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right yeah that students have had these over the course of the year so there's been 23 opportunities to practice over a course of four years students will have a lot of time to practice and I expect that they will get better the schools have also put in supports for students that demonstrate repeatedly that they're not being successful in that space or if it's not playing out well in their classrooms where we're building a little more structure around students in those settings so by all means is it perfect no but will it get better with time yes the other thing that we're lacking this year that we won't be lacking in future years is older students that know how this works that set the example I forgot about that show their peers all of our kids all four grade levels all of our staff this year are figuring it all out on their own so our teachers are even learning is the course what prompts work with kids what what nudges work what assignments work so our staff will get better at it our counselors get better at noticing which kids aren't being successful and then kids as they come into school will see their older peers that have figured this out setting the example for how we behave during resource how we manage our time what we do and all of those things year over year resource of over resource this will improve and get better this is just this is the first year and you know it's yes it's not going to be perfect and it's not going to be as good as it's going to be but uh every every week we get better at this every year we'll get better at this hey come this time next year 50 of our students this will be the only high school schedule that they've ever lived right so this is a long game for the opportunities that this schedule offers and presents I'm fully supportive and I've been one of the things I've been responding to inquiries about it you know we're only we've gone through one semester you know and and uh you know it's we need to give it a chance you know we need to we need to you know we we knew rolling out something so new that there'd be some bumps and we're trying to work through those things and I think Ryan's done a great job here presenting some solutions to respond to those those issues going forward but it's been it's we've only been doing this for a very short amount of time so uh yeah and one of the commitments we made to the board and the public was to do what Ryan is doing yeah many school districts would roll this out and we're like this is what we're doing we're not going to evaluate the programming we've made a huge dedication this year in time and resources and time with the board in reporting out on what our experiences are and chasing after that goal within the Strategic plan of valuing student voice I think that's very apparent in Ryan's work here so um you know we'll get better at it faster because we are doing that program evaluation follow-up to my previous comments about the younger students are we having conversations with any 8th graders right now about what to expect the coming year and how to manage time is there something our partner districts could could do to help prepare and and get get those students ninth grade orientation like this spring we haven't but on the way in right yeah when you talk to ninth graders they're they're and you ask them like what do you think of the schedule they're like this is all I've ever known it's great you know it's better than Middle School you know so it's a different conversation than talking to a senior but it has you're giving giving some different years to compare to giving those those eighth grade parents to an opportunity to have discussions with their students about what's going to be expected and there's going to be some time in the schedule a couple days a week where they're going to be expected to structure their time themselves and to do it in a productive way and yeah and things like Mad Dash in our oh I know orientation sure those things even their peers will help them set that up and and like this year during Mad Dash or or ninth grade orientation over at North no upperclassmen there that was leading those sessions had ever lived the schedule before right so this year is our ninth graders come in they've all and they'll be like already sharing those tips and tricks and how to get around and how to make that work that none of our current students students could share with our ninth graders this year so you know year after year having those upper classmen to set the example will be important thank you moving on um the next item for consideration is the issuance of not to exceed 2 million 880 000 General obligation limited bonds to be issued by the district pursuant to section 17-2-1 2.11 of the school code for Life Safety projects related to Downers Grove North fiscal building the Board of Education will consider the adoption of a resolution providing for the issue of said bonds and the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal and interest thereon the resolution sets forth the parameters for the issuance of said bonds and sale thereof by designated officials of the district Mark Stalin our district controller will summarize the printed terms of these parameters including the specific parameters governing the manner of sale length of maturity rates of Interest purchase price and tax levy for said bonds Mr Stalin right so um this is going to be for the fire prevention and life safety work at North High School um it was known to be there to some extent but all of a sudden it just is deteriorated very quickly and become unsafe so um this is what Debt Service extension base is designed for to either use it for emergencies like this or some projects you need to move up um or for other projects that involve life safety and working cash Authority as well so this is this stream that we have is protected by the property tax cap act we don't violate the property tax cap we we just still get the same amount when the when the tax cap came in the same amount every year that we had four bonds when it took place it was like froze that amount and then each year you would have that much to work with in bonds and sometimes you wouldn't use it for five years and you used a big you know this is going to be um probably be the smallest one I think we've ever done it's it's only going to be for 2.8 million dollars 2.88 actually and um it's important to know that this is a parameters action that we're asking you to take tonight we don't we haven't sold the bonds in fact we and really even fully agreed on whether we're going to do a direct sale or a public sale you're trying to to do a direct sale where somebody we know or some buying other schools by other bonds sometimes and we couldn't get anybody to to bite on that because the interest rates are five percent on treasury notes and so they couldn't come back our cost is going to be we we believe it'll be less than 2.88 for the cost and the interest rate involved in it so instead of going with the private sale where we'd have seen maybe high for 4.8 percent we're going to get something in the 2.8 range we believe the parameters resolution here is for the president of the board and myself and the superintendent to be eligible to get to sign off on documents before the board and then bring it up bring it to the next board we're meeting we're going to do it in the market as soon as we can wait for a good day to issue the bonds and then get your approval but it this resolution is stating some parameters that we can't break when we when we do that public sale is has been decided two point 8 million is what we anticipate to be the total in cost with all costs of including costs of