better be really sure that what I feel is the truth and I had to sit and think do I ever want to work again because you're opening up something big right once your name gets out there there's a chance I could never work again and I'm comfortable but I love these children so I sat on it and then the other thing was what if I'm wrong that could really affect someone's livelihood and their life and their reputation so I just sat and I sat for over a year and then the Saturday before school started my phone rang and it was Mr DeMarco from Special Services saying Angela I'm really stuck we have two classrooms that don't have a teacher it is Saturday and school starts on Thursday would you be willing to take a position and I said what's available he said K to 2 a b a in the Lamont Annex Building or lld in a different building even feeling how I felt I'm really good at ABA that's what I know that's what I'm good at that's where I can affect the most children and create the most change so I chose that one I sat with Mrs Snell and I sat with Mr DeMarco and we said this is where we want to go moving forward why would I choose such a thing right if that's how I felt why would I choose that well there's a couple different reasons number one it's not about me and it's not about her I got a call from special services that said at least five children don't have a teacher and I'm good at it she's not going to do my observations this year right I just have to be polite and respectful which I'm really good at I know my role I wanted to be as effective as I could be so I said yes Mr DeMarco then said I just have to clear this with Mrs Fisher I'll call you back he called me back within a couple minutes and said Mrs Fisher didn't have a problem can you start on Tuesday I thought school started Thursday I was like yup you know what yep let me go out get some school clothes got a couple notebooks so now I'm out I spent a couple hundred dollars on school clothes and notebooks excited and then I came to school for the first day and I think five minutes of me being in the cafeteria I was pulled out of the coffee cafeteria and told this isn't going to happen and I said she doesn't want me in her building does she and he said no she doesn't and I said why not and I got a chuckle and I was like I'm a big girl you can tell me why like let me go and grow from it right and then I was told she thinks you think she's a racist and I said well I kind of do I went through this for a year I could go down a laundry list that would make you guys be like what that wasn't the point the point is for these kids right so she's not going to let me in that building would you please do the maternity route leave for the lldk to feel like ah I don't know if I want to work I'm kind of lazy guys I don't know if I really want to work till January right but you need help I don't know the number of kids in that building but you're telling me special needs kits don't have a teacher I'll take it I'll do it I'm introduced to Mrs Clark and you can tell you can just tell with people's energy she did not want to reach out and shake my hand okay whatever I'm imagining things we're on lunch break the lunch break was like almost two hours I live 45 minutes away guys school starts in two days I need to see my classroom is it in boxes what do I have to go shopping for I need to make a list so I drive over to Lafayette the lady at the front desk was confused clearly because this had all just happened in the morning and I said it's Miss Clark here and she said yes Miss Clark comes out and says I can't let you in the building I don't have your paperwork okay this was just from the morning it's 11 or 12 o'clock why would you have my paperwork like is no one concerned that kids start schooling 48 hours and like we don't even know if anything's unpacked so I got out to the car and I call Mr DeMarco back and I say you know what I think I'm gonna go home for today something doesn't feel right like something is off and he's like you know what maybe that would be basketball home I think you're gonna get an email today and write that I'm like oh okay an email all right I just want to read this email from Mrs Snell because I'm a words person and I'm a little confused and just to be clear it was put on the superintendent and the board as to why I don't have this position hi Angela unfortunately there was some miscommunication with respect to the status of the hiring of leave Replacements the leave replacement positions that were discussed today are still being reviewed by the superintendent and ultimately by the Board of Education at this time we have to rescind the verbal offer of employment from this morning we apologize for any inconvenience so I go to Apple track at eight o'clock at night that very day and guess what's available leave replacement cater two ABA teachers September 6th through November 25th so what I would like to know is why why the Board of Ed and the superintendent chose not to hire me I am fully certified I have excellent reviews you can talk to anyone in the Bound Brook School District except for that principle and asked about my character ask about how I had a classroom with a Dominican woman a Jamaican woman an Egyptian Muslim woman myself and there was another and we created such a safe space that we sat together at lunch with our masks on six feet apart and learned culture I learned Spanish I was on like level four of Duolingo I tried so hard with these students in this district and to be told no by two principles and the one wouldn't let me in the building and have it passed off to you guys I really just want to know why you guys chose not to hire me to fill a leave position if there was no teacher because what I do know is that right now the child study team as of that Tuesday when I was here is rotating in if you know anything about students with special needs they need consistency and now the child study team's rotating in three different women however many days a week but guess what guys they all have full caseloads so at what end is going to be short is it going to be the students in the classroom and their programming or is it going to be the legality of the IEPs I can tell you the legality of the IEPs is going to win and those students are going to be shutting the room again and they're going to lose a whole other year of learning because that's just what seems to happen if you don't make any noise so I am hurt for these children like I'll leave here and I'll be fine you know what I'm saying but those kids aren't going to be fine and in June of 2021 I shut up and I walked away because what if I was wrong and they'll just get another teacher I'm not one to make noise but my belly hurts guys noise needs to be made and you all need to know that this is what's happening in your District so you know thank you so much for coming to the meeting tonight and having The Bravery to come out pressure as you might imagine the board of education has specific responsibilities roles that we play we're not involved with the interview with individual staff members we're really acting on the recommendation of the superintendent and administrators I never met him other than he gave an awesome um like wind us up on that first day but I never got to sit with him I was told this issue was brought to him but I can just imagine that's not what you want the day before school starts so you just get going with schools but I was never given that opportunity I was not interviewed for this position I was called at home because I'm capable and I was needed well and I will tell you one of the things that the board of education is responsible for the districts of hiring policies processes and how that stuff actually operates into a committee that evaluates and makes recommendations and we take feedback very seriously so the first thing that I would recommend is we set up time for you to meet with our current superintendent Dr Freeman just to talk through your experience and you know see if there's anything that he can offer by way of explanation and then following that we'll have an opportunity as a body to evaluate the situation where we are and if there are any changes but I want to stress that we really as a body don't have that opportunity unless people bring issues again just want to say thank you for that and you know the courage I know I might never work again you know what I mean uh that's a really scary thing considering how much I do really care you know I think all children I think humans should really care about all children but there's just something about that special needs population where it's like if you want to see me snap you mess with that population and that's what I feel like just happened and the parents don't know do you know what I'm saying and you guys don't know it was put on you guys at this email but I can bet you didn't know that this happened this week so like I said we'll look for Dr Freeman to follow up with you uh we have our name and information I left your email there please do um thank you very much thank you you have no other comments online any questions I'll learn anything for you all right so now unless there are any uh any of the members need to move into a quick Obsession I don't think we have any hip cases uh to discuss and evaluate so without objection we'll Skip and second session tonight and move right to item 16.1 resolve the developer Board of Education approves the resolution as outlined in approval HIV cases under High School but there's nothing there right I apologize we're on 17.
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no there's nothing else so then we are up to 18.1 actually entertainment motions about the second all in favor um
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foreign Community all right thank you everyone for your patience thank you Cameron and team for all these adjustments at a different space I'd like to call this special meeting of the Adams County school district 14 Board of Education to order first on the agenda is roll call Ramona roll call please Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye we're here here sorry sorry would you like me to start as well yes yes please okay Mr Amador here Ms Estrada here Ms Lovato Here Miss Zubia here thank you next on the agenda is approval of candidate to fill a board of education vacancy approval of agenda oh I'm sorry approval of the agenda thank you Ramona may I have a motion to approve the agenda for the September 13 2022 special meeting a second Ramona Rocco please Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato I'm Miss Zubia aye now we're at number two important conceived um oh thank you we need to do interpretation again do you want to do it again yes I'm so sorry I skipped over that sorry I forget that we're starting to restart thank you that's okay thank you madam president Buena is foreign [Music] thank you so much for catching that could you continue okay okay next is a 2.1 approval of candidate to fill Board of Education vacancy um I would like to first start if that's okay and just thank both candidates Lucy thank you so much for stepping up and applying um the same goes to our other Canada although I'm disappointed that we didn't to learn more about him this evening may I have a motion I motion to nominate Lucy to fill the vacancy thank you may I have a second my second all right um any additional discussion in comments no I too would just like to say thank you for stepping up and you know and listening to the responses I was really happy to sorry I was told that they're very sensitive and I shouldn't move them so I do apologize maybe it's just me um so I just I was thinking um Miss Molina for applying and um I was happy to hear her response to some of these questions especially when it comes to really stepping up for the right reasons which is our community and serving our kids and our families and not having any special interests and really being here for being the voice of the families that we represent and that we serve and I guess I the only comment I had on the questions there was one part where I believe you said I believe I'm ready I guess my question is I hope you're ready not just believe you're ready I hope you are ready um so that would be my my only thing and and um just like you madam president uh kind of disappointed we didn't get to hear from our other candidate so thank you any other comments um I'll quickly add again because I did the intro but I didn't get to make an actual comment um Lucy I just I want to commend you for your your community engagement I um every meeting every Community anything any school board thing that has gone on since I could remember I've always relied on you being there and being the voice for our community so thank you for stepping up for this I'll call it an opportunity it's it's a lot of work but I I look forward to it um without any additional comments uh roll call Romano please Mr alidor aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye Ms Zubia aye congratulations uh Lucy will you please join me at the podium so that we can get you sworn in and thank you [Music] foreign Lucy please raise your right hand um and repeat after me I state your name Molina having been duly appointed as a director of the Board of Education have been Dooley appointment to the board of directors of Education of Adams County school district 14 of Adams 14 oh sorry about Adams 14 district I'm nervous no that's okay do solemnly do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will Faithfully perform that I will Faithfully perform the duties of the office the duties of the office of School director of School director as required by law as required by law and will support the Constitution of the United States and will support the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the state of Colorado the constitution of the state of Colorado and the laws made pursuant thereto and the laws made pursuant thereto thank you congratulations again [Applause] write your name right there please okay thank you this is your um certificate of appointment I can change it if you'd like with your um legal name okay so okay um so I will keep all of these and um make copies for you and get them notarized okay okay so this is your Affidavit of School director candidate for appointment on qualifications for office so if you could complete that for me thank you this is what you just recited this is your Affidavit of um confidentiality mm-hmm I would put your name right here great congratulations thank you so much [Applause] Lucy you're welcome to make any comments um before we move on to the next um to adjourn basically but thank you and welcome uh I am very humbled um and I love you that's all I want to say to my community uh thank you so much for this opportunity um and uh which is thank you so much I will do everything in my knowledge and supporting my board and serving our community thank you I want to cry [Applause] thank you so much you're welcome to take a seat yeah I'm sorry oh yay important stuff you know that brings us to our final agenda item um adjournment this concludes our agenda for this evening may I have a motion to adjourn so moved thank you may I have a second [Laughter] yes Ramona roll call please Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada I Ms Lovato aye Ms Molina aye Ms Zubia aye thank you that concludes our meeting have a good night everyone
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foreign thank you Cameron um prior to the start of our Forum math uh Lupe to provide the administration interpretation thank you madam president buenos a Los participants is thank you so much good evening [Music] team Board of Education I'm here with my fellow colleagues who I'd like to introduce um I'll leave it up to if you'd like to stand or wave um secretary Maria Zubia Treasurer Janet Estrada and director James Amador our moderator this evening is Joseph Salazar I would like to invite Mr Salazar to continue in our farm thank you president Lovato thank you members of the board Madam superintendent and also members of the community for appearing here in person as well as virtually the board has received two letters of interest for the board vacancy and you will hear from the applicant who is present we thank you for being here this evening and we thank the community that is here in the audience this meeting is being videotaped and will broadcast on our local channel 22 so we ask that you refrain from talking while our applicants are speaking and that you turn off your cell phones or place them on silent mode as you heard earlier we do have interpretation available tonight is the final step in the process to fill the remaining time until the November 2023 election of the vacancy left by Ramona Lewis it's an impos an important process to make sure we have the best person possible representing our students parents and community and your engagement is crucial to that process we are providing cards so you so we may select a few questions from the audience to ask prior to the end of the form if time permits please turn these into the secretary to the board Ramona Lewis Ramona please stand and if if you didn't get a card they're out in the um entryway if somebody could maybe get them and pass them out to people that would be great thank you the board provided the applicants with five questions to frame their remarks this evening they are number one well would you intend your major contributions to be as an Adams 14 board member number two what do you see as the primary work of the Board of Education number three what is the school board members role and responsibility how does that role differ from the role the superintendent or Administration number four can you please describe your understanding of the current situation between Adams County school district 14 and the Colorado State Board of Education as well as accountability actions overall five what is your definition of equity and how does it apply to Adams 14.
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good evening everyone thank you for allowing us to be a few minutes late we're working harder to get better about being on time welcome to the september 13th board of education meeting we will begin with instructions for interpretation for our spanish speaking audience thank you madam president thank you so much i like to call the meeting of the adams school district board of education to order please join me as we stand for the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence during the moment of silence i'd like to ask that we remember an unsung hero in our community lost last november leroy quintana leroy dedicated so much of himself to support our adams 14 students and the entire community his legacy a legacy his family members continue to carry on thank you i pledge of the allegiance states of america into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay thanks connie all right um next on the agenda is roll call uh romano would you roll call please mr amador here ms estrada here ms lovato here miss zubia here thank you next on the agenda we have 2.5 2.6 2.7 approval of the minutes of august 9th august 23rd and august 29th of 2022 uh may i have a motion to approve the minutes a motion to approve thank you and second second thank you uh ramona roll call please mr amador aye ms estrada aye ms lovato aye ms zubia aye thank you that is approved unanimously um next on the agenda is 2.8 approval of the agenda may i have a motion to approve the agenda so moved oh second thank you romano real call please mr amador aye ms estrada aye ms lovato aye ms zubia aye thank you next on the agenda is celebrations and recognitions this evening we have the classified staff recognition dr lyria would you please introduce us to the staff we're recognizing this evening yes madam president thank you members of the board members of the public adams14 has a group of talented animation employees who go above and beyond for our students every day and we have been with the support of our partner sanchor we have been providing these recognitions it's a monetary token of the work they do and we want to pre to to say thank you and say how much we appreciate the work that every single employee does for our students we're going to be recognizing three classified individuals today the first one is claudia marcias from central elementary she's a building engineer and i do not know i cannot see very well the public with the light in my face but if claudia is here if he can come up i don't think she's here um claudia is an exceptional employee who requires no supervision and this is what uh her peers and colleagues at the school say no supervision to fulfill her responsibilities she manages her time well and works every minute of every single day although she's always busy claudia will always greet you with a warm welcome and her great and a great smile so claudia thank you i hope you're listening to us and watching us uh virtually but we want to say that we thank your we thank you for your for your work we also have laura pasillas from alsup elementary school she is an instructional paraprofessional not sure if lauda is here i can see somebody moving up there lauda come up here um laura she said also as i said in a instructional paraprofessional and what her colleagues and peers have to say is you can always count on laura to have a smile on her face laura and kurt encourages our students to do their very best and supports them along the way lada goes out of her way to identify the students that she's working with that need additional support she will work with those students on her own time just to ensure they're getting all the help they can get so lauda thank you very much we're going to ask you to come up here in a minute so that we can take a picture uh with you and the and the board and we also have um violeta leyva from hansen elementary school she's also a paraprofessional i want to i don't know if she's here today in violeta it's a great addition to a professional team is what her peers say she always communicates and adapts very quickly and is always happy and eager to help anyone so thank you very much so miss laura if you want to come up and if you do not mind taking a picture with her hello on stage thank you madam president oh thank you that was wonderful thank you thank you dr lydia are there any comments from our fellow board member from my fellow board members sorry no i just uh i would like to say thank you to the three folks that were recognized but also to all the rest of the staff that is working just as hard to and worked just as hard to make this school years um you know the start of the school year go so we're just very appreciative of everybody's work so thank you i agree congratulations and thank you so much great thank you next on the agendas 3.2 hispanic heritage month proclamation secretary zubia would you please write the proclamation yes thank you so a proclamation for his hispanic heritage month september 15 through october 15 of 2022 whereas national hispanic heritage month is observed each year from september 15 through october 15 to celebrate the histories cultures and contributions of americans whose ancestors came from spain mexico the caribbean and central and south america whereas the celebration originally began as a week-long celebration in 1968 until it was expanded by president ronald reagan in 1988 to cover a third to cover 30 days whereas september 15th was chosen as the beginning of hispanic heritage month because it is the anniversary of the independence of five latin american countries costa rica el salvador guatemala honduras and nicaragua that all declared independence in 1821 whereas the theme of this year is unido's inclusivity for a stronger nation reinforcing the need for diverse voices and perspectives to be welcomed in any decision-making process thereby building a stronger community and a stronger nation whereas the hispanic and latinx community compromises the largest minority group in the united states and represents 87 percent of adams county school district 14's total population whereas members of the hispanic community have made countless contributions to the united states economy and culture serving in all branches of the armed forces as the dedicated public servants and as leaders in education healthcare business and entrepreneurship and other professions whereas adams county school district 14 has an important role in educating students and the larger community about the diversity of the hispanic and latinx communities and their contributions to the state of colorado and the united states of america whereas adams 14 schools honor and preserve the linguistic and cultural assets of students through bilingual and dual language instruction and are still a bi-literacy program as well as honoring the backgrounds of our students from spanish-speaking households therefore be it resolved that the adams 14 board of education is committed to highlighting the rich diversity of peoples and histories within the hispanic and latinx communities via further resolved one recognizes inclusion as a core value at of adams 14 and the school board has a responsibility to oppose the historical system systematic racism towards hispanic and latin next people in colorado and two invites all members of our community to join in celebrating our hispanic and latin next students and families approved this 13th day of september 2022.
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orsky I am chair of the Ann Arbor energy Commission um it is 602 pm and I'm calling this meeting to order I am participating from my home here in Ann Arbor Michigan um welcome to the September 13th 2020 electronic meeting of the energy Commission this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covid-19 virus we will conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings Commissioners during the roll call please indicate your current location during the meeting please remain on camera just as you would be visible during in-person meetings also mute your microphone when not speaking public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities one at the beginning and one at the end of the meeting please call one of the following toll-free numbers 877-853-5247 or 888 -788-0099 and enter the meeting ID number nine five six eight seven one eight seven eight seven six on your phone this information is also available on the published agenda on the Public Notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on the CTN Channel 16 and 18t channel 99 as well as online at a2gov dot org backslash watch CTN Missy would you be able to read the land acknowledgment absolutely chair Mercy I acknowledge that the land the city of Ann Arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe and Wyandotte peoples I further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the United States on lands obtained generally generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples The Taking of this land was formalized by the Treaty of Detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can Empower us and our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals foreign thank you very much and would you please conduct the Roll Call absolutely just a reminder if Commissioners could follow tremorski's very excellent example which we'll do again and state where you're calling from that would be great uh chair mersky present calling from Ann Arbor Vice chair Colvin Garcia president I'm calling from um Ann Arbor oh I'm sorry a panelist in the waiting room thank you very much uh commissioner McCumber uh present and joining from my home in Ann Arbor commissioner Levin present uh for my home in Ann Arbor commissioner McCoy here and in Ann Arbor commissioner Kerber I'm here and in Ann Arbor commissioner Smith Leave absent commissioner overpeck commissioner Conan president and calling from Ann Arbor great commissioner zitelman present in Ann Arbor Michigan excellence greetings everyone um thanks for joining us um Kendall I think this is your first meeting correct yes yes this is I missed the first and then I think uh last month was canceled so right I'm going to put you on the spot and ask you to introduce yourself quickly to the rest of the commission um and um depending on people's appetite for doing so maybe we'll go quickly and have people introduce themselves and give a two-sentence introduction okay great um I am a junior studying at the University of Michigan um my major is pipe so the environment and I have a minor in public policy um in addition to school though I'm also working part-time as like an environmental consultant and I'm doing that uh virtually from my apartment which is um definitely a lot for this school year but I am excited to do so sure Mercy I apologize to go backwards I forgot our council members ah you did I did yeah I'm smiling so go ahead and yeah council member Briggs yes here in Ann Arbor council member radina so here in Ann Arbor no you definitely have a quorum excellent good catch uh so welcome Kendall great to have you on board um real quickly I'll introduce myself so you know I'm chair I'm retired after a career in Industry uh I um am real active in a number of different um environmental kinds of activities and advocacy I'm also on the board of uh non-profit and um have was born and raised in Ann Arbor and glad to be back I moved back in 2015.
