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okay awesome red light is on we are going um thank you all for joining um maybe start with the interpretation information thank you so much participants thank you thank you so much um first for uh we welcome our DAC leadership uh welcome Connie um we're happy you're joining us this evening would you like to start sure thank you thank you you hear me all right you might want can you oh there you can hear me sorry for viewing audience we do have Dr Lydia present virtually good evening president Lovato distinguished members of the board and superintendent L'Oreal thank you for providing taxi up to the opportunity to share with you our work thus far in the 2022-23 school year Dak is having their annual retreat tomorrow evening at the Commerce City rec center 5 30 is dinner Retreat starts at six and ends at 8.

I did oh you did something doesn't work I've done this once or twice before you've been here before haven't you thank you Tony right right did you try everything my husband did you try rebooting it no are you comfortable oh go yeah okay okay don't worry about it I'd like to Kyle to order a regular meeting of the Board of Education January 24th 2023 seven o'clock P.M uh Cindy could you please call the roll here Chris Lowe present RJ Mathis here Craig Meadows Aaron meitzler here hey Mrs Meister will you meet us in the pledge please of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign s removed from or added to the agenda for tonight there are not all right so our first item on the agenda is celebrating um stem education and I'm assuming Liz mcalpin is our yeah that's okay I knew this we're good um for those of you that don't know me I'm Liz mcalpin um I've been teaching in Batavia for 23 years and the last seven years I have been at the stem school so I was a classroom teacher for three years a teacher leader for three years and then I'm the director for instruction um last year so um part of my role this year while I'm back in the district is working at Rotolo in the morning and then I also work with fifth graders in the afternoon so we're doing a stem pilot program with our fifth grade students you can go ahead um so I am at HC Storm for a six week unit and then I go to JB for that a six-week unit back to storm back to JB so I'm currently in my fourth rotation fourth of sixth um so I just wanted to share a little bit of the um what we were looking at is the goals for stem this year so stem is this great big enormous topic and we are um starting with small steps with our pilot and so the focus that we had this year was to integrate the science and engineering practices along with inquiry and resources that we have within the district and that I was able to bring back with me from stem as well as to expand the current practices of the staff so I am co-teaching with the teachers they come with their kids to my class and then we work together um another goal that we have is to get the kids to think like scientists and to see themselves as scientists right when we ask them to draw a picture of a scientist they draw a mad scientist with crazy uh hair and lab coat and they just found themselves which um is alarming right because they could be the next people that are developing the next cure for the next the next pandemic or the next thing that we have out there right we also want to increase the number of students that we're exposed to a stem experience that was one of the goals that we had and we wanted kids to view science as a verb now right it's something that we do and live and breathe it isn't something that we I'm just reading a book so go ahead um so I wanted to make sure I was asked to share briefly um how it was going this year so I thought the most important part was to bring the kids voice so at the end of each rotation students were either interviewed or completed a Google form they were just asked five simple questions and then the last question they could just give any kind of comment that they wanted to so one question that we focused on was what makes stem different than other classes right so you can see it pushes you out of your comfort zone but in a good way right these are their words these are not mine we come up with our own ideas and create them from scratch and we get to test things and see if they work gives you opportunities to be creative we do science with multiple exclamation points right there are interactive activities that help you remember and that everything we do is fun and it gets us um gets our brains thinking another question that we asked students was what have you enjoyed learning during our time together right we're we're only together for five and a half or six weeks so it's not a very long time um but they've enjoyed learning how they are scientists how creative they can be um and they um enjoy learning new things and having fun while they're doing it they enjoy the ability to collaborate and then I just threw in some of their comments about specific things that they've enjoyed learning about different effects animals have on ecosystems I was able to bring back digital microscopes that we could hook up to their Chromebooks and they enjoyed using those looking inside parts of a plant when we looked at structure and function so that was one thing that they have enjoyed um another thing that we had kids do was on a scale of one to five right one being low five being high how much have you enjoyed or liked our class and time together 68 of students gave it a five 22 gave it a four so ninety percent of our students gave it either a four or five eight percent gave it a three we had one person who gave it a two and he was like I'm really sorry it's nothing against you I'm just not a huge science fan and not ever right and not everybody is which is complete uh completely so um again I think there the next slide just shows some of their overall comments right I shared with them that because this is a pilot this is something that we want to learn from and we need to know what we can do to improve so overwhelmingly we hear that they want the time to be longer um they'd like to like it to continue if they want all kids to have this experience um it should be for all ages right they're learning and watching things at home because of stem they wish that um oh this is a good I think I don't know if it was supposed to be a negative but I wish you would just tell us the answers and said we have to find them I take that as a win um so that's one of our big takeaways um and that they just really enjoyed the class so um I did ask staff and administration if they wanted to share any comments about how they thought it was going so the next slide sorry the font is smaller um adults are a little more verbose um so um they've really enjoyed seeing the High student engagement I have had kids ask if they could come into my room during recess give up their recess time to work on extensions or to finish projects teachers have enjoyed the ability to observe um doing science differently than they have in the past using science inquiry um highly engaging lessons they feel that it certainly helps promote the STL SK skills portrait of graduate attributes Administration has shared that parents are sharing with them how much their kids are enjoying and going home and telling them what they're doing at school um another comment was that it's moving students Beyond curiosity into action and discovery that they students are loving doing science and that it's been exciting to watch them create and revise in real life experiences so um all in all looking forward for the pilot um obviously there are a lot of things under the surface that we need to continue looking at and explore and that would be increasing the time that we have for stem being able to collaborate with teachers that was one piece of feedback right so I'm only with them for five weeks and they're like so now what like we don't have the same plan time so we can't collaborate on the next unit making sure that we Infuse more stem into our elementary curriculum and expanding traditional grade levels and really building the interdisciplinary connections because I think that's been that was one of the greatest takeaways we had from this down school that it was so interdisciplinary that that had a huge impact on the success and on Student Success so there is one I appreciate Liz kind of bringing forward the student and staff voice she did leave off one thing and it's one of the most frequent pieces of feedback that we get from students who experience this is that they love Miss mcalpin and she's doing a fabulous job so a lot of this credit goes to to Liz and to the work she's done at HC Storm and JB Nelson but you can see this feedback from our kids and from our staff how successful she's been in that classroom so thank you well thanks thank you and I just want to thank you guys um and thank you for providing this opportunity for kids and hopefully you can continue dialogue to look at what we can do to increase and grow the pilot from this point out thank you that was amazing [Applause] and I know I know there's a celebration Brad I'm hoping that can we add uh Liz had talked about presenting in January and I think board members are excited about continuing so what are our next steps how do we build on that like how would yeah we've talked uh we've had discussions and uh what to do at the elementary level what's next based on our learning from this year and then some are discussions that are ongoing about the middle school so we believe we have other phases of learning to do related to Stem and we'll bring those back uh later this spring early spring so you can kind of know what the next steps are for us and these are talking about what we'd be doing next year yep excellent that's awesome perfect um next item on our agenda are our public comments so the first item is comments from the public um so we'd like to welcome everyone to the Board of Education if anyone wishes to address the board this evening please see our recording secretary Cindy to submit a form for addressing the board please put your full name and address on the form as we're required by state law to keep a detailed set of minutes of all of our meetings in general we don't answer questions or engage in dialogue during public comments it doesn't mean that we don't take your concerns or comments seriously we value active Community participation and we encourage people to engage with the district through the variety of appropriate channels and systems that we have but we're not involved in the day-to-day running of the operations and we can't engage in District business individually if you do have specific questions or you would like to further engage with the district you can submit your questions there's a link on the website and an appropriate staff member will get back to you so I'm going to hand it over to Holly deachman our BPS 101 Communications manager who's going to explain the procedures thank you president Dremel speakers will be will be called up in order when your name is called please come up to the podium so that you can be heard all individuals speaking will be limited to three minutes I'll put a timer up on the board so that you can see it while you're at the podium at any time during the meeting written comments may be submitted to our recording secretary Cindy Rodriguez at my right speakers should conduct themselves with Civility and respect towards everyone in this room that's all I have for you please welcome Rick Lathrop it's all right with you I will speak from the middle of the room I think if you can't hear me just raise your hand actually we'd like for you to come to the podium please because we we broadcast this uh so we want everyone to be able to see you want people to be able to hear it thanks I am Rick Lathrop I'm a resident and taxpayer of the district and I've asked to talk to the Board of Education this evening after a six-year-old kid in Newport News Virginia brought a gun to school and shot a teacher some of my friends have said you're reacting to this much stronger than a lot of other people and that's probably because when I graduated from college I became a high school teacher so I've been there I've done that when I left teaching I went to work for the National Education Association and its state Affiliates including the Illinois Education Association so most of my adult life I've been an advocate for public education and for School Employees I wouldn't have come to here tonight also if this were an isolated incident but unfortunately it's not in the last 10 years there have been 189 school shootings since hand sand Sandy Hook in which there was at least one fatality 108 about 20 a year in addition to that more than 1200 gun incidents in and around schools have occurred in the last 10 years and you can just imagine how traumatic that is for the parents for the students for the staff for everyone when somebody shows up at a school with a gun I am a member of the Congregational Church of Batavia with me is Don Smith who is also a member and Larry Davidson is from Saint Marks in Geneva both of our churches are involved in an organization called the industrial areas foundation and over the last five to six years we have put together a gun safety Consortium which consists of towns cities and police departments and the goal is to build safe guns this is not any attempt to get any law any rule any regulation we want to build safe guns through the free market system which this country has done very well under smart guns are guns that can only be fired by the person who is who is the owner of that gun or that person authorized and that's that's one of the technologies that the companies that were working are are trying to develop three critical areas school shootings 42 percent of the kids of the incidents with guns are students they bring guns to school most of those kids are getting guns from their home because 52 percent of the guns in this country are not stored safely according to a recent survey of 1400 gun owners so the kids can get their hands on a gun take it to school and and that's that's unacceptable guns are also taken from law enforcement persons if you remember back in 2017 there was an ugly incident at Del Norte Hospital when an inmate from the county jail took the gun from a security officer and held four nurses captive for a couple of hours until he was shot by the by the SWAT team those nurses collected 7.9 million dollars in Damages as a result of the trauma that they experience so sometimes people do take guns from police officers and they use them on the police officer or they use them on somebody else guns are also stolen from cars and from homes a safe gun will not fire if somebody breaks into my car and steals my gun it's useless to them they can't use it uh safe guns have the safety built in people don't have to add trigger guards or anything else to it so I will come back [Music] have a meeting so the district could learn more about this and also to see if there's a way that the district can support what it is that we're trying to do thank you thank you thank you next on our public comments we'd like to invite our BPS Partners first I'd like to start with our students ambassadors we've got Zara ND here tonight yeah sorry you guys are first oh I did um okay um uh us girls and boys tracking season track and field season is starting up soon and last week we got our first meeting which I uh which went really great and next week we're starting our first week official week of tracking season um Batavia boy basketball also um started their season and JV had a game last week with the North and they won and I also heard that they've won five in a row so that's incredible um Top Dog also raised over 3 000 for children's Neuroscience research which is amazing and if you guys went it was really entertaining so it was a great event and girls wrestling is also on the rise with many athletes getting proud of accomplishments example is little Enos and she has over 30 wins in just this season alone and even the Scholastic Bowl did great because they had their varsity and junior varsity and they both played second at The Duquesne conference um uh the dance team had a compass sectional competition last Saturday and JV dance took place and then there was also a welcoming incoming freshman night for class of 2027 and so many families showed up and 8th graders showed up so it was a great event and there was also the swing swingers had to kick off to their competition season with Rock The Rock and they did pretty good too so it was overall a lot of accomplishments this month that's all that's all thank you thanks thank you super fun let's see what's going on uh next uh person I would like to invite to the podium uh Our Best Buy officers are here tonight I know Kevin botterman's here and if he can introduce who else he's got with him that would be fabulous good evening I'm Kevin botterman I'm a secretary for the Batavia excuse education support professionals Association part of the executive board and this is Marsha suster our vice president and Laura vercello Treasurer treasure so um we just wanted to take a few minutes to introduce ourselves to the board I hope it's not late you know this is our first appearance here and I see so many familiar faces around the room and I hope it's not too late in the year to wish you a happy New Year we serve on the Executive Board of the Batavia education support professionals Association the union representing the district's support staff the secretaries the paraprofessionals the kindergarten enrichment instructors the maintenance workers and the campus monitors those who all help keep our schools operating efficiently and safely Vespa is committed to representing the common workplace interests of its due dues paying members and those represented by the collective bargaining unit Vespa also is committed to working in good faith with the Board of Education and the individuals who make up the administrative ranks throughout the district we see exciting and challenging days ahead for all of us and finally Vespa is committed to keeping our schools welcoming safe and productive for students of all ages and that's just a general idea and thought that we wanted to share with you this evening as the executive order officers of the organization that represents so many key and valuable support staff throughout the district thank you so much it's nice to see all of you here next we'd like to invite Todd Swanson president of the Bea good evening members of the board tonight I do not have a lengthy report to share with you and if you were to ask the members of the Bea they would advise you to Relish in that fact because I'm generally not known for it for my brevity so it's gonna be kind of short tonight uh as we look forward to what is on the horizon we know that April 4th is a pivotal day for our district not only in terms of the school board election but with the referendum question as well when the ba officers met with Senior Management last week smt shared with us the hope that our teachers can be purveyors of information about the referendum it was agreed upon that there needs to be a broader scope of information that is shared with staff and Community what are the actual specifics if the referendum passes what are the actual specifics if the referendum fails what will be the impacts of both scenarios either pass or fail to the district to the staff and to the children of Batavia having these clear-cut and direct answers to both sides of the debate will help our staff members have a level of understanding that may not have been present last fall what we ask of you as a board is the same thing that we asked of smt last week in this process and that is to recognize whose voices you are not only hearing from but recognizing those that you are not looking at this issue from an equity lens that we are constantly striving to use will help you know if you are not only reaching every possible demographic represented in BPS but answering their questions and concerns in the ways that best help them understand the situation at hand that doesn't mean waiting for people to come to you with their questions or comments we all know that they will continue to be those who use self-advocacy as an Avenue to ask questions to challenge to get information and to form their own educated opinions that will lead them to a ballot on April 4th we don't have to worry about missing those voices as long as their information sources are rooted in fact and honesty as a district we should be doing everything in our power to recognize and to hear the voices that aren't being heard is it a family who speaks no English in their home how are they getting all the pertinent information and how are we sure that they are comprehending that information they do receive in their native language is it the family who doesn't have the technological means to receive Communications from the district how are they getting all the pertinent information is it the family that has only one vehicle and won't have a way to the polling places on April 4th how will they be given information to help them cast their ballot regarding early voting or mail-in balloting is it the family who hears that storm and Louise White will be getting new buildings and their kids attend Gustafson and Rotolo how are we being sure that they know what their children will be benefiting from if the referendum passes or if not if it fails we could keep thinking about instances and situations like each one of these and if there's anything that I've learned from beginning to use the equity lens in education it is constantly asking ourselves the same very question how do we know every household in our district gets the same information that will help them make an informed decision on the referendum question as a board and as a district we cannot be complacent in thinking if we don't hear from someone they mustn't have any questions I urge you to make sure that we seek out any groups that may be underrepresented or underserved and that they have the same opportunities to be an educated voter in the April election just as much as those who attend board meetings every single month and engage in every public forum about the referendum that is offered as a district we owe each and every one of our citizens the right to get the same information as everyone else no matter what it takes to get that information out to them that is what Equity is all about please know that the Bea shares in the importance of making sure our members have clear and concise information and we'll do what we can to Aid in this process the entire way with that I wish you all a great rest of your week and I will see you all again in February thank you very much the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda which is an opportunity for us to approve a number of routine business items oh my goodness I am so sorry you're right board member committee comments I didn't have committee this month so I uh skipped on Chris go ahead and start um I had my our rec meeting and we have been discussing our uh goals moving forward and we plan on presenting them next month so that is the big thing that we talked about awesome thanks uh insurance and benefits committee met on January 12th there's really two topics of discussion we were given a presentation on uh the wellness check how many people participated in just so people know this is where teachers and their spouses and families or spouses I should say can get uh preliminating medical information blood pressure glucose levels so the goal is to get better health outcomes so we're kind of getting ahead of any problems that could be determined uh the other item was a presentation by Modern Health it was a presentation on providing additional Mental Health Services it's actually something that's in our action items that Tony's going to give a little more detailed presentation on but um it was very interesting I I look forward to Tony's presentation on that quick question Aaron or Tony how what was our participation in the wellness I wrote down it was 635 total 412 employees and 223 spouses is that an increase over last year slightly down totally down that was part of the discussions how we can increase that yeah okay good question thank you this was our was it your second year or third year this is the third year of the wellness incentives but we've been doing the wellness screening for I've been doing it for a while but we added in 10 years yeah yeah right okay I had plaque the other day last week because last Thursday um they're working on um professional development plan um doing a great job seems like everybody's communicating well getting along doing a good job and so I think the purpose for that is to kind of communicate to the entire District share the information so doing a good job okay got some good ideas Cat meets Thursday RJ uh next type of meeting is in two weeks so I'll have something in the next meeting for that awesome Erin do you want to talk about big uh oh big meets Saturday not last Saturday especially it's Saturday um the January um Equity team meeting took place last week I believe um they took some time to define equity what does it mean to BPS what does an equitable school and classroom environment look like feel like sound like for both students and staff and what should the district do to prioritize and promote equity and how will we know when it is achieved and then there were some action steps formulated um what the actions will be 6 9 12 months finalize the timeline and then research and recommend action steps and that's awesome awesome thanks Erin okay sorry about skipping that um back to Arkansas agenda as I mentioned all of the items in the consent agenda are in the board um in the board book and so Mr Pierce will take us through that yeah 5.1 is the approval of the December 20th 2022 meeting minutes 5.2 is the approval of the January 10 2023 special meeting minutes 5.3 is the monthly personal report 5.4 is our monthly payrolls and bills 5.5 is our donations we had a sizable donation from The Mike Park Memorial for the AGS general fund which was very kind in Mike's name 5.6 is our policy second reading 5.7 is the approval of our renewal of our print management software 5.8 is the approval of a purchase of student Chromebooks and 5.9 is our uh outside special education contracts wrapping up with 5.10 the approval of the consent agenda commissioner removal I actually uh spoke to David if he's comfortable speaking about the Chromebook purchases thank you all right so last year I was going to start with that topic first um last year we actually got a bunch of Chromebooks we got almost 1700 Chromebooks as part of a grant last year which worked out very well it actually put us in a great spot to actually kick off what I'm proposing today um we're actually able to move to about an 1100 1200 count and we're going to plan on doing that every year for first Fifth and Ninth Grade just to keep an actual cycle instead of randomly picking grades like we've done in the past nine years of Chromebooks we've learned a lot Google has even helped us to the point where they've stretched out their life cycles as well so running a four-year device like this is actually going to help save a lot of money over the next four years we're going to be able to even transition kindergarten basically through fifth fourth grade are going to have a full-blown touchscreen Chromebook with a world-facing camera and everything so this is great we've got a lot of requests for it over the years so functionality in the classroom they can do a lot of AR stuff with it and things like that from fifth grade on to senior we're at actually giving them a little more respect to the Chromebook more memory to actually run more stuff as much web development things that are happening these days they're calling for more Hardware so this actually puts us in a great spot to run on that four-year cycle so this will help me budget as well that number is going to just follow enrollment numbers as we go through now instead of just randomly three four grades a year it's three every year so it'll keep our Cycles consistent from this point we do the same thing with staff devices for the district too so this helps us budget a lot more friendly awesome you guys any more questions that's it thank you appreciate it so actually just to clarify so kids are all kids are going to get a new Chromebook at first Fifth and ninth grade yep and then I'm going to do that every year yep so we're gonna basically this plan will take four years to pan out essentially love it cool any other questions on anything else in the consent agenda right then I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented a second moved by my third second by kilburg all in favor aye aye any opposed right consent agenda passes uh next item on our agenda is our reports I'm going to hand that over to Dr Hitchens the first two you see every month and if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to answer them I have a question yeah I'm just looking at this all of a sudden what is service like only because it affects us they wanted School Board information like what is service information how many years you've been on the school board so so they didn't want to know what clubs or activities how many how many years of service yeah like there's a lot but right right yeah what committees do I serve on okay all right that was just interesting anything else all right the next report on our agenda is the Student Services report we've got Kerry Roo and Brad v um Carrie's our director of special ed and Brands our director of student services and I think there's other uh student services Administration with us tonight hi everybody um I'm Carrie Roo I'm the director of special education I'm Brad vertine director of student services and tonight we have Chris Payton assistant principal of special education at Rotolo middle school and Paulette Ali who is assistant principal at Alice Gustafson and also Early Childhood director joining us this evening so thank you for letting us have this opportunity to share some of the updates of things that we've been working on this year um the rules and responsibilities of special education and student services is fairly broad we provide an array of Services for Families and individual needs from birth through post-secondary education so that is students that have special education needs that need support post High School where they get services to the age of 22.

[Music] well for my four years in my Chicago I've been involved in a lot of clubs and activities probably too many math team I really enjoy doing math and it's a really fun time robotics started that two years ago and then there's student council and the marching band I'm a drum major here which means I help the teacher kind of organize everything as well as playing the flute over my four years here I really have appreciated just how many different types of people there are here you can always find someone who's willing to do something a little bit fun like for example just this week in my health class someone brought in hummus we all shared hummus at the table and over the course of the week it has now turned into a daily snack time and everyone brings in our own snacks and we just like have a lot of fun and like we're still learning we're still participating but everyone's just doing something going a little bit out of their way to make everyone else's day a little bit better and I really appreciate that if I had to give one piece of advice to new students here at Wego it would be find something you're passionate about Only You individually will know what really is interesting to you and be loud about enjoying it because there are so many people here and there's bound to be at least one person who has the same interest as you and hey now you got a friend After High School I'm gonna go to college specifically Northwestern and I really enjoy learning in general I'm not really sure what specifically I want to study I just want to learn as much as I can and without carrying me through the next four years I'm Jackie tanashudo and I'm the December student of the month [Music]

all right 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 right we're going to open with the annual uh Board of Finance meeting as all of you are probably aware and we constitute the board of Finance and we'll begin with the election of president and denominations in the past have we not done it just with the same board same officers of people I think what can I make a motion for that that makes it simple yeah for every position okay yeah as soon as I won't favor that say aye aye opposed all right we have a board elected Chris you're going to report all Investments and lead us through the presentation so certain questions um so this is just a financial statement as far as any Investments we don't really have any Investments however we do earn uh interest um and so there's just a little bit of information on how our um current accounts are with our first Farmers Bank a few years ago we asked to have a kind of a floor put on those Investments um that was kind of during that coveted time when our interest rates were dropping considerably uh which they did oblige to that and so we've maintained that it will be um the rate for for this this coming school year is at Point 15 percent if you look at what our interests earned for 2022 is significantly higher than what's been over the last couple years and really that's due to just the increase of interest rates and the cash balances that we have sitting in our accounts and so our bear our rate has varied this is through the whole calendar year from anywhere between point one five percent which is our flow rate up to 3.81 I think I think we're even over four right now so um that's good because of our cash balance and because of the higher interest rate uh we were able to incur um a revenue of interest of a 208 thousand dollars for the calendar year 2022 which if you look at it historically that's one of the higher interest occurred that we've had in a long long time so that just fluctuates like I said with my interest rates and then the amount of cash balances we have in our accounts there any questions with that [Music] sure and moving on by Indiana code we are to have a finance meeting and discuss certain things within that meeting and so I just created a PowerPoint here that will go through and look at those things so um Jeff a lot of this stuff will probably be new for you but back in the fall we adopted a budget for 2023.

thank you okay I call the meeting of tonight's January 24th meeting of the Board of Education this is a regular scheduled meeting welcome everybody thanks for being here Michelle thank you for being the Barbara thank you students for being here um hi Felicia so um we're gonna get right into it with the Pledge of Allegiance who would like to leave not a coin flip why not pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands okay thank you for that I got kind of spoiled after Friday's I mean I thought we'd have a full house but I guess I guess we're not to draw so okay uh we'll try to zip through this tonight so we'll go right to the student reports please all right um so for past events um January 19th is the 21st uh the CHS model un students have gone to Yale University where they've participated in different debates across from campus and I also got opportunity um see very well um select CHS students participated in the northern regionals Festival on January 13th report foreign close on January 20th Mr pippo had spoken to the school recently about the mascot transition says for professional development um for upcoming events Canton High Schools prisms concert will be on February 4th and Canton High School's 9th grade curriculum night will be tomorrow January 20th so ongoing students you know just finished their second quarter or continuing hard work for the third semester with final I'm sorry AP exams coming soon um basketball wrestling Unified sports are continuing to have their practices matches and games and CHS and CMS are both continuing to rehearse for physical reasonable which is kind of a co-op with between both of the schools um also for tonight we have a quick little presentation which uh we talked to with Mr Daniels about like highlighting certain clubs each meeting um for a short amount of time so first tonight I'm gonna be talking for the club that I uh am a vice president and with Mika slimo she's the president um and this is the Steve Thomas club uh so this is a presentation I made thank you for that can you see that you wanna you wanna come around or are you comfortable I have it on my phone okay excellent very excited Okay so for anyone who doesn't know the safe promise Pub is a club for young people across the country to show their leadership creativity and passion for protecting their friends schools and communities from violence before it happens it also is a student leadership initiative from the Sandy Hook promise that aims to cultivate and bolster student leaders to take an active role in increasing school safety and preventing different School different forms of violence in schools and communities um so this club was created the Sandy Hook promise Club was created after the Sandy Hook school shooting and save club is a club that just party had been a club since the 70s and it's uh students against violence everywhere and he was after a student named Alex orange got shot at a anti-gun violence party that he and his friends created and they created the club after him so the two clubs kind of joined together because they both kind of stand for similar things and yeah so that's what the club's about excellent Okay so here are like different activities and things like we have done that have implemented this club in our school so last year on June 8th we had um a school-wide walkout where everyone wore orange and this was right after I'm sorry I forget the name of what school shooting had happened I think in late May um and so we all wore orange to support anti-gun violence and we walked out at the end of the day and we had like this little like outdoor assembly where Mr Fury the one of the school guidance counselors talked um about how we can you know be a better Community as a whole um every year we put on a start with the low week where during the month of September we try to bring our community together by doing activities um and the mornings or doing lunch waves so we'll like hand out bracelets that have little affirmations on them or we gave out like the Hello Panda cookies in the morning because just to play on words and just like little things that make kids Happy And You don't have to do anything in order to get it you just you know just get it just being a part of the community um some of the student leaders in the club were at a youth leadership training program which I had mentioned previously but I only talked upon that but it was it was a good opportunity to learn um how to be a better leader in your community and just for students and I went on that trip and was perfect and then last year and this year we participated in making sandwiches for the homeless after school we had a pretty big turnout and everyone came and we donated to a homeless shelter in Spartanburg um yeah here's some pictures of no that's okay um then during December of this year we came together to create 26 flower pots for the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook shooting and we printed out pictures and we went to Michael's and bought like stickers and we did research on each victim and like really created something that we felt represented them even though we didn't know them personally like how their family members described them and we planted flowers and put them in the library uh as a display and then we also created like a puzzle mural at the school where each student during lunch wrote like positive uh words and things for other students and it created a giant puzzle in the wall and like all fit together of everyone saying different nice things um this is something that's really cool I think we started this two years ago but we have puppies coming once a year from Philadelphia which Mr Fury uses for his puppy Coco and Scooby and Everest um but they come in every year the past three years and so students can have like a anti-stress place during lunch waves and this usually happens towards the end of the year uh after like finals and stuff um and then lastly we had a speed friending activity we did this year where different grades were able to go outside and do like 60 second little introductions with students you might not know uh just to try to like introduce new people so that's those are just some of the things I wanted to highlight and here are some pictures the one on the left is from the leadership training the one on the rights of Sandwich making and that's a picture of the walk out on the left which the whole school participated in and on the right this is um Mary doritis one of the officers giving out bracelets on to start with hello week so yeah thanks so that's a lot of quick questions on this call anybody have any questions thank you for sharing you you lived up you exceeded my expectations because this is what I wanted you know a club come in and tell us more about what's going on so that was a great great report anything else you'd like to add the students recently signed a pledge yes was that related to um the safe Club kind of this is a separate uh like it's called the no place for hate pledge and it's a separate Club kind of the whole school is participating in but there's a few students who are on the student Equity team and we kind of like started this uh pledge and we created a video where everyone watched and chat and it was just saying like we don't like we pledge to like not discriminate others and be kind and just be open to other differences and everyone signed the pledge at the end of the chat on a Google forum saying that they don't know um I would like to guess about 20 students run the club like we created a script and video and stuff but I think almost every student if not every student signed the pledge high school so how about in your Club in the same Club about how many oh would you say 30 minutes yeah which is pretty good because we only meet like once a month so we get a pretty good turnout your teacher advisor is uh Miss Hoagland and she's the school psychologist and then uh Mrs zenya The Culinary teacher yeah thank you so much our school did receive an award when the club was first started as one of the first High School clubs to get started so I I really want to thank um Liz I mean um Mrs Hoagland and Mr Fury for helping you start up the club and for you and the other students who are so involved there's such Crossover with the different clubs that we have all designed to promote inclusion and safe and healthy learning environments yeah so maybe someday it'll show us the video that I hear your Mr Daniels and I heard you were in a video so we look forward to uh to seeing that at some point you said you were going to show it well I don't have access she has it it's a good meaning so when we were at the student meetings someone was a little nervous because you can see this video and she's worried about the parents so it's so it's just fun but it's good time when is Seussical when is that uh I think it's March 16 17 to 18.