issuing the bonds which is so a real interest on the buys themselves or close to two and two and a half percent but 2.88 is the maximum that we would sell them at um average will be for six years the total won't because there's a timing on this Authority they want it to end there won't be any bonds that would be um so that would go later than December 15th of 2029 um you can't exceed a five percent interest rate we expect the actual net totaling costs as I said to be 2.82 for the taxpayer it's really unusual there's a lot of early interest payments it'll go on this one so that the impact is very low for the first five years and it's only a six year bond but those would be very low um somewhere like I think it's twelve dollars for the average annual cost for these and um 22 22.63 would be I'm sorry the annual total amount for these over time for an average 400 000 remote did move it up to four hundred thousand dollars I was almost going to do 100 and let you just keep adding it right now but for a 400 000 home like the first year is estimated to be 3.91 yeah three bucks so and it gets until the very last year ready to stay low the last year it gets to be forty dollars because that's when a lot of the principals can do it's just the way that the bonds will be be laid out into the market um tax rate impact is .0094 which is you know if our we have a larger than five billion dollar assess valuation so we're very lucky that we can pass this on and it's very little cost to the community members and the businesses and the taxpayers in our district um so that's those are the main things we need to keep an eye on when we're issuing them and we hope to do it in the next week or two any questions I just like to thank Mark for bringing this to us I know it's something that we hope to take care about at Capital over a period of time so it wasn't like we didn't know that we were going to needed to do something here but the urgency of what's happened is has has had to accelerate what we're doing and you know to be clear if we didn't do this it would cost it would cost us a lot more you know the potential and the risk is huge yeah no right well in every we think we're doing section through the building oh I'm sure yeah yeah no that's the old well and this is this is the same funding that we would have used a couple years ago yes it's just we're accelerating it a couple years earlier just to make sure we avoid any anyhow I'm happy to support this need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the resolution providing for the dis for the issue of not to exceed two million eight hundred eighty thousand dollars General obligation limited tax school bonds of Community High School District number 99 DuPage County Illinois for the purpose of altering and reconstructing a school building and purchasing and installing equipment therein for fire prevention and safety energy conservation and school security purposes providing for the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal and interest on said bonds and authorizing the sale of said bonds to the purchaser thereof so removed second Mike and Chris any additional discussion right I have important thank you hi Cheryl Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom aye Jerry pavasich aye Joanna Vasquez Drexler aye and Nancy kopka aye so the motion is carried and said resolution adopted Mrs knighted please record the same and the records of the Board of Education of Community High School District 99 DuPage County Illinois okay thank you Mark as always uh do we have any slips for the second reception okay this is the second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Community High School District 99 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts and writing to the board secretary visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment slip to the board secretary will be invited to the microphone prior to addressing the board audience members should State their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes I the board president reserved the right to modify these protocols if circumstances worn audience observation of these protocols is appreciated all right so uh one speaker Gary Baker backer backer oh I'm sorry Mr bocker I'll get it right next time all right Gary Bob um I wanted to address uh I guess two topics in like three minutes the state accountability metrics um Hank I don't think your background's in math I don't think um mine is I'm an actuary I deal with Statistics probabilities and I totally agree with you on the SAT scores looking at Raw scores you can't look at the trends but when you show the percentiles for the SATs as well as the performance assessments I see a downward trend Downers Grove North is a statistically large enough group where those you know maybe that one year the 40 percentile that is concerning but otherwise you see a downward Trend and if I were any of you I would be concerned I agree things are maybe across the country there are issues but you know your focus is right here and relative to others it looks like our numbers are coming down crazy drastically no but they are coming down that's my interpretation professional statistician person based on the numbers that you shared Hank so I would you know lots of factors and Mike I think you said there's lots of factors we can't we can't take all of them into consideration I get that but we need to take off our rose-colored glasses and look at the data and see what's happening and then think about maybe we shouldn't Pat ourselves in the back maybe we should be saying oh is there something here we need to do so I offer that for your consideration on the hybrid schedule um you know thank you for all your work um one thing and I I don't have perspective on this but it seemed like you're Gathering of feedback a concern I had was it seems like you're invested in the hybrid schedule which is totally get that but if you're Gathering feedback I don't know if you're the gatekeeper of it I'd make sure some of that feedback's coming through other people because you have a perspective if you came to me in the Commons at lunch and I'm a high schooler I'm not going to give you my full unfiltered view um it'd be better if got it through somebody else because you're the access guy so that's something that that I would offer I was also very pleased not to hear again Mike I think you said this that hey we're gonna adjust as we're going to monitor we're going to adjust hey you know we're not just going to put this out in the way it is and I would encourage you to say well what's the time that if you look at it and it's not working that you go back to it as a parent I have concerns about the extent of teaching time especially for young males in high school who maybe aren't self-sufficient it's a reality we might want to teach them but I would say reflect on that and that might be something you need to deal with and don't be afraid to go back if you ever do go back won't be my problem my kid will be out but anyway thank you for your time thank you okay um did you have anything else I um oh I do have one thing I just remembered my sticker so uh February 17th is Founders Day in District 99 so that will be the day that the election was actually held to split the community into two districts a hundred years ago so we're doing a little celebration in each of the school uh Jill and Lauren have led the charge with the principals and the activity directors to Mark our 100th day we have little stickers for everybody we'll have stickers for the kids that day and that officially kicks off the 100th year of the district although next year will be our 100th full school year so it's kind of weird how it worked in District 99.