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chamber as well as chris clarke so she will probably join us in a little bit but thank you for um being here and thank you to you candidates for participating in this and we know that running for office is an extremely brave but very important role here in our community so i just want to thank each and every one of you first earlier this evening the candidates did draw for numbers hence that's why you see them in the order that they are um there are five candidates that are running one candidate could not be with us this evening due to a prior commitment so we actually sat down with her and um actually went over the questions and we recorded her live answering that so you're gonna get to see it unedited and so you're going to get to see that i haven't even watched the full thing in the entirety so you'll get to see that live here tonight so i just want to make sure that you knew that the chandler chamber of commerce along with the gilbert chamber and the queen creek chambers we are business organizations but i know especially i can speak on behalf of chandler but we really view education as an economic development tool and how critical that is here as we continue to move forward as a city and so we are looking for those candidates not only that are education advocates that are also business advocates because it has to be that collaboration in order for us to move forward as a community the chandler chamber represents about 170 000 employees here within the city of chandler and we are the third largest chamber in the state i want to also acknowledge chandler unified school district and thank them for the use of this facility as well as being able to host it here because this is really important to our business community i also wanted to thank all of you that are joining us online tonight i know that we had well over almost 100 people that registered online that are watching as well so this is really important tonight's recording will also be available you can it's currently on the chandler unified school district youtube channel as well as the chandler chamber channel as well this debate is a civil opportunity for our candidates to discuss their ideas and philosophies on school governments and governance and current issues that are happening we have made every means to accommodate all of the candidates and as i mentioned before about mary lou so i didn't want to leave her out as well so it is my pleasure though to move forward and introduce today's moderator and i want to welcome lisa simpson and lisa will be our moderator lisa is with the arizona newspaper association and she joined them in april of 2021 she is proud to help her industry innovate and remain a vital part of democracy and a trusted source for innovation information for future generations lisa has over 20 years of experience yes she started when she was 10 and she has held many positions with many of the newspapers such as the arizona capitol times the arizona republic the east valley tribune and las vost publishing so she studied engineering at the colorado school of mines her family leads her needs her and led her to an early career here in arizona she was in the automotive industry product design and telecom industries she moved with her husband in 1995 and began her career in the newspaper industry they chose arizona because of the outdoor activities that they so love she's an avid sports fan and loves the local teams and loves politics even more so so please put your hands together and welcome lisa simpson [Applause] thank you terry i'm excited to be here so hello and good evening to everybody as terry said my name is lisa simpson i do not have a brother named bart just in case you were curious i am the executive director for the arizona newspapers association we have over 83 newspapers in the state of arizona and i'm pleased to be here this evening to moderate this event i want to thank all of you for coming i want to thank the channelified you the chandler unified school district um for hosting this for us um and to thank the candidates for making time out of their busy schedule to come and to participate in this um it's important to discuss these these relevant issues to the chandler education community once again tonight's program is also being hosted by chandler unified school district and we want to thank them for their support and for making this evening happen and for doing all the technology for us so next i would like to introduce you to the cusd governing board candidates in alphabetical order we have laura bruner who's the incumbent we have mary lou estes and once again mary lou was unavailable to come so we did do the pre-recorded and i'll remind you as we go through she did draw a number so you guys will see her responses as we go through some of the questions charlotte gala curt roars and patty serrano [Applause] okay so the candidates did draw numbers um so we're going to start in this order we'll have mary lou charlotte kurt laura and patty so just to go over the rules for tonight the debate committee has created questions that are non-biased and education focused for the purpose of defining the candidates views on school governance and the role in the education community in answering candidates need to provide brief and succinct responses so that the maximum amount of questions can be asked this debate is a civil opportunity for candidates to discuss their ideas and philosophy on school governance and current issues that pertain to this topic in order to fully clarify the candidates views on specific issues we ask that general information about a candidate's platform be laid out in their opening statement each candidate will have two minutes for their opening statements to use as they wish a time to share basic foundational views for their campaign as well as their specific engagement with with the district candidates will provide a response to questions for a maximum of two minutes and then the comments and rebuttals will be allowed for up to one minute each our timer angie waver boards angie is seated in the front row she has a 30 second board and a thank you board so that we can all see and try to stay on time finally in order for us to better evaluate the candidate's position we ask that the audience remain respectful during the debate outbursts displaying of signs comments and any other types of disruptive behavior during the debate will not be allowed and if you engage in those you will be asked to leave so if everybody's ready we're going to get started with the program so we're going to begin with the opening statements and as a reminder you each get two minutes to do your opening statement so mary lou without even being here drew first so we will play mary lou's recording for accommodating me and the scheduling conflict um i decided to run because um i just felt that the teachers in cusd needed a voice and the students need a voice it's just you know kind of uncertain times right now for them and i am a reformer chandler teacher i taught 21 years for the district in three different schools um elementary schools i taught at uh galveston bologna and national elementary um first second and fourth grade and i just um thought that i needed to just get in there and you know speak for the teachers and speak for the kids and and also for the parents too because i know there's some you know parents are kind of questioning what's going on in the classrooms and things like that so i just felt that this was a time and i'm not you know i just wanted to do it i apologize for the video um we do have this um on here and we'll get it set up for the next one so that you can physically see mary lou also on our cheaper website we have each of the candidates their written statements as well as their video statements on there for your future viewing and we'll make sure that we get this going for the next round so let's go ahead and is that all mary lou had to say that is all that okay i had to say yes all right charlotte you have two minutes hello my name is charlotte gala and i'm running for the chandler school board my husband and i have lived in chandler since 2005 and we have four children in eighth grade sixth grade second grade in kindergarten all in chandler schools when i left the corporate world in 2013 to focus on my expanding family i realized really quickly that i missed adult conversation so i jumped head first into volunteering at my kids schools i've been room mom pto secretary pto president and fundraising chairperson i really hit my groove with fundraising so that's where i spend most of my time and last year we wrapped up our fifth annual checkathon fundraiser raising a hundred thousand dollars in-house at a two percent budget with a school with less than 500 children so i know how to get a good team together and get a crowd excited now that my baby is in kindergarten i want to give back to our community i now have the time to serve and i want to do just that i'm a creative problem solver and i really believe in our school district we have the top three elementary schools in the state with knox weinberg and cta independence and we have those top three schools because our district isn't afraid of being innovative those are three of our magnet schools and i want to be a part of that direction of our school district to keep that innovation going i'm running because i love our children of our district i love our teachers of our district and uh i have a servant's heart so i'm charlotte gala my website is charlotte for chandler.com and i look forward to serving you thank you charlotte all right kurt you're next good evening and welcome uh first i'd like to uh express our appreciation for the chandler chamber the gilbert chamber and the queen chamber for giving us this opportunity to speak to you tonight my name is kurt rowlers i'm a parent in this district i'm involved with the district for many years 15 years on the budget committee as well i moved here in 1995 there was three kids in the district all who went on to college first one just graduated from college in may and has a job by the way so i'm appreciative of the district for the good education that they got here i'm also involved with the chandler chamber public policy committee been involved with them in a number of years particularly in the education and workforce development areas my education um i have a graduate degree in chemistry which led to a technical career and then an mba in finance which led to an executive career after that i spent 18 years in the high tech industry working executive positions uh traveling all over the world working with people from many many different cultures so i was a substitute teacher in cusd so i was able to get in the classrooms to see some things that were going on there and volunteer with icann helping kids with homework after school and i coached student athletes for quite some time five things i want to work on catching up and learning loss from recent school closures scores just came out and they are bad i think it's where we really need to work improving student retention we're losing students in the district improving staff retention and then one thing i really want to work on and talk about tonight is introducing a heavier emphasis on career and technical education and workforce development for kids to be able to find jobs after they graduate from the district thank you thank you kurt now laura it's your turn um i'd also like to thank the chamber for all the hard work of planning this event and i totally appreciate all the folks that have been supporting education in our community for many years it makes chandler what it is today i'm laura and i'm a parent and national award-winning educator who has dedicated my life to serving children while earning my degree at rutgers i volunteered at a school for children with autism and at an evening school teaching english to english language learners and then i substitu substitute taught in local schools after graduating with honors i worked with students who faced intellectual and learning challenges for 13 years and since 2005 i've been teaching psychology to high school students this year i teach in the morning and i spend my afternoons working on educator retention and engagement i have served on numerous local and statewide committees for education i've developed and sponsored mental health clubs for students i've presented at national education conferences i've developed retention programs for teachers and of course i currently serve as a member of the governing board of this amazing school district thank you for having us thank you and now on to patty good afternoon everyone my name is fatih serrano and i am your chandler unified school district governing board candidate from our district for our district a special thank you of course to our chambers of commerce and sponsors for highlighting the importance of this election and creating this space to better inform our community it's no coincidence that chandler's chamber of commerce is the third largest in the state just as cusd is the third largest school district in our state this is critical what we're doing here tonight is important and i thank you to each of you here in person and those watching with us online for showing up we show up because we care and have a vested interest in what happens within our schools here in cusd that is one of the reasons i'm here tonight as your candidate for cusd governing board this decision is absolutely personal to me i'm a proud public school cusd mom my son's been in the district for over nine years since kindergarten i'm a proud cusd alum product of our schools i graduated from the second graduating class of hamilton high school in 2001 when it was brand new i hear that's not the case now we have newer high schools and my family is absolutely rooted and invested in this district i have family that has taught here for over 24 years i have family that has played a role in our staff and all of the children in my local family have gone through cusd schools in fact i have the honor of participating in our cusd's i am chandler campaign as a cusd mom alum and community member i have distinct ties to our district as a mom i get it and am ready to bring representation to cusd that prioritizes the best whole child education that we can offer in all of our schools north and south of the 202 for all of our students educators staff and community at large thank you thank you all right we're now going to move on to the question as a reminder um for if you're the candidate with your question you get two minutes to answer then each candidate will have one minute to comment or rebut after that okay so charlotte you have the first question what can be done to improve student achievement and ensure everyone who graduates graduates is either work or higher education ready so our goal as a district when our children graduate is to have them ready for enrollment enlistment entrepreneurship or employment and so then what does that look like as a district it means we have to focus on getting them college ready which as a district i do feel we do a very good job at getting children college ready but we have to understand not all children are on the college path so one thing we must do is expand our technical education programs our chandler technical education that's something that i hear a lot about on our study sessions and our board meetings that needs to continue to expand so that we have people ready to go out into the workforce right away so that would be a focus for me on the board would be to extend that technical education we also have to make sure that our children are becoming critical thinkers the problem-based learning that we've implemented at several of our schools should be a model for our other schools we have this at our gifted schools we don't have it at our other schools i don't believe this is just a model for gifted children problem-based learning could get the kids at our title one schools so excited about and invested in their education and i understand that it will be very different than what it's looked like in the past but it's something we have to look at because if we can get kids excited about learning and excited to go to school then they become lifelong learners and a lifelong learner is somebody who is going to go out into the workforce and be a good employee so expanding that problem-based learning curriculum as well as expanding our chandler technical education curriculum would be how i would go about that thank you charlotte uh kurt do you have anything to add or say you have you response or original comments you have one minute all right this is something that i really would like to work on very strongly i think alluded to my original comments but there has to be a pathway for kids out of school when i was substitute teaching i was in some classes talked to some of the seniors they had a look of absolute fear in their eyes this is in may they're about to graduate and it's the end of the road and they do not know what they're going to do it's a very real thing there are four pathways one is the college track which the district does push quite a bit but another one is the trade schools another one's technical certificate programs and everyone's a military which has some of the best training for kids coming out of school available so thank you laura um i think the core of what we do in education is to prepare students for their future that future is absolutely including academics they need to learn to read they need to learn to solve problems related to mathematical and scientific and social issues they need to learn to communicate well both in writing and you know interacting one-on-one and with larger groups we also want to build character traits in our students financial literacy we want them to be able to use technology efficiently and understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens this is a tall order for schools and the research shows that the number one way to do this is to hire the best teachers they make the most the greatest impact on our students and we need to create programs and find ways to retain the excellent teachers that we already have through things like stay interviews and my time is up thank you thank you and pati hi there so i think this starts by what we're literally doing here tonight strategically coordinating with our chamber and other stakeholders to continue to offer and expand on opportunities a great example is our successful partnership and relationship in regards to ctes and what we do with evit we should grow those type of partnerships and that would look like promoting the option of career and technical education it would look like working with our local businesses to include ctes alongside them and internships and finally i believe it's critical in addressing what's to come by the year 2030 arizona will be a minority majority state we have to ask ourselves are we directly addressing that preparing for it and doing what's right to prepare our students knowing that's inevitable okay thank you very much now we're going to move on to the second last couple of years with the pandemic you know just gorge where they took a dive on that because the you know the in-person learning is so much more efficient and teachers are not trained to do online teaching as well and so just that the connection with the students in in the classroom is just so important and i just felt as far as the improvement how we can get them back up to speed is boy that's just you know have summer schools or or um after school programs but you know it just this was a difficult time for the students and the teachers and of course the parents as well because they have to you know watch the kids but to get them up to speed it's just you know i think it just is going to take time and a lot of i i really don't have an answer once you know if i'm elected on the board we can come up with a program and um have some ideas from you know all businesses and schools to you know maybe help but exacerbate the problem right now so sorry i forgot about mary lou okay now we're going to go on to question number two kurt what do you think needs to be done for school safety and what can a governing board member do to keep staff and students safe yeah this is probably the scariest thing for for parents and for teachers as well concerning some of the stuff that have happened i know that after one tragedy they had in the east coast the district did respond and put up fencing around every school in the district at a substantial expense okay and they felt they needed to do that one never was in the budget they used the reserve funding for that i have visited some of the schools and they're tightening up that as as well with the sally port concept but i really liked having the sros and schools these are police offices that are paid for by the district and the city to make sure that we have somebody there in case of a very difficult situation we have a new security chief here who's uh ex-pd if we've met him i think he's great and i think we'll probably continue to work on a lot of the safety things that that we need to work on the other thing that really concerns me now is the drug problem and i don't think we talk about this enough we've all seen the pictures of the candy colored fentanyl pills those are coming in the schools and we're going to start losing some kids if we don't jump on this right away so what i hate to say it but you probably need some devotion programs for kids that are caught and to really crack down anybody dealing drugs in school should be dealt with very very harshly that's the other safety concern that we have to worry about thank you laura do you have comments yes thank you um safety has many facets to it for our students one of them of course is physical safety of the place where they go every day and yes we have a new director of safety who has been looking and meeting with actually lots of community partners the police department and lots of folks to make sure that we are meeting all the needs for physical safety including for example things like making sure the fencing is secure the entryways locking of doors those kinds of things but there's other aspects to safety as well one includes school resource officers who can be a great asset to the community if you choose the right people to be those resource officers they need to have want to develop a relationship with our students in a positive way where where they can interact with a police officer and feel comfortable with that person and not intimidated by them and we also need to look at social emotional learning the number two way our students are dying in our junior highs and high schools is by suicide and we need to make sure we have a comprehensive plan that's evidence-based and community-based thank you party well as a parent here in our district it's we all want to keep our school community safe that's not a question here i think in regards to sros i think as a school board member it is my responsibility to make sure that we're paying attention to the financial aspect to this and what we already know um i didn't say this in my introduction but i come from an a background in evidence-based research i work in academic research at one of our public our largest public state universities and so i am always following the data and i'm sorry to share but the reality is that to date there exists no evidence that funding sros in our schools makes a difference in keeping our school campuses safe that evidence does not exist we need to follow what evidence does exist and we know that investing in school counselors and social workers really does make a difference if we look at the data aces have gone down we need to pay attention to that okay thank you did you want to play mariolino i know there are this is of a touchy subject you know actually because i know some parents you know are okay with sros and police on campus and some parents are not they just feel that you know that's with the police presence the kids aren't comfortable i think um that right now even when i was teaching they had a you know there's protocol in place for the lockdowns and what the kids are very i mean i don't want to say well trained but they know the protocol and they know what to do when you know there's uh emergency drill or whatever but as far as i think if the board decided to or chandler pd you know got more police presence as a rules or whatever on campus the one thing i want to make sure is that they the officers are very well trained for to know the students it's you know we've had some uh i'm sure episodes where they just don't have the connection or they you know um kids are kids and teenagers especially they're you know they have their own um personality and that i just think that the the sros and the police need to be trained to know be a little more cognizant of the teenagers and all the kids all right on to question number three oh i'm sorry see i'm always forgetting somebody all right charlotte your turn so there's multiple ways to address school safety at school sros being one of them training for our staff on what an at-risk child looks like as well also more parent education for the parents in our community our kids have been through a really rough two years parents need some information on what it looks like when their child is struggling we also need to address our student mental health issues it's not students with good mental health that are creating some school safety issues and we can look to set up a satellite center similar to the care center in the southern part of our district and partner with either not my kid or i can or something like that and again so that will happen resources that the parents can access for their children to help them with their mental health okay did you want to rebut the other question the school safety question or was that your okay because the next question is is under youth mental health all right so sorry about that okay laura this one starts with you youth mental health is an important issue for school administrations and state and local governments what can you do as a governing board member to support these types of programs students staffs and parent thank you for the question we know that over the last decade this has truly become a crisis it's always been an issue for students but it's an increasingly prevalent one unfortunately um and and a lot of attention is given to suicides and certainly there should be and that is a big piece of our mental health program but it also should address um an entire comprehensive plan with the community we need to have our government partners our non-profits and our specialists in the field out in our community partnering with us to this because the school district does not have the resources to meet all the needs of our students and as charlotte mentioned earlier part of that also is the parent education piece and so we want to make sure that we access parks and recreation and the city and the school district to reach as many parents as possible on how to know the signs of you know when your child needs counseling hopefully way before they ever get to the point where they're contemplating ending their lives another element of the social emotional learning is how to interact with each other how to develop relationships which can be a preventative intervention that we can do with students to help them make connections with others and have those social supports that are so vital another piece of the mental health process is that currently i've been working for the last six months or so with multiple folks trying to get this collective way of looking at mental health and it's an issue because to be honest there has been some resistance in the community to talking about it and to working on it and we and we are taking the lead in chandler to try to pull everyone together and we are bringing in a national expert hopefully this will happen in the next month or so where we have multiple people from different groups coming in and contributing to the plan thank you thank you pati well i think we need to start by listening it's that simple we need to do a better job listening to those directly impacted first and i just mentioned the acronym asus in my previous previous comment and i wanted to make sure i defined that those are adverse childhood events that have gone up over the past years cusd has lost students in the last year as many of you are aware to death by suicide clearly we have a problem but one of our problems is our lack of listening to those directly impacted like our students so my plan is to make space for those students listen to them not just at school board meetings but in a meaningful way to carry discussion and dialogue as they know their situation best we need to recognize our students who come here to advocate for their needs and not just the experts our students are their own experts in their own lives thank you are we ready for mary lou cusd has put in place quite a few programs right now so um and they have i think 92 counselors and 21 social workers throughout the district and i think they have put you know quite a bit of money into those programs and they have had other entities come in to to help with the youth mental health issues and i think it's a good start of what they're doing but we need to find out why and talk to the kids and have something you know where they have a safe zone to go in and you know maybe talk to a counselor and just feel like you know or have a group of students that can meet in a you know a club i know they do have a student club but i think they need to feel comfortable enough to be able to talk to someone and whether it be a counselor and a teacher and i know some parents don't feel that you know that is that they don't want their child to talk to teachers but i feel that teachers have that okay charlotte sorry i thought you'd read my mind earlier on the other question so so as i mentioned earlier youth mental health is important for school safety but it's also important to create better learners happy kids equal better learners so um as i mentioned um you know we we need some parent education offerings so that the parents can learn the risk signs but also learn how to listen to their children you know my my kids tell me they feel like a lot of the adults in their lives just aren't listening to them and sometimes