we have a call for corn please here here thank you Ashley stand for the pledge 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 just as strong excuse me foreign [Music] thank you for joining us again our dedicated and loyal audience uh Mr gripple we're going to turn over to you just around anyone this is a finance committee meeting in the whole we are uh Midway through our budget Workshop review for proposed 2023 24 24 budget so Mr gripple it's all yours thank you Mr chair um I'll open the floor for a public comment on the previous um meetings that we've had enough seeing none uh we'll move on to uh I'll hand it over Mr massiano Workshop session and the agenda for this evening is to go through the remaining three budget categories of structural expense support services and maintenance and operations and within instructional expense I will introduce Robin and carry our director of pupil Personnel Services to give you an overview of special education services for next year um before we jump into those topics just a quick refresher and I see the same audience and and uh board members are here but a couple board members were absent last week so just at a high level you know the budget lens that that we use for this budget includes a balance of Staffing programs and services so we can meet our educational goals and maintain fiscal prudence and we always look at complex thinking and social emotional learning as part of what we do here at the Cheshire Public Schools the key assumptions that we use to build this year's budget includes the projected enrollment increase that primarily affects K through or pre-k through six where we're going uh enrollment growth is is also driving special education needs which which Ms Kerry will talk about the need to fund the medical benefits account claims and also operations and maintenance the increases there primarily are in utilities electricity as well as as our heating costs in terms of the total board budget recommendation to 85 million 872 591 so that was the summary from the presentation that we had on Tuesday evening last week um I did want to go through two quick updates the follow-up information from last week's meeting the first one has to do with the pension and I know this is really a little bit hard to read um but I did print so I feel on the screen and it's really kind of hard at this angle if you're sitting on this end of the table but this First Column is the 2021 interim event interim valuation of the pension plan and that was used to come up with last year's budget number for pension and it's highlighted here it's 767.

thank you now moving on to our roll call board member Rodriguez Pena present board member Benavides uh board member arianis is with us anzu board member Ariana's is not on Zoom at this moment okay so we will Mark board member Ariana's absent for now and we're anticipating that she will arrive shortly via Zoom um and we will Mark board member career as absent for now he may join us later uh via zoom and I Sabrina Bo M here moving on to item 1.4 approval of the agenda may have a motion make a motion to approve for a 1.4 and a second moved and seconded any discussion seeing none call for the vote thank you for that uh patience and the motion passes moving to item 2.0 items from the floor public comment on agenda or non-agenda items um hope I don't see one in the room with a blue card and is there anyone online Lika that wishes to make public comment this evening we have no one for public comment on tune thank you now moving to item 3.0 General functions and 3.1 review of effective governance procedures Mr runkio Dr Beau Board of Education it's my pleasure to introduce you to Dr Luis Taylor the executive director for ciac and Dr Debbie Collins it's the ACT consultant who is also our IBB facilitator at Art negotiation table with aea I'm going to turn over the presentation to them they will be leading us in our IBB training and bear with me as I present their presentation thank you very much just would like board and have no very be here men thank you right in front is this good thank you just thank you look Tasha um we we commend the board and cabinet for fluorine IBB and trying to learn more about it because by doing that you're supporting your negotiating team and it takes time out of a very very busy schedule to do that I want to let you know that full employees Association of California is an organization that support School District with collective bargaining all HR issues and provide both free and facilitation at the table and you already heard that Dr Collins is working with aea and the district team in IBB we want you to know that we have extensive experience with negotiations and with IBB both as District negotiators when we were in District before retirement and when we were superintendents and each of us have several school districts where we're helping IBB teams facilitate and so we really appreciate being here and now I'm going to turn it over to Dr Colin good evening it is a pleasure to be here to um provide you information about I think a very very important topic uh in any school district that is how the negotiating teams work especially as it relates to the interest-based bargaining process um both Dr Taylor and I work for uh over 20 years together on in Monrovia working with interest-based bargaining it was very successful and uh we are very passionate about um how to apply it and how to ensure that um that the tables can access Concepts and principles to use them effectively in in bargaining um I have one additional um qualification I'd like to just share with you and as a teacher uh I was an intervine for several years and I did become part of the association chair the Teachers Association and I was on the negotiation it was traditional bargaining so I do have experience um in traditional bargaining in Irvine as well as base marketing experience in Monrovia um so um I've seen both sides and I understand that one of the things that you would like to know what is the difference between those two and so we are going to Endeavor in our short period of time to kind of walk you through what IBB is and then compare and contrast to two forms of negotiations and hopefully convince you why you should we should be using interface parking and how how it so um what we'd like to do is we'd like to hear just have each one of you introduce yourselves to us and just let us know how long you've been working so my name is Norma Camacho I am the assistant superintendent of educational services this is my 26th year in Azusa Unified I can't beat that my name is Arturo Ortega superintendent and I am in my ninth year in Azusa yeah my name is Sandra benavidez and I am a newly elected board member here and I'm Yolanda Rodriguez Pena and I've been on board 11 years hi I'm Sabrina Beau this is my third year as a board member and my first year as a parent of District kids for two and a half years and hi I'm Jorge Rocio and this is my fifth year um we're going to cover several topics today that we feel are we have per our greatest interests um first we're going to inquire for you what your views the perspectives of ibbr and Debbie will take you through that and then we're going to give a bit of the presentation which is where did I be becoming from what is it how does it compare traditional and what are the step teams go through now we usually do three day workshops and we're going to condense that all into under two hour um so you look you're all faster so um we'll just zoom right through it and then we're going to spend some time on board and cabinet role working in ibp and go into questions that you might have and reflection on what you have heard that come join us so um the first thing that we'd like to do is we'd like to get a little bit of a pre-assessment of what you wonder about in interest-based marketing so um I have placed some Post-its on your tables if you would just write down just a brief comment it could be something like I don't know anything about IBB I wonder about how it relates to a traditional or whatever you wonder about interest-based bargaining please write that on the Post-it because we want to make sure that as we travel through the take you through this journey to this evening that we address those questions that you might have okay we will return to those later read them try to make sure that we cover all those and then at the end we'll decide if we have we haven't we will okay so uh where I'm going to begin and this may may be interesting uh hopefully for you that um um the uh interest-based bargaining process began in the 70s with a project that Roger Fisher and William Murray are doing together and it really had the projects had to do with problems and it was it was almost loving daily problems versus actual worldwide problems but it wasn't really intended to be for Collective bar today but it really was a method of solving smaller scale and on the largest so they took the notion of negotiation as a kind of authoritarian work down to what really was very simply problem solved and so what we believe in a school district that has a bargaining that that it is really an atmosphere of problem solved and so that's what we do and we sit at the table that's we probably work with problems and so we will work through how those steps work on their very definitive steps that they come up with um they uh this is the book I still have and I still refer to it on a regular basis called getting to Yes um by these two gentlemen and um it was uh I think that this stands the test time in terms of Concepts the principles used um even to this day if you want to um learn more about this then what about and particularly Roger Fisher has many Ted Talk online that you could um you could review if you have wanted to dig deeper on so interest-based bargaining based in a nutshell it the notion that everybody that at the end of the day even though you walk into a negotiation session with two different ideas of of a solution to whatever you're negotiating um you may not get you may not get that it may not you may not get what you walked into to get but when you walk out of the room out of negotiation what you will take with you is the idea and the experience that you did thoroughly discussed it in an honest and trustworthy way and that you really did the best you had the best agreement that would be the best and in this case the best agreement for the students of Azusa Unified School District ultimately um it's principled and what that means is and what that means to us as we uh our facilitators and we take trainings out to people is that [Music] um in order to have a really effective interest-based bargaining Concept in your District you need to have full trust and trans among um the school district administrators among the the employer employee groups and um among and between everyone has to be built on trust in order for this to work um effectively it's collaborative and that doesn't need any explanation you know what that means and at the end there's Mutual gain and what that means is that at the end when you come to that agreement that nobody leaves the room thinking oh they won or we won it really is mutual what we both want we both won and again and we want to emphasize that in a school district we want to ultimately win student and do the best thing for them so interspace bargaining is I just already mentioned uh is really interest based problem solving and it helps teams to turn face-to-face confrontation into side-by-side problem solving um I mentioned earlier that I I did sit at a traditional bargaining table and it at that table quite um opposite from a IBB cable um literally the district was on one side of the table and the association was on the other side table so it was it was them against us in a very visual form so one of the guidelines that we use in interest-based bargaining is that when we sit in a room to negotiate we sit next to somebody from the other team we try to do that and be consistent about that so that we aren't sitting across from each other or we're not talking to somebody on our team during the during our negotiations but we really are working together as one team in that room that's what we call side by side problem solving so the principles um that that these are the more defined principles that IBB uses is um to focus on issues and uh personalities one of the things that happens um when there are disagreements as you may have experienced in your life somewhere is that when you're trying to solve a problem you focus on the personality of the person people with whom you are feeling and it usually is their fault for not being able to be we should see it your way okay so um in interspace bargaining we really focus on the issues and really really drill down on what we need to solve in as the problem rather than dealing with their personalities um we focus on interests and oppositions and interests are Dr Taylor is going to take you through an activity on interest because in that it's in the the title of the negotiations process you would imagine it'd be pretty important um because interests really do Drive how you come to an agreement uh it when you start out looking at the interest of both sides then you can more easily come up with solutions that meet both sides interests thereby reaching the the on the ideal of having Mutual gain so um so hopefully you will understand interest through the activity that Dr Taylor will take you through in a moment um we also after we uh determine what the interests are rather than positions um and I don't have to explain positions you know what a position is you walk in and and you know you know what you want you can offer them 11 uh zero percent the association wants 11 and then you just you talk back and forth until you reach two um but uh those are positions that you have and those those usually don't work out they were they they may end up in an agreement but everybody may or may not be happy we hope that it even in salary negotiations that interest-based bargaining can work um after you identify interest and you create options to satisfy both um the mutual and separate interests of the group so I'm going to take you through this more specifically um after Louise takes two interest um and then uh at the end you evaluate the options that you have generated like the possible solutions to the problem that you have raised and um use standards and I'll talk about that a little bit later too by which to compare your options to see if they do meet the standards that you have as a team and they that would include for example um something like is it legal uh will the Board of Education approve this will the associations ratify this and so their standards that you can evaluate some of the options um can we afford it uh and so by using those standards you can go back and you compare them to compare your options to the standards and the interests and come up with some solutions at the end so I'm going to step in now and focus on that area of Interest as Debbie mentioned interest-based bargain there's the foundation is interest and I will tell you that my experience moving in to IBB was similar in that I walked into a format of traditional bargaining but as a brand new Chief negotiator the best way I can just describe it is that they were trying to solve problems oh when I felt I was from another plant because there is no way that any problem was going to be solved by people sitting across the table and just being angry with each other and then demanding a caucus and walking out and that was the pattern that was happening then we went through IBB training and I as we perfected it over the years so magnificent and invaluable impact not only for how we work together as a district ultimately and this is our own game or the progress that our students in Monrovia made over that time this benefit might but the biggest challenge I had was and understand interest my brain just like yours you're in leadership positions you are probably brilliant at solving problems and I felt that I was very good at solving problems too but when you sit in your own little faith and think about a problem you have only your own person and your problem solving Your solution may be may seem brilliant if you don't have that information and if you don't look at the broader interest then it's not going to give you the best solution for yourself or for others interest with the biggest challenge I found one activity if you'll go through it quickly with me help me and as help most people understand the difference between position or an option and an interest so I'm going to ask you to do this I am going to ask five of you to um okay a a position in a story you will get the name of you want the name of the character will speak on their behalf and all of the script is on the screen is going to be fairly straightforward what I will need is somebody to volunteer to be a parent I will need for um of the children of this pyramid do we need a Carlos and a Jerome and we need an Isabella and an Olivia so who wants to be bold and brave and be the parent oh great oh thank you okay I'm doing all day uh yes uh yeah okay so you'll you'll be you it's a very familiar role okay so we have para now who would like to be and of course you can choose any name you want it doesn't have to be gendered who would like to be Carlos okay you're familiar all right so we're gonna have a Carlos how about a Jerome every Brave there uh and how about an Olivia and how about an Isabella you wanna do that okay so uh I promise no embarrassment and you can see that we haven't brought anyone in um as the talent scout from Hollywood so you know you're not it could have been an option all right so the the story the scenario is you'll get the orange because you can see how juicy this orange is but parent the one in the house so here's the situation you are parrot with four children who were demanding that one orange nap and these kids are out of control and they are fighting and creating a great so you're going to say an exasperation there's your line parent what is all this fuss go and the answers come first from Jerome I'm the oldest I should get first dibs on the orange and I need it this very minute and then Olivia says I asked her at first then comes point Carlos but you don't understand I really need the orange I'll be in big trouble if I don't get it Isabella I absolutely will be ruined if I don't get it you just have to let me have it if not I will never speak to you again okay so empty threat so exasperated parent with fighting children tell us what's your decision what are you gonna say Okay um I would say okay guys we have one orange who has had an orange today okay um and is that why you said this is the brave part and whatever you want what would your decision be you had four fighting children so Carlos since you had an orange today can I get you go to the store and buy you an orange for tomorrow I'm gonna be in big trouble what do you mean big trouble but I understand I'll I'll I'll I'll acquiesce Okay so [Laughter] Olivia Isabella Jerome did you have any fruit today no no what about the strawberries I packed for your lunch that's not an orange okay okay I had a banana okay thank you for being good listeners um Isabella did you have any fruit today do you have an orange today or any fruit I had some grapes great okay well the good news is everyone has had some fruit today and I'm really happy about being healthy eater so and you you already had fruit you already had an orange so tell me why we need to have a second piece of fruit okay why it has to be an orange thank you very much you're just way ahead see he's an advanced learner so you're doing exceedingly well I will tell you that most people in your position playing this role say put it in fourth shut up right or they say some of them say I'm eating the orange myself because you are misbehaving um it's interesting what the answers end up to be but let's try a different way this time we're going to go into scene two same situation the parent is seeing is all angry and demanding this Orange but this time you're gonna have to walk and here's what you're going to say that dark blue box okay my lovelies I see you're all upset about wanting the one orange we have in this house relax calm down now one at a time tell me why you want and need the orange and my oldest Carlos we have your own okay Jerome I need the orange for my steel life photo project mom I already told you I need to take that picture right now so I can process it and then Olivia says I have waited all day to make orange juice for my friends and then Arlo says I need the seeds to finish my science project that's due tomorrow and then Isabella says I have a cooking class recipe to complete tonight and need grated orange peel so now what you're just hey guys now I understand why everyone has a different need for this orange and I think I have a solution so Jerome you need to take a picture of the whole orc right yes and you just need to take a picture yes and so your your siblings can eat it yes okay and then okay Olivia you're really thirsty and you really want your orange juice yes so can we cut it in half and squeeze it and give you your orange juice yes okay would you be happy with that yes awesome Carlos you just need to see you need the whole orange or just the seeds just the seeds for your science project that's due tomorrow and I already bought the board we're good okay so we'll give you the seed and then Issa you have a cooking class and you just you need the The Flash or you just need the peel I need the peel okay do you know where the grade The Grater is in the kitchen yes in the drawer okay my lovely is everyone does it sound like we have a plan of everyone getting what they need and you have to take a picture you could have your fresh orange juice that we talked about you get the seeds for your project and then you get to greet the peel and you have a plan for that okay everyone agree hey thank you so much thank you Ray Aaron now let me ask this either working with your children at home or working out a problem in the school district are all of them this straight forward against them absolutely not but the whole point of this is that sometimes we just want to get one thing we want to have a position about something and sometimes if we take the time find out more information about the interest that people bring to the table and solving a problem then the solution creates itself and so we take the time not only in the step Debbie will take you through to tell the story gather information get data before we just solve the problem in other words we don't solve a problem right away we'd say it's all the right way and take the time to do that and what we have found in years and years of experience is that if you have just the position everyone said at Birth every thought just wanted the orange you take time find out the general aim or the need or the desire that find it then very often you're going to evolve into pain much better solution with interest-based bargaining you find that positions are mutually exposed in other words everyone wanted the orange and if that was your original demand you you can't have an orange because it doesn't divide them interests are not mutually exclusive and when you have the interest involved then it doesn't belong looking for different ways of solving the problem it really opened it up and it's amazing even with the most difficult question how this works at the table remember Roger Fisher William Yuri they had very complex problems they were mediators for the for the United States they helped solve the Belarus problem they help well Roger Fisher helped develop Marshall and the problems in a school district may seem small compared to those International incidents but they are not small for us in a school district and they are not small or are students in the classroom those are the only day the only month the only years they put and so that's what so important so I'm gonna let Debbie take you through what part of ibp brings to the table so first of all I just would like to say that um Dr Taylor and I have been at least 50 presentations using this orange activity I've also used it in my classrooms uh in my college level classrooms and I can stay that I have never seen an anime uh uh participation on the parts of the forest uh the forge children and the mother who was trying to solve it without us good job on that so anyway just as a um as a caveat to um the interest activity one of the things about interest that we try and we have to work on Concepts especially as we're working at a new table on this using IBB for the first time is to always think of Interest as they're used in IBB as the why it's the why why do you want this why do you need this why is this important I will go I will go through that more in depth but for example people somebody can say um I am really interested in you seeing my point of view that's not it it's an interest in I want you to come my way the interest is deeper than that the interest has to do with really what the problem is and ultimately what's going to solve the problem in the best way for your and ultimately and I'll say this again it's working together for students that and that's kind of what the basis is even though that really isn't what necessarily what the associations stand for um they stand for associations usually stand for their their um uh their unit members and uh in a traditional bargain bargaining session you might not even hear um people who want to even talk about students or the needs of students um but the interest-based bargaining table you will hear that um there is an interest in in doing the best for students as well and for the school district so um and I some really good questions that you um anyway negotiating team has commitments that they make together when I say negotiating team you know once once they're in a room together um they're one team working together it isn't they're not they don't take sides not the idea to take guys that they really want to work we want we want the teams to work together and the way they do that is to have um standards and norms and guidelines and follow the process that I'm going to go through in much detail with you so the um for example the Teachers Association and the administrators in this District at the table have developed their own their own um standards norms and guidelines and they have that that they use in fact we spend a lot of time writing those together and also reviewing them together and spending and really making sure that they reflected um what both teams wanted together we had small groups working together and and they came up with their own dorms and guides guidelines um and then the process is really just keeping true to the IBB process and that means following the steps so I could if I can step out for a second and just say that um you may wonder about you know what my role is as a facilitator at the table and so really a facilitator in interspace bargaining is one who helps the teams develop the standards develop the norms and the guidelines from the experience that I have in doing that at other tables and then one of my main jobs as a facilitator is to help the teams stay with process and and and and um and not Veer away from it because if you don't use the process in its entirety it won't work and so it's my job and and sometimes you know the teams will will call it call me out and say you know what you need to help us stay on task we got off tasks and we want you to make sure that you call us out and bring us back together um it's ultimately a goal and I'll say this honestly in interest-based bargaining it's a goal ultimately to have the teams work together without a facilitator they can do it that them so ourselves and designate people to you know to work through the process that often take a lot of time to do that many maybe a couple years and some some school districts have had facilitators for 12 years you've had one of those right Echo outside of Monrovia so um people just like to have kind of like somebody that just keeps them on track and and also is a neutral person who can give feedback from a neutral standpoint and um that's I think also helpful to both sides so as a facilitator in that I bring in both the teacher perspective and the administrative perspective of my experience um in in my lifetime in my hundred years of being in this work um I think that I I think I can very easily see both sides and um I think that it helps me to help them come together so um uh so this is what we use and I and it's very structured and in um mostly in our negotiation sessions it would be the norm to review the um that the guidelines and the Norms before each session just to remind us how we are going to behave together and this is true especially for a team that is just learning um interest-based bargaining um together with maybe new people in that it just takes time to kind of incorporate the whole aspect of working together cooperatively if you're used to working in a tradition environment so and I think this goes along with this this point the question is how do you anchor your position in IBB if you do um and I'm not sure exactly what that means in terms of anchoring a position if it's the position um of uh of like either the district or the teacher but what we don't do is that we don't do positions in um nibb at all um but and Luis is going to talk about later um but what happens is that the Board of Education your your job by law to set the parameters for the chief negotiator to go in and to follow those parameters in terms of the decisions that can be made in the agreements that can be made so when you say anchor a position I would rather say it in the in terms of and and similarly the association has to really get um receive input from their um their their leadership and from their unit members in terms of what they want and give them the direction of what how they want to reach a conclusion so but we don't use the word positions in interest-based bargaining you know we we tend because that really implies that I have something that I want and I'm going to keep on talking about it until you agree with it so it is it's really I I guess I would rather say say that it would be um really being able to use the process and see if we have to use the process if those positions or if the parameters really do work for everybody so um but it would be the the um the person who's designated to be at the table and that would be Jorge in this case the teacher table he would be responsible to come back and say this but we've been talking about it come back and talk to you in closed session and move on to the if you could reach if you could help him reach an agreement table using the parameters that you had in the first place okay we're good okay how is IBB okay so this is just this kind of a simple um chart each art really um that shows what the differences are between interest-based and like formatted on this felt really messed up yeah I'm not we worked so hard on that formatting I'm not sure anyway um so traditionals on the left interest basis on the right so um yeah on traditional and interest based on number one you both have issues so that what that means is that in a normal in a regular year and to use the the items that will be um discussed at the table through the sun shining process and so you know pretty much what is going to be discussed and you probably have closed sessions so that you know what the issues are that will be discussed at the table um so there are always issues and people think maybe in in collective bargaining that the only issue that occurs in collective bargaining is salary and health benefit and that is absolutely not true um it has to do with the entire collective bargaining agreement with working conditions and um and as I said before and I think this is really important for you to know that any other problems that happen to come up uh in in the district uh that that impact uh The Association members of the district that can be resolved at the table so because it is a problem solving study but you have issues okay that need to be resolved then in traditional bargaining you have positions so if somebody comes in with a position my favorite one was the one I I mentioned earlier and that is you know somebody comes in with wanting 11 somebody else says we're gonna have have zero percent and you fight and haggle about it then you end up with something that neither neither team um really is happy with so um and that goes back to you know District solvency and and having an interest in maintaining that and that can also be um discussed and listed as an interest so um when you rather than have a position if you you can both agree and this happens on a regular basis then all the tables that I said at really that when we talk about interest the association the the association will agree that they want District solvency nobody wants to break nobody wants to spend money that's going to break the district or not allow them to pay their bills or or function so it's a place where both teams can meet and say we agree um that we want District solvency sometimes what the issue is is to agree on what that actually means what district solvents they actually need um then uh on the traditional side there's arguments uh persuasion and on the interest-based side there are options and options are probably my favorite part of the um of the process because it really is a time to be creative to solve a problem in a way that you just open it up and um in a brainstorm different ways that you may not have thought of uh in the in the previously to negotiate in traditional there's power and compromise I'm in control so we're in control no we're oh we're losing control we at the district um you know um has the authority the associations have the ability to go on strike and um you know who's going to take the power if if you in a traditional setting that's the only option if uh you know for Association if you can't have agreements is to have right and we just saw that recently in La unified and how horrible that is uh I was in a one-day strike in Irvine and it was it's probably the worst thing that I've ever experienced in my life in education so um Power and compromise um you know it just it just doesn't work Nobody ends up being happy instead as I mentioned earlier we have standards that we measure um the the options and then um at the end uh on the traditional slide and the settlement there's a win-lose somebody always thinks you know maybe that they lost something they really wanted and others think that they may have won something so it's not really about winning and losing it's about winning and winning meaning that there's an elegant solution where both both teams can feel like they've come out of it with the win that has met the entrance which is a very deliberate process of going through that and I will now any questions at this moment that you wanna yes I had a question regarding the interest-based bargaining um when you mentioned that that's uh I don't want to call a confrontation but face to face problems dogging together in the same room right but how does the administration make a decision um the board of education is not in there do they make the decision for the board or do they bring it back to the board then go back okay I'm sorry say that again just say that again it so typically that's uh done through like parameters or through um Authority so the board gives some parameters or some authority to the negotiations team so that when they are in the room negotiating in this case in an interest-based bargaining um manner uh our team knows what their parameters are because they've already discussed it with the Board of Education yeah got it that's right and you have given them the direction direction from the board understood right which the program have using parameters may be different than saying basically you go and get this period and there's no room that would be more traditional or this is what we want to get it or we're not in an interest-based environment there are parameters and you can say here here are the parameters by which you can work they don't make the decision there they can make a tentative agreement but it's within your parameters and and um the keep your representatives at the table no better than to make an agreement that is outside of those parameters that the Board of Education because the last thing that anybody wants in that room is not to have the Board of Education support the agreement one and two not be ratified by the association either one you can't have so um yeah they have to come back so no I'm sorry I didn't get the first part of your of your statement but they do not make the final decision there in an isolated man and I think Louise might not weren't as thank you okay any other questions at this moment before we move on okay this is the this is the nitty-gritty please stay with me um these are the actual steps that are used and one of the questions that somebody had here or what are the pros and cons of interest-based bargaining and traditional bargaining one of the things that we read um about in there isn't a whole lot of research really in interest-based bargaining but one of the things that we hear anecdotally maybe is that uh interest-based bargaining take to block and um it it take and that that's the con is as it is just you talk and you talk and you're talking I'm gonna as we go through the steps you're gonna see why that is true because going through the steps versus um fighting about it and arguing about it um I think the arguments finally end up in well somebody just gives in because they don't want it to last they don't want the argument to last forever so they give in and they go along with something that really they don't they may not want to and then you end up with an agreement in a room and then you have parking lot conversations than people who are not happy with what has happened but in this process we believe that at the end of the day after you've found the elegant solution um that it uh people everybody ends up happy okay so I'm going to use an example as I walk through these steps with you that is completely unrelated to the unified okay just an example of something that could be negotiated in a school district just to kind of give you some system examples of how each step would be you so um in in in interest-based bargaining um somebody brings in an issue okay so I'm going to use the issue of the classified employees would like to negotiate some kind of incentive program for them to receive some incentives for becoming teachers and that would be maybe monetary or whatever but they they want to find a way to be able to go to go to school get a potential and become a teacher they've spent a lot of time in the classrooms maybe as an instructional age and they want to pursue a teaching credential but may or may not have the money to do that so they want to um appeal to the district to come up with a plan in some way to support them financially that would also benefit the district so the first so you say okay you want to have some kind of a program to help um your people in the inside become so the first thing that you do is you tell the story and so um this is the story could take a long time depending upon how much history is on this topic uh in your district and it could also take a long time depending upon how many people you have in the room with his with um institutional memory some people who have been around for a long time have a lot of institutional memory about a school district and what happened like 15 years ago or 20 years ago um and so telling the story sometimes depending on the topic can take a long time and while the story is being told the reporter whoever is taking notes sometimes it's the facilitator sometimes it's somebody else um they either take take notes electronically and project them on the on this on the screen or um in the olden days and people still do that we use charts and we can write um write the story on charts and then and then have the charts or have somebody transcribe the charts that we have that later um in a in a Word document so you tell the story to clarify the issue so it so so what could happen in this part and telling the story in Azusa is that part of the story could be that there are classified employees who have been working in this district for many years the many they may be uh instructional AIDS or they may be interested in becoming teachers and they want to have promotional opportunities do that but they're in a position where they can't afford it so um and those people and what we know about classified employees in a school district is a lot of times those folks come directly from your community and a lot of times those people are also um or were sometimes parents and so they have a lot of vested interest in this district and so to to have somebody to you know to bring along into a teaching position or promotional opportunity would benefit you know could benefit the district so in in the story you want to hear all the reasons why um you know uh classified employees want this and and give any background that that you might have about it so you tell the story and then um through that story it kind of clarifies what the real question is um and then so that that's number three when you really clarify the question after you identify the interest okay now remember that the interests are the why okay I'm going to give you a little test right so what do you think would be an interest that is the why of the classified employee who is an instructional aide who wants to be a teacher can't afford it and would like to negotiate with the district to become a teacher what would be an interest of that uh us Floyd do you think they would further their career to be teachers from an instructionally and make more money they'd have an interesting promotional opportunity exactly right for emotional activity anything else hey what um better health insurance benefit okay that could be um it would be more financially stable and supported health benefits okay so so you're on the right track so they would they would say that in the district could say what would be in interest of the district in terms of promoting inside people why would you want to promote inside people that came from originally potentially from the community as parents okay so you have people who have um a vested interest in this District because their children went through the district maybe they're still in the district and they want to stay there and they want to continue to contribute so you see how when you sorry okay you want to say something um since we have those online we might want to make sure we're all keeping the mic close to our mouth so that those that are participating online here okay so just okay it's okay is the hard thing to do did you want to say something no you you captured it um okay our classified employees have an interest in in the community so right so um so It ultimately could benefit and uh the district to invest in its own people um to bring them along so so you go through the interest and ask that now we all know that at the end of the day there's a financial tag to this and so that's kind of in the statistics not in her head because and it seems like it doesn't it seem like every single thing that we talked about always has some kind of financial uh tag to that which is which is difficult because you know in our work it's not like we have a lot of money to do a lot of wonderful things that other organizations can but if um you know if we can do something that does really benefit the district and students it would be well worth the um Financial um investment in that so then you clarify the question and sometimes this is not this is a hard thing to do because looking at my time am I okay um it's a hard thing to do because um in in this case it's not really a problem per se but it's really just an interest from a group to better themselves and so you need to clarify what what is it that you want to to to do to create to answer and then um clarify that make a problem statement or or write a clarifying question and then you go through the process of trying to answer it so um how can we best serve the um you know the the classified employees who want to promote in this District into potentially certificated positions um then you brainstorm options and um brainstorming options as I mentioned earlier is my favorite because this is the time this this is so diff this is one of the biggest difference um I think in interest-based bargaining than traditional is that um you just open it up to anything and um you use the rule of brainstorming where you don't evaluate an option that is given anything is accepted and in fact what we've seen as we know as as Educators or people who work in education is that we the more um Outland or outlying the the option can be it does bring about other more creative ideas that could ultimately be solutions that we never thought of before and you know that works pretty much in any environment as well I mean and again as I told you some of these the the steps in IBB can work in managing any kind of group or any kind of problem and so um you know have you ever been in a situation where you're trying to solve a problem and you get stuck has anybody ever been stuck not knowing yeah we've all been stuck and so this is one way to just expand the possibilities and get people thinking and I remember um when we first started doing this and the touch I'm going to pick on you a little bit here but you know when you have the CBO at the table and somebody you know uh sets forth an option that is like really expensive um the dbo just has to like keep their face like totally like a poker face and not rolled her eyes but you can't hardly see Natasha's eyes anyway but I I would know that Latasha would be rolling her eyes over there thinking about how much money that's going to spend and where is she going to get it um so um so and that's one of the things that that we work on um at the table is that when we're brainstorming that any any option is accepted as long as everybody's taking it seriously and it is and you know and and we're doing the right thing um but again making an outlandish um option does bring forth and I've experienced it it does bring forth more creative option then you go through a process of windowing options and there are there are at least 20 different ways that we know of the window options um you know just the kind of narrow narrow them down to a list that can really meet the interest in the standards and I think again I want to emphasize that the most important part in that is meeting the interest in the standards that have already been established and so that can be a very painstaking process if you have a lot of interest to go back and I've seen tables actually take every single option and see how many interests it actually meets and like write down the numbers of how many it meets and and so when you talk about interest-based marketing taking a lot of time that takes a lot of time so um so winnowing options I think that there's like the main part would be just to kind of go through and say and and this is the time they talk about them talk about you know um on how they would work or what people meant by them and kind of and then narrow them down to something that that might work it's a it's a big task um I've seen it I've seen it you know again I wouldn't be sitting here with you today unless I've seen it really work very very well so um and there are other um you know ways to one of the options that you know depending on where the group is um you know a a group that's been working together for a long time and I've seen this happen um and the same people in the same room with this you know that have been together can just kind of start talking about them and they can they can winner the options really easily together because they're pretty much of one mind and so getting to that place of being of one mind at the table again takes a long time and and it takes the same people and and it takes a lot of work to to get there but it it can be done um then uh the the last would be to find the elegant solution and that would be um to narrow the choice and um given and after you've um you know uh looked at the interests and standards and then find out what what what can work and again um it has to also be and I and during this process let's say for example um as in as you as the board and again Louise will talk about too but you know you will be aware you should be aware of what's happening at the table so that in this discussion so that you can kind of give your feed your input into the parameters of where you think can go which is kind of exciting thing for you too to say okay we can see these are the parameters to go back with and then um and then you go on from there and so when when your representative the table brings something back as an elegant solution it does meet your interests and your parameters and it does work so this take time and it does take more time than traditional bargaining and I'm not sure how to explain that exactly but it does because people are talking more and they're listening so um and and it's but any questions about that so one of the questions that that one of you raised was how many interest-based bargaining tables do you think there are compared to how many traditional tables so that's a hard question um sorry sorry to interrupt I actually do have a question oh sure so um you've identified the the steps and this is the protocol to follow correct um when the part when the negotiating team is in the room um are these uh steps printed or outlined or is there a yes you know a PhD uh hey guys this is remember this following yes okay thank you and I would just add for context and I have had the experience of being at both the traditional table and also at an IBB table with Dr Collins as our facilitator but in addition to that I also went through a training ncf where I met these uh two wonderful uh professionals and they had a compare and contrast so one of the signature differences between a traditional experience and a ibup experience is that the amount of air time I mean face time at the table is significantly Less in traditional bargaining because the teams come in with their proposal and add in the exchange proposals they may have some discussions about their proposal and some of the the the the the the explain explanations that come along with proposals but then that then they each go into their caucus and then from there um they they come up with a counter proposal can you explain some of those big differences because I think that's that that'll bring it home yeah thank you thank you I guess the the two put myself back at a traditional table and how it worked because it's so foreign to me at this point at this point but um and I haven't really seen a traditional table uh in my adult life after it was first a teacher so um but I I think that what he what what he's talking about is that um in a traditional setting there really isn't a whole lot of discussion about it it's really the position I want this you want that and then you kind of like kind of barter in a way barter back and forth and so you say okay well then you you know the the district might give a little and then the teachers or the association might give a little and then they they go into their caucuses and they develop develop strategies on how to pretty much break down the other side and that's what that's what traditional bargaining is how do you break down the other side just be at our way to come more around to what we want and how how can we get them to do that yeah well I like I prefer the IBB because I feel that when they go in separate rooms they're like um like they don't trust each other because like what are they talking about over there but when they're together face to face and it does it may take longer right but I feel that they will both tear each other out and they're they're right there together right instead of definitely coming back and then somebody and come back I I I personally prefer the IBB for that purpose um and it's all about trust at the end is it is and what I'll say is is that that in in tables that are very evolved in that process they can stay together in the room always and talk through even if they have questions or concerns they can talk through them but there still is the uh option in in interest-based bargaining to talk and but the the difference would be the intent of so in interest-based bargaining the intent of the caucus should be to get on the same page with each other because sometimes you know because everybody can talk and that's one other difference in the interest-based versus um traditional in interest based anybody can talk at any time and sometimes somebody might come up with something that is more um irrelevant to their own position you know at a middle school or a special ed position or you know or or whatever so um you know sometimes the teams just have to say you know what we need time out we need to get on the same page to make sure that we know what if what we're talking about is the same thing so but not to strategize not to break away so that because you don't trust the people at the other side that talk in front of them so that's a very good point thank you um and just in this I just wanted to just make one comment about um how many tables are there and we'll stay in California say um you know we've been at this a long time and I wouldn't venture to to say but I think that there have been there have been Trends um that we've experienced in California right going in and out of interest-based bargaining in the 80s the California Teachers Association was very supportive of interest-based bargaining they were working with administrators they were doing trainings together they were very supportive and there were a lot of interest-based bargaining tables and then something happened leadership changed CTA um and then all of a sudden uh teachers just walked into the table they said we're at IBB we're back to traditional so a lot of it has to do with the support from the the Regional Offices in your associations um for um for interest-based bargaining and how they support it uh and um so I think that we're seeing more themes coming back to IBB now right Brian I wish I knew a percentage but I don't know my impression is there are few people who have take time to acquire those skills it is a lot easier to just decide what you want and get mad at the other side if they don't have that idea it's just easier as a person should be angry and then bye this is an opportunity up with a much better solution I'm right on my um okay this is just another slide about it okay so this is just a reminder um uh that we talked about this before just to come back to this and um you know you asked a good question about um you know having all of the procedures and having the standards that everybody has it and in fact we actually make posters that are I'm also with that we pull out and we put in in the negotiating room so that we can refer to our norms and our standards and our guideline um and so um that worked really well because it helped us kind of like look over and we need to do that and get back to it so um because sometimes it's easy to take a shortcut on things and I what I have found when I've done that with um with tables we take a shortcut we we end up at the end saying why did we do that that is not working so we just sometimes we'll just stop and start again and go back to the story and walk through the process so um just remember I think probably most importantly is to really remember the in the interest part of this um that is the key and that it's based on Trust and being honest at the table and um people be trusting that what you say is is what you mean and it's true and that goes for both sides there has to be trust there I think it builds a relationship but it's also even with the Board of Education when you know you trust your Administration um by doing the direction that we discuss because sometimes we will hear at some time well they didn't really say what we said but if you build that trust okay I think it's really important between when I say teams I don't say unions in administration because we're all in board we're all a team right yeah together and I think that's how we need to see this the whole um bargaining right negotiation experience right well and somebody else asked a question about how does IBB help relationships and I think that the answer to that is as far as I'm concerned is that we spend a lot of time in the room developing those relationships and one of the things that we do which is um takes time as well is is that part of our process is every day every every time we meet we do a check-in and we go around the table and we say how's everybody doing and that was a very interesting um activity during covid because we were all on zoom and people were really having a hard time and that was it was a tough time but we go through check in with people see how they're doing what's going on with them and then we have we'll have a question of the day and we'll ask a question for them to um to answer and um and to talk about so that the team members can get to know the um the other team members on the other team better because I believe and I've seen it the better you know somebody the easier it is to work with them to listen to them and the more you trust them so thank you for bringing that up some people just want to be heard that's right that's right you're absolutely right pretty much everyone yeah okay I'm almost almost done here and you'll give you to Louie um um so we believe that in order for this to be um workable uh in a school district is it that there is a commitment that really starts here commitment really starts here it starts with the Board of Education and the superintendent um in terms of the commitment to the beliefs and the um the the precepts of interest-based bargaining and that means um that uh collaborative problem solving enhances relationships understandings and outcomes the more you collaborate the more you problem solve the better your relationship is um believe that both parties can win help each other win that open discussion and transparency unveils Mutual interests and expands options and the standards can replace power also um to use collaborative problem solving as much as you can everywhere when there's a problem uh to have equal participation in decision making power uh to follow the IBB steps and to adhere to the team protocol and um that any questions on on my segment before we go on any other questions for me on the process I'm going to move through my slides quickly but with um what your role as a board and a superintendent cabinet are and you have touched on some of them because you have very good questions and the uh the main thing to keep in mind is to think of Interest so let's say you don't they I want you to remove seniority from the contract a single option If You Dig Two interest I'd say I'd like to find a way for quality teachers to be able to move to another school in the district meet the need of a program and students and have a fair process not just always select the most senior person and that's that broader and it really your intent so it's thinking and and um what what you'll be doing in IBB if you focus on the interest and then your role the parameter focusing on your interests and then don't go beyond the perimeter of what you are offering then you're going to allow the team to be more open and understanding and also to come up with some more creative delivery that any one person doesn't have and when you're at the table and you're taking that first step of telling the story gathering information and perception you're going to get a lot more information about how it's best solved do you want to allow your team to be able to do that proposals separate from we talk about that providing an answer options they will create at the table so um that helps so what you would bring to IBB would naturally we have already heard from you in this room so I think you're there is the attitude that values and nurtures that opened collaborative climate for your disc I mean you were saying important for us to build relationships and to listen to build trust hear what people are thinking that's the most supported the team you bring to ibp a commitment to help them use the process and you're showing that by being here today and saying how do I know more and I mean I am not working directly with a group so now I live next door in Glendora and I read the newspaper you've been through some very very difficult time in terms of closing schools looking at mascot and all of these complex issues what I've observed from afar that you've taken the time to hear from people you're not going to be able that they're going to come into the room some of them say but this is the only answer you should provide that's a position as you listen to them you are taking in their interest again okay this is complete how can we asked me this and I mean I just I found it free that you decided Mast box but now how do we redraw of what that mascot stands for and it's just interesting it never would come up I but that pipe of an option without your already your ability to listen and that that of course isn't a negotiating shoe uh it's negotiated with your community inside and outside the district so you have already done that exceeding well so specifically um the First new Step here identifying and clarifying issues and listing the interest certainly the interest to be provided by you if you have some tie into an issue usually if the role of superintendent to come up with issues that need to be but there may be one you bring up such as you know I just heard that Mrs Santos could not based on security being given that position in another school when I hear there's other people who were more qualified so minority may be a problem what are you looking for in general once you've done then you agree on the parameter you're certainly not going to say do whatever you want even if the budget won't balance over here everyone agreed to that so you're gonna set parameter Latasha is rolling her eyes over there so your job is to avoid institutions just stay here here's where you could go and then commit to patient and understanding because um how many in this room know that they can control how people in their family their community in the school district are going to react and how they're going to present issue we can't can't control how somebody responds to that but we can control how we respond to them and if somebody demands something we hear what they can even ask and and what are you looking for you could take for interest if you want but you're not going to make a decision that is the best just because they happen to have ended it nor are you going to make a decision that isn't the best yes because you don't want them to get what they were demanding I mean you're going to base it on what you need for students um so you do that don't take it wrong and then you always have the authority the beginning you want to know you want to share with the Prem and what you're interested at the end you have the final approval on whether this is going to be the district so the final question but you're going to have some more is can things go wrong with IB if nothing went wrong with IBB then we would be traveling internationally sprinkling magic IBB dust across the world I it there is no one answer to all questions what we have learned is it helps people understand poor and trust that you're making the best decision possible for the students staff support them and the district as a whole so but what can go wrong you may have heard of Board of Elections that argue among themselves or somebody comes in and they want individual personality can can make man take decision but working with five or seven people on the board can be in this case it appears you have no problem there can be problems with the negotiating teams there can be disruption on that administrative team you can certainly have difficulties with more associations we've got the wrong leaders but if you keep going through the training and reviewing and if they make commitment like Debbie said to the norms and guidelines and the standards then they're most often with you always need to work on communication all of us too you don't want us understand with the public sometimes the public or even or if staff can come forward and say yes you solved that problem using first paper but if only you'd had a big fight and been tougher you could have had something better and don't let your stuff be pushed into that point because um fighting usually not only disrupts the whole District in fact yeah but it doesn't speak with the best salute so it can go things can go wrong with ivp the way they go wrong with steps but the standard with the commitment much more to go well than with any others particularly oh happy we look at the posted I think we've met us oh I've been yes I want to focus on those with you it's collaborative support I found it negotiating as the chief negotiator as the superintendent and I was superintendent for 18 years in Monrovia what I found is there was a much more collaborative support positions we made in the district and a better understanding of the issue because we got input onto these before we claim um to a solution as a district working with the board there was more buy-in from the staff in general and really if you listen to them and if you collaborate with them it is a grand gesture of respect and value for what they are offering their schools and your students and with students the biggest benefit is that if you are working together research has shown at students teach much better when there's collaborate particularly the stock but that for a district one and so they benefit from learning and thriving in there so I think now we've looked at what your questions are or you can just ask them there's something that we have covered um I think we covered most of the postage that you sure if I understand this one this one this one says how can we increase the time it takes to complete an item and I think I'm not sure I think is the question how do we decrease the time oh increase oh oh oh go faster go faster okay all right um you know a nice tip in here for a minute because I didn't talk about how much time maybe take um what I have found is that actually we tend to think it takes long but it actually takes less time than traditional and I know that sounds strange but I was working with another District in this region and we had we had had about five or six IBB sessions and after we I I was facilitating at the time and so I said I'm gonna stop for a minute I want to go around the room I want you to just say what do you think about the use of IBB this was a mixture of teachers and administrators around the table the first two people said oh you know I really like what we've been able to accomplished but it it takes so much time it takes so much energy the first two said that the third one uh that said no I had that thought at first then I remember but we spent the full day in this same room and it seemed like it didn't take so long because we only spent small minutes of time talking with each other but now what I'm realizing is that it's harder were we the whole time together working on solving the problem rather than going next door to a caucus and wasting our time being angry with each other and then all of a sudden the person who said oh you were right and we went around the room and they said ultimately we accomplish or break no more both in the solutions and in building our relationship and understanding then it just it seems like you know you get we have found that half of the time is lost and caucuses for traditional and you're lucky if only decision or time where you really work together but it is it's a Non-Stop I think the other thing is and this is kind of funny because um as we know there are a lot of different personalities and there are some people even sitting in this room you have probably a lot of different personality types in this room and there are some people who could just sit and talk and listen forever and enjoy listening to people and enjoy you know just hearing all different aspects of the problem and then there are other people that that drive crazy drives them crazy because they are they want to get things done they're goal oriented and it's taking too long and why are you talking Etc so I think that there is a there is a place in the discussion part in IBB and I've had this experience as a facilitator where um sometimes people take the opportunity to talk too much and it really isn't benefiting the group and so when I see and see again I think that that would that could be one of my roles as facilitator to help that and I have been known to because I have I also developed the relation relationships with people in the group too so that I can talk to them individually they need to trust me also they need to trust me being there so if I talk to them individually they trust that I'm I'm really taking their best interest in mind if I'm talking to them about something that's happening at the table so I've been known to pull somebody aside and talk to them about how much they talked at the table and how much time it takes and and are you listening as much as you're talking and so I do that and and I think that that's one of the expectations that some people have of me is just to kind of help control the room not well I don't want to State Patrol to kind of manage the room in the IBB environment so that it is productive and not just an ongoing discussion about every single feeling you've had about everything so because that can happen and and it does happen so um so uh question overall question I think we answered the ones that you put forward to us so far if we didn't um if I didn't clarify we didn't clarify those um uh you can ask it again or differently so that we can clarify it and otherwise are there any other questions that you have I think that's why it's great to have a facilitator everyone in task right so it's not like all over the place right like a referee yeah so I think it's great they kind of sometimes you might feel that way so sometimes it's not here not here not here that's good though it doesn't give too many penalties though right I think in your heart if if you make the best decision for the students and and District but most of all your financial budget you know and we're all here for the same reasons I think we'll be good yeah go ahead yes I can hear you so I wanted just to it's more of a comment to say that um I appreciate the interest-based bargaining because I think it really um creates connectedness with among the group um it gives people an opportunity to um see what individuals you know the value they bring to the table and because we do set the parameters I think that although it could take time I think that when you're working with within those parameters everyone knows we need to you know stick with the within the parameters but at the same time it also gives them an opportunity to be more creative and come up with options and have an open mind so and and at the end of the day um we are here for the students and I I appreciate the fact that uh you both ladies brought that up in the beginning because that's that's what we're here for thank you I have a question just to help with with our team um and if you could just talk about the normal Arc of the learning curve for a district that is transitioning from a traditional um setting into this IBB negotiation model you know you can add to it too they take long I mean think of all the facets of interest-based bargaining I mean you know for me really trying to understand what is that underlying interest and I will I will tell you that I always thought teams would do their own facilitating and I have learned by training District that when they can have a facilitator who has used IBB over years and decades that that becomes their encourager and helps them move back in um so I I'm working with one district for 12 years as a facilitator and I am not their first facilitator they decided they would have a facilitator and they've been doing IBB oh I think 30 years they were one of the first tests and then I have another District that I feel datum were on year nine and I keep saying okay you are doing very well do you want to go on your own and they sing hang around because we know every district has a challenge be it a person or an issue and just keeps it moving through but they built on those skills does that help you know I would like that that um I wish that there were an easy answer to that question right um but this is what I'll say about that I've worked with a lot of people in my bay uh as a principal um and as a district administrator I work with different groups of people in negotiations in other committees or you know whatever we do all the things that we do in the district I've done a lot of those things and I have never met a group of individuals that was the same as another group of individuals So my answer to you is first of all it's going to be frustrating it depends it depends on what people are bringing to the table and I think that at the end of the day what it it really rests on every single individual at that table and what he or she is bringing to the table that day are you bringing an honest open approach to collaboration or are you are you mad because you don't want to do something on this topic you know what do you genuinely bring into it and the extents to which the willingness and commitment is there I think that that there's a direct correlation between that every single member of that group and the time that it takes to get together people are fascinating I love people and I think that you know if if they're there for the right reason and they really want to do the right thing and they bring their best to the table um I think it could work rather quickly I think just the observation that I have is while we might think of a district as a static group we have different players so even a district that's been implementing IBB for decades the leaders have changed um even long-standing leaders they will they will rotate out um the board member composition will change from time to time so the parameter set will change and um you talk about the what that person what the team members might be bringing to the table that day that also um Taps back to what's going on in the district and pressures around all of it uh reorganization mascot Community violence everyone is bringing that Collective psyche to the table during the negotiation negotiating period thank you for bringing that up because we have one other activity that we use on a regular basis at the at the table at the table and that is that um every time we meet after we check in and everybody's doing um for the day and have the question of the day we also asked to see if there are any elephants recognizing just the very thing that you just said um that if you know somebody they come in and they're mad because uh somebody just did something that they were mad about and they you know can't negotiate then we have to get that out and on the table and talk about it or else we'll have we will not have a good day so um sometimes um sometimes the tables when I was first doing this work in Monrovia um sometimes the elephants would would like take over the entire day because there are a lot of things that people wanted to talk about there was no other forum for that and so we kind of figured that out and made another forum for people to solve their problems other than at the negotiating table but um an elephant is is very specifically something that would beep people from being able to negotiate that day because they were so angry and so we would get that on the table but we do that like the elephant in the room so um we do address that and I think that um I think it's I think it's positive I think it's a good way to you know to start the day and to deal with that very issue because you know as you as you all know every day um you know there is never a dull moment in a district there's never a dull moment there's always something going on any other questions okay we have one more thing that we would like you to do uh thank you Louise um we'd like for you to think about um and this will be anonymous but you don't we'll put it up and it'll be enough I'm going to read them but it'll be anonymous though you can write what you want and we'll keep it anonymous why you think that IBB is a good good work in in Azusa why you think it could work why you think it'd be beneficial based on what you've learned or what you knew already and um maybe say if you've learned something about your role tonight that may be different than what you thought before you walked in say something about that or what you think your role is in the IBB process and um just give us that feedback or yeah I've so just put it on the Post-it and then we can open them up and we'll read them but we won't we won't say who they anonymous laughs oh you're um huh that the sisters I be could help you know this better relation and that's usually part of that you know any team you work with if you could work solving problems together it there were some people who say and they don't know IBB is just cookies in Kumbaya that people are just trying to but no the point is to be very productive this comment is um it creates an opportunity to try something new benefits why IBB there is a positive shift to this relationship with bargaining ABP Franklin and as for a role it to listen to communication and understand budgets set parameter for them that is a boy but if they're constantly moving parts okay deepen prod I trust him relationship with our labor labor partner for their double yeah I mean again solution um my role is to help conversation issue and keep um IBB strength strength and trust and collaborative relationship and my role and maybe be support and this is for the role across I think that they are right decision trust at all and better decisions support process me we're doing the right we may give you thank you so much I mean you've just you have such a deep understanding of why maybe be very natural to use them for people thank you for these comments they're very helpful um to hear from you um and I know that you will continue to do the right thing and good things for students in Azusa the great district and you've got a lot of you have a lot of work to do still right always every so thank you for for the time um that you gave us tonight uh it is um look at one minute to spare yes I love it thank you thank you so much thank you Dr Taylor Dr Collins thank you very much appreciate the insight and your time this evening have a great night we're president if we take a recess a break about 15 minutes uh we'll get people out and get ready for the next session okay so we will take a 15-minute recess and we will reconvene at 705.