we just need to step back a little and get a reminder from a third party on on how best to uh create that active listening environment i'd also advocate for a youth mental health commission so that we could again listen to our students and what their needs are and as i mentioned create a satellite center in the southern part of our district somewhat like the care center and have it as a place for children to go for the parents to take them there to access those mental health services thank you and kurt one thing i'd really like to understand about this is the causes i mean just treating symptoms is one thing but treating the causes will actually start to impact the problem kids are under so much more social pressure now than they ever had been before and part of this may be because a lot of political agendas are being driven through the education system that parents in particular are not real happy with so the second part of this is parents have to be involved you can't hide these things from parents and try to treat the kid yourself it has to be a joint effort between it now you know there was a presentation here a few weeks ago and they talked about that uh extensively here most of the programs are based with the county health department so we need to make it take advantage of the programs that are available instead of trying to reinvent the wheel here in chandler there is a lot of resources available with the county and let's use those thank you okay now we're going to start on the next question pathy you can start this one off for us this past arizona legislative session had a large number of education and school bills that became law which bill gave you the most concern and how will you handle the implementation as a board member well i hope we are all somewhat familiar with the aggregates expenditure limit it is not a new law but and we waited until the very last minute at the end of this legislative session to approve uh passing the cap on that limit basically there's a limit to the budget that is handed down from the state to our school districts we were put in a very very heated situation this last spring with the threat of them not lifting that cap what that would have resulted in is us not being able to possibly finish the school year in other school districts i do applaud cusd because we have reservation funds that would have met the need for us to finish the school year but we have to address all of our students throughout the state and be good neighbors i think it's extremely important to advocate for repealing this limit and that is something that i'm really looking forward being done in this new legislative session and i hope people join the advocacy that we're doing throughout our pro-education organizations it's critical that we repeal this limit so that we don't find ourselves in this situation again and that we can keep our reservations as they're needed our schools need to be properly funded and it is incumbent on our district boards to advocate for that funding in order to move our state students forward together again i'm a proud public school mom advocate and i have been involved for many years addressing these issues on the state level thank you do you want to okay here we go i think the one that concerns me the most is the funding and the ael the aggregate expenditure limit because that is going to happen year after year after year until the legislature or the constitution is amended because i just get a fear that this is going to occur like i said year after year and we need to do something because once you give a district x amount of dollars they're planning their budget around those x amount of dollars and then towards the end of the year it's like oops no you can't have that eight million dollars that we told you you could have so um something needs to be done and i think that is a very important um whether it be a bill i know uh representative pollock introduced a bill to extend that um ael for one year but i like i said i fear that this is going to occur every year thank you charlotte yes and i'll respond to the aggregate expenditure limit um so the aggregate expenditure limit is a taxpayer protection that was passed in the 1980s and um i don't disagree that it is very difficult for the districts to be given a budget and then not have access to that budget if it exceeds the aggregate expenditure limit but what i would advocate for would be fixing the limit so excluding the prop 301 money as it used to be but then wasn't upon renewal and then updating the calculation to be more reflective of our times that way the state legislature can then give a budget that falls within the aggregate expenditure limit because it is it is untenable for the district to be given a budget and then lucy with the football have it taken away but we cannot totally abandon that taxpayer protection either we need to fix the limit thank you kurt yeah the one i was most interested in was that there were finally some restrictions put in on crt type doctrine in the schools now yeah i know it's only taught in law schools and la but you know if he walks like a duck and talks like a duck it's probably a duck so judging kids based on their race and then separating the injured groups and calling one oppressed and one oppressor that needs to stop their kids and i can tell you being in schools they don't really care about this so there are a couple things in there holding kids responsible because of the race for things that happened decades ago or even centuries ago you know holding kids morally responsible for things that other people do in the race we shouldn't be judging kids this way let them be kids and i'm really glad the legislator finally got this right thank you all right and laura um so the question was which bills give us the most concern and honestly there's a lot to choose from i'm not going to lie and so i'm not going to go into the aggregate expenditure limit because we've talked a lot about that that is certainly a concern as well as other means by which they are trying to remove funding from our district schools um those are huge concerns for us um but i'll also talk a little bit about some of the other things that might be smaller issues but have a great impact on our ability to hold on to our excellent educators there have been multiple bills that have been proposed not just this year but the last few years where we lower the standards for teachers for them to become you know an educator of our children in the classroom and in addition we are questioning every word and every activity that our teachers do and if you don't think that impacts people and what they do every day you are being very naive people do not feel like they're supported by the community in the classroom because they feel like they're targets and they're afraid and i think we need to look at that again and explore how we can [Music] support our teachers not undermine them thank you okay we're going to move on to question number five sorry the way it's set up is you get to do oh yeah who started no you started it right sorry yep nope you started it so if you want to wrap something up in your closing remarks you'll you'll have a chance then but no you started off with you started off with the two minutes so yeah okay so question number five um we'll start with mary lou and the question is do you support programming that includes diversity equity and inclusion and social and emotional learning and cusd chandler go ahead and finish i'm sorry so once again the question is do you support programming that includes diversity equity and inclusion and social and emotional learning in cusd why or why not i do support the diversity and social emotional learning in chandler because it's such a very diverse community we have um the large hispanic community we have the high school kids that feel that they're not being heard whether it's the lgbtq community um and i feel that there's programs out there and i think we just need to work and um on um expanding the programs for the um the diverse population that chandler you know has i mean it is a very diverse community okay charlotte and that's a loaded question but exactly but i will say um i support open honest and direct communication uh at all levels so um you know for our k through six children i think that the best social emotional learning happens through free play i mean i i even had someone tell me once when i was putting my kindergartner on the bus the best social skills classes the bus you know so um so i definitely support social emotional learning in that aspect when it comes into your middle school and high school we have to foster a community where children can have that open honest and direct dialogue and have those difficult conversations so um that is the community that i would foster in our district thank you kurt yeah regarding sel i mean people need to understand it's now a state statute that we have to have this in our curriculum there's not a lot of detail about how it's supposed to manifest itself but i would say this i think the goal should be to be as a political as possible as we address these things this has to be about character and how people treat each other and being in the schools of the kids they really didn't care about race they cared about how people behave towards them that's i think what the real focus needs to be and maybe pull back some from some of the other things that we've done here um some people think we should look at everything through the lens of racism no we don't no we don't we should look at things to the way that people treat each other in their daily lives thank you thank you kurt laura i think the two core questions when we're looking at diversity equity and inclusion all three of those are that we have to look at the curriculum the materials that we are providing our students and do they reflect those who are using them is the curriculum helping to support our students so that they're prepared for the global society that they will be becoming a part of if they are not already experiencing people from all around the world they will be probably in their future and then secondly we need to look at do we have staff members that reflect the variety of backgrounds and experiences of our students and one more thing to add on to this is inclusion also includes students who have learning disabilities and have intellectual disabilities and we need to be continually striving to improve their instruction to give them opportunities to be included in the general curriculum as much as possible as well as providing all the needs that are there for our gifted students as well thank you and pati absolutely to all of the above in fact one of the main issues in my campaign is supporting the whole child education which encompasses beyond academics the social and emotional component along with mental health our job here in our district is to produce the best kids we can that means meeting them where they're at and addressing all of their needs in order for them to reach their full potential by recognizing and celebrating our differences and our real history we will better be set up to produce excellence in our students and i'm incredibly proud to be the only woman of color on this ticket and make history by being the first latina elected to see usd school board where 30 percent of our children are latino and over half of our students are now non-white identifying thank you thank you very much okay we're running pretty much on schedule so we're going to wrap up here we have our last question before we get to the closing so i think we should go to the closing um so that we remain on time okay all right so we're going to skip that one and we're going to go right to the closing so um we've heard a lot of really good responses tonight and we're going to give each of the candidates two minutes for their closing remarks we're going to go in reverse order from what we did with the opening remarks so papi you have two minutes for your closing remarks thank you lisa well this has just been wonderful everyone thank you again including the fellow candidates for participating and thank you all for informing yourselves on our important election for chandler unified school district governing board i hope through today's debate or forum that our chamber and community have grown to learn more about me pati serrano my vision my passion and commitment to serving our district in my best capacity every day i drop off my child to school i'm reminded of how much i love our district and rely on our district with my greatest gift my child as parents i understand we just want what's best for all of our children while recognizing those other stakeholders involved like our teachers our staff and community at large including our chamber again as a mom i get it and i'm ready to bring representation to cusd that prioritizes that whole child education so we can offer the best we can at all of our schools as your school board member i will listen starting with our students first we've already started on the right foot by holding a student round table with current students i'm excited to bring their issues to our board and address them i invite you to join us in any capacity and help elect someone from our district for our district you can learn more about me and find out how to get involved at serrano for chandler.com thank you patty laura you get your two minutes now okay thank you as a current school board member and lifelong educator i will continue to rely on evidence-based practices on listening to all stakeholders when making decisions i also wanted to mention a few other issues we didn't have time for in some of our questions just to make sure some of the priorities that i have are shared as well our population is aging and our enrollment is declining and we must do everything we can to try to bring students to our schools through high motivation methods with project-based learning inquiry-based lessons career and technical education allowing teachers to be innovative so that we can increase our graduation rates improve not only our academic but as well all the all the different needs that our students have to be successful in college career and life um all our efforts to increase enrollment once those are exhausted then we need to look at our community to see how we can repurpose our land and buildings in a way where the neighborhoods and the districts benefit there is a retention crisis for our staff we still have a few positions that are open in this district that we can't fill and most other districts are doing even worse than we are we need to create a plan where we gather information from our employees in a proactive way where we have a meet and confer process for non-budgetary issues so that staff feel like people are listening and that they can address the problems before they become too large and insurmountable we need to give teachers autonomy and a voice we need to make their jobs sustainable by providing the resources that they need we need to foster connections with the community to help our the mental health of our students and we need to maximize our funds towards salaries thank you thank you kurt well again i want to thank you all for being here um last couple comments i wanted to make is that i go to a lot of school board meetings and one thing i've noticed over the last several years there is nobody on the board that really represents the rights of parents and the rights and the concerns of parents and that's why i think we need to get a couple parents on the school board arizona state law is very very clear it says that the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing education health care and mental health of their children is a fundamental right that includes the right to direct the education of the minor child the parents have that right the right to access all records regarding the minor child the right to direct the upbringing of the minor child and the right to direct the moral and religious training of the mild child that is not the responsibility of the school district the responsibility of the school district is to teach them to read and write and do math and the second thing i wanted to bring up is that we're facing i believe a very serious problem in our learning loss here i want to make sure that all schools all schools have are below are above fifty percent proficiency in leading and math we have schools that are down to twenty and thirty percent range and it got much worse over the school shutdown the third thing is really starting to push job skills training and workforce development is very important to the city is very important to the chandler chamber i want kids to have a pathway out of high school that's very well defined and i think we do a much better job with that thank you thank you very much all right charlotte i want to close with some of the very life experiences that i bring to the board and then also with um what i want to accomplish as a board member so the life experiences i bring are varied and it begins with having a reading specialist for a mother so my mother was a teacher in public schools then at a literacy center for illiterate mothers a tutor for children with dyslexia and finally a teacher trainer in the wilson reading system watching her dedication to education with a focus on the most important cornerstone of reading shaped my appreciation for educators i ended up following in my father's footsteps not my mother's and worked in our family tpa business i worked in implementation throughout high school and college and then after i was shipped out to get some sales experience at other insurance companies returned to be the regional sales manager for the western region until we sold the company to wage works in 2013.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
are we ready yeah okay board members are we are we ready to start thank you thank you for being here we will begin this work study and brief board business meeting at 6 pm tuesday september 13 2022 and i have called the meeting to order and we'll go right to to the presentation and discussion topics starting with 2.01 marketing and communications update dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members welcome everyone to the meeting tonight uh first up for this evening we will bring up our director of communications and marketing uh don antestenis she's just gonna give us an update of kind of what we're doing and how we're moving forward with regards to that so done thank you governing board president um governing board okay move it forward okay thank you thank you madam president governing board member superintendent for the opportunity to come here this evening just to give you some updates on marketing initiatives and a little bit of a focus on enrollment campaigns going into well during the school year and for 2023-24 [Music] okay so quick overview our marketing goals are always to increase awareness within our community and beyond of all of the incredible opportunities that we offer for students both academically and extracurricular all the different programs and alongside that we're always looking to build a trusted brand and last year when i came and spoke to you at a governing board meeting we focused a lot on building trust with our community and the importance of that with all of the different stakeholders our students our existing parents members of our community and potential families also student retention and staff retention are always a goal we'll talk a little bit in a moment about some of the factors that influence enrollment and the experience of our existing gps family is a really key part of that and ultimately a marketing goal is always increased enrollment so with everything that we look at now whether it be data regarding enrollment experiences everything is a little bit through a lens of the pandemic so i thought it would be useful just to bring up this slide here which was actually the marketing mission statements that we had for 2018 2019 and really to highlight the division of retaining existing students recruiting new students and winning back law students and all of the different elements of the mission and our unique selling position are still the same so we really have this solid foundation to build on of academic excellence educational choice a well-rounded educational experience and also the different strengths that we have um and the position that our schools have within our community i did add in a couple of points in orange which i think are what as a department we're going to really focus on to deliver results one is working in partnership with our schools and departments so i think i've said it quite a few times and i continue to say it that enrollment is really everyone's business and a big part of what we try and do when we're building brand when we're bringing in different tools that our schools can use to communicate and market is we're trying to empower the people on our campuses and also in our departments to share the good news to constantly be putting information out there about why people should choose gps for their students education and we actually have now over a hundred staff who are specifically trained across the campuses as campus communications teams and we provide them with ongoing training and support they also have access to a whole wide range of tools and resources so that they can so we can all work collaboratively it's really key to achieving our goals um and then also just we're always adding new channels of communication for our parents it's always important with marketing to bring the message to people rather than expecting them to just find it out on their own so in addition to social media and newsletters we have the district app gold as a tool for celebrating school news newsletters and social media with regards to the unique selling position still delivering academic excellence for over 100 years and we have again that solid foundation and i think we're going to continue to have an increased focus on educational choice within gilbert public schools and really emphasizing that students and families can find what they're looking for right here um quickly just to show you this was actually the slide from last year when i came and spoke um and we emphasized what works and we talked about additions to our marketing toolbox which was gilbert gold as a means of celebrating and some new targeted campaigns like level up we also added in the campus communication teams and we began to really promote educational choice within gps more on that in a moment so some of the highlights from what we worked on during the 2021-22 school year for gilbert gold we actually published 72 stories um and just this week i think it's cause for celebration one of the news channels took a gilbert gold story that we had on our website regarding greenfield elementary and a kindergartner who raised funds for his teacher and just took the whole entire story and published it as a news story which i'm taking as a compliment unbeknownst to us yeah we see our schools you know how it is we see your your school district on tv and you're like hey this was great stuff so it was good yeah it was really positive and so that's really our intention with gilbert gold was to tell positive stories about what was happening in the district to increase morale to retain our families and also to spread the word about what's happening here in gilbert and our team were really excited we won a national school pr award of excellence for that as a marketing campaign great job thank you um also our campus communication team as i mentioned briefly um we have this team and i think it's important to acknowledge that it's not necessarily originally part of these team members job descriptions so we have attendance specialists administrative assistants principals teachers who are all actively creating newsletters updating our websites putting social media out there and we're extremely grateful for all of the work that they do we provide training monthly resources and we've created a quarterly newsletter that we send out to them with resources and tips and tricks and to make that part of their job easier um another highlight was level up and pave the path so if you remember from last year level up was initiated if that's the right term to support our sixth grade families and students moving into junior high and there were a number of goals behind that one was to retain 100 of our sixth graders we know that the most shopping around for schools happens at that transition and we also know that larger numbers of students are not at their boundary school when it comes to junior high so we were looking to retain all of those students and also bring in new families it was particularly important because last year was the time that the fifth grade i called him the fifth grade covert cohort which is not a good term name um but there was a we when we saw losses during the pandemic it was particularly at the kinder level and also at fifth grade and last year was when those fifth graders were coming into seventh grade so it was a smaller cohort moving up so we gave special attention to that and i think we were anticipating around a 300 loss and we really minimized that and attracted additional students in and excitingly as we were doing that community education and our preschool teams came up with pave the path and that you'll see we're gonna um do again this year that was designed to try and retain 100 of our preschoolers into kindergarten um and i'll share a bit more about that so those were the highlights any questions so far okay um so for enrollment i think it's important to identify that marketing doesn't solve everything and there are other factors that affect enrollment including reputation experience quality competition birth rate cost of living boundaries and programs alongside that we collected some data regarding our two requests so when families requested tourist school they complete a form and we added the question how did you hear about us we gathered about three months worth of data and this is how um which i find really interesting but this is how the percentages worked out so 30 was recommendation and i think that's when we're talking about the importance of customer service and the experience of our existing families that's really powerful and word of mouth is always the most valuable form of marketing second is internet and google search and so that just really highlights the importance of our um websites and keeping them up to date and having content like gilbert gold and the calendars up to date and that really matches how people find things nowadays so if you're looking for a restaurant if you're looking for purchasing a car your first port of call will always be the internet to do research and the same holds for schools the third twenty percent was other which was majority of people living within the boundaries of the school and campus signage was 13 driving past our schools and older students attend digital advertising and newspaper ads so for 2223 um the way that we try and do things as a team is build on what's successful so we'll continue to focus on what works and the additions from last year um and then bringing in some new campaigns which i'll briefly go through focusing on educational choice within gps those transition campaigns for retention and recruitment new program growth campaigns we had a number of new programs last year and over the last couple of years so really looking at how we can support them to grow and thrive with enrollment a kindergarten readiness campaign and then customer service so with choice comes potential confusion um for our parents and a key part of the marketing campaigns around educational choice within gps is going to be supporting our families to navigate the different options that are available to their students so that they can find the right fit for their child and their family if i click on this it should go to the website so this is just some initial work along those lines where we have um explore gps and we have these different icons representing some of the different choices available and then different ways that families can explore the schools scheduling a tour attending information nights focusing on the different options now we'll try and get back to the here we go um so i think it's important to highlight when we're talking about choosing our schools and looking at the different options that we do have these really strong neighborhood elementary schools and comprehensive junior highs and high schools offering already a really wide range of academic and extracurricular opportunities and then we also have um more program specific or alternative curriculum options whether it be traditional dual language accelerated options so really making sure that we're providing parents with the full selection and helping them to understand um how those are different and connecting their student potentially with the different options so highlighting that there's choice highlighting the choices educating on the choices and supporting the families to navigate and then also last but not least helping them secure their choice so that's a really important part with regard to enrollment um would be the tours and we're always working with our front office staff to make sure that they're responding quickly to tour requests that they're um following up afterwards to check if the families have any questions and to um support them basically to get them over the line to be enrolled for the next year we're constantly putting out information this is just an example of some of it so for example for gilbert accelerated middle middle school we had information nights highlighting what the school offers each school has their own promotion materials and and we're also create videos um this is just a brief example um which i can show you which is to highlight for a canyon rim so i think canyon room is a good example because it offers two choices within one school so again how do we help parents to understand what that means what is the difference between traditional and the conventional classroom would it be a good fit for their student and their family so this is just an example of some of the content we try and create hopefully [Music] [Applause] i'm in third grade at canada in third grade we started learning long division i enjoy specials like pe library computers art and music we have specials every day and today is library [Music] we do good in class you can become cougar in the month and get a pizza party in fourth grade one thing we got to do was go to the movies for a field trip and do a recorder concert at canyon room we do fun things like the fun run and the talent show in fourth grade i enjoyed learning about magnets and electricity and how light bulbs work we're learning about money and right now we're talking about saving money every year there's a crew carnival and it has a bunch of fun stuff kenyan room's just a really fun school to be at so yeah just trying to each one of our schools is so different it has its own personality and experience so always trying to show visually what does it look like in a classroom and ultimately the students tell the story the best every time okay so with the transition campaigns which we're calling them as i mentioned the aim is to really retain 100 of students that we already have within gilbert public schools and to recruit new students and families and also i think it can't be underestimated it's to support our existing students and families so it's a customer service if you want to use that term um as well so pave the path as i mentioned was introduced in the 21 22 school year um really huge thanks to the community education team and the preschool leaders for that and the way that worked was and all of the preschoolers had the opportunity to attend kindergarten for the day at their school they received water bottle stickers information to take home so they went home to their parents and hopefully shared great experiences about being in kindergarten and then we follow up with support on how to enroll for the following year and the goal with that is for them to enroll at any elementary school in gilbert public schools we do see movement and from the preschoolers they're not necessarily going to attend the preschool that they have the school that they've been at level up the same that was the projected loss potentially of 400 students because of that fifth grade cohort and actual loss of 86 which was a significant achievement and meant that we did attract a number of students from out of district um the goal is to retain 100 of our 6th graders we do do um as part of level up we will contact directly all of our outer district sixth graders to make sure that they are staying with gilbert public schools and then i think last time when i was here we talked about could we introduce something for the transition to high school so the working title right now is next level um there's still conversations to be had with our secondary principles to get their input into what they currently do and what will work for them but a similar uh goal will be 100 retention over eighth graders um attracting new students and and then also providing that support piece for the families to navigate the different course choices electives that kind of thing so here's just a little bit more information you can see there and there was the again the front office staff did a phenomenal job with pave the path contacting directly by phone every single preschooler to welcome them to the school and to support them with any enrollment questions and then level up which consists of the level up days where the sixth graders visit their junior high also the family preview nights and then plans for next level another big focus as i mentioned is going to be building enrollment at the new programs that have been introduced a big part of this is actually raising awareness for the first year of any program it's completely new and to an extent it takes a little bit of a leap of faith for the students and the families to enroll in something new that has not existed previously um so we're working with for example gilbert accelerated middle school students and the ib students and the accelerated students at the five elementaries k-6 to follow them throughout the year and then also the performance academy to really help for we're basically asking the students to help us create content so we can tell the story about what the experience is like of being in those programs so that then we can share that with families and they can watch that content they can read about it and they can hopefully see their student in these different programs and that will make the decision easier for them um and then of course celebrating successes so i have another video as an example um this is what we've we've picked four um gilbert accelerated middle school students that we're following throughout the year so we're basically interviewing them every four to six weeks to get their insight on what their experiences and this is one of the first ones [Music] we all really know each other i know mostly everyone's name here the fact that it's a small classroom it just feels more intimate i guess because we're all talking to each other we know each other's names the teachers i thought that they would be like middle school teachers but they're high school teachers it's pretty cool because now we get to see other kids from on the campus and we get to like hear about what the high school teachers teach they're on level kids or like their older kids and it's pretty cool so that's just one example but we're trying to focus on creating content around some of the um concerns that parents might have so for example you know it's a real highlight for the student and you can see on her face that she's being taught by high school teachers so the idea that for some parents that might feel a bit nerve-wracking but actually being able to see it from the point of view of the student that that's actually the value that she's getting from it she enjoys that so um we're excited to keep building that content and as we do we're learning a lot about the programs and from the students and and what they enjoy um similarly for the performance academy we're working on a day in the life video right now following them at mesquite l in south valley and then going to legacy just really trying to tell the stories and to help our parents give them all the tools so that they don't miss out on these different opportunities that are open for their students um kindergarten readiness so um we're bringing back some of the tools that we used for kindergarten enrollment prior to the pandemic and one of which is the kindergarten readiness fairs and that was previously held at the greenfield library so we're looking at how can we kind of supercharge those efforts and work as a team so the marketing team is working alongside community education preschool teams and elementary to create an event that will then be tied into the other initiatives so for example pave the path is going to be probably around i think early march that the preschool students will go to a kinder classroom and then one week later we'll have a kindergarten readiness fair so we'll be able to say to parents you know your student had this opportunity experienced that you probably heard about it now registered to come to our fair they do vision screenings they'll get an opportunity to learn all about kinder and we'll have a q a session with kindergarten teachers so we're really trying to integrate everything and to make it as easy as possible for our parents to navigate noting of course that kindergarten is really key for us because that's where a lot we're welcoming a lot of families for the first time to gps so not only haven't they haven't experienced our schools potentially they don't know anything about our district so events such as that we're really we're building trust with the brand we want to provide them with community resources and really welcome them to the gps family and provide them clarity with the options because there's options and choices at kinder we have a huge range we have the dual language five accelerated campuses with kindergarten traditional so there's a lot of different options for them to navigate not just choosing kinder and the goal of course is increasing enrollment um when we look at data and analysis of you know over the five years ten years kindergarten is definitely a vulnerability for us and all surrounding districts so that's an area that we're going to put a lot of focus and that is my conclusion any questions i i have a couple things a couple questions i really appreciate the collaboration that we're building a team and helping the schools to be involved so it's not falling just on the shoulders of a few people you and two or three others that's that's not manageable um especially in keeping our website fresh and updated so i really appreciate that um one question i have is we put a lot into explaining what our traditional classrooms are like i would really like to see us put something into explaining we call them conventional classrooms i prefer collaborative classrooms but classrooms have changed a great deal in the last few years and i think that explaining what a collab a collaborative or conventional classroom is like so that people don't look at it oh this is what i did when i went to school because it's really not it's really changed a great deal and i i would just like to see some more emphasis on that and i don't know if that's where we talk about you know where you're talking about the elementary schools but definitely um you know we're doing a lot of things differently than we were 10 years ago yes yeah definitely and i think that's an important piece is not to lose the um conventional classroom collaborative classroom to not to lose the value of those classrooms and the schools the neighborhood the community schools um and like i said the comprehensive high schools the junior high and all the different options that are there as well that's going to be a really key part of what we're looking at this year for sure okay and then i wanted to ask about i mean it said newspaper ads only one percent are using but have we used many newspaper ads i mean it might be very small because we haven't used many newspaper ads we do we do um regular newspaper ads in the local newspapers um primarily gilbert sun and then also east valley tribune in the area where our schools are in mesa and then we also do ads in for example like the morrison ranch magazine eastmark doesn't have paper they it's in their newsletter so we continue to do that it's a solid foundation of marketing that we wouldn't want to lose no that's i understand i just wasn't you know our our newspaper market is a little more fragmented than it was you know years ago yes um well the value of print advertising and digital advertising is when people frequently see our brand and see the information and then maybe they drive past the school so it's not always just the one factor there's multiple factors in there so having that visibility is important too all right thank you don congratulations and and my compliments to you and and your team i said this the last time you presented and and you have done just an incredible job of keeping gilbert public schools out in front and in the public view without asking you to dump dirt on things because this is exceptional stuff it's quite innovative and it promotes the district well from my point of view but in the pr department as it were what are some of the challenges you face and what some of the challenges the schools face as we really search and look to refine those things that we're doing and innovate where we can well thank you first of all one of the challenges is always going to be competition i always say we have the most charter schools in the world here but we have i think it's 18 within our boundaries and 26 additional within a mile and that hasn't changed since i started here five years ago so that's an ever present and then also increasing competition with surrounding districts particularly when surrounding districts are experiencing enrollment laws for the first time so they're switching up how they market so that's one challenge that we face i think the number of schools that we have and our campus communications team approach has significantly helped with that and that i cannot thank those people enough for what they do every day and how receptive they are to me constantly emailing them with and can you please put this on your marquee and but i think we've streamlined the processes for that to make it easier for them so for example we create graphics and verbage that schools can drop into their newsletters so we're always trying to look at how can we make people's jobs easier while delivering what we're trying to do and and building those relationships is key to that um but really what they do is exceptional because as well i'm always saying when we share information as a district people read it but when they share information as a school people really read it and and definitely value it more because that's such a unique special relationship between the families and their child's school so just always emphasizing those things and working collaboratively definitely helps and we'll keep building those partnerships again thank you thank you thanks again uh and if you need an example uh the my next-door neighbor recently bought the home next to me and uh they explained that they had done a tremendous amount of research on gilbert public schools before they moved here from out of state back east and this was the reason that they bought the house there so that's uh you know that's that's something that people do now in the days of the internet and everything so it's working thank you thank you i just want to say that i think that the campus teams that you've built um are phenomenal and um but i think you know having your support you can have all the campus teams you want but when you what you're telling us that you're doing for these campus teams is invaluable and giving them the tools that they need and i i think this is just absolutely amazing and thank you oh thank you i also just wanted to add my thanks to all the board members for the great work that you're doing and i love that you're getting i think the key is the good things have been there and we continue to improve and want good things happening in our campuses but that we can now that you're talking about them that they're that the news could pick up a good story that was happening at our campuses because we know that those are happening but it's hard to get that word out and to keep that focus you know on that so i appreciate that and i also love that you're focused not just on attracting new students but really taking care of the families that are here and retaining students i think that's i think that's the key is to make sure that are we meeting the needs of the students that we have both through customer service through marketing and then through just communication letting them know what our choices are letting them know that they have the opportunity to find a program that fits their child's needs if it's not exactly at their neighborhood school which most you know there's great programs all throughout the district so i guess along with that i was i was also going to ask you this is a little bit different but um i know that in the past we had done some ideas of trying to have opportunities for feedback with current families and parents to provide kind of a two-way channel of communication and i just wondered i know with kovid we kind of just there wasn't room or time and really it wasn't appropriate in a lot of ways because we were trying to avoid that but as far as just the in-person feedback so i just wondered did you have any thoughts on that going forward yeah absolutely i think it's actually in the strategic operating plan to build those opportunities for two-way communication and um as we started this school year i think the first step with that has been to really welcome our families back onto our campuses and there is a phenomenal number of events happening i think we just had grandparents day and so building those opportunities for the our parents and families to be on campus and is kind of the beginning and then working on opportunities kind of throughout the year for introducing and we've been researching different ways that we can build two-way communication i mean we have the superintendent councils we did just introduce um one thing we've been trying to do is add in our parent newsletter opportunities for them to so to nominate for example for like the chamber of commerce excellence awards perhaps we previously went out to our staff community for those nominations but adding our wider community into that but yeah there's definitely more work to be done on that and there it's an important focus that's great and as i was thinking about us i was thinking we do have there are opportunities in place and i think we just keep working on it i know like i just got an uh text or email today for the site council at our at our school you know every school you can go and participate in the site council ask your principal or teacher when that occurs that's a place for feedback there's the online web comments that we provide now on our official board meeting yes once a month besides coming to board meetings that's another opportunity or emailing your school your principal the board members when you when you have a concern so i think we do have things in place and we actually are working on a gold story right now about parent involvement where kaylie latham who i i didn't met kaylee latham communications specialist johnson paulie videographer couldn't be doing any of this without them but m kaylee actually went out and interviewed a number of our principals to look at what's happening on individual campuses to start to build that conversation as well oh that sounds great i appreciate your work toward that as well thank you thank you we will be putting out a survey at some point this year we've talked about it in the past and with everything that's been going on you know i think we'll get more solid results in a year like this year this year started off phenomenally uh and it i don't know how to put it it feels much more normal than it has in the past and so um i think you'll get better data in terms of just honest opinions about things and so um we'll be putting that out we just don't know which time yet oh that sounds great well i appreciate it again thank you thank you for all that you do and your team please thank them as well get down real quick before you leave can you talk about just the communication you talked about our newsletter parents talk about the newsletter to staff as well as um what we just started with our high school kids yeah absolutely so connect create care goes out every two weeks to our parent community and always has over 40 000 views um and we're using that as a tool i think our community has become familiar with that as a source for um important information and also celebrations with gold and then the same every two weeks we send out gps together to our staff community which has always over 4000 views again putting key information and also celebrations in there and then last but not least we a goal for our team this year was to look at connecting with our student stakeholders so um kaylee latham worked we met with um san francisco school district and because they've done something similar and then we pitched to marcy taylor and dr mccord the idea of a newsletter to our high school students from the district to go out to those 12 000 students it's called in this together we did our first edition and we're working with the superintendent's council a student council they're writing introductions and so the student voice is in there and um i haven't looked at the latest numbers but there was a surprising number of high school students reading it so that we were really encouraged by that and there was important information in there we find that what they're looking for they just want factual information that's going to help them make good decisions and they want to know what the district is doing and how those decisions are made so yeah the the the council the student senate is a phenomenal group and when i say that you've got just a mixture of kids from every one of our our high school campuses and we talk about building relationships with people and how key and how important it is and for many of these students on the senate they are very open and honest and you want to talk about feedback right we'll talk about surveying staffs talk about surveying parents well this is direct conversation with kids and they don't pull any punches and i love it and and they're very complimentary and but yet they'll tell us straight out like i don't even know why you guys do this or why were you thinking about doing that and we love it we love it we walk away from every one of those meetings me marcy and doug daly and we just it really makes us remember why we got an education so long ago because they are definitely the reason why we do what we do so that's the best feedback i think we've gotten uh in a long time so we're appreciative that so this newsletter that uh don has put together and kaylee it is really something that is born out of that communication with them and pitching the idea to them they're like yeah that'd be great we'd love it and they're involved and so it's it's kind of like a bit of a student newspaper except from the district level so it's great well done thank you shane how many kids do you have from each school yeah usually we have two two uh they don't always show up at the same time but we the first meeting of the year usually is right here in this room and then we rotate to each school and part of that is the hosting school has to give a presentation about their school and then they take them on a tour and then we have certain things that they have to do do a little update but they have become friends and they didn't know each other before they sat down and um i don't know i i would keep them all day long if i could so i know marcy would she just smiles from here to ear when she sees himself and then they come to some of our meetings like they'll be a part of and they'll come observe either a gef breakfast or a board meeting or some other event and you've heard me introduce them in the past will continue to do that thank you for that presentation we will now go to 2.02 community education fees dr mccord thank you madam president community board members next up we have mr jared ryan our executive director of community education as well as strategic initiatives and part of the role related to community education this is a self-funded program so everybody knows community education is and they have all kinds of different programming as well as facility rentals that are fee-based and so over x amount of years they constantly have to look at what fees they charge and how does that keep up with inflationary rates supplies all those types of things and actually we have to analyze are we charging the right amount to ensure that uh we're keeping up with what we need to to make sure we're still self-funded so mr ryan will be giving you a presentation on that tonight thank you dr mccord madam president governing board i appreciate the time to come and speak with you regarding community education and some of the um some of the adjustments that we're looking to make for as we move into the 2023-24 school year um first off i i always feel like i'm kind of busy through a day and then i listen to dawn talk and i realize i don't do a whole lot so dr mccord needs to find a few more things for for me i think so don and her department are incredibly impressive and so the work that they're doing um not only is on campuses but has a direct benefit to community education and everything that we do matter of fact earlier today she was with our team discussing youth athletics and some strategic adjustments we can make or initiatives we can put in place to be able to promote to be able to get word out and make sure that all of our families know what opportunities are on our campuses to represent their community and represent their schools so i appreciate she and her team for what they do um it's kind of a beginning portion of this i wanted just to go over briefly what it is that that we offer in terms of programs and why we're looking at them on an annual basis and what different pieces of information we take into consideration when we make recommendations regarding fees both in tuition when we talk about preschool before and after school care camps anything during intersession that will now be coming up as well as our fees for renting our facilities so just as a brief outline the the bold portions are what we'll be focusing on this evening vik which is very important kids our before and after school service program summer and holiday intercession camps as well pre-k for those that aren't familiar we have four different kindergarten preschool options kindergarten prep building blocks toy box and advantage we'll get into the kind of the differences and what those programs are and and why we offer such a variety of preschool programs enrichment which is our after school primarily as well as intersession and summer skill specific options primarily from outside vendors that we partner with and nathan paquette does a fantastic job of finding needs on campuses and addressing those with some vendors as well as some of our own staff members gilbert youth athletics which we began just a few years ago with with your blessing and has been fantastic for our community as well as in facility management and all the rental of our facilities as they're available on our campuses we want to make sure community is able to to take advantage of that opportunity so those are those are the programs that we're mainly talking about in bold this evening as we talk about tuition rate adjustments we all know what we've experienced in the last couple years and not only with sickness but now on the financial side of things and unfortunately every time we go fill up a tank of gas or every time we go eat a meal or any time we do just about anything else i think we all feel it and we feel financially we feel it from the standpoint of stresses on our on our families and on our homes and in our bank accounts and we've really tried over the last couple years to prevent that from trickling down to our families and our community because we know from the school side of things if we can keep things as financially accessible as possible that it just goes a long way to making sure that they can live um with less stress in their lives and over the last couple years we've been fortunate we've been blessed to receive grants we've been blessed to have workforce employment grants blessed to have early childhood grants that we've been able to point towards some of these increases in staffing costs and whatnot and and those are kind of starting to run out and so that's why we're coming at this point in time this document talks about the tuition rate adjustment and in the pieces of information we look at our current hourly rate of pay so total volume of employees and what it's costing us to attract and retain those employees is first and foremost that's our biggest cost that's our biggest out of out-of-pocket expense and as we all know the employees within our organization are experiencing those same increased costs in their lives and so for them to be able to to live and survive in in our town and live in gilbert and the things that we've been experiencing our rate of pay has had to increase to be able to attract and retain some of the best out there our curriculum costs we analyze on an annual basis so we look at everything from arts and crafts to our science projects to our cooking projects the things we're doing before and after school as well as in our camps as well as in our preschool classrooms food supplies our azdhs requirements we've received a couple questions related to these requirements and so when you're licensed program there's certain specific elements that must be within those rooms in order for them to be licensed sometimes we move rooms from time to time as campuses grow or as campuses experience reduction in student population when that occurs then we have to make modifications and adjustments to classrooms if there are specific things that licensing auditors are looking for as they're observing our classrooms obviously we need to make those adjustments and ensure that that we're meeting all the requirements and there are costs associated with that and of course finally maintaining competitiveness with surrounding programs we don't ever want to put ourselves in a spot where we feel as though we're not competitive or we feel as though we're not giving our families an opportunity to access the care that they need based on based on cost and based on out out pricing the market so we want to make sure that we're always competitive that way mr ryan sir just quickly do you have any well i'm sure you do but what is the total number of staff who support the community ed programs do you have and between 230 and 250 depending on where we're at with our staffing and so we'd like to be at 250 right now in the 230s so if anybody out there is listening and has a desire to work before after school care or preschools we are hiring um if we can just put in a little plug for that right now that'd be great and that number represents the largest amount of expenditure out of the budget right yes sir um the next page and that's a great lead into to the next document which is it took an actual staff member that we have um and really looked at what our average expenses were two years ago and where we are today really trying to ensure that one the fee increases that we're looking at are in line with what our actual costs are as well as making sure that there wasn't a large discrepancy between certain classifications of employees and so after doing that i just pulled one and this is an average uh look at it at an employee in one of our classrooms so this particular case is a site leader in one of our preschool classrooms this is a non-certified position this individual is the preschool classroom lead teacher as a site leader the individual is hired on august 20th or i'm sorry august of 2020 at a rate of fifteen dollars and sixty cents thanks to governing board approval and support there that individuals received a two percent increase on august 20 uh or august of 21 a dollar fifty increase in september of twenty one ten cent and three percent and march of and then the final increase of two dollars in july of 22.