we would like to extend an invitation to you to attend if you would like we will be looking at the requirements of DAC as a review for ourselves and for all our new DAC members we have also invited all principals of the district to attend to see what and how Dak is an important part of what makes up this District it truly gives parents voice we have an update we have been updated on the connect ed Academy changes uh being prepared for the high school for the 24-25 school year and it looks very exciting to me I'm really excited about it I think it's going to spark our chill our kids to really want to go forward we've also heard from tntp and their work within the district at our last stack meeting we had two presentations from kids first on mental health and suicide and substance abuse which to say the least were emotional in our parent engagement subcommittee is looking at this closer to see what as a district we can do not only to support our students and parents but our teachers and staff and these type in these trying times everyone present was so grateful to Kids First and District employees who gave us a better perspective of these issues lots of questions were asked and answered there were a few tears also the uip unified Improvement planning is looking into Trends our math score trends of our math scores beginning and middle of the Year star math and what these scores tell us and how we can improve we are seeing a slight Improvement already we are asking questions on how these Trends are affecting our students and what measures we as a district can Implement to bring our scores up in all grades because every grade that we looked at is way below but in from the red area there are slight improvements our budget subcommittee is working to understand how and what our funds are being used for and if there are different ways or places we can use our funds they are also getting a feeling of where our funds come from and how enrollment is affecting our funding as you already know we review two Charter School applications this year this is also known this is also a very tedious process lastly we thank you each for you each of you and the Adams 14 staff for your support of our efforts also all the work and time you have put into our children's education any questions board members and comments or questions sorry a little short um so I just want to commend you again um for all your work and all of Doc's work and I'm very pleased to see that you have additional students on Deck correct and so um that is amazing because we've been really lacking the student voice at this level so I appreciate all the work I know that it's been difficult for everybody to get parents to get involved and much more so students so I commend you for that thank you that's one of my proudest moments as a DAC chairs to actually have we have three or four high school students that are attending on a regular basis now and their voice is so important and it's just amazing if you really listen the uh amount of knowledge and what they can what they can contribute when I started this um thank you so much Miss Connie um I'm I come from the deck and I'm really honored honestly because I've learned so much and I really thank you for your leadership miss Connie for everything you have been doing um I will be there tomorrow at the retreat I one my question was I I do you said that more parents have been added to the deck no that's one of the biggest issues we have right now is trying to get parents involved in the DAC we've been working with the principals Sheila has worked with the principals Joe was working with principals trying to get everybody on board to understand the importance of DAC and that it is a place for parents to have a voice and I think a lot of times parents do not feel like they have that voice but if they come and be part of Dak they do have that voice right so that's where we're at we're still we still have the same issues that we've had for the last five years so it's been a continuous a continuous challenge to get more parents on the deck right and and I know I understand the parents are busy but then so is everybody and if you value your children's education then these are the kinds of activities that you should be trying to get yourself involved in just that's just my perspective agree I think a lot of us are here on the board already have uh worked together on Doc before so I agree thank you so much for your work miss Connie thank you foreign yes thank you so much Connie I I've had the pleasure of attending a few DAC meetings and um just to hear the insights from students I know the one where we reviewed data um the star data I think was the beginning of the year data just their feedback about how we're looking at data like they they ask something simple and it just seemed mind-blowing like why are we looking you know at the segregated data by race or why aren't you asking us you know how many of us have a job how many of us take care of another family member um just the things that do impact their learning and that we know that in our community um so I'm just so appreciative that they're attending and participating um Maria and I are the board Liaisons for both high schools so if we can do anything to help bring more in even if it's scheduling a meeting you know during student council or lunch or something but I think that's an area that has made such a big impact so quickly I I think the student council um teacher has really been a advocating for that and I believe some of the students that are coming to DAC are also advocating it during the lunch hour so oh great you know if we get more students I'd be thrilled but I'd be even more thrilled if we had a few more parents um I think my only question for you is do you have any ideas on how we as a board can support you and Dak in getting more parents to come and more students to come well I I don't I don't have any more ideas I mean the the fact of the matter is according to the state statute it is the principal's responsibilities to get a stack Representatives and I understand the principles are busy we all are that's just the way life is today if there's any way that we can encourage the principles but the principles probably have the same issue that we all do in trying to get parents involved and they just it's still a trust issue and I think a lot of parents just feel like oh it's just another committee they want me to be on and you know it's not important but I don't know how the board maybe can help us to reiterate to parents to principals to other community members the DAC is an important part of this District and what we look at and what we present to the board I have to say the last three years everything that we have presented has been implemented so that tells you right there that the work that we are doing is very important and it we're looking specifically at things that affect our children so that's the only thing I can say is you know just to keep encouraging and well and that may be something we as a board can look into when we meet with our schools just kind of have that as a standing question to our principals like where where are you with sac and how many um parents are participating that would that would be greatly appreciated because I know they're having the same issues with Sac which is the school accountability committees and uh I know they've tried to combine it with other things like PTO and you know that kind of thing but that's that's not the purpose and I think that's where parents come from you've got that you want me to be on this you want me to be on Sac you want me to be on you know and so and every school has about two or three 400 kids in it so there's got to be that many parents I don't know what to say yeah we just have to keep pushing forward for everything that deck does and for your leadership within deck I do remember having conversations with the family and Community engagement um gal herein and I remember um and I remember briefly talking about different ways that we can engage the community to for specifically that purpose of getting more parents on deck and so I'm just wondering like if if we can get an update on that to see how that's working and then to see then how our efforts can we can collaborate with with that department and see what what we can do to really get more parents involved because I think like you said right like we're out of ideas but at this point like let's check in to see what have we done what's worked and then whatever hasn't maybe we can get on board and see what we can do to support that so I think that update would be nice thank you Connie so um for us what I think what I'm trying to do for the next couple months is trying to get to like the PTO or this act meeting that the schools that we're involved in like we had one at the middle school last night um if we're on fire it usually sends to us so we know when they're having them to try and make them if we can I think it'll help to show us one of them being there too and kind of helping the principal along with uh you know encouraging parents to come out because like I said if you only have three or four parents at those meetings it's hard and you know having the principals and the staff there but just kind of explaining to them and at least they can show that we're trying to help too and then you know we can have more ideas with our principals after those meetings to see what they could do as well to reach out either through flyer or something else to let them know like I think uh like last night we had a SAC meeting for one of the middle schools and I think a lot of it came out of it was like let's be more you know don't send so much communication in one thing with flyer but sudden it kind of imparts because if you're going to send them like three pages of stuff parents are going to read the top part and that's it and like you know especially communicating what we're going to do for those kids and stuff like that especially we have continuations coming up we have fifth grade continuation eighth grade all that stuff to start communicating it now and get those parents involved to give them ideas as well to help with that so I think I think if we can show up to some of those and maybe give them some ideas as well or help the principals be a thing too just for us and they know we're there for them too we did a couple of things during October when they were doing the trick-or-treat streets and that kind of thing at the schools but I'm only one person so I only made it to two schools I made it to Central and I made it to Adam City High School and we had a table there and we were handing out flyers we were talking to people about it if we could and unfortunately also I looked it up almost every school had their event either on Thursday night or Friday night so that's why I could only go to two went to Central's on Thursday night I went to Adam City high schools on Friday night and I felt they were pretty successful so I need to get all my DAC members and see if I can't get some of the other DAC members to be if we had a DAC member from every single School the DAC member of that school could set up a table the district was very generous they got they printed all the Flyers they gave me bags of candy to hand out it you know those kinds of things are things that people notice and so we're trying on our end if you guys can try on your end maybe we can get a few more people involved I think that's a great idea I know um Lucy and I had attended a basketball meeting and a wrestling event and we thought of that as well like why don't we have a table out there and just um you know we as board members or community members are out there all the time and it shouldn't just be one or two people that are out there with information well and to James's point if I knew when some of these meetings were going on I could come and attend those meetings and and speak about that um I don't know whether it would make a difference it might I think also if we could get our students although they have to stay in class I won't have it if they if they have to leave class but if they would speak because we have one girl that's just absolutely she's just amazing and she loves coming to DAC meetings and she feels like she's being heard and so if I can next time we have an event that I'm going to go to I'm going to ask her if she'd like to come so those are just some of my ideas I think those are all great ideas and I I know we pushed for many years to try to get a district-wide calendar of events because we constantly hear that from our parents um you know I have a middle middle schoolers that have something going on in this night and my elementary has something going on on the same night and you have to choose or divide and conquer and get different family members too well and I think a district-wide calendar of events that for every school all in one place for parents and for DAC members board members whoever I think that's something that we really really need to look into yeah yeah and like um director amateur said we get the flyer notification but usually that's like a day or two before or sometimes the day of and it's like we all work so we can't attend I can imagine everybody else can attend as well great ideas um yeah I went through and I I went through the doc budget recommendations that you guys have given us and I was going to reiterate those but I'm very proud that we've got it done we've got everything that you've recommended so far and they're making a huge difference um I think one thing you had suggested or doc had suggested was adding an additional resource Fair um and I don't know that we did that this year if we're looking into that we have one but we wanted our doc recommended that we have two more yeah yeah one one like before school starts and then maybe one around uh just before maybe Christmas break or just after Christmas break because you have students rotating in and out all the time so these resource fairs are and there's when we say resource fairs it's not just come and register your kids there are a lot of different booths set up that are you know um kids first and other organizations within the community that are re that are good resources for families and for parents and if they come into our district after the first resource fair then how are they going to know that these resources are available well in the one at the high school had all the clubs and the sports things and um as as a community member it's just great to go learn about everything that's going on so I think those are all great ideas great any other questions or comments for Miss so much for attending and all your work yes have some food thank you for all your work um next I would like to turn it over to miss Burke to just introduce our Colorado Department of Education guests good evening Madam president Lovato as Dr Lydia a distinguished board members and viewing audience so as Madam president shared my name is Sheila Burke and I'm here as the chief academic officer tonight we have a presentation from our senior officials at the state department we're going to provide a progress monitoring update regarding the work that we have around our turnaround efforts so in here we have Lindsay Jackal and then Andy Swanson who's going to be joining us tonight and so we have a presentation that we're prepared to share followed by an opportunity to do any questions and answers at the end of them Sheila I'm sorry Dr Lydia go ahead yes thank you before you pass it on I just want to well first of all thank Ms Jacqueline sponsor for Mr Swanson for being here and I I do want to share before um I pass it on to them how excited and this is something that they have heard from me how excited I am of the work that we have engaged on this year uh the partnership amongst CDE tntp and the district has been um uh quite quite focused on what is right for children and I I want to just note how appreciative I am of um of their work and partnership with us wonderful um yes Madam president Lovato members of the board Dr lyrian staff and community members we are very excited to be here um as uh Dr Perkins said Leesburg Dr Burke we're going with Dr Burke um I'm Lindsey Jekyll um with our executive director of school and District transformation from CDE and this is my colleague Andy Swanson I'll let him introduce himself hello everyone glad to be here uh Andy Swanson I am the director of accountability Pathways at CDE so we are but I might not be if I just let you know like great um so our agenda here for today um is to just review some context and talk a little bit about our work of progress monitoring with the District staff and share some Reflections from our first semester it's been a full first semester and we've really enjoyed getting to know the work and so we wanted to share with you all just what we've been up to and what we've been observing next slide so just to reground us in the State Board directed action for Adams 14.