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okay I hereby are we we ready to go okay I hereby call this meeting to order uh roll call please yep you can only that you're talking not in your mic no I don't not in your mic Brown is here Mrs Galt here Dr Hall here Mr swales here Mrs Walters here vice president R here president Al here please stand and join me in the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and Miss rup would you please recite the mission statement yes our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new Future Okay um can I get a motion to open the public hearing for the fiscal year 2022-2023 budget a roll call Mrs galberth hi Dr Hall hi Mr swanes hi Mrs Walters hi Brown is an I miss uh vice president rot hi president Alber I okay the public hearing is now open I'll turn it over to Mr Surman thank you president Al uh good evening board Dr Cara administrators to the public um just as a formality to let you know that uh the presentation I'm about to share has been posted to our website it also is posted to board book so it is on there also if you wish to follow along board I think I've given you a hard copy of the presentation so you can follow along also we'll be presenting at the same time um as we go again this is the public hearing to present the 2022 23 tentative budget as you see in your packet uh page two is just an introduction U stating that we've met all the requirements along with an advertisement posting it through our website having the budget available to anyone that is interested um at our district office on page three are just some definitions of Revenue and expenditures um again uh I just put these in there just so everyone has an understanding if this is their first time of some of the terms that I may be using I ask to turn your attention to page four um which is really the revenues and expenditures of the budget and uh this is for all funds so I'm going to share the budget not only for all funds but just for our operating funds also okay so what you will see is I've done a comparison between the 222 adopted budget because our our numbers really aren't final they're not audited numbers yet so the adopted budget uh that was approved by the board in June versus the 2223 budget and the variance and you will see on all funds Revenue totaling $98 million almost $99 million offset by expenses of $125 million which gives us a deficit of $26.8 million most of that deficit is driven really by capital projects and construction that is taking place um that is part of the off funds that's normal we have that money in the bank from bonds sold so that money is there but again just so you know on an all fund standpoint um there will be a deficit of about $26.8 million you will also see then on the next page a comparison with can I just ask you a question on this page sure I'm sorry thank you yep what's the decrease in other objects which I know includes our debt service payment which is pretty constant you know you you have in there 11.9 but was there another big item in 2122 I I don't know that off the top of my head Mr alre I I can try and find that out by the end of the meeting I can like take a look at the budgets individually uh my computer and just kind of see what that variance is that 4.6 million I'm just trying to think off the top of my head what it would be uh and I and I'm honestly not sure okay of that okay uh it looks like there were some expenses that we had last year that were added in there that 14.8 is pretty constant from a budget standpoint as you mentioned because of our uh annual debt payment is what comes out of there so looks like there's some other objects but I'll check that out okay okay um the other thing I will mention too at the bottom there you will see some other financing sources and that has to do with the bond sales that took place last year that's this category please also know that at the end of this year we will probably have to amend the budget again because we have another Bond sale this year I haven't included that because we haven't sold that well we closed down we just closed down so we'll be amending the budget to include those numbers in there also we'll have to do that but that will come in June and that and so that will be the amendment that will take place on page five then you will also see then uh the operating funds and I think this is really the most important page when you look at the budget is to determine what is going to be the Surplus or deficit in this area and again what you will see is I'm projecting a deficit of $48,000 um in our operating funds um I have included um a lot of um things uh I will say this expenses in security I've up some security budgets I've allocated money in there if the board decides to have metal detectors I've added that if we wanted to upgrade some other things with security that Dr Cara and I have talked about so there are some upgrades that are in there I have included all raises and uh that the board has approved now in August or in July so all of that has been included in the budget this also shows a budget that is uh fully staffed also um so again I don't believe because of the shortage that is taking place and in consultation with Mr uh Mr Neil in HR I don't think we're going to be fully staffed just because of uh shortages that are taking place in educational profession but the budget shows that shows being fully staff so I believe again this this is just my opinion I believe that and I know Mr Alber is going to ask me about making up that money uh I believe that we'll be able to make that up and we'll we'll have a positive at the end of the year but from a budgetary standpoint I think it's fair to share with the community that are just going to be a little bit of a deficit um the other thing I will share on the revenue side is the good news to the district whether it's good or bad but uh we have now been classified back to tier one in evidence-based funding so last year we were tier two so we lost some of the extra funding we are now back in tier one for this year so it gained us I think about $400,000 extra in additional evidence-based funding I have included that in the budget too so so that has been included uh so that is you know whether you want to call it good news or bad news you know the bad news is the fact that we are still underfunded when it comes to State allocations and that but but again that back able to get some extra so Ken on the the um salary V variance you you answered one of my questions which is the 50 m 50.4 million is based on being fully staffed right of the 5.3 increase can you break out how much is of that is due to salary increas or increases for Acme and um administrative sta I can get that breakout for you I don't have I can get put that in the FYI so we kind of have an idea of yeah I can I can do that for yes yep and then on purchase services and supplies and materials you know there's pretty hefty increases I don't know if you have there's some key drivers on those two lines you know again I can look at that and get you some detail in the FYI yeah maybe the top two or three drivers of Varian I can easily do that that's not a problem yep okay okay all right and I think too you know uh going back Mr Rober to your question on salaries and benefits again I think if you look at last year's numbers we were short staffed and again you know the the numbers that are there from the adopted budget were actually our raw numbers on our ledgers so they're going to be pretty close to our audited numbers um so you'll see that I think we were short staff so I'll try and break that out for you to kind of give you an idea where we right but I'm thinking if I know how much is due to the increases we've approved versus the the remainder kind of gives you idea of how much budgeting fully staff over being not fully staffed versus the 45 million sure it's kind of yes how much yep wiggle room is in there yep I can I can take care of that okay so real yes on that so just thinking outside the box a little bit so later we're going to talk about metal detectors right so if we're going to staff that or fund that is there any way of you're you're using a budget number of a fully staff District but using some of the funds to help with that issue moving forward now we've talked about you said putting the metal detectors in there but do you have salaries in there for those people too I do not have salaries in there because I don't think we've really discussed that about what it would take I haven't seen that yet so um I have not put that number in there yet uh again I I have put a fully staffed security officers in there now again whether we're able to hire all of those and not use other services that we've have in the past but there is a way to just kind of move some things around there you know also yes to help that issue to help that issue sure sure there is yep um the next page then page uh six is is again page six and seven will go together on fund balances both comparing our fund balances and our projected fund balances I should say for the year in all funds versus operating funds uh so you'll see a little Gap here at the end of the year um and all of that from last year to this year um and that is because again we're spending down the money that we had sold Bonds on for construction projects so that is being sold so that is starting to come down here right um You will see some of these lines here this line here which under all funds I'm just I just want to make sure I'm going to go to operating funds so this 21 million it's I'm on page seven now the 21.7 million line that represents 25% of our expenditures that's actually the board policy when it comes to fund balance fund balance according to board policy is 25% aggregate of our uh uh expenses in operating funds so this a fluctuate but for right now it's at 21.7 million and then you'll see a line up here which is six months Cash Cash which is what we really want to stay with um and I believe we will as we move forward again we will be adding an additional 14 around 14 million to our fund balance this month I haven't included that but this number will actually go up another $14 million at the end of the year because of the bonds we just sold and that we're closing on okay um then lastly uh the final page on page eight are just the goals of our department and um what we are working on this year uh the audit again completing the audit by December 15 statutorily it needs to be completed in October however you can apply for a 60-day extension and so really December 15th we are on target for that easily on target for that um really the only one thing I have to do is is do some uh Brian and I are doing some asset work um so we're doing that but the the UTS have already been out um have done their field work have gotten everything so uh we are in really good shape with that uh the the good news is our our cash accounts have balance to the penny so we are happy with that and that that's the number one is your cash accounts and everything so that that is all done uh and that's a credit to Brian and him doing it all the reconciliations have been done so we're good with the audit um I I am I would project that our financial rating is going to be recognition again uh I believe it will be I think we're in good shape for that so U that is good news for the district uh we continue to transition our business Suite in Skyward SMS to Skyward cumulative uh there have been some roller coaster days with that I will tell you uh but uh the system is a better system and will make us more efficient so uh I am uh I'm happy with that progress um we continue to develop end of the- month closing procedures those are just normal in case something new comes up we will continue to develop them and then lastly facility planning and capital projects as you well know uh we're finishing up year two on some buildings year one on some buildings uh I can as during the regular board meeting if you want an update I can give you an update of how things are going but uh again we continue to work on that too just real quick I maybe I missed it when do you think you'll the audit will be done um I always I'm conservative on this I so you know it'll easily be done by December they are pushing to have it done by by December they're pushing to have it done by November so I think I we're looking to have it earlier and earlier than that it all it really rests right now with Miller Cooper you know so they came in and did all their preliminary all their preliminary work is done all the information has been given to them the only one piece that they're waiting on is our assets our Capital assets that Brian and I are working on and that's because it's a new module in the system and we just got training on it last week so um that that's the only part they're waiting on and then the last question I would assume in the regular board meeting should we talk about the cative just as a question just sure we'll bring it up then right sure we can talk about it then yep J um can you turn to page four please sure or move your screen maybe I don't understand this um probably don't understand it so the 2022-2023 tentative Revenue budget at the bottom it says 26,800 whatever for death is that this here 26 yeah 26895 3 yes okay is that okay can you explain to me is that mean that we are 26 m895 $375 in the hole somehow you will be on your books okay so here's my question sure you always keep telling us now that we're really in Good Financial shape being that much in debt we're in good Financial shape you are actually because this money that you're in debt from you already have taken in through the sale of bonds in previous years so that money is really sitting in the savings account that is spent on capital projects for three or four years so we got all the money up front it's sitting there this is this is normal to see this on the books when you talk about all of your funds and that's what this page does this page talks about all of our funds and that includes capital projects the the state normally pulls out when you talk about operating funds which are up there pulls out capital projects because they know that your capital projects are done over time and you sell bonds at one time and pay and pay down the I shouldn't say pay use the bonds to pay for projects over a number of years so they take that out of the equation this is a better representation about financially what the district looks like from an operating standpoint how I operate this one looks at all of our all of our money and and it is saying that we're running a deficit but it's again it's like you having a savings account at home and you have $110,000 in that savings account but I know that I need a new roof so I'm going to pull that money but in essence on my books that shows I I have this big expense and I'm in the hole but I'm really not I'm just taking it out of there that's all yes and Janine if you go back to that page you look up at Capital outlay the 25 million kind of up about three five or six that's up here Janine right here so that's the money we're spending on the Capital Improvements that we've already sold the bonds for so we have the money in the bank to cover it yes and we got that last it's if you look at this the chart we got that like last November yes so if you look on page um six there's the red dash line which is our last year's budget it goes from 51 million to 91 million that's the money that when we sold the bonds that we actually you're right we got the money in the bank it's been waiting there and now we're spending it right so it's not really a deficit no not not really but it is but not really and when when I talk about our financial rating so the financial rating is only based on operating funds it's not based on all of our funds it's just based on and purposely so because of the capital projects part of it you know so it's only based on this and again I believe that we'll make up this $400,000 because really in all honesty $400,000 on an 87 million budget is nothing it just nothing you know so uh this is what your financial rating is based on not not this one but that one thank you y okay I don't have anything else so good any other questions okay thanks Ken thank you and is there any I don't see any public comment for no I the public hearing um therefore can I get a motion to close the public hearing for the fiscal year 2022-2023 budget moved okay roll call doctor Dr Hall hi Brown is an i Mrs galbert hi Mrs Walters hi Mr swales hi vice president r hi president Alber I okay public hearing is not closed um is there any Cheryl is there any public comment there are none okay uh next up board updates does anyone have any board updates I have one um I attended the first responder meeting this morning with our three of our four communities were able to attend whether be police fire or both um it went really really well Mr Tobias um had us well organized and that committee um is not to discuss problems per say like discipline or whatever it's kind of Mo is having a traffic problem what are some solutions it's it's very interesting um I learned a lot this morning just by sitting there and listening to everybody we have great participation from our communities um they're very open and and giving with information or help or vice versa so um all in off our first meeting I thought it was very very good and I'm sure Mr Tobias will keep us up to date as we go on any other board updates yeah I guess the only question I had I talked to Ken a little bit before the meeting but um we started at cre a couple days late and we're moving forward and everything how's the status of all the construction and I know we talked a little bit about some of the rooftops coming in sure I I just give you an update as as you all know we we continue to have things coming in uh they're trickling in slow but sure um the latest update I have is most of the rooftop units should be in by the end of this month on site and then we'll start having those installed now they've already started selling some like in our I know in our administrative area and some in a building here they're beginning to put all the stats in the thermostats and hooking them up and all of that so those are starting to come in the chillers which are at tala and ELC are probably not going to be out site till the end of October so it's just you know that's where we're at um they are uh you know it's not the contractor it's the supplier you know and that so as soon as they get them they are working nights and week end to get the stuff in so that instructional time is not uh interrupted at all so that's our plan the East Wing over at uh Creek is moving forward um I have to actually go over there I'm going to try and get over there tomorrow um our goal is to try and open that up October 1st and I think we're going to be a little bit close I just have to see on the air conditioning and all of that stuff to make sure and all that I think if I have to push it out it may not be until mid October but we're still trying to hit that October first on El hary well that's that's the big thing is the elevator you are at the mercy of the elevator's un uh they are very they are sticklers when it comes to how they're going to do things and all of that uh so uh we believe Keith am I right the elevator stuff they have I think I think all the parts and everything come in I think but I'm not they they have most of what they need okay so now it's at the mercy of the elevator GS so we have the actual elevator well the shaft is there and everything you know there there's still a little bit of framing that has to be done and all of that stuff uh and so we're trying to coordinate that because what I don't want to happen when they come in is that we have people in the way while they're working because they get pretty peny about this stuff they just don't want anybody you know around and I don't want them to come on site and then all of a sudden walk off site have excuses whenever do that so that that's kind of where we're at so now since the Roe came in and gave us their you know uh temporary occupy y were the punch list short yeah the punch list is short so there you know again they're still doing that there are some little painting items and all of that so so that's being done um I don't believe the roe has to come in again once they gave us do they ke I I don't think they he'll probably come again they'll just come again so then and then what will happen then once we get uh new chillers in or anything like that we'll still have to do balancing and testing that all still has to be done so they they'll take care of all of that um we'll work out with the manufacturer on warranty and all of that stuff especially if chillers don't get here so I know next week we're I think we're voting on but I was tracking with one of my with one of the people that I you know I get bids all the time so the high school edition came in so is that on for that's on for next the contract will be on we're uh our our uh we opened up the bids last Thursday I believe uh there was a company that was the low bid uh I I don't have any recollection of who they are or anything like that so we're doing our investigative Healey Bender is doing that making sure they meet all the bid criteria and all of that stuff that will be on the agenda next week Dave Patton will be here for the meeting I will not be here for the meeting but Dave will be here for the meeting um in case you have any questions the number actually came in on target uh I think we had Dave had budgeted about 12.8 now this is construction cost not overall but 12.8 and I and I think it came in close to 128 yeah it's really close so um so it came in at a good number for us so barring any material shortages is our tentative still to be open next year open in August yeah okay yes yes that is our plan um and then lastly while we're talking about construction we've already started the process of looking at construction for next summer also uh I've already had Keith and I have already had a meeting with our architect we are thinking that the bid documents for next summer will be out in October so we can get a head head start on this thing we're putting some contingencies in there so uh vendors can begin ordering things and we can get things on site and all that so we've already taken have jumped on to that the good news I will tell you I don't think anybody knows this but we did put some air conditioning units into this first year at some buildings so if you go over to Creek their cafeteria and gym are actually air conditioned now and that so we got a head start on some things we just put that into the project uh because it was better for us uh from a financial standpoint to do that is that because there was availability you got it no it was just that we you know one of the things I will tell you this one of the things we did here that we learned when we did this building is that we probably should put the unit it it would have been better for us to put the unit in the bigger areas because we had to run the piping when we brought in those units then this year we had to redo the piping so that's simple terms to be honest with you so what it allowed us to do that is to bring those units into the bigger areas so um you know like again like a cre uh their cafeteria and gym are now air conditioned um so we were do all the piping it actually saved the district money so by next summer cre CSK and bore will be on schedule to be finished with they should be forther air conditioning and so this building too in tala so tala ELC Creek Boro CSK will all be air conditioned you know as long as we don't have any supply issues and then after that it's Dr Hall's project yeah and then next year too will be this building um I will share with the board that I will be coming to you with an abatement plan there are some asbest issues in some of our buildings U not on field that that's that's been taken care of um but there are some Asus issues in some of our buildings so I will we'll be com with a plan about that okay so Kim we feel pretty good uh not sure if anyone seen the weather for next week but we are supposed to be getting record heat for this time of the year so we feel pretty good with our schools the yeah I think we're in good shape you know we still have the cooling rooms Mr Brown you we still have that there are some areas again like I said at Keith there's some like at cre there's some bigger areas that they can take students into I think I think that's a that's a big plus for us um we're slowly adding some U units into some areas and all of that so I I feel good about that yes okay so I think the weather is helping us a lot too you know so we have any contingencies that we would think you know be ready to implement and if we came across some issues with those schools we have our normal heat plan that is in play that um if we have to enact that we will and that's in consultation with you know Dr Cara and you know M Perkins Mr Neil and myself you know we'll get together when we have to do that but you know we we have we have that plan ready to go so we're not looking to potentially close any schools down next week no the FES get he started over there he moved over here I'm good all right thank you sir sure okay thanks okay the only last one I had I have a question I don't know if this is the right time for it so obviously we opened up three weeks ago and we had an issue with you know uh the rooms in the buildings being dirty and we paid you know six hours and I'm and I'm all for it the question I have is we paid six hours to if I understand do we pay we pay that to all everybody right so I guess the question that I have is why would we pay everybody six hours when the people in the affected buildings had to work twice as hard so I understand the six and I'm all for it but I guess the question is why we didn't compensate Maybe a little less on the others because in certain schools they didn't really have to deal with I mean some of these teachers walked in and and they walked in it was a mess right so they the six hours was just probably just the cleaning not even probably their cleaning probably exceeded six hours so I that I understand but I guess I don't understand why we paid everybody else that when the affected buildings should have been I understand should have been handled but maybe yeah I think so you know it was just uh you know Lon and I were involved with just it was just part of negotiations and we just felt we just do it for everybody it was a good gesture to be honest with you you know I I I will tell you this one of the things that was in the back of my mind is something that Mr Brown said at one of our meetings about you know helping everybody out so it's just something we did I I do understand that I think um I will tell you this in the future I think we're going to have to do something like that when we decide to do all flooring because we have to keep in mind that when we do all the flooring next summer both in ALC and tala everything has to be packed in in this classroom everything I think budget that right figure that we we'll budget that and then you know we'll take care of that but I think we'll it'll only affect those that are in that bill that's my point is that if we're on a job and something happens I only you know if there's an issue the guys on that job getting that affected I just didn't understand the whole thing because if I was a teacher in a room that was filthy dirty I'd be pretty just a little taken back that I'm doing all this extra work well here's here's what I I was just thinking that yeah I I think you know when I think back because I always I always evaluate these things and how we did things and what how should we do this and all that I think one of the things we probably should have done is throw out there you know and and have people come into the buildings while construction was going on so they can see what really happened in those buildings and that um um I also think you know we underestimated uh the amount of dirt you know I I we just did and and um I think it was a good move that we brought in a contractor to assist us I think they did really good work they worked really well with our custodial staff our custodial staff did yman work um and all of that so uh because it was needed so I think you know as I think back I think what we're going to do and we've already um ly and I have already had some prary conversation with the cmea and we'll have to have that with acne is as we look at next summer we're going to have to put something together to assist them because there's going to be a lot of packing and unpacking and and that's in the affected building and that's in the affected building because I think that's a fair thing regardless of the Union I just think that each building in each situation meaning if you do it for one building and there's five affected those five get get what they need right and I and I and I do feel that we're going to have to do it not only for U there's your fly Dr U not only for cmea but also for acne because they're going to be effective agree because everybody else like uh everybody's involved yeah but I I do agree I think we need to do just in the effective okay yes thanks don't go please don't go darn it I just have one more question you know um I am the social media Queen there was a a post out there about the water bottle filler whatever you call those things um not working at the middle school and the high school now I did see a lot of people jump on the post saying which one are you going to because my kid is at that school and he's filling his bottle da da da so I'm just bringing it up because it was stated that supposedly those chillers are not are they I don't guess they're not called chillers whatever they're called those the stations or whatever so there there's a couple cold water also well there's a couple things that we have done in the buildings we have put bottle fillers in but there are some uh fountains that have not only bottle fillers but have the drinking spout on them we have covered up the drinking spout because that is you know that's kind of postco right you shouldn't be drinking out of those things so people are saying I can't drink out of it no you can't drink out of it because you're not supposed to anymore but the bottle fillers are working bed to be cold water cuz they're claiming they don't have cold water either I mean it's not ice cold water but it's cold water like you would get out the so we know that they're all working correct as far as I know they're all working we have not gotten anything and Keith Shak said I just want to say that for the camera because and if one is not working then put in uh if they I would ask to put in a a work order and we will have well here's what I I put out there if it's not working please contact the school how how are they supposed to know it's not working but many people jumped right on and said I use I've used all three in the building today and they're fine so so maybe it is that Fountain deal I don't know but I just wanted to make sure heard some things about the spout why is not the spout uncovered and and we are not going to open that up again you know it's it's cheaper for us to cover it up than to just put bottle filler only now any new construction that we've done we've put in bottle filler only we have not put the spout in there on the device you know so they bring their own bottle of water I I'm not sure that I I don't know that can they bring own bottle of water I think it's restricted no and the last question is the cumulative yeah I I would imagine it's like the old uh National Bank and First Midwest transition was an absolute it was a nightmare right and then in our town and everybody else it was it was rough but the question is and I think we got an email today and I think what the person's looking for more than less is uh a little bit of communication what the end result is going to be so I guess is that what's happening is you're just upgrading the software and it's changing no here well I I will tell you what happened we upgraded the software from it's it's Skyward SMS to C Skyward cumulative it's it's a newer version and that one of the areas and this is what happened