um in while the students are here in Batavia we support special education programs or Early Childhood Center at Alice Gustafson 504 plans nursing Services requests for homebound instruction McKenney vento eligible students which some people may refer to students that qualify for homelessness status social emotional learning which includes instruction intervention Home Hospital coordination private and procal services so we partner with a lot of our parochial schools in the area to make sure that those students needs are met when they qualify and we really are a prevention focus and work through our multi-tier systems of support so we want to make sure that our students get access to supports and services prior to that sense of failure every year we come to our Board of Education in January as part of our schedule to report and provide an update and give you a story behind some of the numbers that are in that documentation so I want to share a little bit of the changes that we've experienced our response and some goals for this upcoming year so since we met last January we've been working as a division in close partnership with our cni team which is our curriculum instruction team to develop some improvement plans for our existing structures that we have established in Batavia to responsive to the identified needs of our students we want to make sure that our students not only have a positive experience in their day-to-day life in Batavia but that we ensure that there's student growth from our little bitty Bulldogs in early childhood all the way up through high school and then our post-secondary education as we shared our strengths in our board report we are moving forward with much excitement a lot of plans that are happening in each one of our levels so we've been focusing a lot on providing training for classroom management at the elementary levels we've been working with our case managers to provide ongoing professional learning so that they can support our special education in the classroom using District resources to align vocabulary instruction and intensify their plans based on student needs our secondary level we've been working with school leadership teams to look at how do we enhance our small group instruction for students in the classroom and how do we really meet those social emotional needs of our Learners when they demonstrate that their days are extremely stressful and that they may need something more than that general education experience the public school district so asimatavia our doors are open to all students for immediate enrollment and School staff are often challenged to be the first ones to not only make a relationship with families but they start to identify that sometimes they're students in their classrooms in our buildings that may have needs those could be developmental delays they could be social emotional needs they could be mental health concerns there's a there's a variety of things that present to us every single day and our staff are the key people that help make sure that our students get what they what they need to be successful but over the course of the last 10 years we've definitely seen a shift in student needs not only in Batavia but overall at the national level while we have much to celebrate here in Batavia um our our staff are phenomenal they work hard every single day but sometimes you get shown with challenges based on the way that the world is Shifting that our data is not always reflective of where we want it to be and our staff and our Administration from Vespa to Bea to us standing here really are feeling the impact of that change of the world and what is walking in our doors in a public school setting um in the United States the number of students identified with disabilities has increased over the course of the last 10 years it was around 13 and it is up to the last number that I've read is around 14.5 percent there's been a noticeable increase in identification of students with disabilities from birth to five so that early infancy range and when you look at special education support that's needed there are different eligibility categories and some of those categories require a lot of related service Personnel that go and collaborate one of those examples is autism and that has quadrupled in the last 10 years based on that rate um our last official report in Batavia our special education population was founded at 15 percent so we are right now above that state average while students are changing we recognize that the response to data and our staff really need to rally and support the students that we have walking in our doors and our support needs to be strategic and very impactful areas that we have had a lot of conversation and focus and reflection on have been highlighted in conversations with our significant disproportionality in black males being over identified for emotional disability as well as some of our internal metrics that we have been examining that indicating that there are certain profiles of students or there are certain attributes that tend to be overrepresented in some of our groups some of those tend to be our low income different races and English language Learners are some of the conversations of students in our Forefront of what are we doing how do we support and what do we need to do to move forward while these Trends and student profiles are not isolated to Batavia it does streamline our focus and make us pause and reflect on we are working hard but are we doing the right work and are we providing the right supports that we need to our staff in order to make a difference for our students that enter our doors every single day in public school setting as a division we have heard that the Board of Education really wants us to Rally together and our work to be focused on increasing student outcomes and I would say for those of us that we tend to re data nerds and data Geeks in a very loving manner we couldn't be more excited about seeing that turn into a measurable action step to help make sure that we are making the difference that we need to First our division goals are still in draft form but these are the areas that we look to focus in increasing intensity of our instructional practices reviewing our supplemental supports for students who demonstrate needs in social emotional competencies and improving our overall knowledge and skill set for culturally sensitive child find practices embedded with asset focused cultural responsiveness for the adults that work with the kids in the building while this work is hard and it's very ambitious I and our admin team and I know our staff are very excited that we're starting to have these conversations and our committees are dedicated to look at our practices and identify what we need to do differently or what we need to do more of to make sure that all of our students that walk into our doors are successful are there any questions oh go ahead Aaron sorry Carrie can you kind of talk a little bit about um outplacement and what that means what that looks like for those definitely students so out placements um in the in the eyes of special education what we talk about a lot you'll hear lre or your least restrictive environment and so in um when you think about a special education lens we always want our students to be with the peers that they go to school with and so your your general education with some special education supports starts to be at that least restrictive environment and that works for many of our students but there are students that walk in and it may not be enough support for them so then we look at time outside of that general education classroom which some people refer to as a self-contained program and we have a number of them in the district that support our students at Grace McLean Hoover wood Rotolo middle school and the high school even with that level of support which typically involves smaller class sizes that's where a lot of our basketball Partnerships come in and they provide a lot of support through AIDS or different instructional practices there are some students that that still is beyond the scope of what we can provide within Batavia Public Schools and that we look to partner with therapeutic schools or our Mid Valley special education Cooperative to provide supports and services that may be more unique or more specialized to the types of disabilities that students are presenting with and so that number represents right now we have 43 students that are requiring that level of support in Batavia the reason why there's an asterisk for the 28 is that students in our transition program so there are students once they um leave Batavia High School they may not be at a point yet where they can be independent or they require Services up through their 22nd birthday and so there are programs out there that are what we refer to as transition Services where it's really working on students level of Independence and their job skills so that they are employable and able to go out and be as independent as possible we in Batavia don't house a transition program as part of our public school and so the majority of those students attend Mid-Valley special education Cooperative as part of their services so that number can be a little deceiving when we say outplacement that's why we spread it out because it's they are um and Mid Valley but they are still a part of our our art district okay and when we say 43 is that um Early Childhood to through 12th grade then yes okay and some of them are past post 12th grade because we do have to provide those services to their 22nd birthday so the 28 is over and above the 43.

and when we adopt a budget then we submit that budget to the department local government and finance who then approves or tells us that we need to reduce our budget and so um that First Column there uh the budget we have to submit is only representing uh four funds and that's the education operations Debt Service and rainy day funds for County year 2022 it shows what we actually spent in those funds the second column shows what our budget was that was approved in that fall meeting for 2023 the dlgf told us what our budget should be in those funds after we submitted our expenses and revenues there were no reductions in any of those budgets that we submitted so those numbers remain the same as far as what we approved and then as part of our 1782 notice it gives us what our assessed valuation is for a corporation and our tax rate for our Corporation and you can see that our operations fund has a tax rate of basically 54 cents which will generate should generate uh 4.6 million dollars and then our debt service has a tax rate uh 17 cents essentially and it will generate uh 1.5 million dollars of uh Revenue in those funds and then the last column represents what the anticipated tax cap impact will be uh which shows that we could lose uh as an estimate up to 243 000 of that we wouldn't collect basically um so this shows what um our budget will estimated at total and what percentage each of those were obviously our education operation fund is the uh bigger amount not much changed with that since nothing changed with our Appropriations foreign estimate budget that we set shows what that 14.9 million dollars is separated out into uh primarily salary and benefits it's your bigger chunks of 91 percent after an adjustments um you know because we set our budget in September we don't even know what our like negotiation salary raises and all that type of stuff that's going to be so there's obviously changes that need to happen we don't know what our vocational dollars are going to be and all that stuff to like December so we make those adjustments then to that budget that we set as long as we don't go over the amount of dollars that we request that we said we would spend um so you can see it changes but it doesn't change drastically typically so we're still at you know so 91 of our salary benefits for the most part uh that we won't necessarily have to go over but I just kind of laid out some historical comparisons when it comes to what those budgets have been over the past several years just as a comparison uh net assess valuation again we look at that when we set our budget we get our final numbers when we get that from the dlgf you can see that our assessed valuation improved almost 13 percent so it went from 760 million to 857 million which is important because that the higher assess valuation uh can lower your tax rate and still generate the same amount of dollars this is a historical view of what our assessed valuation has done over time the blue is the actual and the red is the estimate and if you remember back in like April May when we were talking with the referendum we had policy analytics come in and kind of give us a preview of what you know anticipated growth might be in our assess valuation and so that's what that red represents um budgets are completed for uh taxing units this is a comparison of ours um it's not updated on the program that I use so I kind of updated with that black line to show where our 71 cents would kind of sit uh for 2023 as a comparison to previous the past 10 years or so this is a new slide that I got back in December um Isco puts on a a session and they usually invite Dr Larry the board who is a Purdue he can Economist I guess um and so these are where our School District would sit compared to other school districts across the state of Indiana as tax rate is concerned so uh 71 cents is below the 10 percentile um where the median is around a dollar two dollar three and that was for 2022.

yes it's the Thursday through Saturday um yeah how's it going combined with the middle schools that we haven't idea how that's getting okay so much of one thing okay because it's like respecting like the difference just of like you know you know you wanna [Music] all right thank you very much for that report very good Mr Case okay thank you very much chair Daniels good evening everybody it's great to see all of you this evening um I have um four items uh to talk about tonight um the first one is um to let you know that we had the first of three of our community Gatherings related to diversity equity and inclusion we have the first one last Wednesday evening um the the point of last Wednesday evenings was to conduct our first series of focus groups um so we had facilitators from Pratt who worked with each of the focus groups um we had administrators and Board of Ed members there thank you to our Board of Ed members who attended we had um parents and community members and then a couple of uh of teachers and um this was the first in a series of focus groups and I just wanted to put this on the agenda um just to remind everybody why we're doing these focus groups in June of 2021 um the Board of Ed adapted a policy on equity and diversity and a component of this policy directs the superintendent I'm just going to quote from the policy to developed and conduct a systematic Equity needs assignment for the district then the purpose of that is to identify processes and practices that may need to be revised in light of our newer Equity policy so we want to get as much feedback as possible possible from our community members so we didn't have as good of a turnout to this community Gathering as I had hoped for we are going to conduct conduct additional focus groups with our teachers with community members including parents in those community members who do not have students or grandchildren in the school so we're going to be doing that again to ask the same questions and then we'll we will receive a report at the end of the year with all of the information and then we can identify strengths and areas that we need to all become educated on and that will be our roadmap for the future so again I just want to remind you we have these focus groups we'll be conducting more and we're going to do everything in our power to include as many people as we can in these upcoming focus groups then we have two more Community Gatherings scheduled for this year the next one is on March 15th and I don't have the third date off the top of my head but we'll be identifying what topic we'll be talking about for that March 15th um Gathering I'll just open it up to see if board members have any comments questions or ideas how you should do this differently moving forward anybody so I I have a question so last year I went I went through it and I I found it to be very interesting and thought provoking what how does how does that converted the actionable how do we start making a little bit of a difference because I I know the focus groups what we're doing there and first of all I thought this was going to be more Community Based I thought the first election was committed to to working with us to join the community it seemed like it was really School related which is okay but I mean how do we get actionable items out of this or how do we promoted or maybe we need a I don't know a big name program or speaker to come in I don't know but how do we move it along I guess yeah Lou it's a great question um last year uh was the year that all of our staff received professional development training on this topic and every school developed their school Equity Council and that's going strong in each one of our schools so so our schools have taken action but we continue continually learn and improve and coming out of the equity Council system would work as our sooner reps reported tonight we really want to make this to your point more more of a community effort involving people who may not have connections with the schools right and that's really what we're striving to do so if anyone has any ideas on how to do that I've talked with her selectman vessel about that and we want to continue to partner and get the word out to the community in any way that we can I know Kira will help us with that sending emails throughout our town email blast system there's probably a private preschools in town there's just different organizations and groups that may want to participate right this really needs to be a community conversation and we've made great growth in this area in our school district within the past three years um people that I was in a focus group with mentioned that um but we need to um to involve others along the way along our journey if I could use that I was pretty proud and impressed with our administrators and their comments and their input into the acting Joe Joe included I I was it was a little bit um I was a little bit of a disadvantage I I think I mentioned I said you know coming from a business perspective is a little bit different and they were able to really tie this into uh how they approach it from from a building perspective but our I thought our our administrators did a great job in making their comments and you know those questions weren't submitted in advance so I was impressed with the uh equipment presentations every every year Joe what our four schools are working at uh put that on our agenda a future agenda topics right at the end of the budget absolutely we will do that thank you any further questions from Mr Case on that that's number one okay thank you so much um the other major priority uh we continue to work on developing the fiscal year 2023 2024 budget um so two weeks from tonight that will be the major agenda item I'll be presenting my proposed budget to you for your consideration and so there's um there's still a lot more work to do in preparation for that Donna John and I and Barbara are working very diligently on that budget presentation um our mental health and wellness Student Assistance Program that you approved last month thank you so much um we're having meetings with the staff to answer their questions about the program and we should be rolling that out within the next couple weeks when the process as I said to you the last meeting we're in the process of setting up a parent meeting date for that um however the administrators and the support staff have had many more questions about the program how they can assist in the implementation of the program so we've wanted to make sure they get all their questions answered first we had a meeting today and we'll have one more meeting with our support staff and then we'll be able to roll that out and I must say the staff is very excited about this ability to get support outside of school hours is not available so they're very open to this they're looking forward to it and we will get that um going very very shortly a question on that yes Alicia um the timeline was delayed because we had to have another meeting which was important um timeline was delayed by two weeks right but that meeting was this month it was last month it was this one all of the meetings have been held as fun so we have one more meeting with the support staff and then we'll be able to have the parent room thank you we talked about having members of our support staff at that parent meeting that was that's important so the parents know how the services their students will receive outside of the school will dovetail with the school so we're making that connection explicit which I think will be very valuable we want this to roll out very smoothly thank you for asking that and then finally um I want to let you know that the mural you've heard about the creation of the mural at Canton Intermediate School in conjunction with um the Arts Council in Canton and some of you may have participated in the creation of that that mural I know um some of you did participate the unveiling of that mirror will be Monday afternoon at three o'clock at Canton intermediate school so if you can be there it's just very exciting that we've been able to put together this old school initiative on the heels of the school visiting the American mural project um in Winston you recall we did that in the fall this was a follow-up project that every student and staff member and Community member that wanted to has been involved in so please plan to come to CIS Monday at 3 if you can and those are the items I wanted to report to you tonight I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have any questions for Mr Case good hey thank you very much okay good we'll move on to the chair report get your children um first of all I wanted to thank buddy and Kira the job that they did putting together Friday for us uh that was a that was a scramble event to get that ball together and they did it so professionally and the uh reception was great so I wanted to thank you both publicly for for the work that was done there okay um I want to thank the board again uh for making Friday a success and for your time and commitment to that process um I also want to let you know so um we had talked about the electronic sign it's created some controversy nothing that I'm um willing to back down from are afraid of however I think the best uh thing and I tried to say this tactfully is uh I don't want to detract from the budget process we we have to use the term bigger fish to fry right now so I want community support for the budget so I've I've pulled that for now um uh in order to um to really focus in on the budget and some of the other things that that's that's a minor thing when I saw the type of magnet that it was uh it's it's not worth going through that right now so I hope you don't mind that I did that um and then the um other thing I want to mention Mr Casey uh February 1st um we have our our gathering there too do you want to just give a plug for that sure and I'm sure John was going to report that was in your report all right that's right so February 1st at seven o'clock we have Justine Ginsburg from the Farmington Valley Health District she'll be coming to do a second presentation for us this year and John you can remind me of the exact topic social media in the minds of our children so it'll be at the Canton High School um uh uh learning commas the media center uh we'll have a nice opportunity to be able to speak and then um just to add on if I may quickly it's hard to be able to get people to um in in the amount of time that they have the finite amount of time that they have to to join us to be able to work with us can be a challenge to be able to ascribe that time what what Justine brought up is a great idea is we're going to do a little snippet of a video afterwards after we do the meeting we're going to do a short video to say hey just so you know in 30 seconds this is what this is what this is all all about we'd love to see you in the future or please watch our recording so if we can't get people to be able to be here with us we're going to keep working to be able to get it to them so um good yeah you're excited to be hybrid or not it will be hybrid again yep we're going to try and meet people where they are they will not get cookies for any drinks okay uh thank you John the final thing is in your packet um there's a letter from me to our state representative and and this is from me I uh made sure to say that was not done um I don't I didn't have a board vote on this but this has to do with the uh free uh lunch program and um I think it's important that um some of the other uh board chairs across the state were providing their state representative with a little bit of the extra money that the uh the state has to to continue to free hot lunch for the free meal program and again you know when a child is fully nourished they they learn better they're more productive and um you can read you can read what I said in the letter but um I just thought it was important to um to make the statement so yeah sure absolutely and I support you know you're the better um I'm just thinking back to meetings we've had where I believe it's um even if a student didn't have a lunch or didn't bring one they would not be denied food right they're supposed to be given food sure um no it's just yeah this is more of a Statewide effort to try to get this done it's not it's not an indictment on what camping does or I know we do things a little bit better but this is more to what push the state into promoting neon that so but thank you yeah that's a good comment and I am proud of what we do here in Canton yeah but do uh there's some schools deny voters as state law that they must I don't know it is now um federal law that we cannot deny students food and we have a newer policy you might be probably adopted just a few months ago that's what I'm thinking because of the federal law and that's all that any other comments and that's all that I had thank you very much all right um so now is our time for public forum the reason why we have public appointment this particular point is so the public can hear a little bit about what's going on with the board hear what's going on between us and of course that is uh calling in tonight that has anything for public forum Zoom is being very strange right now and it's saying we have 13 attendees I apologize if you can't get on um and no one here at the public Michelle we're going to speak to you Sarah thank you Barbara so I I think that there's no other public comment so we'll leave it at that all right so we'll close public forum and we'll move into presentations and I'll turn it over to you Mr case thank you very much tonight before you on the agenda you have a proposal for a sabbatical lead um one of our our most outstanding Canton features Michelle Tran timuratrop as she's known to us here is here tonight to talk to you about her proposal to take a sabbatical leave um before um Senor tribe speaks um I just want to let you know that per the contract that we have with the Futures Union the Educators Association of Anton EAC teachers are allowed to apply for sabbatical lead and I copied that portion of the contract and it's in your folder tonight for you to take a look at um sabbatical leaves of one half or one full year may be granted at the discretion of the board uh there are certain criteria the future must uh fulfill and you'll hear tonight that and Samurai is willing to fulfill all of the criteria she meets all of the criteria to uh reflect and sabbatically but it is up to you um in the end to approve for denying and uh you have the right to do so for the contract teachers must come to the board you must present their proposal in January and the board must get back to the teacher by March 1st so um I'm a thrilled tonight that us viewer John has put together such a proposal she's going to talk to you about that tonight of this is your chance to ask her any questions that you have about her proposal and then you will get back to her we'll put this on the agenda again in February for the discussion and then you'll be able to get back to Sonora tribe about whether you approve or deny their requests by March 1st so with all of that is the context um you will see in your packet it was sent out with the agenda Senora traps proposal I know that um she's not going to read all of that to you tonight which is going to give you a brief overview of it so uh Michelle Trapp thank you so much for being here tonight you're happy so thank you all for being with me for the next 15 minutes or so or so as I get to share with you a little bit about my statical proposal just wondering could anyone read it yet yes all right well done by the way thank you I'm going to start with a little bit of background about me uh I have been teaching in Canton for the past 12 .

so that's what's in this year's budget the columns or the rows that I highlighted here are really the ones I want to focus on because what I'm going to talk about is the 2022 evaluation that we just received and that will drive our final budget number so in this in this going back to the 21 intro evaluation at the top you'll see that there's a mortality Improvement scale MP 2019 that was the mortality table that was used for this year's budget the interest rate of seven percent that's the interest rate assumption that the actuaries used on a pension requirement and then I highlighted a little bit lower the funded ratio of 73.5 that's means that the funds that we have assuming seven percent the mortality table we've funded at 73.5 of the obligation this is not just by the way for the board events um Board of Ed pension this includes if you look at the bottom sewer pool Town um and Board of Ed is part of that and then look last section I'm going to talk about is what was the actuarily determined contribution for last year it was about 2 million 242 681 of which 928 000 was for the board's contribution so this 2022 evaluation we just received this and they call it 2022 because it was as of July 1 2022 and that's driving what we need to budget for next year and this you'll see it as three different columns um the First Column where it says no changes what that's referring to is that there's no change in the mortality cable the seven percent is still used to drive the interest that's the interest rate assumption if we accept that the funded ratio is 73.8 percent so actually the the July course valuation was pretty good so we're funded at a little bit of a higher percentage than we were in based on the 2021 valuation so you could dropping down a little further based on no changes to the mortality table and the seven percent interest rate the actual uh contribution for all the plans would be 2 million 233 234.

foreign thank you foreign okay Lika we're going to go ahead and uh rejoin our meeting we are ready the live stream is on good evening and thank you uh the board has returned from recess and we are continuing with item 3.1 review of effective governance procedures uh Mr Ortega thank you Dr Beau uh we are very grateful and fortunate to have Miss Angelina Pride uh back with us uh here uh to continue uh with effective board governance um a couple of years ago we had discussed that we want to take advantage of this particular gov board governance meeting uh in the case we have new board members uh so that this would be an opportunity to really get them familiar with some of the big picture things uh regarding uh the board and so again just very grateful that Miss uh pride is here uh to help us with that today thank you well thank you for having me and um it's nice to be back work with Azusa Unified School District again I always enjoy the time that I send you into the new trustee um welcome it has been wonderful meeting you today I look forward to working with you as well as part of the governance team thank you so I know you guys have been here for a little while so we're going to go ahead and get started and I will say um that some of the information they covered today will be redundant for those of you who are returning board members but we all know our refresher is good and especially when you have a new member who may have questions about things and if they bring something to light for you or you may want to chime in about something specific about how you do something um in particular in your District okay so we'll go ahead and get started do you have your packet so our agenda today is to cover governance review um governance team protocols and consent agenda items and we'll also be briefly talking about the brown act and Robert's Rules award so you have your handouts that I gave you um governance system is is what makes the school boards work there is no other way to explain it or say it but it is what keeps the school board functioning it is what governs and um dictates the way you take care of the district's business and the way you um interact with your community and stakeholders and the way you interact with one another as well so government is the is very important ground governance is important but even more so it's the team adhering to governance protocols that makes it really effective the first thing I want to talk about is the attributes that are shared by effective school board and I will use the word effective because some some school boards will say oh you know um we we have this problem with governance and we're you know but we're fine we get through everything but to Be an Effective board it's more than just adhering to the governance rules and regulations I would say but it's following them and being clear with them and making sure that you set an example with them and so there was a study done a while back called The Lighthouse study and it talked about what effective governance was and what made School boards effective and one of the main things that showed was peaceful relationships and that means that even when you don't agree you're all respectful to one another you ask questions of underscore understanding so that you don't make assumptions and you if you do have a conflict with someone you're addressed it immediately and you do it one-on-one with them first so that you can clear the air because a peaceful board can work together it doesn't mean again that you had to agree but it means that you respect the just respectfully disagree so you don't yell and scream at each other you don't hate each other and call each other's name post things on social media you just um say okay that's the difference that we have but that's okay we still work together for the benefit of our school district and the kids also the um the board's opinion of the superintendent so often I have done these workshops with some teams governing teams who felt like the superintendent was their enemy and that they weren't supposed to get along the superintendent and I never understood that and I would always ask them to please explain that to me because I don't I don't know how that works and you know I would get some weird responses but the fact of the matter is the superintendent part of your government you hire the superintendent to do the job of running the district day by day the superintendent is someone you rely on to give you guidance when it comes to the business of the district and to make sure that when you're casting a vote that you have all the information that you need in order to make an informed decision I always ask the question how many of us could apply for a superintendent job and even get through the paper screen and usually except for when I did where I had a former superintendent sit in the room but usually the answer is none of us and that's why we need the superintendent we rely on on the superintendent's expertise to take care of the day-to-day business of the district and we'll talk a little bit more about role later the Roses superintendent and the rules of board but just know that you work hand in hand with the superintendent superintendent is not the enemy he's part of your governance team and together is what makes working together is what makes you an effective board also and this one goes without saying because usually when I ask um why people ran there's always children children so of course remembering that why we are here I tell people all the time don't forget for why no matter how long or how little of a time you've been on the board when things get breath remember your why because that'll help you get through it look at those kids look at those students that you you're representing and then just do what's right by them so on the next Slide the realities of school board governance um Sandra when you campaign you campaigned alone as an individual you are not part of the governance team yet that goes for all the rest of us when we campaign and when we campaign we you know talk to people yeah I agree oh yes we should stop that oh yes we should do this you know we're hearing from the community and we have all these big ideas in our head what we're going to do once we get on the board then you come in and you learn all these rules that you have to follow and the biggest rule is that you're now part of a team so not one person makes a decision but all decisions are made by vote of the team and it's always majority rules and um sometimes it's hard I won't tell you that it's easy because they think that we're very passionate about that maybe the others on the board think that that's something that can wait and it doesn't pass emotion might not pass but that's okay we still keep fighting and we still continue to be a strong part of the theme and a strong advocate for the children in the district that we serve so just remember as an individual nobody has the the power to fix anything in the district it's all about what the team wants to do and you're bored and your success as a trustee is tied to the success of the board as a whole uh there's this uh comic strip that we always use in some of our workshops of a boat that's getting ready to sink and there's people at the bottom who are getting wet and there's two people at the top and they're like man I'm sure glad I'm not down there getting wet but they're eventually going to get wet too so no matter what position you take or no matter um what happens the board is viewed as a whole so one person not adhering government standards and making the board um have a a situation that that's not a good one for the public to see can ruin the reputation of the entire Port so you want to make sure that everything that you do is as a governance team with respect and it's tight to the success of the board and then just keep in mind that you like I said that you work together with one another that you treat each other with respect and remember that governing is a human experience you're gonna make a mistakes um you learn from them you correct them you move on but most importantly we put on here have a sense of humor because if you don't you'll drive yourself crazy so there's some times when things are going to get rough and the community won't be happy with you and you have to just remember to you know still try to smile afterwards and just know that you did what's best for the district and fortitude and as long as you can say that you have the right so governance mindset what is the government's mind that just means that you understand that what you do in the role of a school board is strategic is not administrative there's the administrative part if you're super intended in his staff so yours is strategic what do what is our vision for the district what do we want to do where do we want to see our district going how do we want to move forward um how do we want to handle these tough things those are the things that you all talk about and then you provide direction to your superintendent and then the superintendent and his staff job to carry out that that work also remember that it's policy driven because there are policies that dictate what a board can and cannot do should and should not do and then as well as that you have your Norm you have your protocol that you should be following in here into and then just remember like I said that no individual is in charge of the board no matter whether you're brand new no matter whether you've been here for a long time no matter whether you're the board president no one person gets to make all of the decisions foreign that I talk about frequently and I am I don't think that I ever do a workshop without mentioning this no matter what the topic is I find a way to weave it in that the board has to be unified but not uniform and what we mean by that is very simple that means that you can have a 3-2 vote you can have a 401 Vote or you can have a 5-0 vote it doesn't matter but when you leave this room you support the vote even if you're on the losing end and it's something you didn't agree with you still support the vote you don't go out and bat-mouth it you don't go out and say well I don't know why they voted for that I'm against that and I hate it and I don't know why it passed and that that doesn't do anything to cause cause um relationship problems within your board and remember we just talked about how you represent for it one person still represents the whole board so if you have a boat and you're on the losing end of it find a way to get on board with it with something about it find a way to make it work for you so that it is you beneficial and will meet the needs of the students and if you can't no matter how hard you try then like our parents always said if you can't say nothing nice don't say nothing at all because you don't want the bad mouth support you don't want to have a divided board and when I use the word divided what I mean is you don't want to start having practice where you have factions developing on your board where two people are only voting together on everything and three people are only voting together everything because you lost your cohesiveness and being divided on both and not being uniform Unified and that causes that problem so you don't have to vote the same you can vote no you can vote yeah it doesn't matter but be unified as a board to find whatever decision the board makes and I I emphasize this one because it is and I learned from experience from my first year on the board that this is one of the key things that will either make a board or break board so don't let it break your board Community leadership when you all are out in the community remember that represent the district and I I always tell the story about when I first got elected and I'm an early bird and I like to go to the grocery store early before other people go and I had I was on the board for a few months and I got up through on my different color scarf on my head in different color socks and my son's flip-flops or whatever thinking I'll go to the grocery store and get my stuff done get back home and wouldn't you know I ran into like everybody who lived in Rowland Heights and I was so embarrassed but I thought I'd just get in and get out you know that nobody else would be up that early and I learned a lesson but just remember you don't have to be dressed up like a you know like a queen or princess or anything but be mindful that you may run into people who recognize you as a board member and don't go to the store early in the morning looking like I did so but also make sure that you know how to handle yourself when you talk to your community your district has been through a lot lately in the past few years with the community you know with schools closures that's like the toughest thing any District can go through anything related to school closure or financial those are the things that bring the community out and broke and so you guys have been through a really tough time and I think that I think I had off to all of you that we're here during that time you handled it very well um you know you guys made it through I didn't see you all in the paper too much and that's always a good thing but just remember that when you go out and there's something big going on in the district take guidance from your superintendent as the superintendent and the board president will work together so that you guys are informed so you know what the message is because when there's big things going on the community will call each and every one of you and they should hear the same message from each and every one of you that's transparency that shows truth that shows consistency if they start getting different messages from different people then they start to think okay somebody's not telling the truth what's going on here you know the district isn't being honest with us so that's when you guys make sure that everybody has full information and it's on the same page tell us what's going on so that when you are approached that it can be addressed properly um I know you guys have some protocols on that as well in your uh full board handbook but um stay focused on the on the business of the district and the mission and the vision and make sure that they're both are aligned with things that with the goals that you guys have set so don't go off and spend a whole lot of money on something that's not going to be tied to the goals that you determine you want to follow for your dish so understanding your roles just remember you're superintendent that you was aboard you guys are the what and your superintendent is the how so all of you are in that yellow circle there where you guys set the Direction with the policies and the priorities and the missions Visions those things that's all the governance teams work so once you guys say hey this is our vision this is our mission these are our goals this is what we want to do then you're superintendent and cabinet will hear that and then they will come up with the plans to implement and make your vision reality and then they will to their business once it goes to them then you guys will get reports and updates about it but you don't do the work and you don't question them about doing the work they will give you report update so anytime we had given direction to um the hour of superintendent on a project of any kind we would always say can you you know give us an updated three or six months or sometimes the superintendent would just say automatically I have an update for you guys in three months or six months and that's how you get updates on how things are going is the superintendent and staff doing what you requested them to do and how's it going is it working is it not working as the board do we need to support something in a different way in order to make it work but remember you're the what superintendent and his staff are the how and then responsibilities related to the superintendent again remember you said Direction um and established a structure you support your superintendent you provide resources so that the goals and divisions can be met and ensure accountability and you let the community know what's going on as well and by letting the community know what's going on too I encourage the communities to you know I used to always encourage my community members some sort of board just hear you know what we do see how see us in action or watch on a live stream you know whatever it takes just so that they know what you guys are doing and how you are taking care of the school's business and again the superintendent when they're doing that how will give you follow up on how things are going and if for some reason you don't get a follow-up then the board president will ask the superintendent for a follow-up and that's usually done through a presentation at a board meeting or it could be communicated through you um to you through your superintendent communicate with you I gave you a little cheat sheet in your packet on roles and responsibilities and it shows just some general things like Personnel community relations um you know General and it's there's a column that shows you what the school board's role is and what the superintendent's role is so it's just a quick little cheat sheet so if you're not sure you can take a look at that and kind of get an idea of where you fall and what your role is and what the superintendent so uh next I want to talk to you about your norms and your protocols and this one will just breathe because it's in your your school hand School government handbook uh have any of you guys looked at your handbook recently ah there we go good and I know Yolanda and Sabrina have been around for a little bit so I'm sure they've looked at it many many times but this that handbook outlines on what you're supposed to do as a board which you should be adhering to as part of the governance theme and it talks about your norms and protocols and one thing I like about your district is that you always have your Norms here when you have a meeting so that you can look at them and reflect on them as needed because I tell you sometimes meetings can get rough and there may be something you want to say that you know you shouldn't say so you have a look at that and that helps you to remember okay I'm just gonna stay quiet right now that's why yesterday I organized my notebook and I made it a point to include my handbook in my notebook because like absolutely yeah and and you're lucky that you came into a district that already he had one because a lot of districts that I'm still working with don't even have one and new members are coming in and they have nothing to guide them so the fact that you have your district has one and that they take the time to put out the norms and everything here is critical when it comes to your norms and Protocols are there any that um that you guys have questions about or would like to reiterate to the board you feel like they've everything gets a little lacks on I don't have any particular areas of development but I I do feel that we are really coming together around I I have oh I'm sorry I'm sorry you said you're coming together I feel like we're coming together around those meaning that we are adhering to them better than a year ago and that's my perspective I only feel um that my team I would say my team is being laxed on is be present and be prepared and I'm not sure if that has to do with time because I do know somewhere where it states that we should be here five minutes before the meeting I I think we should be here 15 minutes before but that's what that's me um and my board members they do not they'll come in a minute when meeting starts and sometimes they're not even here when the meeting starts so I feel that that's being locked because I know that was one of the discussions that we did have when we set the protocols and norms and and when it came the last time thank you for bringing that up Yolanda and and you have valid very valid point because remember again like I said the community is watching you and so if they see that the meeting is being called to order and people are still straggling in it doesn't look professional um it doesn't look like the board is taking the business seriously so they do need to make effort to every effort and I understand things happen I commute from Los Angeles so I know that sometimes I get stuck traffic or things like that and apps that they should make every effort to plan accordingly to be here prior to the start of the meeting so that when that apple is that everyone is pressed so thank you for bringing that up and hopefully all the board members will will hear that concerned and we'll adhere to it do you think there's an issue with the time or is it just well we have two board members not here not present so I don't know how that would be I mean you know related to them or you mean a concern about the start time of our regular yeah of your meetings that like Elon reference about not being here on time for a regular meeting I can set the context only so people know I think uh more vice president is referring to board members will attempt to be ready to begin the meeting at least five minutes prior to the board meeting start time I think that's what yeah yes I am so maybe it's just a reminder let's start with that um formal reminder and um maybe in a communique you can um State something about that that was talked about today in that uh if there's an issue to please bring it up to the board president and let her know otherwise the expectation is that everyone will be here prior to the start of the board meeting so that when the meeting is gaffled to order all board members are pressed and saying that I just have a second question to the superintendent so um when I'm looking at the clock up on the wall would you say it's this 5 00 p.m I'm not now I'm just saying but and then when I looked at my laptop it said five um 455 or something in other words this doesn't coincide what are we going by here are we going by there I don't know if you noticed but maybe it's my computer but uh like right now my it's this 727 and this says something yeah a few minutes more right my computer says 733.

um so this slide shows uh the directed action for the district and for Central Elementary so as you all know the State Board of Education directed The District to implement a partial management plan with tntp for this beginning in this school year in addition the State Board directed at the district to engage in a reorganization process and in June of 2022 the State Board directed Central Elementary to implement their Innovation plan that includes support from tntp as a personal manager and Central's conversion to a community school Adams City High School does not have its own order but we conduct progress monitoring at Adams City High School as a part of our district progress monitoring and you know that the district's order also removed the district's accreditation but that accreditation has been restored was restored in September of 2022.

correct okay yeah thank you I had a comment so uh first of all I want to thank you for your presentation and uh reading through the report and uh I appreciate the frankness of it identifying strengths in hospital opportunities for improvement um I definitely think that we do need to do some self-examination to figure out why we're identifying certain groups and and uh looking we're to see you know if we can improve that but I also just want to point out that I really think the work that you're doing I want to applaud the team the 10 members of your committee because when I think of you know public education is um I think the backbone of a community and for example I was naive but when you think of our mckinney-vento eligible students I mean when I joined the board you know if someone would have told me we have 59 students that are identifying as homes that were providing tremendous amount of services and now it's up to 72 which is a very disappointing to hear but if people actually knew the type of resources they were providing it's a Lifeline for these families it's giving these kids literally an opportunity to escape that situation and then also the families that we're serving that have mental and physical disabilities I mean I think people would be shocked at the resources that the district is providing these families I know families they're receiving my families received at my youngest daughter's receivers or services and I know um that it can be life-changing for these families and these children so I just wanted to point that out and say thank you we're very fortunate with the team so we have Latavia and the level of care that they provide is above and beyond what um is expected in a public education setting and I think that is a great source of Pride that um it has existed since I I walked in the doors there's a lot of pride in making sure that every student is taken care of and that teachers go above and beyond to make sure that they get from the basic needs to um they go home safely every single night so I thank you for recognizing that because I don't think that happens everywhere and I think that's definitely a very special and unique feature of our teams in Batavia and I just want to Echo what Aaron said in terms of the hard work that you and your team do but also the Partnerships that your team shares in the community um just from you know United Way to chip in um we couldn't offer all these things without those Partnerships and um just want to thank them as well in addition to your team yeah we um it's fun to go to outside meetings and um be able to not have some problems that other districts have because we are able to tap into United Way or make a request to chip in and that's a unique feature that comes from the community that just up and down Randall Road we don't have that same experience when you listen to struggles so it is nice for a teacher to know that there's a place to turn to when they see a student struggling and it's a phone call away and within 24 hours something shows up for a family and that is um because of the community that we live in that people um see all the needs and are able to be responsive so it definitely is a very unique place to be Eric can you talk a little bit about McKinney vento and what we're obligated to do as a district and how that kind of plays out for students yeah so McKinney ventil eligible is um the term that we are trying to get used to using in Batavia and that formerly was known as students who are experiencing homelessness and there's a variety of ways that students have this experience they could live we have some families that are living in hotels motels we've had families living in cars we have what we also see families doubled up with another family so they may have lost their residence due to some financial hardship and they move into a family member a friend or a friend of a friend and their kids need to go to school the first thing that we do is we talk with the family to understand are they eligible for support because our obligation in a public school setting is not to stop a child educational experience based on hardship that adults may have experienced because we don't want to see that cycle repeating itself from generation to generation or from situation to situation because our obligation is to make sure kids are served in the public setting so once we identify that that is a need of the family we immediately enroll the student or we have a conversation of what is the least disruptive experience for that student so for example if they were living in um the Aurora School District and they lost their home but they moved into a family with Batavia we work with that family to say is it best to stay in West Aurora School District and we'll transport your child because we don't want their their year to be disrupted or is it better for them to immediately enroll in Batavia in addition to that we work to make sure conversations happen about school fees do they have their school supplies and then we also again partner with different organizations there's backpack meals there's chip in Furniture anything that those family needs but the the key to that is we really partner with the family and the the local school district to make sure that the students education experiences a minimal disruption so some of our students that live in Batavia we do partner with the other school district and we pay for part of their transportation to go to that school district or students enroll here and another school district May partner with us to pay for those Transportation costs that is part of their their rights you do see a big jump this year we have experienced I think the number is 15 refugees that have come into Batavia and their stories are incredibly heartbreaking and things that you could never imagine to experience in your your lifetime so members like Amy Nelson our guidance counselors our social workers are key to making sure when the students come in not only are there basic needs met but that we have students available to um begin to work through all the emotional supports that they need whether it's contacting them with outside agencies or working through staff in the district so that they can start to be a kid and just focus on learning we try to take as much as that external stress away as possible one other question Carrie threat assessments and hospitalizations both look like good jobs largely is do we have anything we're attributing that to um we have gone back and forth I think the 17 and 20 was a covid that was when we were um fully remote around that time and so just access to students in journal was a different feature um we are not sure at this point that's something that we're taking a look and analyzing because it's naughty past Trend it's kind of a blip in the radar that we want to look and see why that's happening but right now we don't we have had conversations around it but I don't think any of us would say we have a hypothesis well I was maybe just one thing that a couple of things we're looking into is increasing numbers in our chronic absenteeism and concerned that we're not seeing the threat assessments and hospitalizations they may be retreating to home as a possibility there was in in as Kerry said there there are blips along the way December happened to be a a blip month and now it's getting feedback into saying is that continuing into January or was December the outlier right up into December we were right on Pace with where we were uh previously so well that was we had a blip up in threat Assessments in December um but before that we were coming in even lower so we're like are we just kind of returning to where we used to be so those are a couple of different possibilities but it's early uh it's just good to work with the the school teams to hear what they're saying on the ground and we're just kind of getting that feedback now I do have a couple of thoughts and observations um one I want to Echo what Todd was saying earlier um making sure that we're identifying whose voice isn't being heard during this process um when I was looking through the data and by the way I Echo all my board members I think you guys are doing a phenomenal job and working very hard and our hearts are in the right place but as we know sometimes things fall through the cracks and that happens the goal is to get better um so looking through the data I was not able to identify why the over or under representation is occurring so um I think that that's an important question that we need to identify is why are we over identifying some people and under identifying others and as part of that are we getting student and family feedback to make sure that we are actually meeting the goals that we think we're meeting so we may think we're providing a service but if it's not actually meeting the goals or expectations of our students and our families then we may need to do more work and then lastly how do we know we're improving are we actually identifying specific data points and are we setting a deadline to say hey if we do not hit this by this date then we know we have to um go back and look at how we're doing things so those are my thoughts incorporate them how you wish thank you I think that's great feedback for us to take back to the different committees in the admin team to make sure that all of them are reflected because I think they're great points anyone else all right thanks you guys so much thank you I'd like to just thank Carrie for giving me my first year off it was a big blessing but um also thank you to the board for your support and thank you for letting me be a part of this year so thank you all right next item is a referendum update all right I will pick this one off got your June uh January 10th meeting you guys had a very lengthy discussion about um the referendum and the pros and the cons of asking a question again um and ultimately you did decide to put that question back on the ballot and at the time we talked about um this is you know the the referendum um failed by 24 votes and so we're going to get a lot of feedback if we put that question back on the ballot but one thing that we talked about is that people felt misinformed or we didn't do a good enough job communicating and um one of the things that we need to do is we did have a very lengthy conversation we have been as RJ has pointed out we've been talking about this for years and I think that we can do a better job of like re-telling those stories because we've heard them many times but it might be somebody's first time so with that in mind we're going to just speak for a few minutes we're going to recreate why did the board put this question back on the ballot I know you've already gotten an email about it I think it was today why did you put this back on the ballot the the community has already said no why did you put it back on the ballot so um Holly I don't know if you got that I sent you a presentation a little bit ago but um so when we met back a few weeks ago we did go ahead and go back and remind everybody that this is the first of all this is the longest Span in Batavia history since the 50s that we've gone without a referendum the way that school financing works we have our operational dollars and really most districts can't afford to do everything that they need to do to upkeep their facilities within that operating cost and so what we're left with is to go to the public and say hey we need to make these improvements and this is the longest we've gone in Batavia without doing that we entered then the master facilities planning process way back in 2017 RJ was on that team as a citizen um and that was quite a long process and ultimately made some recommendations to the board so the master facilities plan is quite large and this referendum wouldn't cover that Master facilities plan but it's a dent and so um what we did was we engaged the community for the course of a year many Community engagement sessions surveys and we said help us out here help us prioritize this plan because the plan is massive we know we're not going to ask for all of it but we need to knock off at least a chunk of it so we can stay on top of those annual capital projects or those surprises that happen and just keep on top of our maintenance and so that happened over the course of two years all signs were a go it appeared that this was the will of the community so the November 20 um two referendum you can see it fail by 24 votes voter turned out 64 percent a lot of people we spoke with hundreds of people and gave a survey after the fact and asked people why do you think it failed and a lot of people were saying oh it's it's the senior citizens they didn't want it we're like well actually we wanted to clear up that misconception because just looking at the homestead they that they were one of that Precinct where they reside it was one of our large largest supporters of the yes of the referendum and so we like I said we talked to many people focus groups we gave you all their feedback um survey results and most of the people unfortunately said you know we we didn't hear from you we didn't hear from the right people and you know we had this website 275 people went to the website but as we can you know 14 000 people voted so where were they getting their information people said they were confused misinformed um they they want us that was me thinking okay they want us to do better so ultimately that was a pretty important reason why the board thought well we can do better with communication and and try to make sure that we are really clear in our messaging and that the right people are talking which you heard a little bit about that from our Union president that they're going to help us to tell the stories not convince people what wait which way to vote but to tell people our current reality um Tony and I did a road show we talked to anybody who would listen but people want to listen to they want to talk to their neighbors they want to hear from their teachers they want to you know talk to others not just us so um that was something that was pretty clear and frankly we didn't even do a good enough job explaining it to the staff what the plan was and what the purpose of the referendum was so then in our discussion on the 10th we um asked you three questions the first question was do you want to place the question back on the ballot in April and then the next slide shows a couple of the pros and the cons the pros would be well our current bonds are retiring if we don't act now then people's taxes will go down um so if the referendum fails the taxes will go down but if it does pass people have predictability that stability in their tax bill for that part of the payment um should you place it back on well many people felt like they were informed so let's give them the chance to become informed by us doing a better job and putting it back on and then we did give a survey that was um statistically significant number of respondents and the um among all the different sectors in our community and and they did say please ask the question again and many of the comments were like I didn't understand it I didn't you know my neighbors weren't talking about it I we need to do better in getting people talking about it but some reasons not to put it on was would be if this is not on your if if you didn't put this back on the ballot or if it's voted down taxes will go down so people would expect about um 10 of their tax bill goes 10 percent of their school taxes ten percent of their school taxes yes just their school taxes not their whole tax bill will um are made up of this bonded interest payment which is a healthy chunk 65 percent it's a huge chunk 10 of 65 goes towards our projects and that will go away so people's taxes will go down if we didn't put this on um another reason to not put it on we can take some more time build trust we heard a lot about trust and then maybe that economics conditions would change after a lengthy debate you said yes we will put the question back in April so then the second question is do you want to maintain that tax pledge because you could just say we're going to borrow 120 million dollars and then we're not sure how that's going to impact your tax bill because we don't know what the interest rates are but we know that we're going to borrow 120 million dollars but you decided not to do that you decided to make that tax pledge which is every year the school district pays 9.1 million dollars in bond paper makes a 9.1 million dollar Bond payment and so um we can Tony can issue the debt to make sure that that Bond payment doesn't change so that would not impact the taxpayers so ultimately you decided yes we want to pledge to the taxpayers that we're not going to increase that Bond payment I'm pausing in case anyone wants to add anything before we go to question three so then the third question that then once we had those two questions answered do we want to answer ask a different question and um I think one of the things that we heard is really people don't understand why are we rebuilding two elementary schools that were built in the 70s I wouldn't and so that was probably one of the most frequently asked questions or the things that people wanted to know more and they really didn't believe us when we said rebuilding these schools is more cost effective than bringing them up to where they need to be and once we start touching a lot of the buildings then of that particular building then we have the extra things we have to do to bring that building up to code really that is what makes our buildings the cost more expensive actually to renovate than to rebuild and so for that and for the reason that um people really didn't understand the first question and then if we changed it then now we have to explain a different question and really we felt like this was the right question to begin with so why would we change it just to try to pass something we're not just trying to pass something we really do believe we got the question right but we need to help people understand why we thought we got it right um and so a event uh then ultimately you decided to keep the question the same on the ballot so what's going to look different the word Outreach I think we thought we're just going to hand out information we'll come and we'll talk but really it's that Outreach and having different people different voices talk about the referendum and meeting people where they're at and having you know I have we have groups at each School of Staff members and administrators jointly meeting and they're going to do the Outreach within their school community so they're going to make sure all their fellow staff staff members know the the what this referendum means for their building because if our if if a teacher gets asked or a staff members out at the jewel if they're a Community member and somebody says what does this mean for your building um for your school we want them to be able to say well here's the pros here's the cons not we're not asking people we're not telling people how to vote but we want the people what that means and so um there will be some Outreach there's an Outreach team at each building we're going to make sure that our information all the documents the website that no one went to when they go there we want to make sure it's easy to navigate clear and concise and we also have handouts that all of the people doing the Outreach can use that just show the um both sides of the the referendum question really and then we'll we'll we do know those FAQs about like do we rebuild tell us more about enrollment why can't we just close a school we can't close this we if we close to school um it's a pretty simple answer we would be above capacity at the other five elementary schools because there's a capacity at each school if we take a 400 student capacity building off and take those students and place them in the other five schools we're going to be at above capacity at those five schools but we need to do a better job of telling the story about some of those FAQs so those are some of the things that'll look different we'll keep the conversation going here even though you've heard this many times it's an opportunity for us to tell that that put the information out there one more time I asked Holly to pull this document up just to give folks an idea of what we're working on in terms of communication so we're taking the analysis that we did post the November referendum understanding why people voted the way they did to prevent present the information in a way that is clearly understandable and conveys the message so that people can make an informed decision whether for or against we want to make sure that people understand the facts and and the potential impacts in either way so we've prepared a document that gives a breakdown of what's happening at each school and this just happens to be Alice Gustafson school and talks about what condition it it's in when it was built students and then the concerns in the project and the budget and then if you go down toward the bottom Holly we're taking some of the key misconceptions I would call them of the prior referendum and trying to address them in one page which is really challenging because some of this stuff is rather nuanced and detailed in distilling it down to its Essence in a way that is easily digested is it's not easy so here for example is why it matters both for and against reasons to vote for the referendum and reasons to vote against and we certainly would be happy to add reasons to this document if people want to share them with us but in this document by the way is very much a work in progress but this is what we're using as kind of the basis to share our things out scroll down a little bit more Holly please understanding the tax implications like what does it mean if I answer no to my property taxes and what does it mean if I answer yes and real dollars and what I can expect um enrollment we get a lot of questions about enrollment as Lisa mentioned like we're losing enrollment keep going go to obviously this is still working in progress but um yeah you'll notice with this graph enrollment's going down but the enrollment declines at the middle school and Elementary level have already happened we're really it's we're at a certain stasis for middle and middle school and Elementary School the declines for the next five years are almost entirely going to be at the high school level and that's just how the different classes the cohorts as they're aging through the system are moving and so as we talked about special education and student services we use space a lot differently in our elementary schools than we used to used to be that we outplayed a lot of students with special needs and and we don't anymore we've brought those programs in-house and so we need a lot more space than we used to need and so we're trying to explain those things as well I think lastly Holly toward the end one of the other key concerns is well I want to know the details I want to see a picture I want to know exactly what you're doing and one of the challenges about that is that we're trying to hit a moving Target and what you see here on the screen is a graph of construction inflation since 2020 so this is only in the last few years and so when costs are increasing that fast it's pretty hard to plan it makes things really challenging and because we're pledging this tax rate the bonded interest taxes aren't going to increase we've locked in one of the variables we're saying we're only going to borrow so much as that it locks in how much we pay we can't don't have control over the other variable which is interest and if you scroll down a little bit further you see that you know just in the last year the cost of issuing debt has increased by over 250 percent so the last variable for us to control is the amount of money we borrow or the principal and that obviously changes the scope of the projects some will say well maybe we should wait well maybe that's a valid argument but I you know costs things to have a tendency to get more expensive in the future and that might just mean that we can afford even less and so these are all things that I hope that we can engage in a conversation about as a community to understand what the impacts are to the bottom line of our property taxes and what the impacts are to our students it's just a and you can explain it better than me but when we take If This Were to pass the way the bonds are issued it's not a one-time so it's spread out over three to four years so um we kind of hedge our bets yes we can hedge our bets in a way exactly yes additionally if something catastrophic happens we don't have to spend this money if economic conditions are poor are really poor two five years down the road we can just decide hey this is not efficient use of taxpayer money and allow it to expire and go for another referendum in the future right that's a possibility but once you take the money you have to do what you said you were going to do you can't you can't take the money and then do something else you can't take the money and spend in operations for example it has to be spent on basically fulfilling the obligations of the question that you asked but if we can borrow like only 20 million dollars and have the same payment obviously that would be a poor investment and we might want to choose something different as opposed to not take the money right yeah and not take the money in the first place and that goes toward the moving Target yeah so I just want to point out the fact that we don't have to do something that is really bad if when the time comes and the amount of money that we can borrow is not enough to do what we what the community expects the other thing though is that planning a projects of this size is takes a very long time and it's not exactly like you're driving a sports car here we're driving a steam ship and uh turning it is very slow and so we have to plan on Long Horizons and people think oh we can just ask later well you can but we're planning on very long Horizons on things that when you're deferring deferred maintenance can get rather expensive I also did want to point out earlier Lisa had mentioned that bringing the buildings up to code is a big part of the expense also moving kids out of the building while we renovate a building is extremely expensive and so it's not just renovating and bringing it up to code but where we put the students during that process so we're going to give more updates every at every board meeting to make sure that everybody hears us it's going to be yeah it's going to be a little redundant and I apologize for that but I think it's important so that we as a community can engage in this conversation and make it informed and if people have questions come find us yep yep um right any other questions comments about that next item on our agenda is our two items for Action the first one I'm going to invite Josh Bullock to tell us about the athletic uniform bed all right so just like Dave talked about having a refresh for computers it's the same thing with Athletics there's a cycle that goes through um to outfit our athletes with the best apparel that they can for competition what I'm really excited about this bit is in the past it used to be just one brand name and as a former ad sometimes one athletic style doesn't fit for a certain athletic event so the coaches were able to pick which athletic brand they wanted for this so it's either Adidas or Nike or under armor but it allowed it didn't fit them into one um you know constraint which is very exciting so um we re-upped actually with the company that we used last time they switched names so you'll start seeing uh they used to be called The Graphic ads now they're called game one they're the same company it's just a different name but um they came in as the lowest bid and um looking forward to continuing our partnership with them any questions so this amount is Over a four-year span or this is yearly oh no the great question so um we purchased the uniforms and then those uniforms last four for you okay um and then it's a cycle so then that Varsity uniform goes down to sophomores after the four years and then we start the cycle again does that make sense so we use the uniform for a total of eight years right no then the Freshman get them then the Freshman yeah okay the freshman and one question that usually comes up is why doesn't it go down all the way to like middle school and partially because they'd be ancient at that point and then the other part is at that point the sizing doesn't work um at all styles change right well there's that you're thinking our sixth graders can't wear our Varsity correct exactly all right then I would entertain a motion to approve a four-year contract with game one for the purchase of our athletic uniforms and spirit wear so move second move by excuse me mine's our second by lock all in favor aye any opposed all right thanks Josh next item on our agenda we're going to turn it over to Tony to talk about our mental health support services thank you this is a recommendation that comes from our employee Insurance committee well it's not the employee Insurance committee but it is the insurance committee that's made up of employees and stakeholders from across the district uh and one of the things that as we talked about earlier is an increasing prevalence of Need for support for mental health and our employees need some additional support and this is a new product offering a new service that we are excited to present to you that can help with mental health issues that are available and it's available through basically an app and a web portal and it isn't a one-size-fits-all thing which typically is the case with most of these things it runs the gamut of whether it's you know kind of self-guided help where they can do an assessment and determine the level of support that an individual or their dependents may need and then provide it whether that's self-guided whether that might be clinical or you're meeting one-on-one with somebody or you are working with um community-based groups groups in the community where you might be working with others that um that are in the area and so it's kind of an as needed basis you sign into this app you complete an assessment and it walks you through the resources that are available and you can generally you can get support within 24 hours if you need it so it's rather fast whereas that is not the case almost with anything else as I said this is new so we're dipping our toe into the water with this service for a one-year term and if it works well and uh and we see value in it and there's reasonable utilization perhaps we'll continue it um but it's something that we think that our employees and their dependents could benefit from immediately typically this is something of the package that we would present to you each year we came across this and said oh my gosh that's exactly what we need to better support our employees and so we decided to move forward with it rather than wait who are the is that a fair description of our conversation Aaron would you say yeah it was I I mean we had a very lengthy discussion about what I will add to that Tony is what I learned in my is I did a little research after a meeting is that I think when people think about mental health they I mean I'll speak for my own experience I think of like sitting on a couch with a psychiatrist or a counselor and actually what we learned is most people that's not the perform method of getting mental health there's all these other methods that you can get coaching or other resources so that um maybe when you're going down a path before you actually would need that kind of service you can get services to help get you back on a better path and also that you know again I'll speak for myself but um you know there's still for some people a stigma for mental health and in reaching out for help can be a of my generation older than probably everybody in this room uh you know maybe weakness but um it's a we're at a crisis point and so I think um we're hoping that this will be something that people will access and utilize at a higher percentage than perhaps what we've offered before correct correct and thank you for adding those comments those are important points and especially that where you know it used to be if I was struggling with something I had to call somebody and I had to talk to somebody and you don't really know sometimes what to think whereas this it's kind of is low the barrier for Access is very low you can kind of dip your toe in the water and figure things out walk things through it and then just if you want to make take the next step or you do need to talk to somebody they're practically a quick away the services are available through zoom and in the app so I don't necessarily to get help so it's much more accessible than anything else we've had in the past and the other thing again correct me Tony if I'm wrong but this is sort of like a one-year trial it's a one-year trial so it's not a long-term commitment so we can if we vote for it I imagine about a year from now or 11 months we'll have another presentation where we're assessing exactly if it were you know how successful it was and then we'll make a decision yes so thank you for bringing that up Erin because that's my question so how are we going to what are our success points on this because you know I love this of course but especially the average time for first session I mean that's I've never seen anything that wonderful but what are you know points of assessing if this was successful or not because it's almost all of it is web-based or app-based that statistics are easy to collect and so if we see a high not necessarily high but decent utilization and then user satisfaction that's all we need to know right now with our with our current Solutions it's radio silence you know we really don't know and we don't see and uh you know anecdotally we don't think the solutions that we or the services that we have right now are used much this this is much easier for people to use and will know when they're using it not necessarily we'll know who's using it but we'll know that it's being used well and it also is available for dependents so if it's for your children your spouse or your kids off at College it's a click away so will there be data point okay and will there be maybe user surveys within the app like any other app in terms of how people are yeah okay is there a cost incurred to the member no no no the cost incurred is to the board right no it's not this obviously is not cheap yeah but so there's no reason they shouldn't no it's no cost number now however I will mention just so in the in the interest of full disclosure um it is limited if you were seeing a somebody on a one to one basis in a clinical setting it's limited to 10 sessions and so anything after those 10 sessions could potentially cost the employee well they could then then our regular insurance right would potentially kick in depending on who they're seeing and those sorts of things but yeah this isn't necessarily meant to be a like a silver bullet for all mental health but more along the lines of a intermediary I wouldn't call it a stop Gap so much as kind of like they another another level of offering so for for kind of buyer insurance or is that not really fluid it it's based off of um yeah if you're on our insurance you have access to this app is that what you're asking no I'm asking if the if they choose a service provider that the 10 sessions are free for continuity of care how is that linked to our insurance oh they would probably have to see a different provider but if depending on how acute the issue is you can start planning that transition on the front end okay potentially we also have another service that we've recently added to our repertoire called referrals and it's a little different but it it knows more it's available for students and to staff but it it tries to reduce some of those barriers and getting people into care as soon as possible they they coordinate with the mental health providers in the area and they also do that based off of the insurance information that that particular Seeker has and so that they're not sending you to a mental health provider that won't take your insurance or has a two-year waiting list yeah so with all these different services that we have available we can kind of they to some extent kind of overlap and coordinate maybe coordination isn't maybe the best word but hopefully they get people to where they need to go unfortunately as I said there aren't any silver bullets and all these things have to kind of fit together in a certain way but we're definitely making progress in terms of the support that we offer it sounds like it lots of different options to get this type of care which there's lots of barriers out there so there is this makes who are the employees you're speaking of just want to be clear we're talking about faculty we're talking about everybody yeah everybody everyone's covered under the theme okay I want that some of the same insurance with that everyone in the district everybody has the same insurance benefits okay compare this to the other companies we don't know of any other company that does this there are other offerings that do online Mental Health Service but nothing like this so this is Best in Class for because there aren't too many but do I guess I'm I'm looking to see if we're Best in Class because do other districts offer this I like to think we're Best in Class I would tell you that we had this part which was part of our conversation uh at Insurance committee uh last month was uh how our benefits are truly Best in Class it compared to other school districts our broker says that what we offer to our employees is pretty amazing and this is part of that and well this will be right so do any districts up and down Randall have something like this or is this really kind of exciting there's none Two Towns over okay okay and we didn't on for something like this we didn't we didn't even bother to ask the the neighboring districts we just saw this is the same discussion um we did not have that discussion no we have this new referral GPS that I mentioned that certainly will help um do they have a package like that um I'm sure they'd be willing to take your money but they'd only uh offer it based off of the total population of the employees and so we're paying for it's not when you get use it it's people have access to have access to it and they weren't willing to negotiate anything other than that and so it would be exceptionally costly to offer something like this to students many many millions of dollars per year one of the things having sat on the insurance committee Aaron and you probably are seeing this in action now um that I've always loved about the insurance committee is that is a group of of people who are um very committed to providing the best possible uh health care services to our employees but the other thing that I really love is that they are very critical and assessing that we're that it's valuable to our employees so what I love about this is that we'll get analytics that will tell us our employees using it and is it valuable before they would bring it back to us again to ask us just to willy-nilly approve it so I feel like they are very very conscious of cost to the district what makes sense for our employees and and they're just very careful about providing the best care possible that was a point I just wanted to say is to the rest of my colleagues on the board that I understand this was not a planned budgetary expense but due to feedback we've had at many board meetings that need for mental health services and because of the management of our health care plan we're living within our means if we were to prove approve this correct that's correct yeah and I'm I'm wondering was there any conversation about how this plan could possibly ward off more expensive care down the road yes where we had those discussions and I if this goes well I believe it will and so I would believe so too it to some extent there's no guarantees about that but I think it's a reasonable assumption reasonable risk another question right then I would entertain a motion to approve a one-year contract for mental health support services with Modern Health total cost not to exceed a hundred and ten thousand dollars an enthusiastic so moved second moved by myself give it to math the second by Mathis all in favor aye any opposed yeah I think the entire board is very very happy to see this come across our yeah our desk um the next item on our agenda we do have closed session but there will be no action after the closed session so we'll do our um administrative and board comments and then we'll adjourn to closed session but when we come out there will be no other actions uh so we'll start with Lisa yeah I have three quick comments one is a thank you to the board candidates we have seven people um three vacancies on the board and um they all came out to a workshop today asked great questions those who are able to are here with us we have several people in this room that are running for the board on April 4th um and then my next two messages go to people who probably aren't watching this right now one of them would be our maintenance team they will probably be up super early in the morning so a thank you in advance to them because there is snow and we will be open tomorrow it's one to three inches but they will be they they will start they will start at three or four in the morning it depends on when the snow starts so I um big thank you to them not that they're watching because they should be sleeping right now as should be the parents of nope no snow day um my final message goes to the parents of the uh almost five-year-olds probably also a little busy right now not watching but if you know somebody who has a four-year-old soon to be five year five years um we need to meet them and there is a sign up on our website it's called meet and greet used to be called Kindergarten Roundup because we don't necessarily know who's coming so we just need you to talk to your neighbors and say that kid looks for you need to go show up at the school district they want to meet you you get to meet your principal you're going to meet Cindy she's going to take all your paperwork to make it as Flawless as possible we'll take them anytime between now and August this is just our first time to orient them to the district so sign up on the website it's February 16th here at rjac for a new uh families of kindergartners incoming kindergarten that's it awesome you miss our comments there um nothing for me this evening shockingly but I will note that is the only the second time I've given a enthusiastic so move so I really appreciate your work on that what was the last one I don't remember it was three years ago fine it was enthusiastic yeah I I reserved my enthusiastic sometimes so thank you for that Tony RJ no comments um yes just real quick for the Batavia Foundation of educational Excellence seniors can go on the website and apply for scholarships there's also a scholarship for anyone in bertolo or at BHS or a guitar less guitar lessons and a guitar so you don't have to be a senior graduating that one and then also teacher grants are online and open so anybody with a great idea apply thanks so uh so I want to say first thank you to everybody in tennis tonight uh I love to see a full room everyone who addressed the word all the presentations everyone who contacts support uh everybody who's running for the school board community community participation is vital to a healthy functioning School District so thank you everyone um I do like to share a story of uh District events I attended saw the our student ambassadors had a little blurb about VHS Top Dog I attended that for the first time I think it was formerly known as Mr BMS I don't even know how to describe it what used to be kind of like maybe like a male beauty contest yeah maybe there was like a wardrobe section now now it's open to everybody so it's called top dog so we had men and women participating I was in the second row and I gotta say first of all holy cow these kids have uh chut spot because I speak for a living basically and I could never have done what they did so Bravo all the participants but also you know the whole Endeavor was put on by the Key Club who partners with the Kiwanis team you don't know what Kiwanis does is it's community service and so uh they raised over three thousand dollars for the Neuroscience Research Foundation which is a it used to be called the paralysis Research Foundation basically what it's doing is it's providing funding for kids that have disabilities to teach them or give them their resources so they can be independent so you know I just think our kids every time I see them I am just blown away you know the the sponsors at Key Club to help put it on the whole thing was just a really fun night and so I guess once again Bravo to our students and so I would just encourage people if you see events like that and you haven't heard of them or seen them you should check it out because you might be surprising again if you see what our kids are doing I think you're gonna you're gonna our future is very bright so thanks yeah Chris I don't have much just um Batavia has a lot of big decisions to make and this is your opportunity to be a part of it so this is your time to find out the information meet your candidates for school board and I believe the park district also has a contested election I don't believe we have any other contested elections in town get to know your candidates find out about the referendum make your decision vote it's going to make a difference in the next couple decades in our town there is our important decisions be involved make a vote thanks Chris as I mentioned uh we have closed session but no uh no activity after that so I would entertain a motion to adjourn to closed session for the reason of collective negotiating matters in the body and the employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees so much second move by lock second by low all in favor a couple minutes