with the payroll issue one of the areas that we had not used in the old SMS is the benefit management that means all of your um insurance rates all of that go through and there's an automated process that when you enter all these things it automatically Taps into the payroll system and it creates your deductions and your benefits on your paycheck and all that stuff well the system created double is what happened on some people took out double it took out double on some of them uh we did not catch it when we did our payroll check everything looked fine we balanced and everything but then all of a sudden we started getting emails and all that so what we've done is is we have spent uh I'll be honest with you we've spent the last two weeks I've spent the last two weeks trying to correct this whole thing we literally have gone through each individual we've told people it'll be corrected on the 16th I have an email ready to go either tomorrow or Thursday that fixes that will tell them the adjustment that's being made I don't want to send that out yet because we're still running some tests okay because I want to be 100% sure that this is good as long as they're aware I think that that the biggest complaint is even on the 16th you're going to run payroll Friday right yeah if it happens again just give them an update that you're working so they know that yeah and and so my plan is to send out an email tomorrow Thursday that's been my plan um I was going to do something over the weekend but I was talking to a couple of our staff and they're like you know they're just going to forget about this stuff so I you know and I hadn't heard anything yet I got like one email you know and that so I'm just just kind of Whitey and all yeah I don't know how many people affected but yeah I you know I I will tell you this the system is good I mean uh I think the problem that we're having is we need to adjust a lot of our operational practices in our departments um and upgrade those because we were kind of all over the place and this is an opportunity to do that thanks okay any other board updates thank you hopefully not a real little thing um our November Committee of the whole is election day thank you for being um which is probably no big deal I happen to work the poll but I just wanted to put it out there just to make sure that um that that doesn't affect anyone else we'll have a qu the district is closed that day right oh okay and so I won't be here I don't know so the district is closed so I don't know what that means for committee of the whole but we don't want to probably push things back because then you're pushing things into Thanksgiving you want to pick another day that week because November's a funny month because we have um Thanksgiving and then we have uh triple ey conference we we tend to schedule early early so my recommendation would be to Move It from maybe a Tuesday to a Wednesday if you wanted to do I'd be okay with that move it how about if we move it what what date is the Wednesday's 12th and it's the 11th well the eth is election day should move it to the nth so it would be Wednesday the 9th I'm okay I I would probably be just a few minutes late because I have my work board meeting but it usually ends by 6:30 what about the 7th Monday either day WS for me doesn't matter yeah make it work yeah seventh I'm open yeah I'm I either either the sth or 9th I can make work okay Monday all right sh you've got that okay okay we'll make the adjustments so we'll have committee the whole on the Monday the 7th and then our regular board meeting will be on the 15th Tuesday the 15th great thank you than okay I personally I just still kind of I guess this is update somewhat but I just want to thank Dr coges and the rest of the board members for attending the festivities of of the parades both up and Moni and I said as far as I'm concerned what was considered success was for the board members to rid themselves of all candy by the end of the parade stay on our feet while you were running the t i I enjoyed riding in the car that's all I'm going to say God you did that veryard in the parade and and Moni and Moni but she Dr koganes at at Le University Park she was she was running from across the street to meet someone in one house to the other and it was it was it was so great to see that with my eyes how you engaged in such a manner so thank you for all you do and I want to also say that I was here I don't know a week or so ago at the high school and something kind of came out of a potential trouble that could have occurred but I guess the mentoring group got together some men's and I was called and asked if I can come out and I made it out you were in the picture I am in a picture you were in the picture and it's on our website you can take a look at shows you how much I am I try to stay in the background okay but uh that was a that was a good experience good experience for me to see the kids I don't get a chance to get out much into the schools but to see the kids and and it was nothing like people portray the school to be it was very orderly uh very just calm I know we have our issues momentarily here and there but I was delighted I saw if I'm okay to say the teacher's name Eric Nelson okay how he engaged with a student it was like a father and son nice it was great and I think a Michelle Rivera I believe Rivero Rivero um and how she was just so happy and thrilled to see the men of the mentoring program present so that was that was a very good experience for me so I I would like to do something like that again and uh I just behooves all of the board members I know uh Janine board member galbert is is really and Sandy probably as well have the opportunity to get into the schools much more than I do but it is I just challenge all board members if they can get into the schools periodically to just show presence as that would be very welcome yeah the staff has been very happy about all the reception you know I know everybody was out there that first that first week right so it was it was great so good thank you and I'll I'll run the parade I'm sorry yeah stepped on your I paid the price car driv having a attack while we're on that topic just publicly say thank you to Tom whipfit Sand's brother-in-law for for bringing his classic cars that which which Sandy I didn't have a rear lights I know very enjoyable time very enjoyable thank you okay can we move on to administrative updates okay I'll with that I'll turn it over to Dr Cara all righty um we've just got a very short presentation and um as you recall you had asked me to uh provide um an opportunity for staff to give their input on the um the use of metal detectors so I'm just going to kind of buzz through this um to show basically what they had said all right can I go up here and just click on this oh look at that thank you so as you recall we had the community uh gave the uh the survey before and we had a very small representation of the staff so right here you can see we had over 300 people did uh choose to participate in this survey 25% of those worked at the high school 19 at the middle school and the remaining percentages were sprinkled throughout some of the other uh Elementary buildings my clicker thank you you can see by the the pie shape uh how some of the results were the question says I believe that District 2011 schools are currently safe and the red is the agree to strong strong agree or agree and then the green and the little of the Orange is the uh the disagree so you can see it's close you know there's a majority of them do believe it is on the safer side the blue just separating the strong it was it was actually the strong agree and the redest agree okay yeah so I just combine those together okay gotcha so you can see it's it's a little bit kind of a 5050 but you know more on the uh the agree next slide next question is I believe uh our schools would be safer if metal detectors were installed each of the buildings and again a little bit tight uh a little over half agreed or strongly agreed with this statement okay next slide and then is this the next slide so that's a breakout from the buildings again you know majority of the folks believe that you know looking at middle school and high school would be the strongest recommendation and then certainly uh Moy education center but Mooney education center already has a metal detector there so next slide so quick summary we have 37% of the respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed when asked if they believe the districts are currently safe 39 or almost 40% agreed or strongly agreed that they were safe so you can see that we they're very similar next bullet is just over half of the staff uh indicated they believe that the district schools will be safer with metal detectors this is much lower than 78% of the community uh next bullet a little over 50% of our staff responded that they would feel safer at work if metal detectors were installed nearly onethird disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement and then lastly staff respondents generally indicated they believe that the high school and middle school would be the places that they would then put them so again kind of I don't want to say a 5050 but you know is a little bit more uh broken down I think uh the question is where where do we go from here you know what doc if you go back the question was asked go go back go back to either one of those slides I go back go back to right there it says the last four words entrance of my building so right at the entrance on so you only asked that question or was that was the survey question Yeah so basically one metal detector per building is that how I'm seeing that that's how I would see it if I was looking at it it was the entrance of you know students coming into the building so every build everybody would go through that okay not all the entrance doors that's you know we was alluding to kind of talking about every place entering the building would go through the metal detectors because for example at the high school we would have one near the parking lot we would have one in the front Okay so okay okay any entr into the building not just the the front the okay that's okay I need clarification okay did anybody else see it like that like I just saw it as the interest and one interest the main you didn't say the main interest I guess that's how I saw it I said oh just interested that people would think it the entrance where they enter the building okay where they enter the building okay so as you can see and think back where we were and where we're going I think as you recall you asked me to say okay what does the community say what does our staff saying and more importantly if we do go in that direction do you have the procedures and protocols written and number one do we have the staff so here's where we're at at this point uh as you know Mr Tobias uh graciously took on this role um late in the in the season he has been able to go out to some of our local districts and has observed um um watching what it looked like at the beginning of the year he had indicated there were a lot of lines at the beginning of the school year and those were some of the concerns that we had he's also going to be going and participating at another school uh to actually feel what it's like to go through and and work with um you know the staff in doing that so he is working at looking at their handbooks uh it would affect policies and so forth so that is in the mix but I think the bigger question here is staff now right now he is still trying to hire staff members and Mr Tobias we talked this morning how many staff security guards are we still looking was it 20 okay and that is just to keep our our normal security now we are using credential right now but we are so we have 20 to hire and then we would still have the additionals to do so you can see we've got we've got a little bit of a gap here um in in moving forward and there are there are some applicants that are in the pool and we are going through and vetting them but it has been kind of a slow process on that so I think where we're at we're going to continue to uh put together the procedures and so forth I think our main concern before we would even come back to you for a vote is trying to get these 20 filled first and maybe it might even take till spring or even to the next round I think the question is to one is we discussed we want to start in the high school yes so we're not talking about any other building but number two I guess us the board what I think you guys got to come back what do you need from us to be successful for this to be successful that's the question so you guys got to come up with a plan and say what do you need from us I mean we got to figure out that's why I think I asked Ken earlier on on on the salary wise there has to be a way to pull that in because we all know moving forward in society what what's it look like it looks like at some point in society is this going to be the future right so how do we get to that point how do we get to the next level but you guys got to come and ask us what you need to be successful because I think I asked uh Mr seamonson that before you know before the school year what do you need from us to beat for this to be successful if it's people I mean how much money per hour like what do we need to do um we know it's a staffing shortage but what's the next level what's the answer of that and we were hoping that the the contract uh was able to entice a few more um as far as you know doing more I I'm not sure if we can pay any more out of the contract um that we already have in there without doing some anou um and uh you know Mr Tobias I but but if that if it comes down to that we need to adjust that salary scale in order to get those let's have those discussions with the Union if that's I mean I think security is in everybody's interest right so if that is the issue so I think a lot of it would depend on you know why aren't people applying or do we have enough people applying um and kind of gauging that out so I think and how many people do you need for the high school how many metal detectors we need because again before we spended we want to have a plan we want to have procedures but what we just don't want that we want to know what you need from us to make that successful how is that going to run that would be probably the one piece that we would need is investigating you know changing changing the salary in that and I know U that was an area that we were wondering if that would um if that Sally would not be enough and I think we if I can add I'm not sure we're at that point yet okay we do have people in the pool that we haven't talked to yet uh Mr Tobias and I will be meeting on Thursday to go through that a little more carefully put together a schedule and a team to take care of that we'll hopefully have a good number to bring to the October meeting but uh we have already put through I think three uh in the last week so we we are we are working on it and I think we have about 13 that are ours and if we add in the eight that we were uh projecting we would need for the high school for metal detectors and that would make us a 21 but for you know if we take those three out we're down to 10 that we need to hire uh and we do have a lot of those currently staffed by credential people right and we are hiring some of those who are have turned out to be a good fit for us so I think we have a little time for we need to get that conversation but we are prepared to go forward and talk to the union if we need to so let me just understand so we're short 20 people today of our own staff how much of that and we're filling some of that in with credential we're short probably about 13 of our positions that need to be staffed without the metal detector positions okay with the metal detectors a little over 20 now we have a lot of credential uh officers who are helping us out I believe we still have a couple of Elementary buildings that are occasionally operating without on some days because they're the buildings that are most used to operating without and probably have the the less meat but we want to get an officer in every building so we that's what we want to go through our pool and and try to fill the existing positions first and we we're hoping to do that really quickly okay and once we know more about that then we can come back if there's something else need okay while do we have male and female applicants we're looking at because you're going to need quite a few females still we we do have uh across the Spectrum male female okay a variety of because we will need additional for the metal detectors for sure so and and of course we can always look at the people we hire for particular positions once we bring metal detectors online some of those people may shift other positions that are better fit I was just curious if we had your mic you need your mic so I guess my question is as well if we hire um um I guess a comfortable number for our positions then could we ultimately use credential for the metal detectors it's possible you know we would look at what's the best use of all of our assets who wherever we were getting from makes sense because we would need to train everybody in case credential they've left you know so correct and and we will probably retain credential regardless if we filled every position because we'll need backups for if we have officers absence those kind okay okay any other questions on that okay next Southland Career Tech update yeah I wanted to just give the board an update of where we were at and also see if we we get some direction on if you want me to go ahead and keep pursuing that as you know uh this initiative we had started actually a couple years ago uh it is the rich Township uh hwood Flossmore Bloom Thorton fractional Thorton 205 speed and Prairie State as well as ourselves are working to develop this Career Tech Co-op and again this was proposed location which would be currently at Rich East Rich Township would be donating the property to the co-op and allowing the co-op to construct and it would be about a um 100 million to 140 million on the site the building would be in excess of about 145,000 Square fet and primarily would be looking at manufacturing which manufacturing as you know we already kind of do Aviation you know because that was the one that we were looking at Public Safety Urban agricultureal and information Tech the co-op would be available for tuition cost so just like our speed we would then pay tuition what is different about this is that from speed right now you know we get you know reimbursed from the state for for so forth and we just pay for the tuition we don't necessarily and tuition does have some of that operational cost in there of course so it's very similar um currently right now uh the rich Township has asked for their legal team to um work with our interested interested districts to create some bylaw so we wanted to start putting this to paper to see what it would look like as we were uh working through it we've invited our Council our attorney Council uh to the table to review the bylaws and to make suggestions and certainly to look out for the best interest of our district in this endeavor the co-op is planning to fund the construction of the building with donations and grants and I verified that again at my last meeting you know it's a lot of money out there so they are trying to look to find um you know grants out there donations and so forth um Robin Kelly our conest roomman has donated over a million dollars for the project and so it's is sitting there ready to donate but again that's just a small dent into the bigger uh project in order to even accept these funds the co-op needs to go ahead and have the board um sign their interest or intent of interest to continue so each of the districts is going back to their boards to see if you know they indeed want to contribute and continue with this in order for them to secure those funds uh in order to consider them an entity but in order to do that you know um in working with our legal counsel there was some concerns that were coming up that still needed to be worked through um so before we have signed on we wanted to make sure that uh the board is well aware of some of those costs um that we would be obligated to and again if you still wanted to pursue this uh after the construction of the building the co-op members would be uh required to share an operating expenses so the five districts would then have to share all the operating cost for that site initially which includes Staffing Staffing everybody which need a director or principal there you would have teachers uh computer supplies all sorts of things that go into that and right now that budget is not been necessarily determined once students begin to enroll the general operating expenses would be shared with the co-op and then divided by the number of students that were enrolled uh for example if there was a 100 students and we sent 10 from our district we would be obligated for at least you know that 10% of that tuition and again so it could be you know sizable amount of money for for that piece uh we're still working on some of the other language issues of that um but certainly we're kind of deciding whether we want to pursue having a co-op uh or do we feel like we have enough here because it would incur some additional expenses at a time you know certainly when our our monies are going in a lot of different places um and I can ask the legal council to join in on this but some of the financial concerns that legal brought up in our conversation was that the district would be responsible for an equal share of operating costs that might become responsible for a pro rated share which could be up to 12 million a year initial initial startup fees there's a question on that if you're paying tuition per student why are you paying operating operational cost I think would it be built into that it would be to get the facility up and running first before the tuition even starts so we would have to put out some money in order well the co-op would have to put out some money so this would be a reoccurring expense and the 12 million Capital expenditures Capital expenditures you know there there be additional Capital expenditures sorry that 12 12 like 125 estimated there we go the uh the 125 you 12 or 125 that you mentioned that's initial Capital expenditures but there would also be initial operating expenditures as well bylaws separately my point is there would be cost not the 12 million year but there would be cost occurring every year and and Ken correct me if I'm wrong our longterm our long-term facility plan is to go down in size in buildings not add more right I mean I think the idea was to you know not have the Mec that's why we're putting the addition here so it's all in one facility number two is if we can you know consolidate even further in a few more years and and whatever how that works but it's not to add more facilities right no I mean the goal is to you know try and downsize as much as possible sure yeah you to reduce off expensive so and some of the other costs would be um again it's the unknown expenses right now because you know and signing for an unknown is you know is a concern for our attorney and Council as well as ourselves um and the way that the voting structure is right now U there are five districts so if four districts vote for it then everybody then is responsible for for that that portion and you're going to have to hire a a someone like Mr Ser right I mean you're going to have to hire somebody to run the finances it has a whole staff yes so those would be some considerations so um there some things that were still being worked out and then we would need to transport our students so I think you know before we move forward I just wanted to get direction from the board you know what the what the appetite was for this uh well I'll start by saying I love the idea of working with other school districts for something like this but I don't think we're in a position right now with all our capital projects and everything going on to take on something of that magnitude it's just my opinion age you know I first thought when it first came to the table I said wow you know what what a program that we can Embark upon and and then we decided to go ahead and add the addition to our high school which we're looking to do we got a very successful manufacturer program and we were looking to do more things which is kind of doing the same thing with this program that you're talking about and and I think you know reading through that one thing that I didn't like correct me if I'm wrong Eric was that if we decided to If We join we decide to get out we're still liable is that forever I saw something in that bill wrote in his is his in his opinion you would be liable forever but you'd be liable for any that are incur as of the that coer okay so whatever expense that we occurred when we was part of that we was still be liable for that if we withdraw from that SP okay okay okay or another example could be like you know litigation that occur while you're while you're a member right I think that would be another sure and can you if we decide not to to take on this endeavor but somewhere down the road can we do that I I do believe that it does allow us then to it would be at a higher tuition than if it was uh we were not part of the co-op but we would be able to participate at some point okay that'll be my thought at least see Let it go forward with our participation because again we have so many moving Parts in our district right now including again the addition ition to the high school which is looking to take on a lot of those I don't want to say a lot but at least several of the programs that you listed already and see how it goes and you know and I'm not sure if the transportation cost will be reimbursed like it's reimbursed for us transporting our kids it would be there would the kids get College CR or not college but High School Credit Credit yeah their career classes just like we would have here okay okay so but I doo think it's a really good idea but I don't know like um as rup said that we're in a position right now to embark on this but um if it is something that we can maybe do later there's too many unknowns right now so I'm not really 100% comfortable with it um until maybe it's up and running and if we want to do that later it' be great but yeah I'm not willing to go to our taxpayers and say we need to Fork over 12 and a half million to go into the old Rich East Building for a pro you know we could a bigger I mean if it came down to they could fund all of the capital initial Capital through donations or grants and then it just became a tuition issue I mean we we send kids to Prairie State we pay tuition we send them to KCC we pay tuition we have speed I mean we we already do that so we're comfortable with that I think that would be one situation but kind of stepping into something where Our obligation one isn't Quantified and two to put money into capital projects where we have Capital we have other things on our list that we'd like to do you know I just don't see this being feasible right now and that was the question if we're paying tuition why would we pay the 12 you know the operating that didn't make any sense if you're paying tuition is something I shouldn't have to pay for your operating expenses either and they're looking to build a new building for this on the existing grounds of rich Rich East High School they're planning on using that property I don't think it's been discussed whether they were going to demolish it and start over or if they were just going to you know so basically we're helping them rebuild and look good and I I it's not okay forget about even helping them I mean I guess we could be what are your thoughts on love to do that because I I value her opinion yeah well and that that is why I'm bringing this forward and that's why I said and you're bringing it Forward because you believe in it I I'm bringing it Forward because it was a great idea moving before as we've started going into the bylaws and getting into the nitty-gritty stuff we've I've worked with Council and there's there's areas of concern still okay do I mean but do you think with what we're doing it's worth it I think I think our district is uh doing a lot of really good things and it's continuing to do some good things certainly in manufacturing but there's some other things that we are going to be um promoting I think probably after the high school edition gets put into into place okay all and we've been working on this for about two two at least two years I know it was during Co so we've been talking about this for a long time now this was a little bit before we decided to do the addition at the high school so well let me ask you to be because is that a question you're prepared to answer now as far as do you think it's worth it because I don't know if I understood your answer as to it's wor think it gives the district uh our students access to additional career choices you know certainly my concern is about the financial pieces I know the sentiment of the board we've got a lot of um irons in the fire and um you know our our our focus is trying to get our facility plan done uh and those things are very important to the board and the community because that's what they're counting on for us so and they triy to correlate some of this with speed program spe in our in my opinion that's kind of a mandatory thing that's a need that really is a need we can't provide those Services right right so we have to have or Cur expenditures to get our kids up to speed best we could with the speed program but this here this here is more of a yeah it will promote some form of Education in a different form different fashion but not more of a a total need like Mr SW said is it is an elective it gives more exposure um for students so it it provides more options but it doesn't fulfill requirements exactly exactly which is good yeah which is good yeah I think the goal was nobl but I just don't think we're prepared to execute on it at this time so at least at this point I'm I'm sensing certainly the cons put the not to close the door in its entirety because again and that's why I as the question can you can we re revisit this at a later date and you know it was my understanding through the bylaws that allowed allowed people to come come and go it was based on tuition because they're trying to get more districts to participate you know the co-op is the initial group that's going to kind of share the the load initially and then as you have more and more districts coming on the outside to do tuition base it would help kind of help fund it and reduce the other District's expenditure so so Dr K I have a question that came up in my mind now when we're saying it's an elective manufacturing is not an elective so we're we're grouping it in the same thought as our manufacturing class but in essence it really isn't because manufacturing is not an elective they get credit for that class what I mean you get credit for you get credit for elective elective just means you don't need it's not a requir it's not a requirement right oh because when I went to school in elective was you didn't get credit for anything oh no took it as an extra there was only one R not around told I'm done you stepped into that no you still have to take another see where you're at that's all I said he muted everybody okay thank you okay okay any um that's it for administrative updates M that's that's it for administrative updates okay okay okay so okay um okay next up any old business I guess old business I did as the question damn funny it was funny it was funny it is funny old business seriously old business our din for you uh just old business I I did ask our HR assistant superintendent a couple months ago about where were we as far as hiring more minorities within the district as far as certified teachers of that nature I don't I don't know if we actually have that numbers those numbers um since school started you know I don't have the numbers with me tonight my plan was to put them together at the end of September I believe I said that at that time because we usually kind of we usually count the hiring season as being from May to September so that I'll put them together bya that first FYI in October and we can discuss it further if we need to that's good great thank you and that is all I have I did ask Ken to um you know bring back some information I asked for so he said he would so I'm not going to even bring that out and he's been good getting me information that I wanted and thank you Ken and Dr Cara for getting me some information which I think you shared with the board I do yes good information that was a good good information going through that thank you any other old I've got a new business item oh I'm surveying the whole room don't um new business so well you're not a paid employee so it wouldn't uh it gets rough um on um question about the consent agenda what would the board think about uh when we have all of the construction uh contracts to approve putting those in the consent agenda you know where we have you know for each School we've got you know I mean Ken runs by these projects in the committee the whole um you know when we have you know $887,000 being paid out to ourl Soho for tala or whatever could we just throw those all in the consent agenda instead of having them but because we're voting on money don't we have to do individually no I know that was one of the concerns we had we we approved payables bus we approv payables as part of of the consent agenda so I mean to me it's it we're aware of it if if there's ever an issue we can always take it out of the consent agenda we could always just take it out and vot on that one but it just it seems like it would streamline you know where we've got eight eight approvals under action items to just throw that into consent agenda yeah I mean again as long as we have an opportunity to to pull it and and then and then the other item was what about the payroll or uh the Personnel report whether or not to put that in the consent agenda I think maybe at one time prior to me being on the board it was in the consent agenda and there was some desire to pull it out yeah and I guess for the same for the same reason if you read it and you don't want to vote on it as a package deal pull it out yeah and you asked that at every meeting so if we want to pull it out we can pull it out yeah I think we just have to make sure we're specific on that I just think anybody I think I'll have to be very disciplined to make sure I have Cara read all of the items in the consent agenda there you go so yeah which is I do I'm hitting Miss on but okay well let's put those in let's try putting those in the uh consent agenda and then if it works if it doesn't we'll rethink it but yep okay and we all legal on that right Eric okay you're um okay any other new business can we put close session in the [Laughter] consented um so okay we do have a need for Clos session tonight let me get my handy dandy uh reasons for close session it's just number one correct Personnel Personnel okay um can I get a motion to go into close session for the purpose of the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees second Cheryl's eager to get there roll call Brown is an i Mrs galbert I Dr Hall I Mr swales hi Mrs Walters hi vice president Ru hi president albre I okay we are in close session at 7:50 um for those watching on the live stream uh the only item that we're going to have after uh close session is adjournment so we'll uh end the close stream