uh this is a comparison again 2023 budgets are completed but they're not updated on the on the software So eventually we'll review this again at another point in time but just looking at 2022 this is where we compared uh tax rates from our border schools and then the graph on the right just shows how much Levy amount of dollars were generated from that tax rate for those school districts this also came from Dr deboer's presentation uh kind of shows you a historical uh rate interest rate for municipal bonds and you can see that Mutual bonds are on the rise but still historically low in comparison uh from many years and so right now they're sitting um around three and a half percent so they went down even a little bit operation fund um budget that we submitted I broke it up into different categories because our operation fund really covers so many different uh operation overhead sides so you can see you know how much of that is General Administration some of that is marketing technology maintenance custodial all those different types of services we provide uh in capital projects and so forth so you can see that breakdown of that 8.9 million dollars that we anticipated uh spending then you go to the next slide and then that's the actual budget for 2023.

I know it looks like I've been here for once and I've been here for 12. I was actually first hired by Dr Jordan Grossman who's going to be our new superintendent so I've been here for a while I've taught at CIS Canton middle school and the high school and I currently teach fifth and sixth grade Spanish fcis and I teach Spanish too and Spanish 2 honors in high school I'm also really involved with the extracurriculars here I run a club every day after school I run the CIS Global Citizens Club I run the rotary interact club which is a service learning club and the Canton High School International club and I'm also the point person in between our school exchange with Santa Maria Del Mar which is in Academia Spain and our students here in Canton so I always knew that I was going to be a teacher and I always knew that I was never going to stop learning thankfully for me I found Canton Public Schools which has allowed me to explore so much of who I am as a teacher both inside and out of the classroom with the support of Canton Public Schools and the Board of Education in Advent I've been able to have experiences that have made me into the teacher I am today in 2018 you can see up there I was able to participate in a fallbight fellowship in Senegal where I worked with teachers around the world for a year in a virtual Forum this is before covid and before there was virtual forums that were so used to and then I had a one month teaching placement in Senegal that was called teachers for Global classrooms I was also granted the opportunity one year to participate or actually to just use my my personal days instead of for personal reasons I use them to go down to the border of El Paso and Juarez Mexico where I was able to translate at a refugee Center using my linguistic skills to help make the world a better a better place and most recently you can see up there that is a group of me with United States senators and people from the state of education in Argentina and in Washington DC I was able to represent the United States as the U.S youth ambassador to Argentina this is a position that's held by just two United States citizens every year and puts me in the same Alumni network as Nobel Prize winners and heads of state that is something that I would never have been able to do without the approval of the Board of Ed and Mr Case I share these things with you not to overtalk my experience but to let you guys know that as much as I Inspire my students to do their best and be their best in the classroom you and Canton Public Schools inspires me to do the same in my own life encouraging me to advocate for every opportunity I can to learn more serve more and not just be a teacher in the classroom but to be a teacher of life one of the major reasons why I chose to work at public at Canton Public Schools and still stay in this District after More Than A decade is that Canton truly values the well-rounded education of both its students and its teachers up here you can see the Canton vision of a graduate we have creative thinker Communicator collaborator critical thinker and compassionate citizen these are all things that are important to us in Canton the Mastery of these skills starts at Cherry Brook or CIS when students first enter and continue all the way on through High School even past graduation I remember reading the Canton Public Schools teacher contract all the way back in 2011 and I highlighted where it said that students that teachers could apply for a sabbatical because I knew that that meant that Canton value the learning and growth of their teachers not just their students I'm asking you for that chance today I hope you can see that I've implemented these same five characteristics creative thinker Communicator collaborator critical thinker and compassionate Citizen and what I do in the classroom and outside of it so what am I going to do on my six month sabbatical that is the question and you read a lot about it in my proposal sorry it was so long but it was from my heart but these are my three major learning objectives the first is I need to reintegrate myself into the Spanish and Latino community is important for me to recognize that I am an English first White non-native Spanish teacher my Spanish comes from a semester studying abroad in college working for two years in Guatemala and a short teaching sent in Ecuador while all of those were over a decade ago it is not enough to be an expert in my field I need to keep my Spanish current and to reintegrate myself my second objective positive with culturally responsive teaching this is something that's been a major focus of us in Canton Public Schools for the past few years for professional development we have studied what it means to be a culturally responsive teacher we have discussed the importance of getting to know each and every one of our students at a deeper level so that we can understand their culture and non-surface level background but one thing that's a constant note in our discussions is how difficult it is to understand each student's background culture especially when it's so different from our own we noted that learning about different cultures was something that we could do via a Google search but it's really hard to understand the deeper differences and learning underlying differences ways of thinking and learning styles just from a Google search it really comes from experiencing it and my last goal is to create Global Connections one of the major criticisms I hear from can students teachers and families and in those people in surrounding small towns is that he and him is a bubble sometimes this bubble is as small as Canton High School or the town of Canton or the state of Connecticut or New England but it's still the same our students struggle with really understanding what life is like outside of their personal day-to-day experiences in our 21st Century Learning expectations mission statement we state that students should appreciate the diversities of American and Global cultures but outside of a textbook we don't have a lot of ways for students to really interact with people of global cultures the international trips that are offered and the clubs that are run are few and far between and are only really readily accessible for a small number of students Canton wants to create Global ties but lacks the connections that would make it easily to do so throughout my work at Fulbright teachers for Global classrooms and the U.S youth ambassador program I've watched incredible American teachers connect their classrooms around the world I've seen teachers hold discussions about the israeli-pakistanian conflict while Skyping in students from those regions I've seen students learn about Roman history and architecture while doing a scavenger hunt with pen pals in Italy and I've seen people hold a community Jazz performance between Argentina and a classroom in Arizona but these teachers have one thing in common direct connections upon my return from sabbatical I will be able to provide Canton Public Schools with a multitude of Global Connections so that our piano students graduate not thinking that they came from a Canon bottle but instead saying that they worked in group projects with students from Turkey studied climate change with classes in the Amazon and learned about the rise of Technology with their Penthouse Etc my proposed timeline you guys got to read a little bit about but I'm just going to share I want to start in January 2024 volunteering again at the Annunciation house this is the refugee Center that I volunteered at a few years ago but I was only there for a week this time I hope to stay for at least a month I hope to serve allowing myself a much greater understanding of the process of refugees and immigration and working with these families at the center so that I'm able to best support these students when they're in my classroom one day in February I will be working alongside a fellow teacher that I know in Mexico strengthening my linguistic skills and Diving deeper into the Mexican culture an area that I have very little experience in March and April I will connect with my colleagues from the boulevard Fellowship these colleagues are teaching all around the world in Latin America and in countries such as Senegal Morocco and India and I will work directly with these teachers to create classroom connections that we can continue working with when I return to the United States lastly in June I will Shadow teachers in Finland and Switzerland countries with two of the highest ranked education systems in the world and I will bring back extensive research into the most recent best practices as well as create collaborative connections it is really important to me that while I'm on sabbatical my students back home are still receiving a stellar World Language education for that reason I recommended the proposed coverage of splitting my sabbatical year with Mrs Mendez Kyle Senora Mendez Kyle is a current tutor at CIS she's been with us for a few years she holds a master's degree in international relations and is currently going back to school to be the Spanish teacher she's completing the certificate in the arc program at Central Mrs Mendes Kyle has suffered me many times she's even created lessons for me when I had coveted four times so that's a lot and she's even started rcis Spanish club a club that I've always wanted to start but I run a club every day after school so I didn't have time so she created this it means on Friday mornings while I'm doing door Duty I get to hear what the Spanish club is doing and we most recently had a two-hour dance lesson where we had over 40 students come and learn three Latin American dances which is really cool if you get sixth graders to learn Latin American dance so she's amazing and I know she would be able to take over my classes in a way that I feel comfortable and most importantly since I know it's really hard to find a Spanish teacher exhibit a Canton we she is willing not only to take my intermediate classes but also my high school classes a position that is almost impossible to find so she would be a great choice what are the benefits to Canton Public Schools my participation in the sabbatical will greatly benefit Canton Public Schools as a whole not only will I be returning back to Canton as rejuvenated veteran form taker but I will be able to share these skills with my students and their colleagues alike my students will have a teacher who has made a conscious point to immerse yourself in her subject matter both nationally and abroad I will bring more culture realia authentic stories experiences and connections than we have ever seen my students will be able to collaborate with the classrooms I have connected with in Latin America and we will be able to have true Intercultural learning in addition my colleagues from Canton Public Schools will also benefit from my learning they will gain International connections with classrooms studying their subject matter abroad they will be able to work together to do group projects or product seminars and all other kinds of creative and collaborative work with internationally diverse classrooms I will host workshops collaborative professional development opportunities and be open and available to share what I have learned regarded culturally responsive teaching and best practices through my sabbatical experiences similar to what I did when I came home from Sandoval from TGC I want to see you for that my participation in this sabbatical will allow Canton to have someone on their teaching staff who has experience exploring the world connecting with global classrooms and learning about diverse cultures that most teachers will not be able to have in my opinion I think it would be a gift to have Canton have a teacher with this experience who is so dedicated to sharing all they know of maybe not you could picture in conclusion over the past 15 minutes in cancer I recently attended the tragic Memorial of Raheem Nelson and sitting on this bleachers as a soccer players students and families read their tributes all I could think was candidates my family although I never had Raheem the students that was a rarity I had every single other one of those students I spoke about that day so multiple times have been a part of all of those student lives growing up ever since they were just 10 years old those kids are my kids those families are my families and I love every single one of them watching them come together to remember and celebrate one of their own was incredibly powerful sitting in that gym and on that field as I cried with fellow teachers and hug my students I truly felt this is my family this is my home I'm so lucky to be part of this community this is where I belong and where I'm honored to be at the memorial Mr Phelps read a poem that he said stuck with him for the past 50 years and I know it will stick with me the same it's called the dash I'm going to read a little bit before I read about my husband stood to speak at the funeral of a friend he referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning to the end he noted that verse came the date of birth and spoke the following the date with tears but he said What mattered most of all was the dash between those years for that Dash represents all the time that they spent alive on Earth and now only those who love them know what that little line is worth where it matters not how much we own the cars that house the cash what matters is how we live and love and how we spend our Dash my Dash was predicted to be shorter than money and at the age of 33 I've already outlived my life expectancy by eight years that is something that I live with as a celebration and badge of honor but also a fear every day however if it does teach me one thing it is to make sure my Dash is everything I've ever hoped it's available I want my Dash to say an unspoken words that I live my life to the absolute fullest that I wasn't afraid to take a risk that I was a teacher of life that I stayed true to who I was and the experiences I wanted to have that I loved and made a difference to those around me and in the world the sabbatical is a dream of mine it is something I'm going to do regardless of your decision it is something that will help hold in my Dash into a teacher I am proud of it is something that is truly me and hopefully something that will be a ripple in benefits for the dashes and the lives of those around me thank you for your consideration Michelle thank you so much [Music] we'll now open it up to um did you say you were gonna and June you're gonna go to Sweden or Finland or something Finland here [Music] at least it's on the next page oh it is yeah okay oh there it is I didn't realize you had double I did have a question but one of your uh last slides already answered it and I I think it's um in so many ways what you're describing is a gift for a person in the schools honestly and you know bringing back those experiences and the learning not just to the students in your classroom but also uh to teachers through like professional development and stuff I think sounds sounds amazing I also understand what you're saying about um you're not a native speaker and you're living in Canton or you're living in Connecticut I mean it's it's hard to find people to speak Spanish with around here so I so that I understand as well and there's nothing like the total immersion um to really like revamp your your skills your your language skills so that makes sense to me too thank you any other questions so I would just say that you are a remarkable person and uh your embody everything that we would want to see in a teacher in your presentation was an A plus that we had the grade in and we appreciated this so the next step will be the the board the board will discuss it and uh we'll we'll probably take a vote on it in March if that's okay you just wild the heck out of me so I'm a little speechless right now which is never happened thank you very much for listening yeah absolutely thank you thank you and Michelle for you to even recommend to like your substitute to me I listen to the universe conspiring because that I actually added to my proposal in the last bit um but when she told me she was going she stopped for me she's such a good person but every time she came into my classroom she was like I think I want to be a Spanish teacher she goes that is her years she's like I'm finally going back to school to be a Spanish teacher I was like I'm doing the sabbatical she's like who's your long-term sub so for that line up and just like financially because um I'm not an expensive teacher she is a long-term sub we're not the like we're not losing money as a school I think um without having a an end like that I know when we had a submissed when we were missing a Spanish teacher in the last few years we had to use an online program and now I teach all those students and they're like I didn't learn anything and I do not want my students to have to go through that so I want a seamless trans sense of transition in it thank you feel like the universe kind of yeah you've done it all you've put it together so you should get a referral for me I just said you know you always get us to that okay okay Michelle thank you so much all right um so closing out that portion um another person that embodies everything we would like to see in one of our administrators one of our teams so Barbara I'll let you go ahead and make that thank you so it's a great night tonight as it's my pleasure also to introduce to you uh this is Barbara who you know is our newly appointed director of special education and related services um Barbara's going to talk to you tonight about uh what she's seen in Canton so far in the area of special education and related Services I know Barbara could talk to you for two hours about what she's seen but she's going to give you a brief presentation tonight uh just highlighting uh the different aspects of special ed talking uh someone about the finances also I'll let you know that Barbara did an outstanding presentation for the town Board of Finance last night just explaining our special education costs and our out placement costs and in your spare time you could always view that presentation as well but I know Barbara will talk about it tonight Barbara has hit the ground running since day one um 40 days on the job were a little bit just about 40 days or so I know I think your presentation that's what I titled it the first part again 40 days no it's there first 40 days so so welcome thank you for being here tonight Barbara oh good evening everyone thank you for having me uh thank you super interested in case for those lovely words um chair Daniels I appreciate being here um and having the opportunity to speak to the entire board tonight about special education uh since I've started here part of my entry plan really has been to uh hit the ground running as we keep saying and immerse myself in uh all things special ed so some of the ways I've gone about doing that are I've taken a really good look at our special education data to understand our prevalence rates our disability categories um and I've spent a good amount of time talking with parents and teachers para Educators and even students and my reason for doing that is I believe that there's a combination between understanding what the numbers and and percentages are telling us but also that on the ground level data so you can really get a sense of where our needs lie and what the story is so taken a lot of time to do that and I do feel ready to provide all of you with an update on what I've seen so far so for me as a leader it always goes back to the instructional core which is what you see on the screen in front of you our goal is at the heart and Center which is improved student achievement outcomes in the way that we achieve that the secret sauce so we like to say is connecting the dots between engaging our students as Learners providing academically challenging in rigorous content and then the teacher and they should have actually LED that the teacher the teacher is the most important research tells us across the board that the teacher is the number one driver in improving Student Success so we want to make sure that we are giving all of our teachers whether they be Care Canton parents teachers starting at the very beginning to our Educators and para Educators we want to make sure everybody has the skills they need so that they can reach all of our Learners excellent so how do we get there well these are some of the initiatives within people's Services I'm not going to read every single piece on here and I did provide on the very last page the abbreviations and acronyms and these people are wondering special education we have our own complete language so I will try as I'm talking this evening to Define some of that for all of you but the things that I really want to draw your attention to on this slide are the fact that we are learner or focused first and foremost and that is the center of that very first slide that I showed you for improved growth of all learners from there we're focused on building our Community Partnerships streamlining our organizational Effectiveness and cultivating the talent and that's building up all of our Educators so some things that we've done in the first 40 days are just going to highlight um that aogpe that is or in Gillingham training which is gold standard training we sent three teachers just this month one from each school to the classroom educator training and that's going to benefit our students with dyslexia who require structured reading support so we're already starting to build staff capacity and training towards meeting those needs we've also by the end of this month will have trained 90 teachers in non-violent Crisis Intervention Through The Crisis Prevention Institute and we have John Pierce and Scott Lorac over at CIS as our lead trainers and they've taken the initiative in doing that so I thank them for their effort I came to them early on and I it was maybe my first week on the job and I was like hey John I need to make sure from a safety standpoint that all of our staff have this up-to-date training and we just got right to it and we got those scheduled right away so we're very very proud of the work we're doing specifically within people's Services we launched a brand new IEP system this year called CT says and our teachers go to monthly webinars and trainings on how to access that um so we are embodying that lifelong learning is is really what we're all about here in Canton and go to the next slide so briefly I'll just share with you that over the last 10 years we are noting an increase in Canton in our percentages of students being identified as having disabilities our October 1 number isn't on this slide but we are at present 16.9 259 of our students have IEPs in District next slide that include 504s no but if we if we include 504s we're up to around 20 of our student population and that's October of 22.

so the bottom line is the board's budget which dropped at 900 12 155. that's what we would have budget this year if you use that set of assumptions however in the next column there's a new mortality table highlighted MP 2021 using the same seven percent interest rate I'm just going to cut to the chase if that is what is used then the board's contribution would actually drop down to 905 thousand so the only change there is the mortality table has been updated and of course our contribution drops does anybody know what that means happened in the mortality table life expectancy actually decrease the top works and that's primarily because and then the last column is the new mortality table but with the 6.75 interest rate assumption the reason that you're seeing that column is that is what the actuaries with the Town Council and their I'm not sure they're recommending but they're suggesting that we may want to drop our interest rate assumption to 6.75 and in doing so we would have to contribute more in order to meet a future pension obligation so in that case the board's budget would need to be 951 289.

yeah I have 7 30 right now on my computer yeah 7 27 p.m so I'm looking at this but I'm looking at that and I'm not sure which one are we facing to be here on here that's another question I have I think that oh then this is not my computer it's not fit right I'm not sure they're all what is your say mine right now says 733 oh yeah see here's it yes oh yeah that is anybody's watch that yeah so yeah my watch this and your computer is not watching my hands because the clock is only shortly yeah no this one's just 7 28 now okay so yeah so you know if I see my colleagues I'm not sure if I'm looking at this or I'm looking at that you know I'm maybe they're on time I don't know I'm just questioning that well it's never it never hurts to be reminded to be on time right so again thank you for bringing that up so are those the only thing that you yeah and then Sabrina indicated that she felt like things going much much better they are referring to that and that's wonderful I agree with her on that yeah sure yes do you have a question yes so um one of the things that I was surprised since I'm you know new to um the the protocols and um the meeting Norms is uh we don't participate in so when the public speaks we don't participate right but yet yet during the pandemic if you will or you know things have gotten really contentious with some at some districts with between the parents and the board members yet I'm sitting here hearing that you know we have these board Norms but I had yet to see that kind of behavior because and and I'm speaking on the part of the board because the board things got contentious like I said in some districts and it's because the board maybe didn't have these Norms or um they they got verbal with with you know the audience or the public and um it's nice to hear that because it wasn't some of the behavior that was displayed um because there's a lot of you know issues in you know within each community that rather safety whatever the case may be and um and I think that um for Azusa when I when I came on board and I read that because I read it a couple of times and I and it just brings dogs my memory back to some of those meetings that I've seen I mean they're all on social media yeah and I think that I like that the fact that we have to we have those Norms because we are being respectful of public participation and the public because they also have to share right they have a a time in the meeting where they bring concerns to the board right right so I just wanted to share an observation and thank you for that and um in some cases you're right uh some some boards that don't have a governance handbook and so they don't have a set of norms and um protocols that they have agreed to follow as the governance team and so um there's no way to really hold anybody accountable other than to say Hey you shouldn't do that but with with your District you can say hey remember these people out there but they remember these we came up with these as the government team and we agreed to follow them so that does make a difference and sometimes it doesn't I will be honest with you that yes you don't engage with uh the speakers during public comment only thing that you can do is to support president and provide directions to the superintendent and say Hey you know can you have someone speak to that individual or have someone reach out to that individual um but that's pretty but pretty much it and I know that things I really needed a lot of times during the pandemic and that was just unfortunately the norm up and down state of California and throughout many school districts I was support president when covet started so um I I understand my district was we were fortunate we didn't have that many who were angry so but it wasn't that way across every place and you know you as a board member you learn to deal with it you have to put on your poker face and you have to listen and and that's the one key thing I would say even when someone's yelling and screaming at you there's usually something there and so I would try to find that something that that message that they really wanted to get across or that point that they were really concerned about and I would try to you know just make myself a note of that and just ignore the yelling golly all the other stuff um and then sometimes some people just do come yell with you I I think for me I was just surprised um because of the you know the the board that some of the districts that engage with the parents or the audience that um and that's a note yeah I think for me I was surprised right to read that and then I thought well I I thought well I thought that would be adopted across the board you know what I'm saying Within the whole school district in California well it is it is in the 9 000 bylaw about uh public comments um so the board bylaws the nine thousands uh you you should take a look at those and it isn't there's usually always something in the board bylaws about the public comment and how the board um should react or not react to Public Health here when the word president um or he reads it um [Music] Yeah because sometimes that will like make people more irate because they think that you're ignoring them but that's why the divorce the president reads the statement to say Hey you know it's not that we're not ignoring we're ignoring you it's that this is you know how we handle public comment foreign helps keep the meeting in order yeah and remember the board meetings are they those these board meetings that you have are the board meetings they're just held in public but this is a meeting for you as a board to come together to take care of the business of the district it's not or designed to cater to the public yes you show transparency in your actions at the meetings because you're handling all of your business in public but it's your meeting is not the community's meeting and sometimes that's hard for community members to understand and they don't like when you say that but it's a fact this is your board meeting because without it you cannot take care of the business of the district but that brings us to our next thing effective board meeting so that was a good segue into that um in in the board meetings are also um the opportunity for the board to show leadership for the district and your board has done that um especially well over the last couple of years with everything that you were going through because you have to give the community confidence that you're making the right decisions that you're working well with your superintendent and cabinet to make sure that the students have the best education possible the best resources possible the best staff possible so you guys have to demonstrate that and that's what you do when you hold your meetings and that's why they're in public to show that in this you do that also through your vote to support the things that you know are best for the district they may not always be popular but they will be the best thing for the district if you guys have been reading the papers lately you know that there's several districts that are in um Financial turmoil and um that's those are tough things for a board to have to go through but if it's the best decision for the district to make those cuts to do those layoffs close those tools then that's what the board has to do so it's not always an easy and fun job but it's one that needs to be um that needs to be in place so that the district can function and then also um your agenda when your agendas are done for your meetings your agendas should all be focused on Student Success and achieve everything on that agenda should be focused on student assessment achievement four-year district and people are like well you know if that's the case then why are we approving you know um uh invoices to pay for toilet paper and soap okay because if you don't have toilet paper and soap at your school sites then what's going to happen so everything is ultimately tied to your suit uh when you're approving new staff when you're proven uh job bulletins when you're approving um for new textbook for professional development training for your your classified and certificated staff when you're supporting your superintendent for professional development as well so all those things are tied to Super the students success and achievement because the more that they learn and the better they can do their job then the more resources and the more Direction positive direction they can have or give provide for the student so everything is linked to students success energy and can I just mention something regarding this is the yes ma'am we're on the consent agenda right the bottom one are we there no we're not there oh we're not there yet okay okay we're going to talk about that one all right okay um but also through your District um vision mission and priorities and progress through goals and then that's an area where the district with the board wants to continually when you're looking at vision and mission statements that's where you want to continually keep the public informed and also get them involved in the process and keep reporting out on what that is because your vision and your mission in your District beliefs and priorities those are what should drive the work that you do and that tells the that tells the community where your focus is I was just recently um invited to sit on the um the theme for my former school district for Rolling to work on the their redefining their vision and mission and goals and they asked me did I want to come and be part of it you know as a community member now and I was like oh absolutely definitely you know because the voices of everybody should go into those things but the board provides that direction of where they want to go and then they listen to the community and then they might change some things or revamp something or to just let the community know hey we heard you and this is the direction that we're going in and we we're taking your input when we formulate these Mission envisioned States you get input from people same thing and then the um bylaws and your policies and norms and protocols those should all be followed when you have your board meetings you want to make sure that you stay on task and we'll talk a little bit about that if you um the brown act a little bit more but you want to make sure that you're following um the agenda in that you're abiding by state conflict of interest and open meeting laws as well when you um have your meetings and use both Sandra about you know how contentious some meetings had had gotten and there were times when the board asked to make a decision to adjourn the meeting and go back into closed session or take a break um because things get so unruly or out of control and the board has the authority to do that because again it's your meeting it's not the public meeting when people come in and they get a little loud and rambunctious and you know we had to do that during negotiative negotiation here where everybody was yelling and chanting and we can conduct our business so we just dabbled out for a recess and when it said in the superintendent's office until they got quiet and we came back out and finished conducting the work of the of the board so and that's the that's the duty of the board president to do that yes it is it's not us sitting here the board president yeah and if you feel like the board president isn't doing it fast enough feel free to shoot him a look and be like she knows my look yeah um but um you have to you have to use your best of when when it's necessary to do something like that and if it impedes you being able to do your work then it's go ahead and so now we're gonna get to what Yolanda wants to talk about the cassette agenda and um just a quick recap about the the is you know there's consent agendas are listed on every board and the consent agenda is basically um an area on the agenda where you can vote for a whole group of items at one time instead of going through every single one independently um one of the the blessings that I found about the percentage and the things I love most about the consent agenda and being able to vote for a group of things at one time is this saves a lot of time and allowed us to spend more time talking about other things um during our board meeting because if we had to sit there and vote for every line item in our agenda on the consent agenda that we would be there all night because remember every invoice and payment and you know Tech bridge and things that need to be done um are just basic things that happen you know in fuel for the buses uh toilet paper for the school sites you know those basic things order and paper and pencils I don't want to vote for those things one at a time one at a time so that's the that's the blessing of the consent agenda um and just know because um when it comes to robbers throws the Border they refer to it as a consent calendar is the same instant agenda Instinct calendar is the same thing it's just um just worded differently but these are things that are non-controversial so don't try to like buy things that you don't want the pub to know about you know inconsistent agenda so not that your board has done this nor does your board intend to do this but let's say the board decide hey we're gonna give ourselves a 50 uh exercise um for our hard work and we're going to put it in consent that's not something that you went to but let's say that you wanted to um you had already gotten a bid for a new fuel supplier for your school buses than you guys that went through the discussion at a previous meeting and everything and now it was coming back for a boat and everybody was like yeah no we're good with this you know that get going so you just have to make sure to write things are going on consent agenda you had a question Yolanda yeah so the question uh word says how did all items together without discussion um actually we can pull an item that's something so I'm ahead of myself okay okay all right yeah and so if you go to the next page you'll see it talks about what belongs on consent agenda and again you know we're talking about things like a proven minute um proposals um staff appointments that um require board confirmation but the superintendent has already you know let you guys know about everything reports that are information only um correspondence that don't require any action just routine math those are the things that go on consent agenda now the um the Yolanda's statement uh things can be pulled from consent we have had things that may come up that are of interest to you where you're like that just didn't we just approve that last meeting too what is what is this one why is the same company on here two meetings in a row then at the beginning of the meeting when you're going to adopt your agenda then Yolanda could say I would like the full item B12 from um consent for further discussion so that one item would be removed from consent agenda you know not physically but in your mind it's removed the board president takes note of it and then when they vote on consent they're voting on everything except for that one I and then that one item is discussed and voted upon independent so you can pull items from consent um I have seen that be abused that time um where somebody just you know felt like nothing should be inconsidity with full like item in it I want to pull this item that item that item that item that item and for no rule and that's just a waste of time like I said your meetings in order to be effective need to focus on things that are related to Destiny and if you're spending every minute going line by line voting on the things that were in the consent calendar independently because somebody just wanted to pull them all for whatever reason that's just a Time waster and it's not fair to the rest of the board make sure that when you something is going consent that you're pulling it you have questions and you you feel like it really needs to be discussed and if you know that something is going to consent when um you get your copy of the board agenda and you see it and you have some serious questions about it or you're not sure about it if it should belong there that's what your superintendent is for have a conversation with your superintendent and say hey I see this item is here on consent and I'm not sure that this should be there can you tell me why we put it on consent and not independently and to to your point that's one of the protocols uh that the board came up with that uh they will make an effort to notify the superintendent in advance of their eye of the of an of their intent to remove an item from the consent account yeah because then if you still want to pull it at the meeting it helps him to be prepared or his staff to be prepared to answer the question effectively in the meeting and um Brian and Yolanda I know you guys were here when I talked about this and Sandra I'll tell you this as well one of the things that I always advocate for for school board members is that if you have a question about anything on the agenda in advance of the meeting I'm sure that your superintendent and board president have told you this as well um that time to talk to the superintendent prior to the board meeting and ask ask your question now that is not the same that you cannot ask that question in open meeting you can and if you feel like it's something that the community should hear like let's say it was something related to a Child Care Program that you guys were thinking about ending funding for something and you wanted to still ask your question in in public please do by all means but this is what I tell people I have certain board members I've worked with that have been well I want to ask my question in public at the board meeting because I want Community to hear me ask it okay that's fine they were like I don't need to tell the superintendent in advance you don't but here's the thing if you want the community to hear the answer it's better to have a superintendent with the information to provide that answer at the meeting think about all the things that the superintendent has to take care of all the things that that happen has to take care of and if let's say your questions regarding the number of students enrolled um in the third grade at a certain school that is not something the superintendent is going to have in his head that's not something his cabinet members who are present are going to have in their head so if you tell him in advance hey at the meeting I'm going to ask how many third graders are enrolled at the school I want to know that gives him and his staff time to get that number for you so then you say you want the community to hear the response they get to hear it otherwise what happens is if you don't tell the superintendent in advance and you ask that question the superintendent is going to say I'll get that information to you and it was pointless because the community didn't get to hear the answer you'll hear the answer probably the next day when the superintendent calls you or you know and it gives you the answer so it didn't work out so you want to make sure that you tell the superintendent you know here's my questions and some of them you might be like okay there might be one where you say I'm still going to ask this one in public so that they have their answer ready you answer that ask that question they can answer it fully the community hears the response and it's on record that's why we say ask the questions in advance some people think that it's like a doctor thing and that is super cool to ask a question that the superintendent happened can't answer and it's not it really isn't is there no one um to do that so again always take time to talk to superintendent before the meeting do you guys do one-on-ones I know you just got sworn in a little with a little over two months ago yeah so during those one-on-ones thank you that's an opportunity for you to ask those questions as well so um in the both items that are taken um items that are pulled from the consent agenda those items can either be addressed before the vote on the consent or after the vote every District does it a little differently but it has to be either before that vote when you get to consent and say this item pulled you can address that item first or you can vote on the consent the rest of the consent agenda and then address that item there's no right or wrong way for that part so if you pull a consent item is it it's over to the next meeting um only if maybe like there's by boat I think it has to be by boat of the board majority of both the board in order to carry it out you have to give a reason why and then the the board super board president would fall for a vote to determine if they should be Cable in the item yes to determine if it should be held off or and so Sandra what our practice has been currently is we start the meeting prove the agenda and then we get to consent agenda I'll say is there a motion and then board member Burgers Pena may say I moved to approve the consent agenda accept item 3.1 okay and then is there a second right and then we vote because there's no discussion um and then that 3.1 will become four point and hope we'll we'll change that electronic uh dashboard and then we'll say I'll say okay we're now at item 4.1 um is there a motion and and is there a second and then we'll have and then we'll say okay we'll have discussion and the board member who pulled it will ask question and get clarification any further discussion all right then we'll move to a boat an item from the consent but I guess it's presumable that it could happen sometimes maybe just like a lack of information or yeah they didn't put the total amount something like that and they uh again it's up to the board if they agree that you know we wanted more information we want to see that bigger before we vote on it and then they the next um agenda item that's when they they can move it right I was just gonna say for just Uber transparency that's for both consent and action again it's not uh it's very rare but it doesn't have to be in consent could just be a regular item that gets tabled for whatever reason it would be you know I make a motion to table items 3.1 second and then discussion you would say this is why and then it would vote and then it would thank both of you bring in all of that point about SafeLink and I know we wanted to talk about the process that you all use for the consent agenda and so I'm going to turn it over to superintendo um delete that discussion thank you uh in your packet I believe it's the last piece of paper in the packet that was given to you you have something called consent agenda uh draft um so I think uh first just really quickly just to give some context um in Azusa Unified School District um the way we do consent is very very simple if the board has never seen this has never spoken about it it's the first time we're going to do it it cannot go on consent even if it's something like Miss price said toilet paper something that's only fifty dollars something that's super routine the the practice in Azusa has been that that cannot go in consent so to miss price point then the regular agenda becomes longer because now we have to deal with those one by one by one by one by one or the direction of the board I put together uh something for us to consider moving forward to change that practice uh on how we do the consent uh our consent items here in Azusa the first thing and I I want to point out um we didn't practice this but um Miss Pride threw me a lot of softballs today right now we currently call the consent portion of our agenda consent calendar I don't think there's anything wrong with that but I think it's a better picture and everybody has been using it today just as a as a note I think it it gives a better more accurate description if we change our own terminology and we and we move to consent agenda um again that's what we've been using today you when I've been hearing and listening you have to say when we get to the consent agenda to me that seems a more accurate description than consent calendar um so that's my first kind of can we move to to that to that verbiage and then um Miss Pride again touched up on quite a bit of the things here and so why is there a consent agenda it's to promote more efficient meetings um we can bundle those items together we act on upon them you know in one motion everything that has been talked about uh today but these bullets that are here would be the new guidance of how we determine what gets on the consent agenda and some of this has been spoken uh by Miss Pride so something that's routine in nature so I'll give you just some simple examples uh we have a with kovid one of the things that everybody found out was like you don't need to be physically where you're at so now we have a staff that are going to universities that are not even close anymore and they might be doing their their student teaching or their credential and so in order to do that we have to have an agreement with the University that is routine we have that with Cal Poly like all the local universities but if it's a university that we have never discussed UCLA Bradman University of Minnesota then the way we do it right now that would be an action item that you're gonna have to vote on individually by itself versus well that's super routine that just means we have a teacher that's clearing their credential through this University it's an agreement to make sure that you know we're on the same page that now would be in the consent calendar in the consent uh agenda portion of our agenda of our agenda um something that's not that we're not anticipating discussion that I am recommending approval um still continue with the old process previously been approved by the Board of Education is forty nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine dollars or less um unless the item has been previously approved by the board I think Miss Pride talked about non-controversial and she also talked about that's already something that's been discussed explained and we don't we don't need any further uh discussion or explanation and if it didn't meet this criteria one or more of these points then it would be an individual action item and then we end with the discussion that we just had right now that no matter how we cut it slice it or dice it a board member always has the right to request that an item be pulled uh for for whatever for whatever reason so this is just our our thoughts bringing forward that per the direction that the board gave this is what we came up with to say maybe this is a new way that we look at the consent agenda versus the old way Mr Tate I have one um point of feedback so um I know that there are certain items that cannot be adopted in a consent agenda um I'd like to see that written here that any items that were legally precluded from being on the consent agenda would not ever be placed on the consension good point yeah I have a question so I I agree with the consent agenda because it's part of the agenda so where did this consent calendar even come from what does that even mean right so agenda uh Robert rules the Border oh oh so it's part of the agenda under the consent and I do also like uh superintendent Ortega when he does um give us our packet he does specify if something has been consistent like we've been you know using this same thing for two years so you know it's not like new you know he he'll he'll break it down and see how long we've been with this with this company or how you know totally people we've been buying it for the state company for you know five years but he always specifies that so we know it's not like the first time so it should be in the consent agenda and you know I have I thought that I had included a samples of items that should not be placed on consent and it's not um I apologize that Legends I will email um the list that we used as the information point for csba that talks about the items that um you don't want to put on instant so I'll send that email that to you in the morning thank you for bringing that up that should I think overall the nature of developing the agenda um that process goes between the board president and the superintendent to draft the agenda and then of course when it comes out to the full meeting any one of us could pull an item so I I guess by saying that there's a little bit of these are some are firm firm guidelines these items such as these cannot be placed on consent agenda and these are more specific guidelines and and we might have a different interpretation of what is non-controversial so we can talk about well I think it might controvers let's put it on regular and and we'll massage it that way right because I think if we do put something controversial people think you're trying to just put it under the rug and not talk about it right but of course like you mentioned that controversial may be different from you and I or whoever right so yes you have to look at that closely when we get a person I think that's a like a super great point because you might have an item that Matt like everything checks out and it should be based on this but these are to Dr Boys DR Bull's Point these are guidelines and even though it matches all that it's still gonna the it's still better to to deal with it outside because of XYZ um the dollar amount too is what you're comfortable with as a board because I know our district had a little bit higher threshold but it has to be again what the board is comfortable with so I like that came to an agreement or that you're giving them a suggestion of what you think is that yeah and thank you for that so I did work with a lot of neighboring districts uh work with my personal coach as well and so yes this is like in the middle uh there's some that are lower and there's some that are way higher that can go on the consent um so I thought that that would be a nice middle ground for us yeah I agree yes so I will spend tomorrow a sample list of and it's not all inclusive by any means it could never be all inclusive but I do have a sample list of some types of things that should should never be put on consent um no matter what so I'll send that and then um to Brenton and we'll share that with all of you and we have Mr take we also have our legal accounts to provide an opinion if we're if there's an item in question absolutely thank you and when in doubt leave it out put it on the regular agenda yeah if there's any question and you're not sure don't waste money calling legal just put it under regular agenda it'll make your life easier are there any other questions about the consent agenda that was some good conversation I'm glad that that that was talked about that there's something that um WordPress that will be being adjusted and just in some things that were clarified um I do have a question regarding like sometimes there's State mandates right that come from the state that impact the school district and the the board has to take a motion to approve those are those automatically on consent calendar typically because they usually would require some discussion usually if something like that comes down I think the board would want to discuss it before a vote so anything that the state mandate apartment a bit or or something like that I I don't see your District puts that on instead um am I wrong no you're 100 correct and some of those State mandates um have an effect on board policies or administrative regulations or board bylaws and those always come out of consent first to give the board an opportunity to speak into if there is any and then then they do move to consent because we've already discussed that and we've already had an opportunity to talk about the approval then moves to consent at a following board meeting is because I heard today and I I mean I haven't had a chance to read about it but they were talking about um bringing the Mandate like masking to where I'm at and I don't know if that if that's a state mandate that's coming down to the local level the school district I was wondering how that worked with respect to the school board and you know them implementing that mass mandate is it something that just because it comes from the state is that an automatic it has to be implemented at a school district how does that work foreign we're in a tiered system so we have the California Department of Public Health that says these are the guidelines let's just use mask mandates as an example so the California Department of Public Health says effective on this date you must wear a mask indoors at all these locations the county which is at the end of the day really what we have to follow can always be stricter than the state but they can't be um Less in the state and so the county can say we yeah you're gonna have to wear a mask plus you have to get a vaccination and a booster this is an example I'm not saying that's true um so ultimately we get our protocols from the Department of Public Health and those we have to follow a board just like the county can do to the state a board can decide to go even stricter than the county but they can never go less in the county and so when you talk about board being means board meetings going viral that was part of it because I think there was confusion that the board can say oh well but we're not going to mandate mask in art in our district that's not an option when you when when the uh the health officer has given an order uh you have to follow those those protocols thank you I think it's good to know because I heard today they were talking about that and it's like something I was surprised to hear so I know it was something you know a big um ticket item for a lack of a better word for schools you know something that was very controversial thank you and that's a good question so um after each meeting I always tell forth to ask yourself two questions um what you achieve in the meeting did it enhance student learning test and achievement and then also was the majority of your time spent on issues that were related and connected to the district Division and goals if you come out of your meeting and you can't say yes to those things and you have to wonder if you're be productive because those are the goals of your your meeting as I said before the actions that you take should be linked to Student Success and achievement so um during covet when meetings were um basically live streamed at every District across the state of California almost I saw some really interesting board meetings and um there were several that had no focus on Student Success and achievement at all um so make sure that you guys stay continue as they continue to stay focused because you are a focused board right now and just continue to stay that way and then um I put this in here about confidentiality just because um you need to remember that um everything that you say and do and closed session is confidential and there may be things that are not in closed session but something that happened in the district that the superintendent needs to notify you of right away but it's due to it's related to a matter that is confidential um for the board it's not something that should be shared with the public so you have to really be mindful of those things and um just make sure that you're not saying anything that you shouldn't be saying to the community and it's going to be hard because the community will press you and they'll throw out that card I voted for you I supported you you need to give me an answer and on some things you just can't you can tell them the answer will be forthcoming and that the board and the superintendent are still working on it and that um tune into the meeting things like that and let the superintendent know if there's um any topic where the community is really you know coming hard at you with lots of emails lots of phone calls lots of when they see you in person um with the same question immediately notify your superintendent because sometimes even just something put out by this defendant something posted on the website um a common state at the board meeting they can help to alleviate all it so with that I want to talk about Brown act and Robert's Rule of Order so let's start with Robert's Rules order I gave you that one and I'll I'll give a full disclosure I am not an expert on Robert's Rule supporter but I know the basic and so I'm going to share some of those Basics with you so I gave you a handout on that one of the white paper so um just remember that Robert's Rule of Order those are Parliamentary um procedures they're not uh lost they're it's just all about um procedural of Brennan immedi and usually you you won't see Robert's Rules of Order in its full form use typically used in a school board setting but what you will see is that in like corporate boards um I sat on a board for a foundation um that was starting up and we used Robert's Rules of Order um in that meeting and we had actually had a parliamentarian who would be telling us no you can't do that I I had no clue what was going on it was very different from a school board um so it the Roberts rules and Border are usually used in more like organizations like foundations corporate boards but there are some super some school boards who used it but here's some things that you guys can use like parts of it um I will see people use parts of Robert's Rules of Order um basically the one of them is to make sure that if you are going to use any part of Robert's Rules of Order that the whole board knows what it is um don't just assume that people know this uh if you guys like something about something that's linked with Robert Earl's reporter then bring it out and say Hey you know I'd like for us to adhere to this maybe look at putting it in your handbook and indicating that that's something that you guys would like a procedure that you guys would like to follow but don't just throw it out there and say Hey you violated Robert's world's order like okay I didn't know that I didn't know what they were I did have to say that once um so you would adopt them and then you would um say these are the ones that we're going to use these are the procedures from Robert's world's order that we're going to adhere to make sure that everybody has the copy and full understanding of it be consistent if you are going to pull out something from Robert's Rules of Order to use be consistent about it don't go back and forth okay we're going to use it no we're not going to use it because we have informed adopted it so we don't need to use that we're not required to use it if you say you're going to do it and the whole board is agreed okay yes we will do this then make sure that you stay consistent with it and then if you have questions about it um talk to somebody who's who's knowledgeable about Robert's School supporter um that wouldn't be me not in the full extent but um there's plenty of parliamentarians out there who could come in and and teach you about Robert's Rules of Order if that's something that you feel like you would like to adhere to as a board in its full sense uh and then you know Robert's Rule of Order it can provide like framework to help the board stay more structured um by what I see your meetings are going fine now they're pretty good yes thank you so um usually if a board decides to bring in Robert's Rules of Order it's because their meetings have been out of order and so they want to try and it's full set in its full capacity and they want to try to get it back on but um you don't have to adopt it um fully to be to utilize it you can use like I said pieces of it but also keep in mind that it shouldn't be used in a way that will conflict with the brown Act because there are some some crossovers um that you'd have to be very careful of but the school board you guys should always stay in compliance with law over parliamentary procedures large from the Parliamentary I have a question for a superintendent Ortega do we currently have we adopted any portion of the Robert Rules of Order we uh do not we have not formally adopted Robert's Rules of Order I believe that our board operates uh in the spirit of Robert's Rules but it's not a formal adoption and to miss Pride's um comment the the entire Roberts Rules of Order is ginormous I mean it's a lot of steps and a lot of things to do but I think for the most part the board the spirit of Robert's rules in order in terms of first second you know those kinds of things I think we we definitely try to adhere to the spirit of that thank you and just their energy there's people who have college degrees in parliamentarian procedures that's how detailed it is so um yeah next I want to spend some time just talked about the brownie because this is one that we do have to adhere to because remember the brown Act is a California law that governs local legislative body um and in the school boards you'll hear us they round out background around that brown act a 50 gazillion times um and it's because it is important that we follow it the brown Act was um put into place because um people were doing things that were detrimental uh the organization um violate confidentiality making illegal bills and things on the agenda that shouldn't be there and talking to people to gather their votes and and the state of California said okay no enough is enough and there was a case and I can't I'm drawing a blank right now and I wanted to share it with you guys and I'm drawing a clean blank I apologize but there was a case that ultimately brought about the brown and I'll I'll remember it of course as soon as I get on the freeway and I was like so um but um the brown Act is important and it's important that we adhere to it and the biggest thing is that it says that meetings must be held in public and um if you guys remember uh and they must be agendized properly too within 72 hours of the meeting taking place and I know one of the cases we all remember the um City of Bell scandal where they were holding meetings and giving themselves phrases and you're not not agendizing things properly and not really giving proper notice so nobody would show up and hold them meetings at different locations and things like that and that's ultimately was their downfall um of what they were doing because of the violation of the brown act so you have to make sure that your your meetings are agendized posted properly and that the agendas are available and when we say post it properly you know you have to post the agendas um here at your district office so that people could see it we always add copies at our front door of our office so that people can see the agenda as they came in the office um so it has to be in a prominent location you can't hide it somewhere put it on the back door things like that or the staff entry door it has to be where the public can see it and then the public has the right to address the board you know we talked earlier about public comments they have a right to public comment they have a right to comment on anything that's related to the business of the district even if it's not on the agenda now what they don't have the right to do is to come in here to your meeting fill out a public comment card and then start to say what are you guys going to do about those those potholes that are down there on Covina Boulevard um I went through one today because that's not the jurisdiction of the sport so there's nothing you can do about that so you don't have to um to address any of that let's just say out of our addiction you know go talk to city council but uh so but anything related to the business of the district they have the right to talk about and then it also the brown act also says that they have to be given reasonable amount of time to beat now with reasonable um and it also depends on the situation ours was three minutes what is yours during normal times three minutes three minutes um I imagine that during the height of the discussions that you guys haven't over the last two years on some tough issues that you probably had a whole bunch of people who wanted to talk and at that time you can reduce the amount of time that each person has if they're speaking on the same topic when we are we're in the midst of a contentious negotiation and a hundred teachers showed up and they all wanted to fill out speaker cards then we reduced the number of the amount of time and the amount of comments that we would hear and so then people kept building their time to the next person yield three times in the next person but um you can do that as a board under the brown act you can limit the amount of time because to have a hundred people give the same comment a comment on the same agenda item is not reasonable can I ask a question regarding that so yes ma'am it's up to the board president Earth's up to the board so I thought it was up to the board president uh number one and number two is um also it's up to the board or the board president too also said no you cannot yield that to the next person also right right now here's the thing what we did now keep in mind that um you know negotiations so when we were addressing closed session items regarding negotiations before we went out into the public meeting we could look out the window and see that there was a hundred teachers on the line honking horns and screaming and yelling with time but we already knew what we were in for it so you know we had already said we're gonna we're gonna talk about that you know so one of the things when we first went out and the the president was handed the speaker cards and the president said you know I have you know 68 speaker cards here and they're all on You Know parody for foreign be the board if it's so if the police is the board um I would like to recommend that we only give speakers this much time or we only think this many speakers or you know whatever we did but we decide to do so the president would make a presentation we discussed it because other people throw out Recreations and then we would come up with one and we would vote yes that's what we're going to do and then that's what we did and what about the portion about yielding the time to someone else he now we didn't I have to say I'll be honest we didn't deal with have we ever did that Mr Ortega I don't recall if um I think we have most recently we we are not allowing that most recently the board has not allowed I didn't allowed it it's not allowed for you to say they're gonna take my three minutes or whatever right yeah so I guess it wasn't that bad because we never had to address that one I saw him do it but that was at a time where we were only giving them like one minute so they had 20 seconds left they'd say I yield my 20 seconds yeah but yeah but just know that you can limit time um and that you stood I was up at a school district um two weeks ago and they had an issue um it was it was a controversial issue that came up and so the community came out and um I know that one of the board members well actually more than one several of the board members felt that they should hear the community that resulted in them spending three hours listening I was just gonna ask and you also increase the time but then you'd be there oh no oh yeah a long time and and I yeah that was just three hours wasted of their meeting um and they ended up not getting out of their meeting until I think like one in the morning she still has to take care of the business of the district exactly you got to say that so it's not something I recommend and the board members who had wanted to hear the community to show that they were transparent and listening they they kind of regretted that afterwards but um just be mindful that you don't have to do that to show that you're listening you know if you hear 10 people say it and you're you know you show that you are listening you know then that that's enough and note that I said that you show that you are listening even during a comments and when people are you know upset and angry over something it's still good like I said earlier in the meeting to try to find what they're really angry about in their statements and and take note of it um don't you know sit there and play on your phone or you know look up at the sky or you know really pay attention to them still you know and and show them that you you do hear them because sometimes that's all some people want us to be heard and if you're sitting and they that makes them more angry because they feel like they're being disrespected so just give them your attention be patient and listen and and look for what they're really upset about and make note of those things um meetings should be conducted in an ordinary fashion I think we talked about that because I you know I shared some of the interests and meetings that I saw online during covet um but this board is professional and you guys discovering yourself accordingly so you don't have to worry about that one but anytime the board changes it's good to address it um promote transparency and you do that through public participation again with public comments and also by you know some of the questions that you asked um after presentation that's how you show that that you're being transparent and you're being open and then one thing that I had underlined on my copy was you guys should not discuss or take action on any item that is not on the agenda and sometimes what will happen is something will be on the on the agenda like let's say uh you guys are talking about the fuel provider for the bus and that's on the agenda you know the field provider for the bus on the and the and you guys are having a discussion about that before your vote and then somebody says well if we had electric buses we wouldn't even have to worry about that yeah I know I think we should get Alexa too yeah how many people here think we should get electric buses that's not on the agenda so you can't do that so make sure you stay focused on on what's on the agenda what you can say is that is something we should talk about superintendent can you prepare a report on um what a process would look like to get elected but as that is not something you should have a full discussion about at that time or address because it's not on the agenda and if there's someone in the community who is anti-electric buses they have the right to know that you were going to discuss that so that they could be there um and um a closed session just remember closed session except um you guys are not going to take any action on anything unless it's something that you're reporting out on in Open Session and that you guys always letting you guys do that um these are just some of the general rules um about the brown Act before we talk about closed session any questions on the brown act and that's something the brown act has a lot of twists and turns so um we we have workshops that are like you know several hour worked up just talk about the brown act because there's so many ways you could get yourself in trouble with serial meetings and all that other kind of stuff I just highlighted some of the things that tend to happen as you go through your closed session now this one is is one that um people kind of get mixed up on but just remember that everything in closed session again closed session will happen agenda items items put on the agenda however they will be very vague it might say personnel it might say um negotiations it might say um uh anticipated legal action but there's no other information there's no links to click on and get documents it's just very generic because those are things that cannot be discussed in the public for example when you do your superintendent's evaluation you guys do that in closed session because that is the Personnel thing so I gave you a list here of things that you can talk about in closed session and again like Personnel if you're going to terminate somebody if you're gonna um if you're discussing an appointment of somebody for employment um discipline in evaluations anything like that that's a Personnel matter that that's the system in closed session pupil matters if you have to talk about suspensions expulsions um anything that a kid did that got them in trouble that those are confidential about that child about that student legal matters any um pending litigation potential litigation anything that you need advice from your attorney on um that you guys are having trouble working through uh in that phase and closed session as well your attorney comes into closed session they will talk to you once that part is done the attorney leaves and you resume your closed session property matters selling a property purchasing a property all of that same thing security um security procedures related to Personnel those type of things are closed session when I first got on the board Berlin unified had a a police department we didn't just have campus security we actually had full police and um so there was several matters that came before the board uh here in that uh negotiations of force or confidence and stay in close session and I will just reiterate that um that is one of the most important because it can um just throw your negotiation process into chaos if things leak out of closed session about the negotiation process and with the where the district is that what the district is doing and what people said that that can be very detrimental to the district and it can also cause some severe legal prompts uh and then other things that are specifically authorized by law but for the most part if you ask somebody what can I talk about in close session they're going to go ahead and they're gonna name off those first Six Bullets because those are the most common ones that you run from those are all closed sessions and it's important to remember that the brown neck requires closed session only be held for those purposes nothing else don't just because something's controversial and you don't want to talk about it in front of everybody else don't say oh let's just talk about this in closed session you cannot do that unless it falls under one of those things and then um you guys do keep uh the superintendent will typically keep a very generic note about what happened in closed session because sometimes there are some things that um that where direction is given to the superintendent and so you know superintendent may need to make a note of that direction but you keep them very vague about went out and then um we would always tell the members of our board to try not to take notes because it just wasn't a good thing he didn't want to get out you know any questions about closed session anything about closed session yeah I wanted to say something during the csba um I went to one of the workshops on the brown Act and it was really good I mean I appreciated the the conversation they had with respect to social media because when I worked in local government it was social media wasn't as popular so I think that was kind of an eye-opening for me yeah and if you're in covet especially a lot more rules came down about the use of boards and social media and I always try to stay on top of it because it changes so yeah so then finally the brown act violation um I I want you guys to know that the brown Act is serious I know that as full board members we tend to throw it around oh no I don't want to violence around that oh no that might be a violent background you know we say it a lot here that those two words a lot but it is a very serious matter and a violation of the brown that can cause you some very serious problems it can um it can be a fine it can lead to being sued it can be lead to um a referral being made to the district attorney for prosecution um there's a whole lot of things that can actually happen with the brown act in just two weeks ago my my phone and I hit the Google thing that's you know how this new stories come up I get several stories about school districts that come up because I'm always searching schools and um one of the ones that came up recently and I wanted to screenshot it so I could go back and read it later and then it went away because they hit the wrong thing and I couldn't remember what school district was I tried Googling it I couldn't find it but there was a school district um that was had a school board member that was being prosecuted for violation of the brown Act and um I remember one of the things that it said was that the district attorneys were starting to take the brown act more seriously as a result mainly of both because there were so many boards that were split on them and so some board members would go out and tell people hey the board's gonna do this so get your people together and come to the meetings and and stuff so a referral was made to the district attorney and they're actually um going to file charges against this this board member but one of the things that we have to be mindful of is number one there's no secret um I know that that we always think that that we can say things and do things and if you tell one person it's not going to be a big deal um it's something that happened in closed session but you can't do that and I think I shared with this sport that a kid that went to school with my son who who lived with me for a while I tell you guys that story where he he ended up after they had graduated he ended up working for the district and got himself into some trouble um and it came before the board and my son called me and was like Mom did you hear what happened you know and like oh what are you guys gonna do and I was like I can't talk to you about that he was like what do you mean he lived with us just tell me like no I cannot tell you and this was one of my son's good friends in high school like I said he lived in our home and I actually ended up recusing myself from even being part of the discussion because of my Coastal but but again I you know I couldn't say anything to my son about that because there was been a violation of the brown act it was a closed session matter as personnel can't say it and tell them so my son had to wait until he could talk to the kid and the kid could tell him his version and when he told me I just said that's what he told Jesus you know but we have to be careful in his heart sometimes especially if it's involved in a friend or a family member but keep that in mind that like I said that that um the district attorneys are looking at cracking down on some brown act violations more and part of the reason too is to protect the board members because when things get really contentious and people start following board members and harassing them and stuff like that because something was leaked out of closed session we can put you guys at Jeopardy so it needs to be dealt with so um it is something serious that you have to look at as a governance team any question about Brown violation and just real quickly um in our other going back to our other packet you guys have your governance handbook and remember to board bylaws the nine thousands I recommend that you revisit those frequently just to remember like or if you look them look something up just to remember um you know what protocols you should be following according to the bylaws as well not just the normal norms and protocols because there's things in the bylaws that tell you what your position is and what you should and should not be doing and then you know I put this quote in here when problems arise so do our emotions and based on our process perception and Associated feelings of whatever is going on and that's just a reminder like I was saying earlier that when people come and they're they're upset just just listen and try to find something in what you're saying that you can take away from it even when they're angry and the same goes from when all of you disagree just listen be respectful ask questions to make sure you understand and always assume positive and sin so with that that's all that I have are there any next steps I will ask our board president and our superintendent any next step for the board I think Mr taken now that we have um at least among the three board members present today looked at the draft the consent agenda guidelines uh will you then be publishing that with the additional items around what cannot be in consent and circulate that among all the board members that is correct and so that will that be in next week our next board packet or what do you think yeah about in terms of timing if Miss Pride can get me that email and then I'll do some homework as well um I could I can my goal is to put it this week on Thursday's weekly board packet thank you our board members that are not present the reminder of the brown Act and the um I do have stockings of the handout for them Angelina do you have your materials electronically that you could provide to Mr Ortega and then he could send to us absolutely because I might recycle this packet oh no worry um colleagues do you have any uh last thoughts before we adjourn Mr Ortega no thank you so much all right then if we could move to item 4.1 adjournment is there a motion make a motion to adjourn there a second a second all right let's move to our vote the motion