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
all the speed days of the maryland wilson rainbow school district order this meeting is being recorded your image and organized navy broadcast we're going to begin with the pledge of allegiance [Music] indivisible with liberty and justice for all has anyone received any communications that they would like to share is there a motion to approve the content agenda as presented so again sorry is there any discussion um all in favor aye aye and i as well opposed motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passes i'm going to do a little moving around just a little bit with these principals who have had a busy couple of weeks and i think we're going to start with their reports these properties [Music] ladies would like to go first sure so for our report uh we talked about the fact that on the 26th professional development session um um and engineering teacher we have volunteered a couple years uh keith schmidt is a new role actually that we put in this year so she needed part um school district school concert and we have gina who took over four years and we just hired a preschool teacher trisha sims we had a paraprofessional michelle sander from upcoming elementary we also have either youth professional in our preschool jennifer baxter and it was very nice to have the pto and [Music] um met with all the grades actually throughout the day and we also linked our um student camera presentation to the report you can see that and one of the things that we're focusing on this year [Music] uh for chromebooks we're now one on one for all students involved which is great because and there's also a voluntary insurance policy that goes along with that and for athletics we are focused on another successful season we had some teams do really well last year so they're field hockey and soccer teams are looking to defend their titles from last year and also um soccer teams who did very well um uh um for upcoming events we have school pictures in our senior class photo on eight and we have the pba next week on the 21st and our um open house have any um i just have one really quick one um i know we talked about this before but um is okay [Music] okay right so these have been added then the cell phone used for high school students quality exactly that's just the procedure but that's not the name of the outline of the consequences for um [Music] is the policy you have in place typical for what otherwise believe me when it comes to students using cell phones i ask because i just i don't have high school students right but i have friends and family and i hear so many stories about the extent to which bullying occurs and other things happening with myself and obviously we can't control it outside of the school day but uh students can have their cell phones yeah i would say yes just based on my presentations just because those slides were amazing to know that they're working on kindness and how you're going about it and then even just the information in the slides was really helpful i read a few parts aloud to a student of mine that attends here for you know strengthen that um but it really was helpful yeah i think oh good good yeah i must have missed that but i appreciate it was very very well done and it was just like i said i can't say it on both kindness parties just think we all really need it right now to see that positivity and to see it be an expectation that's really just comfortable thank you thank you i wasn't able to access your acne presentation in years equity to help staff members realize that this is something we're taking seriously obviously this school year and school years coming forward and teaching um staff that you know they're working on working on development just to be mindful of the classroom because oftentimes you don't know internally what a student might be going through whether it has something to do with their social economic background their family background if they have a mental health being going on so just kind of be mindful of that you know in and out of the classroom and making sure that we're really developing for our students because once you have that rapport and commitment to getting to know them we can really stop meeting them while they're at connections with education so throughout that presentation i will leave you through three videos one with just um someone's perspective on absolute flows of discipline relationships that was done by edward eddie green and it just got the conversation going up as educators we're learning each day too from our students and kind of enhancing the idea of what's our power purpose and responsibility and the more of a reminder of our students they can also teach us too what is our power purpose and responsibility to take us some days we know as educators we might feel like we're not reaching our students but you never know they're just being mindful of how to approach that we have students that feel very comfortable here identifying their their preferred pronouns go into different communities and make sure we are upholding the respect and also to be mindful of curriculum [Music] you know a lot of times we go to museums the portraits are all of you know but there's also thanks very much i i have to mention my new best friend who is not here this evening to be the best elementary school but i'm the best elementary school i'm sure we brought 223 children into the building on the first day of school and we managed to send them all home and nobody cried so that's always a win at the elementary level i think that there she was once um but that's okay is that kindergarten kids choose just a couple of updates for you as we start the year we did school pictures we um i always like to take the year you know kids they come wow a lot of them come dressed up and then more the boys come dressed up from the waist up and handsome shirts and nice ties and their shorts but it's a lot of fun this year just to give you a sample of what it's like to be an elementary school student because the day is a we don't little different much time in the morning we always take a picture every year it's a nice shot keep trying to find a nice place to hang them up um but the teachers all got together but i only had [Music] you know week of school to their classes we didn't go past them because of course the teachers were all right there there was nobody lost them in the classroom but i was just amazed at how like this is how we did things and i think that's a you know part of this whole school-wide behavior these are our expectations everything um because kids so picture day was a lot of fun we have open house coming up on thursday your wall and michael um instead of 90 minutes we're actually doing three sessions for parents which is great for the few parents who get more than one or two children um steph did with presentations i do in the olden days when mrs costello was in principle [Music] three sessions three thirty minute sessions i just sent the email out to clarify for parents at six o'clock so you haven't just got yeah obviously oh yeah yeah we thought two 45 minute sessions and then teachers went are you crazy we could not talk the 223 pre-k through grade 5 how does that compare to last year uh slightly up okay not huge uh that's that we are seeing a kind of continued slow growth yeah so there's a set of houses now being built literally right next to school um as i look at this you get two classrooms for each grade k through five what's your staffing beyond the teacher in those classrooms how many of those classes have an aide that's in the room assistant teacher several have aids but they're typically tied to one or two or three special education students the days of like just classroom aids why um partly funding it's uh it's expensive it's a professional doesn't make a ton of money but by the time you toss in the benefits and all the other stuff um it gets very expensive um sometimes it's not worth it do you have anything kindergarten correct is that we do we do not at this point because of the staffing talks that we're having and uh paraprofessional they have what are their lines for kindergarten games and vocal kindergarten classrooms are there staffing lines for kindergarten there's one kindergarten this year that is the one exception to the it's not always helpful kindergarten and all you have to do is walk into a kindergarten class um it's it is hurting rapids yeah what do you think before i see here and i see in the bes numbers too is the kindergarten enrollment you've got 41 students so 20 and a half students in each class you know you know as that number potentially continues to increase at what point does it require us to add a third increased by about 10 students from kindergarten here you went from 70 to 20 if you had a similar increase in new kids coming into first grade this year you've got 23 24 in classroom in first grade it's that's a lot of kids especially when you're trying to do small group work and that's where paraprofessionals are really helpful because you've got a teacher who's doing direct instruction but you want to take four or five kids off to the side and you want to work with them or whatever wow although thank goodness you know back to routines think about themselves yeah okay but yeah it's going to be the shield there's no space yeah berliners were too so you can't even add oh no you do have two glasses per grade perfect right last year you only had one in fifth grade so we had one fifth grade the lesson hit just one was three years ago that does not work for a whole bunch of mostly social reasons [Music] john is there a threshold number that you keep on your radar that is a tipping point downstairs uh primary grades 18 is probably your sweet spot upstairs 22 more far away no you're not a couple here as the grades go higher the numbers get lower is that anything to do with it you track or do you know how many withdrew completely from the school you've got to go in during those couple years you just haven't come back or is there a situation okay um we don't lose kids they we lose kids and they leave us much more reflection of you've got 41 kindergarteners 42nd graders but then you only have 26 4th graders still two teachers for all of them giving class sizes of 20 which is over your 18 but then only 13 for the fourth graders so how do you kind of handle those issues where because i mean that's a huge difference the teacher has one more time attention to 13 kids versus 20.
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when you have a moment could you call the uh role for the purpose of attendance Please Mr Fitzgerald here Mr Hayden Mr Cirillo president okay our chair would appreciate a motion on the minutes of August 30th any discussion all those in favor anyone opposed thank you uh you pack it uh hand out well no we have a handout for the Consolidated cash Reconciliation Report revolving fund report and budget report any questions this is for Joe yes question on the revolving account I know that in many cases the revolving account is used directly to support an activity I'll use the pool account as an example um that the pool is expected unless unusual circumstances to pay for itself through the rentals but there were a couple of accounts such as the cosmetology account which now has almost thirteen thousand dollars in it and I'm I don't want to assume it is that all from the services provided through cosmetology that would be question one and question two uh the um the expenses used on a client applied after that or do we use these accounts um for other things for the students you know I know at the end of the year they have Awards and so on so I used the um Reggie Locker accountants I think that's the school store account which would be kind of it is or as a self-explanatory as to where that money would go and then for instance graphic which now has about sixty five hundred dollars in it is that from Services we've provided to the community Through The Print Shop or so I don't need the answer right tonight but if we could show maybe the revolving account count that are used to support that activity or those that are from community services and so on so if we could just look into that I would be grateful thank you okay John do we understand the directions yeah you'd like a more detailed report on each of the accounts see how the money is how the revenue comes in and how the revenue is spent I guess I don't need it for every account because some of them like the cafeteria account continues to have money coming in and then expenses go against it same thing I use the pool account facilities rental would be a different thing I know sometimes we've used money from that for Capital expenses but um those things that directly service the public that would be like cosmetology Auto Body Automotive or whatever um just to see what happens to the money at the end does it go towards the students I don't mean paying the students for services provided but maybe the awards at the end of the year so just maybe a clearer picture of what the accounts do sure thank you I'll meet with uh Melissa will go through each account and get a little more detail and back up on it how the funds are allocated and spent and then what we do with it at the end of each year anything further okay moving on uh Jerry uh budget transfers please budget transfers uh we'll give that off to Melissa I'll do the cash balance report sorry sorry um so we had several budget transfers to account for the colas for the teachers settled contracts there were some salary adjustments I did I did transfer I factored in what the colors are going to be for the rest of the unit so I did Factor those in there'll definitely be some adjustments after all the rest of the contracts settled in the first three transfers were not salary but they were line items that were missed during the budget process so I needed to add those lines back into our budget Joe accept the motion to approve the budget transfers as presented so moved yep sorry sorry yes yeah I I apologize I'm sorry not on purpose not on purpose a long day we're doing the budget transfers then we're going to go back to the cash balance report sorry I have a motion to uh for the budget transfers yes I I have a second second discussion go ahead um there are some items that you you were putting back into the to the budget and you talk about the code was the one-time payment to staff in general part of that um the one-time payment was last year's budget so that's all taken care of this that included in the cola um one of the raises no okay anything further uh there was an error in the formula on the um on the revolving account balances in the packet so it's just I corrected the formula on the balance so it's just it's the ending balances this ending balance column the formula was wrong in the packet so I just updated it so some of the balances were incorrect yeah anything further all those in favor and you would opposed okay sorry Jerry took your auto cash balance report please sure cash balance report as of September 6 2022 count balance on August 23rd 2022 was 670 000 90.46 we had deposits from August 24th to September 6th of three million 555 270.05 less payroll on September 1st of 1 million sixteen thousand four Twenty Eight spot 93 a warrant number four on August 30th of one million four oh ninety four fifteen and wallet number five on September 1st of 96.14.
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okay we're gonna kick off the Board of Education meeting for the 13th and and welcome everybody I am so thrilled and so sorry that we brought you out on a rainy night like this and everybody's dodging the uh the raindrops but thank you for telling me we're excited to meet you we're actually gonna break uh once the principals make their introductions we're actually going to break at that point so we get a chance to mingle those board members and get a chance to meet you I had a chance to walk around and say hello but um you know I'm the oldest guy in the room so I'm going to forget names so forgive me but uh we'll catch up on all that so but I wanted to welcome everybody I want to welcome our PTO uh presidents uh tonight that are here and Julie and Andrea are here and I think uh online is Who's online we have James online is Jamie up there yep hi Jamie thanks for coming this is kind of a new thing for the board we want to be better connected with our PTO presidents to be as supportive and helpful as possible you don't have to come to every meeting but we're going to leave a spot open for you once a month in our agenda so if you want to report on anything or you need our help or you want to give us some advice you can do that okay so we've cut that out for you guys also tonight uh I believe uh Dean and Steve Mandela Martel are going to be here we're going to discuss the uh the buses a little bit and we're we have some uh an excellent announcement on cameras and things that nature and then Chief RC Arrow will also be here to kind of talk about some of the issues that were we've been faced with so far with our buses so it's going to be uh it's going to be a pretty uh action-packed night but we're so thrilled that everybody's here and part of it you'll see that our agenda has changed somewhat we've moved those for they're online in those in the audience we've moved public forum later and me um and the reason why I did that was I wanted you to be able to hear some things that are going on with the board so the superintendent who is on his way here uh he'll be giving his report I'll give my report so if you have something that you want to comment on after you hear from the student report um you cannot you can comment on that so um just to make that that'll be a standing going forward with public forum being a little bit later in the meeting so people can catch up a little bit on what's happening with the Board of Education so having said all that we're going to go to our Pledge of Allegiance and Simone if you would be happy you know to meet us we'd appreciate it thank you you're the flag of the United States thank you okay so this leads us to the introduction of uh of our staff and I'm going to go in reverse order I'm going to ask Mr capippo and uh if you would like to introduce everybody from the uh from the high school side of things so okay I think I think so I think you look pretty good there so I'd like to open evening by uh dividing James welcome James James is our digital technology teacher and as many of you know here we have split staff funeral high school and James has beautifully filled that role and done it quite well so he splits his day between the Middle School and High School um James Bay Choice from Farmington where he's released a 15 year veteran teacher um in both Wallingford and Farmington graduate of Uconn where he earned a VA in the College of Environmental Studies he completed several courses in those areas at Binghamton and then later learn a masters of education technology at University of Hartford she comes in quite prepared um carrying several certifications here to support our students and as I said he he started Wallingford middle schoolers a science teacher and then uh continued on at Irving Robbins as a science teacher as well until recently around about six or seven years ago it became um the teacher of engineering and technology and education so we were very thrilled that he was interested to come over um and join us here at the high school and the middle school so at the middle school he teaches pre-engineering courses and he's very well equipped at the high school teach several courses which is really hard to find so this semester receives some Bigger Productions computer science principles to be teaching computer programming electronics mechatronics and computer programming as well and we also have other talents people will share with us um you know via ad or um you know Technology robotics after school so he's well invested early he's already coming with some new ideas thinking about some grants so I'm so happy to have James here we'd like to welcome him to Kent Public Schools you're in welcome it's a nice deal thank you speaking of Steel to the Board of Education so Eric comes to us also compartments in Farmington High School um they hate us over there so I really as with James I really do appreciate um Eric Wilbur as a veteran and taking a chance on Canton and making uh you know a later career move um to join us I came to schools it was a choice on his part to join us here in his hometown which I think played a big role in it James has two um daughters in the public school system here um and um you know we're happy to see them in school every day as well um so James comes I'm sorry air comes to us again from Farmington where he was there for um since 2006 it appears to that he had teaching experience in New York and Massachusetts he teaches physics at the high school and um you know he had his education was at Cornell University um where he hope he sees his VA and then a secondary math and science instruction you know earlier in his life and become social symbolical certifications as well so that's hard to find um this year he's teaching primarily AP Physics even few electives astronomy and um you know we're just so lucky that he's willing to come over I was very impressed and leaving and seeing Eric all summer long um most teachers stay away but he really acclimate himself to the school to his surroundings to his workspace he's really created a wonderful workspace for students pulling out as martial Jordan's impulse everything that was sort of blocked away so students can be you know interacting with that um and again I think commitment is already evident um you know with his hours and hours of time spent the summer making sure he was preparing the ready to move students so we're thrilled to have air I'll join us here at Camp public schools and I think we've been locked out with the physical situation [Music] I'd like to also take a moment to take the board here um we in our budget last year asked for a literacy coach and it was something we had asked more and talked about for some years and just really couldn't quite get to the to the end goal of the budget you guys really supported that and um as a result we're able to hire our experts that Dr Phil will talk about and she's already making a huge impact on our school thank you Dr Tidwell so thank you there's a little bit of thunderstorms um so we are very excited to welcome Gigi as our new brand new position as literacy coach new role for her a new position for us it's been a really nice partnership already in the last couple of weeks um so officially this is Christina di Giuseppe but it was by Gigi that's why you'll hear that um so Gigi has graduated from UConn with several degrees in the certification so a degree in English when she was an English teacher for several years she's also got a master's in curriculum obstruction her remedial reading certification finishing up another six years to have her reading consultant certification so definitely a student for life um she comes with most recently from Windsor Locks High School where she was an English teacher from 2016 and is no stranger to designing and leading teachers in professional development she actually presented as we asked annual conference on Fifth Grade division of graduates and advisory components so she's definitely got a lot of different pieces that we're going to tap it into and happy to use um when she's not being a student and designing professional development and trying to figure out what her new literacy coach role is she loves photography and theater and she's definitely already making herself at home at VHS so we are excited to do what uh what she'll bring welcome that's it on the high school side Mr Moore how are you sir we're doing well how are you okay thank you good evening everybody um thank you for having me here tonight and to introduce our new staff um I have one person joining online in abstention so I apologize for that phone so passion for what they do which at the middle school level you are passionate um can you hear me sir thank you all right this is another one of our shared staff members and so Dan and Mr robita will be teaching music technology at both the middle and high school level Mr Rivera has a bachelor's degree in jazz trumpet performance from Western Connecticut state and a mask um when I was speaking about genuine passion his love performance for arranging music and then people tell them is that in Denver he was a member of the uh the halftime brass band that performed at the Denver Broncos games so we're very fortunate to have Mr Bean and his talents and passion teaching music here in Canton Public Schools Mr Ravine welcome to you foreign will be teaching special education at Canton middle school she has trained she has her bachelor's degree from St Joseph College and a master's in instructional technology from Western Connecticut state um so that may be a familiar name Megan Rue she is a king High graduate and um and her first teaching job was actually at Canton Middle School where she was a building substitute and then a language arts tutor uh and then she began her full-time professional Journey uh honing her craft building her skill sets teaching in Southington Stanford and most recently Lincoln Middle School in Maryland so she's already made an impact in supporting our students here at Cape middle school and we're very lucky to have Miss room on the team so we welcome this room equipment Benjamin's record he goes by the Benji Benji sprecker I actually introduced it to you um last year informally he was a long-term building substitute Force so he's a familiar face to the the families and students of Canada he um had a bachelor's degree from Uconn and a masters from St Joseph's um in his bachelor's in biology and then education Masters and um he was a very successful long-term substitute teacher during uh one teacher's maternity he built extremely strong relationships he showed a master of the content that's one of the more difficult roles to do a a long-term sub because it's not your classroom but you have to take ownership of it for a long period of time and be delicately balanced his his role at that time so when a full-time position became available we snatched up Mr sprecker to bring on his talents to our school he is incredibly um calm he's got very calm demeanor he has an unking patience with students and he's also got some really sweet skills at disc golf and we're excited for him to share all of those talents with the students of PA middle school so we welcome Mr sprecker to our scientists and additionally uh Forest can served below um is another addition to our our science department he has a bachelor degree in biology as well and a master's in global sustainability from Central Connecticut state and uh so uh my introduction to mrpool not my introduction but at orientation I had my my personal phone out probably texting my family and he looks at my lock screen and goes is that the first image sent back by the James Webb Space Telescope and I knew we had I had found a fellow people I knew it and I couldn't be more happier to have another one running around Kent Middle School um this person's passion this uh Mr circle of passion for science is Extreme evidence uh and although his trainings in biology he's had a very purposeful journey to further his scientific knowledge in the areas of uh chemistry and astronomy which he was teaching most recently at Southern's in high school so that experience his deep knowledge and genuine curiosity are going to be great benefit to the students in with science classroom and kids middle school so we welcome Mr door below as well foreign hired as Sean Glenn but was married over the summer before the first day of school um I would like to welcome Miss Sean arel to CIS Mrs arel joins our fifth grade English language arts team and is enjoying life with Mr perotti you have a partner teacher up on the third floor at CIS Mrs arel is not completely new to Canton Public Schools she served Cherry Brook Primary School several years ago as a para educator and a substitute teacher Mrs arel holds a Bachelor of Arts in theater education and a master's degree in elementary education from St Joseph's College prior to earning her Elementary Ed certification she taught theater and gardening and most recently she completed her student teaching at Forbes Elementary School in Torrington so we feel very fortunate to have such a well-rounded unique experience in Mrs Rowe welcome another new through CIS but not new to the district Edition is is MJ Sturgis prior to joining CIS as a part-time Library Innovation specialist to complement Mrs Conway who has moved back to part-time Mrs Sturgis served as the library media aide at Canton Middle School since 2019.