so in later slides we'll talk through a little bit what our progress monitoring Reflections are of District Adams City High School and for Central so and as you know those state board orders outline cde's role in progress monitoring at the district at Adams City High School and at Central Elementary and is what brings us here today so we'll give you a second you can take a look at that but it sort of outlines CD's role in um coming on site and observing the implementation of that partial management plan at the district and those two targeted schools so next slide um with that background I'm going to turn it over to Andy to just share some Reflections from all of our visits from and conversations and learning with the district this semester thank you if we can go to the next slide there so CDE monitors the progress of all schools and districts that have uh directed action by the state board this process composes of a few components including regularly announced site visits sometimes unannounced site visits if that's in the if that's in the board order updates from us twice per year uh to the State Board of Education which includes our mid-year report which will be going to the State Board in a couple of weeks in the February board meeting as well as possible presentations to the local board like we're doing right now so think of the progress monitoring visit structure we have here one thing we all know is that as was mentioned earlier by the DAC that school and District leaders do not have enough time on their hands and so one of the things that we really tried to do alongside the district and tntp was to streamline our visits so that it matched what was happening in the district already as much as possible a few ways in which we tried to do that was really come alongside meetings that were already happening so tntp 360 learning walks and streamlining what was used to be a weekly visit between CDE and multiple District staff members we really scaled that back to try to be as efficient as possible to monthly visits that really just pertain to the the staff members that were necessary in those visits specifically for Progress monitoring purposes um in a lot of these meetings especially the ones that are on site at schools such as Central and Adams City High School Lindsay and I have had the pleasure of participating in observations feedback brainstorming and action planning processes alongside your leaders overall we have found these visits to be very thoughtful well organized focused really on transparency and continuous Improvement and typically including a discussion of implementation of improvement strategies with school leadership observations of instruction a review of local data and debrief along with next steps um from the next one right thinking about the overall Reflections for the district's progress so far we've had the opportunity to learn more about the approach and key Focus areas in the district this year and we've observed the following key Reflections about the district level progress overall the protocols and structures that the district and tntp have initiated have allowed for a focus of instructional conversations with school and District leadership this year because we've been able to align our progress monitoring visits it's enabled us to partner with the district and tntp for aligned feedback so it doesn't hopefully it doesn't feel like the principles like they're getting feedback from all different sources the 360 learning walks have been a deep dive into instructional systems and have included a broad group of instructional leaders our observations indicated that this has supported high levels of academic discussion and planning the academic Excellence Playbook that was developed by tntp and the district provides focus on instructional priorities and supported alignment between school and District priorities as we would expect after a semester of implementation we're seeing indications of structural progress and foundational work that we would hope uh that we would hope to see in establishing such instructional systems and aligning school and District instructional priorities in addition the tntp and the district are working collaboratively to ensure strong continuous Improvement structures of course there continues to be room to grow and as such we know that maintaining this level of focus and prioritization is essential to continue to see not only continued Improvement of the academic system but in turn of course then academic progress with all of your students so moving on to discuss then specifically Central Elementary having shared some of these district-wide Reflections we'll talk Central first and then Adams City High School for the specific schools our team has been able to join 360 visits at Central multiple times this year the school has focused on implementing its Innovation plan as well as its conversion to a community school the school is focused on establishing school-wide routines and revamping a school the school-wide environment this school leadership team has also aligned to the district's priority areas and establishes protocols for their professional learning communities and internalizing District curricula uh in providing regular coaching and development for teachers in addition the schools launched their Community School model they've hired a community school coordinator established a parent leadership Council and built out the Family Resource Center to serve as a hub for parent-focused workshops and events Adams City High School has also been a part of the school progress monetary they do but of course aligned with the partial management pathway of the district as you remember the district presented to this board an update on the planning for the themed academies and apparently the DAC as well just recently so you are well versed in in the work that's happening with those we've observed and been able to participate also in multiple 360 learning walks at M City High School and observe the school leaders really transparently working through difficulties looking at data having hard conversations brainstorming one of the next steps that are best for their teachers and their students and really I would say eagerly taking on the challenges of what's before them next they've been actively building a foundation of systems and structures such as common planning protocol common professional Learning Community protocols consistent use of the Align curriculum and if they're if they continue that hard work of implementing systemic change across classrooms this has a viable path to move the school forward in the right direction and then with that overview of our analysis of different progress monitoring areas in the district I'll turn it back over to Lindsay for a few final updates thanks um uh before we share some more about supports from from CDE we wanted to touch on the district reorganization CD is not progress monitoring we're involved in the reorganization process Beyond making available a grant um but we wanted to share a high-level overview of the process so this slide shows an overview of that process and as of today you know the committee has formed and held their first meeting and so in addition to progress monitoring we want to continue to provide supports to the district and we do that through a variety of mechanisms one of those ways is through the empowering action for school Improvement or the easy Grant which districts will tell us is not easy but that easy Grant is an umbrella for a number of different supports that are available for All State or state and federally identified schools across the state and so that easy Grant just closed in December and as you know Adams 14 has participated in the easy Grant before and apple applied for three routes under easy for this year that are aligned to some of the work that is already happening in the district and so hopefully the district will hear about that Grant in the next couple of weeks and so next slide please and then as we look ahead to the next few months uh as Andy mentioned CD will be providing a regular progress monitoring update to the State Board um in two weeks at the February board meeting um progress monitoring with the district will continue through the year both for with ongoing site visits and those monthly meetings with the district and tntp and we are always glad to return to the board for Progress updates as as you as you as you want um and in the meantime we look forward to continuing to support the district and the things that they need to continue to implement their plan moving forward and we also just want to take a second to thank the school staff I know it can be stressful to have all these people descend on their on their buildings and they've been nothing but welcoming and open and it's really felt like a true collaboration and we're really grateful for all the work they do every day and the progress monitoring work um so that concludes sort of our information for the evening and we thank you for your time and open it up for any questions we'll turn back to you so much um board members comments questions um well I'll start while you guys can't figure your thoughts thank you both for for joining us um I know we've been um rebuilding a lot of relationships and it's been really um refreshing to hear about the collaborative efforts and um appreciate our our partners tntp has just been amazing and not Reinventing the wheel once again but carrying over and honoring all the work that was being done prior and um uh I think one of my questions to start is about our progress monitoring report that we're going to present in February are you CDE working with tntp and Adams 14 to um work on that presentation um or are we going to do have like separate chunks of that presentation that's a great question um so the February presentation is CDE staff to the board about all schools and districts with directed action okay um the district did request to present to the state board and the board is interested in that and so we were working on scheduling that I think that will be at the March meeting but we will absolutely work on that collaboratively but in terms of our February progress monitoring yeah we are we are actively seeking their feedback and making sure we're representing the work that's happening with the implementation with tntp in that report Andy and I are working on that December this week that we will get over before the board meeting yeah um that's good thank you that's helpful because I um so we'll be a smaller part of a larger accountability update to the board okay great um yeah I think one of the the big uh things that I've heard from our our staff um at this Administration level and at the schools is um the change has been noticed um that it's not um it just feels more directed and um so I think you all our Administration CDA and tntp for collaborating all of that because I know it's a lot in addition to everything else but it just feels um more actionable not you know what are we doing this month and then what are we going to do next month um so thank you all for your work on that guys okay I couldn't find it I found it I had started I like I'm just right in here um so you said the the visits aren't as frequent anymore so um in this past semester how many visits have you had to our schools and here to The District in general yes um we are the visits with just the district I would say the meetings aren't as frequent we are trying to prioritize School visits which there were a number of school visits last year but I think the feedback from principals was it felt like multiple people like the CDE visits weren't aligned to the work that was happening so we've tried to prioritize joining the visits that uh the principal supervisors and tntp have scheduled so we can observe the work in action and we're all leaving with the same takeaways so the me we've tried to reduce the meetings but prioritize getting in the work and learning about the schools and and the district's needs as a whole and so we meet monthly with the district team but I think we do two or three or maybe four visits a month like there have been quite a few we've been to Adam City Middle School Adam City High School Central and blanking already but we we can give you that full walk through menu um for the for the year if that's helpful it is because um I know before there were a lot um and and you know rightfully so it does sometimes um it hinders some things as opposed to helps them right because you have multiple people multiple times coming in so that's good to know um and along with uh the question that Madam president have posed about the presentation for February is there um will that presentation be shared with us as well so that we can see once you have finalized it um some of the the data points or points that you will be presenting besides what you presented to us today will that be possible or is that something that you could share before or after I guess that's my question yeah we can definitely share those materials will go to the State Board like they'll go um but be public uh well before the state board so we can share them with you all and I can I can we'll send them to miss Burke to send out with to board if you want yeah yeah no no the presentation I will just the presentation that CDE gives includes information about all 13 schools and districts with directed action So Adam City or Adams 14 will be a small piece of that presentation but we're happy to share those materials and so just to clarify is that the whole district is the presentation or is it broken dome by Central Adam City High School and the district um we are going to break it down by District Adams City High School and Central as mentioned in the presentation I think both those schools have a lot that they have implemented and we have observed some really strong momentum at both of those schools so we want to make sure that we're calling out all the work that Central has done to establish the community school model and some of their school-wide routines and procedures and give that a call out while also framing what's happening district-wide this is my last question I was like this will be my last one um during your visit I'm just curious um on a personal level as a parent if um there's any interaction with our linguistically gifted students that are at the elementary level Middle School level and even the high school level um have you been able to have that experience with them because I think we talk about it a lot but unless you actually are there and see it it's a very it's very different and it's Unique I am going to share just an anecdote from Central that will actually make it into our state board presentation and Sarah knows this like um we do one of those visits the tntp visits are well structured to visit every school in the club in the in the or every classroom in the school so we are seeing all kinds of modes of instruction and just on the central visit we walked into a kindergarten classroom during a specific period of the day where there were multiple students with different needs of varying of just all sorts of needs we had a visually impaired student a hard of hearing student and a little kindergartner teaching her peers uh with the teacher it was so seamless and so inclusive and this teacher created a wonderful inclusive environment that I think really shows their dedication to the students and was it was really powerful of like this is what it means to be developing an inclusive culture and we saw it and uh I I teared I had to step in the hallway for a second because it was really moving but um those are the kinds of things if those can continue to build across all of your schools and all your systems that's really powerful for kids and for families but it was great you'll see a little picture of of that classroom and our skateboard presentation it's a wonderful man yeah yeah the one thing I'd add to that is I think the structure of those visits also really is so student focused that it really does allow you the opportunity to and all the schools that we have visited to have been very open to talk to students when it's appropriate in classes and so we've had opportunities to interact with multiple students at elementary middle and high school and of course I think observe what you all observe is how great your students are and how much of a gift they bring to a community and how much their linguistic differences actually bring out so much more within that Community with that so we do get quite the opportunity to talk with students get their perspective what's happening in classrooms and really interact with them and get that perspective as well thank you I think that to me it's very important that we have the story behind the data and that you don't just have the quantity the qualitative I mean the quantitative you have qualitative information to share and reports because I think in the past that's been missing it's all based on numbers and as you may recall I'm big on humanizing those numbers don't just tell me numbers but there's a little human beside behind each of those represent numbers that you're representing to the state that I really enjoy the fact and and I'm very proud of the fact that you're able to really see what we see when we talk about our students in this community especially our linguistically gifted students so thank you um so yeah I had a similar question so I think you guys already answered that just in terms of the human aspect of this whole process and so thank you for sharing that um the question the other question that I had was um the presentation that you're going to give to the State Board is that reflective of what you're presenting here or are there other pieces that you haven't shared with us like um this kind of seems very operational like the operations that are happening within buildings but are there other pieces that are going to come into that presentation that maybe we did we haven't seen here tonight um I'll have Andy answer in our monthly meeting yesterday we did talk through some of the progress towards the six major goals that the district is monitoring and we want to bring that to the table to also share the practices towards um established goals that I think the work with tntp in the district have really put front and center of like this is about we do want to see lots of see our metrics move and those are that's a robust set of metrics from attendance to student achievement to our teacher perception and student well-being and I also think we'll we want to include a little bit more on the district strategic planning work I think that stakeholder engagement process that the district has engaged in we didn't touch as much on that here tonight but I think it's important also to just share that's that's part of the work that you all have been doing and so we want to add some information and some progress about that but the walking through those those six major goals yesterday show how the implementation of the partial management plan is designed to build towards these goals the only thing I'll add to that there's other aspects of context that you already know that we weren't sharing with you because it's already your information such as the pathways plan built out of the high school that we'll be sharing with the state board so other aspects of nitty-gritty details on their plans that you are well aware of are aspects of of what's going to the state board so they can get a fuller context not being obviously adversed in What's Happening Here As You Are just a comment is it on yeah so gracias de Nuevo uh thank you um and more of a comment I first want to just give a shout out to the staff uh thank thank you thank you um everybody because I honestly uh and again just as a comment because uh as a parent uh just to hear positive something coming out of the tea right not you guys but uh you know I was gonna say cdphg but that's a whole nother story um but you know to hear the positive collaboration the positive collaboration um between you know all the the schools that's refreshing uh because as a parent again I feel like the last 10 years as a punching bag for the State uh and as well as our linguistic my child our linguistically talented children as directors Zubia mentioned and I'm glad that uh you can see that now um and remind you know that we are abiding by the law right it's it's um you know I don't see it like you're not doing me a favor really right and my kids either but I do as a positive note really is I appreciate the collaboration and my question is really you're not going to shut us down right so we're doing better right that's the question um that we appreciate the collaboration it has been important for us to learn about the Community First and learn about the work with tntp and the district and sort of understand where the goals are and continue to build on that and help sustain it and build the the your teachers and Leadership your teachers and leaders over time continue to grow them and grow grow them in support of your students because students are wonderful um so that is that's part of our our role here is to continue to support you all and help progress Monitor and make sure that the plan that the partial management plan you've implemented with tntp has the best chance of success over time and we'll continue to do that um we'll continue to do that and we'll share with the State Board the progress being made with that team with the with the work with tntp and just the all the other work I Echo just the other work that's going on with staff there's hard work going on across across the district in a number of different areas thank you um thank you again I I think one of my questions that just popped in my head as as listening to my fellow board members um are are you as the accountability team looking into um and Reporting on the differences between the full management that we had many difficulties with versus the partial managements like is is that included in any of the the feedback that goes back and forth as well yeah or considered yeah yeah that's a that's a great question um Andy and I are new to working with Adams 14 and so right now I think we are really focused on trying to um document and talk about what's working and do that in light of where we've seen other successful partial management um uh structures across the state because there have been some places where there are some bright spots and so we really want to name and notice what we see is going really well around that collaboration and we don't have necessarily a benefit of having experience last year or or knowing really where those differences are but trying to ground this year in what are we seeing that has a strong likelihood of success based on what we've seen with other successful partial management management structures with other districts okay thank you that's good to hear all right any other comments questions all right thank you both so much for oh did you have no more oh okay great thank you so much um Dr Lauria sorry I feel like I'm you're so quiet over there do you would you like to add anything or um have any questions yes um yes Madam president thank you and uh thank you for the presentation um we've been seeing in Andy um I just wanna you know just like uh director Molina I want to thank the staff because we do have a very very hard working staff and I although I may not need to or I may not be the person who can answer director Molina's question about it is they going to close us I can't answer that question the answer is no they're not going to close us we are taking care of our students we have a staff that is fully committed to our students and we want to get better and are getting better and although I know that Lindsay and Andy are new to working with with us as a district I think it's going to be very clear when they share and I appreciate their transparency and and um in in this the kindness in uh with which they presented today because I think it's going to be very obvious to everyone uh what we can do when um we have a group of individuals who are committed and focused on students and that is what we have right now uh when we have a board like this board five board members who are absolutely committed and absolutely focused on uh putting aside anything that may have they may have heard or or seen or wanted to do in the past it is just looking for the future and I do appreciate that so it is a new day for students in our district we are changing the narrative for our students and even when uh we do not go in and do a comparison in a slide um the it's going to be so noticeable um that everybody will see how you know and what we can do um for students so I I feel extremely excited and um you know I'm gonna be sleeping very well tonight after this presentation so thank you yeah yeah I love the thoroughness of the presentation I think may I ask can we get this on um the public uh content part of board docs I think right now it's just an executive um but this is good information to share oh yes and we're real Madam press it and uh we will continue working with Lindsay and Andy so that we can go and have a presentation even in when February might not be an opportunity for us to share what Lynn sees there from tntp and individuals from connected and I spoke about was um going as a united front with board members of Wales even when we do not have a space at the table during that meeting to do the presentation because of the format they have structured having the sole presence of a United Team I think it's going to be very powerful thank you I was just going to mention that one of the things I find very helpful is also learning the areas for improvement so not just necessarily all the bright spots but all the not so bright spots because it helps us move forward and not repeat things that weren't working so I think that I'm okay hearing some of those things as well as hearing the bright spots that you guys bring forward but um just you know I I just as a observation that it's okay that we have some of those as well because we realize we're not everybody's perfect and and it's a learning we're you know we've been in a rough spot for a long time and we didn't get there overnight and I know that we're not going to get to the other side of the bright spot overnight either so um just knowing that um we know that and we understand that I think in full transparency sometimes that is what hurts the most is when you know that other people know that yet we're not aware that that's what it is so if you're not aware you only know what you know and if you don't know it how do you change it so it's it's good to have that and that's for tntp that's for our staff as well you know I appreciate that you guys work so diligently to make sure that things go as they are to go as their plan to go but sometimes that doesn't happen and we get it we understand that I think or at least I do but speaking on behalf of everybody else but um I get it I just think uh it's good to hear it once in a while too and say yes this didn't go as planned but you know we did a 360 turn and now it's working uh it's it's one of those live and learn um and I like to hear those too sometimes yeah thank you thank you again all right without any further questions um next on our agenda is second quarter Financial update I'm sorry oh yes yes thank you [Laughter] Chief Moss we were turning the meeting over to you for this item all right you're in charge hopefully you've had time to look at all that and uh yes thank you what I what I first want to start with is the budget timeline I know I sent that probably a month or so ago but I just wanted to go through it real quick because the next five months you guys are going to get bombarded with Finance and so we're kind of ahead of the game I'm looking at February down um we're already doing the second quarter report tonight this so that's out of the way and then as you can see we're already starting our staffing yeah can you yeah you got to eat it yeah so uh what we're looking at we've already started working on projections for uh enrollment for next year and we're kind of looking at like a five-year enrollment projection and then we'll start looking at Staffing compared to our ratios with students in each school building um once we get some of those projections and things back from the schools then we'll do a study session with you guys we'll enter in look at our budget priorities for this next school year because they change year to year uh funding you know it's going to change we still have no clue where that's going to land this school year um it looks promising but that's just the governor's request and so I'm sure it's going to change then we'll start doing school and preliminary allocations to all the buildings and get their responses back and then March we'll do our DAC meeting with their book budget recommendations we should have a third quarter economic update by the hopefully by the board meeting so that we can kind of get an idea how the economy is doing right now it's we're staying stable and even above a little bit so that's good uh preliminary budgets go out and we'll get those back in March and then the fun begins on putting together a budget that we could can sustain for the next school year in in years after so um I don't want to go through the whole thing but the next five months are going to be very intense around here and uh we still have audit to receive and we should have that by the end of next month and then we'll have them come report as to how the prior fiscal year turned out okay with all that being said and done let's tie into the financials um on the first page I gotta see yeah that's the general fund so our property taxes as you can see up top we barely trickled any end in the next three four five months you'll see that number grow substantially um some highlights are earning on in Investments have increased by 120 000 so far this year so if if the economy stays good the uh interest rates stay high like they are right now I'm looking at probably four to five hundred thousand dollars on just Investments for this school year so and we only budgeted 85 000 because at the time this was going on we were only receiving like 0.2 percent now it's like four percent so that that helps a lot um one thing you can see down as you go down the local Revenue we've only received like 20 of it so we still got 80 percent of just our funding and at the local level to receive and then as you go down to the next group of numbers we've received 50 percent of our state revenue so I I anticipate our Equalization number that we get each month from the state I I think we're going to beat the 32.9 million Mark I really do and even with our property taxes I think we're going to be above in collections of look we anticipate receiving um as you can see we haven't received any federal funds yet and that's with the Arsenal land we get Federal impact dollars there and so we should receive around three million dollars of that and uh so right now we've taken in 25 million dollars in just revenues um keep that number in mind because when I get down at the end of are expenditures you'll see the offset of how much we've taken in compared to what we've expended and it's don't be shocked by it because the the expenditure portion of it is going to stay the same it's by month it's going to increase what it's supposed to by year end hopefully we're above in revenues than we are against expense so if uh you look at uh each of the school breakdowns you see their budgets the next column is what they've received today or spent today and what's left over and then over on the next couple columns I put in oh there basically tells us that uh each School how many students are in the building as of October count and then the next column tells us by month what it costs per student at that building and I thought you guys might like to see that you know like uh our preschools you know they're low numbers but it cost nine ninety five hundred dollars to to educate one student in preschool that was fascinating to me I thought it would be less but it's actually quite a bit more everybody else is four five six seven million dollars which you know I think people need to realize that we just don't throw this money away it's going to our kids and this is what it's costing per kid at each School um so then you know you just go through and it lists by quarter and this is mid-year and we have to present these numbers to you and so at the bottom you can see we've spent almost 35 million dollars we budgeted 75 million so we should be around the 70 million mark of expenditures and hopefully receive around the 70 million Mark as well for revenues so we try and stay even and if we go into fund balance like we could a little bit we're good with that because our fund balance is very healthy right now um so you can see down below that were short 9.5 million dollars to be even with Revenue to expense but you have to take in account we haven't received any local funds yet so that's the general fund if you have any questions I'd sure listen to them right now and see if I can answer them um I don't necessarily have questions but I have um wonderings future presentations and maybe this is something that we can dig into when we have the finance meetings with you um but for to for me it would be really interesting to see um I really appreciate the costs per pupil but I think it would be interesting to see the revenue sources that go towards that average people because we know you know the per people funding doesn't cut it so it would just be interesting to see the different areas that it comes in federal and state um and then another wondering is for expenditures it would be helpful to understand um or have it split where we could see operational versus salaries and benefits um just so we're seeing where where the money spent and maybe that's just the detailed thing that we'll get to later um and then my other question was around Equity can you give me an example about like some expenses that we're spending in equity is that okay sorry and I'm throwing that at you so I can follow up later that that's just one of our programs that that we have within our budgets okay um there is an equity piece there's a truancy expulsion piece uh just a lot of different programs within the whole budget and what I can do I I do have a report that I can run I'll trans move all these numbers to where you'll see by program what it costs by budget what's expended and that'll break it all out for you by program that would be helpful and not necessarily like every time you have to do these statements because I appreciate the work that goes into it but just so we understand going into it and then what we're looking for absolutely no I love this report because it keeps me knowing monthly what's going on instead of quarterly in three quarters we could lose or really expend something and go oh my God what just happened so I'd like to do this monthly and I know I just shoot it to you and you can look at it but quarterly I'll see if I can get that other report compile it all and then maybe one of these times when we have our one-on-ones I'll shoot that to you you can take a look at it and see if it makes sense that would be awesome and I apologize that's my fault I haven't been able to join you guys um one quick thing I'd like to add to you I love that you do this in Excel oh yes um just like some like what are just some examples of what what that what we're spending money on in that yeah because for me like I I um I dig into the numbers I have a CD um but I want to be able as a board member to make sure that we're aligning our resources to our goals and that's just another way for me to be able to do that so any other questions anything else a follow-up comment to what you just said right now I know our meeting is coming up um soon and um when I attended naleo the conference for newly elected officials we had a session where they had programs that districts can run to see how their funding is aligned to like board goals just like um president Lovato was talking about right now and I'm just wondering if that might be something that we can talk about when we meet well absolutely because I think I would also like to see just like what is it exactly that that is in each one of those categories and then seeing how it is aligned to the board goals or um you know just general things like that I think for us to be able to to just see that um that the dollars are going where they're supposed to absolutely do you have a copy of or can you send me in the right direction to even look at a package like that so I was like I was trying to look at it right now and the agenda that I had I'll have to look deeper to see if I can pull up the exact slideshow um that I viewed but there was like an interactive page where we were able to see um it was just very interesting you know um yeah so yeah I think I shared it with you yeah yeah I would I would like to see that um right now I'm looking at a forecast model and so maybe that has something that we can pull out of um I haven't looked at purchasing yet I just started the process since we don't have a forecast model here and I was like we need to get one so um we'll work on that but I'd love to see that and maybe we could get a package like that and compile everything into it okay um sorry I wrote it down and I forgot to ask um we have Dr Lauria wanted to check oh yes um yes go ahead I can wait until oh I just have a super quick question um that to me this is like the profit and loss statement and I noticed on our uh calendar that you gave us we have till the 31st to do any budget adjustments are we good not doing any of the show we're good right now um if anything will come in May or June and do a supplemental budget if we have to okay but I don't I don't foresee us doing that okay okay awesome thank you Dr Lydia yes Madam president thank you and if I say something that has been shared in the last few minutes and my apologies because we're um I I don't think I was hearing everything that was said but what I hear from questions from director Estrada and you know for the conversation that is happening is um you would like to see how the funding is being used uh and how those funds are going to be or are supporting or not uh the goals of the district so as we move uh into a full adoption of uh policy governance and as we start uh in you know as soon as next month discussing how the reporting is going to be given to you what is it that you want to hear about and how those reports that I'm going to be bringing in front of you are going to be connected to the goals we will start implementing those questions we'll start implementing for this goal this is what we're doing these are the funds that we are using for that and the progress or lack of progress with uh potential next steps of um of the work that we that we're doing uh in the past and although when Lindsay was in Andy was there your question about a compares from last you know management to this management or what happened before or now I do want to recognize that the couple of years before my arrival uh in in probably longer than that there was not a full transparency from um staff to the board on how the funds were used and um in in not I'm not wanting to put blame on individuals especially before the management company I was not there I did not know the details of what happened I do know some details to when MDT was there but one of the things that I want to make sure is that we change the narrative on how this board the board of Adam 14 is informed of the funding in in the finances in in how we learn together about how it works where the money is coming from in in where does it go at the end of the year or by the end of the year so what doug was sharing with you at the beginning that calendar is something that once we get into the detailed discussion of the finances in the reporting on finances you will be able to know what month we're going to be discussing what Topic in finance because it's not a one-time thing Finance is it finances it's it's really a huge piece that you will need to understand and approve as a board by by yeah for that is your Authority and so we throughout the year we'll be setting opportunities and times that you will know way ahead of time to be learning about the process so as you heard from the the next semester it's almost I want to say enough every time we meet you're going to hear a little bit of the finances I'm 12 to get this Rhythm and we spread it out throughout the entire year um for school year 23 24.