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] so [Music] now [Music] now [Music] me [Music] no no no no [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right board of trustees will reconvene our meeting and we'll start off with our pledge of allegiance please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and to join me in a moment of silence i want to recognize that september is suicide prevention month i know that many of our students have also experienced our families have experienced some tough times with suicide by debt so i want to keep everybody in our memory as well as i know the past weekend we had 9 11.
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thank you let us know when it's open it's open all right so we are back from our closed session at 10 43 p.m and there is no action to report from our closed session uh time but we do need to take action in 15.0 and 15.1 which is adjournment but with that that is there a motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn 15.1 by second moved by board member rodriguez pena seconded by board member bo any discussion hearing that all right yes yes and i'm also yes and so that passes for yes to one absent and we are adjourned at 10 44 p.m have a great evening [Music]
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well good evening and welcome to this regularly scheduled board meeting of the azusa unified school district board of education on september 13 2022 the time is now 7 p.m and we will open our we'll move to our open session and we will begin with 4.1 which is our flag salute and i do believe that we have scarlet overrubias here with us this evening welcome scarlett go ahead and lead us my name is carl garlicobadobias and i will be leading you in the fox bloom please stand for the fox loop please face the flag put your right hand over your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all prometa republica representative [Music] thank you very much next we will move to our roll call board member rodriguez pena president board member beau here board member cruz gonzalez here and i board member greer i'm also here board member arianes will be absent this evening next we move to 4.3 approval of the agenda is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda make a motion to approve 4.3 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena that's seconded by board member beau any discussion hearing none we will move to a vote and is there a uh excuse me for not asking do you have a student is there a preference would you you'd vote yes thank you and so the motion formally passed is to approve the agenda uh four yes one absent which brings us to 5.0 a report of report action of closed session matters and we'll begin with 5.1 student matter final sentiment for office of administrative hearing oah case number zero three three one student number twenty two dash twenty three zero one dash zero one is there a motion to approve a motion to approve 5.1 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena seconded by board member beau and we'll move to and that motion passes or yes to one absent bringing us to 5.2 student matter final sentiment for office of administrative hearing case number two zero two two zero five zero eight nine six student number 22-2301-04 is there a motion to approve a motion to approve 5.2 second moved by board member rodriguez pena seconded by board member beau with that we will move to a vote and that motion passes four yes to one absent this brings us to 6.0 recognition and awards and specifically 6.1 recognition of azusa high school student nathan nogues estrada please correct me if i pronounce that incorrectly but i will look to mr fernandez good evening board of education i'd just like to invite our head coach coach brownstead up to the days for introducing his players tonight for his player tonight video uh i don't know hear me or not but good afternoon or evening excuse me i'm still on practice time um my name is mark brownstead coach brown said um we're here to uh recognize nathan we call him nate um for his performance in week zero which is confusing because it always seems like a week one um just weird football stuff but uh in our game against mountain view nathan threw for five touchdowns ran for another touchdown um had a fantastic evening played very well on defense has played well all season um as he often does and what i can tell you about nate is he is an extremely hard worker on and off the field he's very coachable he's extremely intelligent he has a bright future i think we're only seeing the beginning of what he's capable of and it has been the culmination of four years for uh interesting years of him dedicating himself to not just the game but tolerating me so um i am pleased to uh recognize him in this moment and i'm very proud of him and uh i appreciate his family being here as well thank you is there anything that you would like to say this evening at the podium i just like to say i appreciate my mom and dad for like helping me throughout my journeys and playing football throughout my high school years but this isn't like my award i feel like this is a team award because without my team i wouldn't be yours thank you half of the board of education certificate of recognition for all of your hard work as a student as an athlete and as a young man so congratulations all right and next we move to 7.0 and specifically 7.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board of education on agenda or non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education on any agenda or non-agenda item when the public wishes to address the board of education on an agenda item they may fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise their hand while in zoom attendant the board will take blue card requests first followed in order by speakers at the podium and then those and zoom attendant do we have any blue cards this evening we do so first up we have david pavero [Music] good evening president greer and board members and superintendent ortega if you don't know me i'm chief david pavaro of the covenant police department i wanted to come at the beginning of the school year best time here september to just affirm our commitment to gladstone high school you know that's in the city of kena affirm our uh passion our mission provide safety and security on that campus to the student faculty and parent we've committed our sro program there through the summer we've done our department in-house ongoing training as we always do with school safety and active training we continue to partner with superintendent had several discussions with them over the summer we're here for you i just want to make sure that you important understand to take care of tonight but uh the last thing i'll bring up is you can see by my patches i'm wearing patches october is right in front of us breast cancer awareness month the vino police department has always been a supporter of breast cancer awareness the la county police chiefs last year raised a quarter of a million dollars together for breast cancer awareness research intervention the covenant police department raised seven thousand dollars on its own this year we're winning ten thousand dollars uh a pledge and we're participating home and block october october 8th saturday down by la live welcome any of any of the community of azusa gladstone uh faculty and students anybody in our community join a partnership on a worthy cause um you can go to our website our social media sites join our fundraising we have shirts and challenge coins if you don't want to join us that's fine join any organization to fight a worthy battle breast cancer awareness thank you for the time you know where you can locate me superintendent again we're here for azusa unified thank you have a good evening thank you uh chief next we have albert sanchez all right good evening president grier superintendent ortega fellow board members and cabinet my name is albert sanchez i'm a physical education teacher and athletic director at glaston high school i'm speaking tonight on behalf of our ausd coaches and want to address ausd's extra duties pace schedule in particular the coaches section on octo on november 5th uh 2021 i sent you all the first of two emails addressing the extra duties pay schedule i shared a spreadsheet with information that i had gathered that compared the coaching stipends of five neighboring school districts to that of ausd what's important to understand is that these numbers reflect the pay scales entering the 21-22 school year the findings clearly showed our shortcomings when compared to the other five neighboring school district salaries in my follow-up email on may 14 of this year i sent an updated spreadsheet that compared ausd to 16 of our neighboring school district again numbers clearly showed that we rank at or near the bottom in pay in almost every sport football volleyball basketball soccer baseball and softball i've asked both of our high school head football coaches to join me here tonight to further drive home the point i'm trying to make these two coaches coach brownstein from azusa and coach lopez from gladstone are the lowest paid high school football coaches on the list i provided you we rank dead last 17 out of 17 the speaks volume also in my follow-up email i mentioned that if you take a look at the ausd extra pay schedule 2019 2020 effective july 1st 2019 found an appendix d of the aea contract the initial sentence underneath this states this title states the following percentage for number of years as applied to column one step one of the teachers salary schedule forty three thousand six hundred fifty eight the teacher's salary schedule begins with column column one step two at fifty two seven seven eight there isn't a step one on the teacher's salary schedule a first year teacher in a zoo unified begins at column one step two of the teacher's salary schedule a ausd the facts have been clearly presented to you you have the opportunity to correct an obvious heir find a way when it comes to negotiations to make the changes needed to make us comparable to our neighboring school districts and consider separating the coaches pay schedule from all the other ausd extra duties change the initial sentence of the ausd extra pay schedule to state column 1 step 2 of the teacher's schedule do away with the 43 658 total and replace it with the base salary of a first year teacher like our neighboring district on behalf of all of our coaches and student athletes i thank you in advance thank you for your attention to this matter thank you thank you moving on to uh our next public commenter which is amber fish hi everyone sorry i couldn't be there in person um i wanted to start out with a couple kudos thank you so much to nutrition services for the amazing food they have been serving uh the first day of school my son had chicken noodle soup and he was absolutely raving about it he's still raving about it here we are almost a month later um seeing the pasole the fresh foods it's really encouraging and i'm hoping that we can roll out more soon um i love seeing these fresh options for our students sorry about that um also i wanted to say thank you to superintendent ortega for opening up his parent roundtable to everyone in the district it's nice to be able to log in and chat and have some conversations with him to address some concerns that we might be having which leads me to my final point uh air conditioning uh i see that air conditioning is a problem throughout our district not just at hodge we've been waiting on some parts that have been on back order however we just had this very giant heat wave and our students are having lunch outside yes underneath a covered patio however this covered patio it's it's still over 100 degrees outside and hot for them um i'm hoping that if continuing waiting on these parts is probably not the best option we need to look into replacing them um it was mentioned that they are old and some are up for replacement so i'd hope the board would take time to consider that being proactive about this so this way we can get on a list to purchase acs instead of waiting until we need them again and then possibly being at the bottom of a list and we can get ahead of this for next year's heat waves coming up thank you all for your time we look forward to a great year this year thank you very much miss fish and with that we will move to 8.0 which is comments reports and requests by the board of education and we will begin with board member rodriguez payne uh hello um good evening everyone i just want to start off by saying i went to the welcome back district luncheon it was great to see everyone out and it was i don't know 105 degrees right but it turned out very nice a lot of people showed up and we had the opportunity of either choosing between a taco um don't want to see a taco stand but a gentleman was telling making tacos and also the big ice grill which of course i have to go get my favorite bacon wrap hot dog and um i want to thank natasha and her team they did a great job they had many many raffle prizes distributed them and they're really good um i also went to the cls va conference the california latino school board association i went to several workshops the one that stood out to me was equitable while addressing the mental health needs of students and community they spoke about creating a safe space for students i do know that we do have the wellness center at the high schools but i would like to recommend that we have the wellness centers also in the middle schools i would like to um also wellness center should not only be for students they should also be for staff members that was really important when we spoke about when they spoke about that in this session you know i know we have staff lounges but it's not very private because you never know who's in there you know somewhere you know where a staff member can go and and and you know just spend some time in there if they need a break you know we're all human beings and we all go through different emotions um and even if they stay there 10-15 minutes just to be able to get away um i'll just give you just a quick example of myself just like you know i i've been working in the school system for 40 years my husband passed away and um in 2011 2009 excuse me and and i'm working the office right and and i'm not feeling good but i had to go back to work eventually right and people wanted to talk to me or and i just wanted to not have him ask him all the time oh so what happened and how did he die what i just but then i couldn't get away right i mean i had like a space where we just go and sit i mean i just i just have to get up and tell my principal i have to go home this is like it's too much for me so i mean it's 13 years but it still affects me so i think it's really important that the staff members at the school sites and the district have a place to stay other than um just going to the lounge or just sit in your desk and just taking it [Music] so i i really like that class i went to coffee with the principals at murray elementary school and uh with mr costa and then i went to central middle school with mr contreras and um you know they spoke to the parents about the upcoming programs and all the great things that to look forward to here this is the unified school districts of course parents had many questions regarding the middle school um regarding the organization what are we doing next year and mr mr dr contreras you know he had answers to them or that he said they can come and speak to him anytime and he would also bring updates of what's going to be going on so they do know being transparent is so important to these parents um but i do see the balance back the valve's been missing and it's there so um my concern is that you know this bowel was there since 1988 i asked mr contreras how long has it been there and i'm just hoping that when we do all this reorganization it's not just we put back in the warehouse because that's where it was all this time i'm hoping we'll find a place for it i mean even in the district office in a corner somewhere i don't know but i just don't think that we should um we should respect it and put it somewhere and not just stash it away and i did go to the back to school night azusa high school in glaston high they had a very good turnout considering it was 101 degrees out that evening it was a nice evening but it still was very hot but they had both schools had a great turnout with parents um the um retired new york city fire lieutenant um 911 responder you usmc veterans award veterans mr singleton he came and spoke to our students regarding 9 11 and how to help others and also um lisa landeros levine she was an active u.s army captain for 17 years in the military they went to the high school they spoke to the students and the um sierra high school were famous this channel 7 went there and they interviewed the students and they interviewed the gentleman and he was i don't know seen it had a chance to see it but it was a tidbit but it was azusa unified school district so all the students i was so impressed they did so great they all were real quiet they were listening very interested in what what you have to say to them and they also asked him questions so i wanted to thank myra rico and um the she's the president of wrote the rotarians and uh ray kearney for all the hard work because i know it took a hard for them to bring him from virginia they they flew him here and they found the funds and they housed them here and took him to lunch every day and and he was a very nice gentleman so and also mary turner on 9 11 they had a um and the interact students they had the dinner outside at the front of the city hall and they had their ceremony until it started raining right but it was good everyone still continued to eat and everyone's get even the um apu the jazz van they kept on playing them and playing and everyone was you know they were okay just a little water was not gonna hurt anyone but um that's all i have to report thank you board member bo thank you good evening everyone um just a couple of um shout outs that i'd like to give i'd like to give a shout out to all of our teachers and all of our principals at the site for their hard work in making this year a true back to normal back to school i've seen a lot of energy at the school sites a lot of enthusiasm a lot of print filled and art filled classrooms already in the first couple weeks of school so that's exciting to see i also wanted to share that i am a new hodge parent and a new long fellow parent so the morning drop-offs have gotten a little easier now um especially with my little one at longfellow um and and the thing together staff at the administration especially at longfellow has been very caring and welcoming as my little one is making her transition from preschool tk today in fact i had the opportunity to volunteer as a parent at the hajj book fair and i think it's a great fundraising opportunity it's a great opportunity to promote literacy um and for students to have the opportunity to come in during lunch and browse and and purchase books at their at their leisure one thing that i noticed that um i think given our current national climate around school safety and campus safety is as apparent um i i think maybe there's an opportunity for um the district to take a look at our visitor management systems um some of the schools that i've been involved in we have sort of that that system where you have to show your your driver's license your id and then it's run through the system so that if we verify that i am who i say i am and um i i didn't experience that today and it just it's been on my mind as a school administrator about how we're able to have access to our campuses so i think given our um current upgrades and technology and servers and phones and cameras and just security in general i'd like to see if we can start having that conversation about a visitor management system district-wide board member cruz gonzalez thank you i'm just a couple things i'm also just want to say i've really been excited with coming back to school year just the excitement i see on campuses and the energy um i know my son is having a great time in second grade um so just a couple things that i wanted to talk about i also attended the california latino school board association conference and there were two workshops that sort of stood out to me um the first was around ethnic studies um and um wouldn't it woodland unified has actually started training a very long time ago passed a state a board resolution to to focus on the high school graduation requirement and so we know that their message to all of us were that we know that the requirement is two years out and so if you're not preparing now and putting your courses in now you're gonna you're not gonna be ready in two years right so i just want to bring that message back to us um and they've gone so far as not only training the cohort of their ethnic studies but also all their social studies teachers on sort of a baseline understanding of what ethnic studies did so just something for us to think about um and then the other area i'm glad to see our citrus partners in the audience i went to a session about dual enrollment um that cintanella valley about and they've got a very different path right so i really appreciate our our um early college that we have um they've actually focused much more on the career tech and embedding fuel enrollment in those career tech pathways um and so i think it's a place for us to think about us expanding partnership because i don't think we've gone that in that direction yet so thinking about like as we're consolidating is just the high where all the pathways are going to be at one school even closer to citrus than before i'm thinking about maybe that's maybe a place for us to think about how we expand partnerships um along with um my plug for like a full early college where kids walk out with an aaa like we see in a neighboring district um so that's um i just want to mention that and then just a couple other things i also wanted to mention the quality of food i really appreciate um especially the scratch cooking that our kids are getting i think it makes a difference um because you're getting really high quality food i did want to mention i still i feel like there's still work to happen at the breakfast level and especially now that we have um the second star break which i appreciate now because every kid gets a breakfast but my son who i do not let him have sugary sugary cereals it comes home excited because he gets the cocoa puffs in the morning right and so you know he's like and they have tricks and they have he's mentioning all of these sugar cereals that in my house we don't have right so just thinking about like how do we make that breakfast that we know we're giving to every kid make it a quality breakfast that that uh someone who wants a healthy start for their student is gonna knows that the school is delivering that but i do want to just preface that by saying the food i mean especially at the lunch is i mean it's incredible to see those changes i'm looking forward to seeing how we expand that i do know that the state um i think in the last day budget has out actually allocated dollars for grants for kitchen upgrades so i hope that we're looking at at trying to get some of those dollars because i know that's a big barrier and being able to have full scratch cooking um i also just wanted to mention i wanted to express appreciation to especially to our hr department and to our services that we have a fully staffed dual immersion program i know last year we had issues with with um you know teachers and classrooms and so i know that we walked in the door with some really great new teachers i i think some of them are very new in their careers so but that's exciting um and so i'm really excited to see that we have a really strong program um and that it's continuing and then um i think that is oh no two more things i also wanted to mention all the positive press that i see i see that we're getting through media through local tv i think that's just a testament for the work that our staff are doing in terms of how they outreach um i know we get to i get text messages from arturo saying hey this abc or nbc is coming to interview us right and so i think just thinking about where we used to be in terms of press i i i just want to say i appreciate that i noticed that that difference um and that is the all i have for our for this part right now thank you and good evening i similarly just want to comment on nutrition services i'll say that it came up kind of kind of school lunches and whatnot came up uh in conversation between my my daughter and and myself prior to the school year starting she brought it up and as and as she brought it up i i informed her uh to be on the lookout for some things that were going to be changing and uh she has since come back and has has said dad you were right and and if i could right right that's always a great thing to hear and as well as the food was bomb it was was it was another it was another quote from her and so yeah i just want to want to tip my hat uh to the nutrition services team and all the hard work that's that's going in to provide quality meals uh to uh our students here in the district and with that we will move to 9.0 comments and reports by student board members superintendents and cabinet and we'll we will begin with our student board member so to begin project high school azuza high school would like to thank the azusa rotary and the chamber of commerce for inviting captain lenderos levin and lieutenant clarence singleton who uses the high school on friday to share with students about the importance of service and helping others lieutenant singleton offered aspects a strong personal story about his service to his country in vietnam and in new york as a firefighter who helped save others on 9 11.
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