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our first graduating class actually split their year between the Consolidated district and the separate District so um it's always interesting because we'll say it's our whatever year the North High has been open or the year of the district but this is officially our Founders Day is coming up so February 17th 2023 the district will have existed for 100 years um so a little celebration of that but a little commemorative sticker for the board members but all the kids and staff will be getting uh that day as we celebrate so I just wanted to bring that to your attention thank you [Laughter] we need a motion to adjust I move we adjourn second all the Mike and Terry all those in favor aye all those opposed we are attorney thank you have a good evening thank you
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okay all indications show where where it go okay um no I am uh still have a couple more steps at my end okay sorry sorry about that okay all indications where it go foreign we are Live on YouTube and ready to begin with the lab interpretation announcement great thank you Cameron um thank you for joining us this evening for a special meeting of the Adams 14 Board of Education on Tuesday February 7 2023.
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we'll have our call to order please welcome everybody thanks for coming to everybody in and out of here okay we can have a roll call please I'm here okay great thank you here Mr mcgibbon yeah Mrs Allen here Mr Austin thank you thank you and we need to next uh approve our agenda which is an action item I'll move to approve the agenda I second any discussion on the agenda okay this is Ellen yes Mr Wall Street and I approved yes next item number five is approval of the minutes from our January 10th and again tonight thank you any comments or discussion okay all right given yes Mrs Allen yes yes the next homemade will be called the public looks like we don't have any stuff or six move on to the superintendents um information discussion all right okay good evening members of the community members before February board report as always we're very busy and it is a busy week so just a reminder there's our vision and mission statement which we adhere to review often and make our decisions based on our mission and vision it's cyber security update just to let everyone know that we completed a risk assessment with the Trust on February 7th we'll be working with the Trust on some cyber security issues we also received a grant from Ade which will allow us to upgrade our endpoint protection to crowdstrike and also begin our multi-factor authentication both will be completed in June any new of the TUSD ransomware attack all staff has been reminded of best practices for avoiding suspicious emails so those suspicious emails keep coming through organizations of send money buy gift cards give us information and as much as we try to warn our staff and public it still happens so everybody's been reminded and I believe TUSD system was down for a whole week the entire week without computers technology and of course that affects teaching and learning and payroll and everything so I'm glad that we're not connecting to USD we have a lot of Campus Special project updates we had our campus cleanup day on Sunday January 22nd from nine to three a huge thank you to 50 plus mother church members Mr Schubert Charlene Shubert misses a Maureen shorts and Trooper a nurse and her husband Joel Mr Grantham from rotary was also president who is also a substitute teacher a special thanks to Mr Marcy who came in on Saturday to trim the trees so that all we needed to do was to pick up the debris but we literally worked from nine to three and you can see the little picture our cafeteria was full the members of the Mandela Church once a quarter they do a service day so 50 of their members stayed behind to help us out and the other members went to different locations to some were doing um feeding the homeless and doing other projects on that day but we really did put a big dent on our campus so I hope that students and parents then you've noticed a difference in the front of the school up by the fourth and fifth grade pod and to the west of us for the rain Garden Project we are planning to do some more work between now and for Earth Day we will get our students and staff involved to help us also finish cleaning up the back of the school another special project our reading piece Garden dedication will be on Tuesday February 14th from 8 30 to 9.
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and um everyone I uh we're moving uh moving I remember where I am looking forward even unemployment uh it's November I like [Music] and showed everyone that and were and show everyone that and I also enjoyed the video of vegetable console right I enjoyed about SUV dealership without we've got to write in my 1B it might One Beat is when you can talk about things that we don't usually talk about like it might want to be I would like the world to be clean another thing I like is that we got to tell others who wrote them when I was there I felt I felt like it was a little bit different compared to the person but I like that because it was a large theater during the experience what we did in my 1B with was really good in my thoughts during that time played games and learned a new handshake we also learned more about geography it was really fun when I started [Music] responsible I'm pretty sure say sure what is this thing called go ahead and get started thank you to all the beautiful faces that I see out in the audience it's great to see so many people here or are going to start with their land acknowledgment and also if anybody in the audience needs any translation okay so if anybody needs translation just let me know and I will do my best to translate as much as I can um the Creighton School District at land acknowledgment the grain School District understands that our community of schools is located on the Anson Central land of the Odom Jude and ecumel Odom people who descended from the Hohokam and have inhabited these lands since time immemorial now Odom whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and Community spanning countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful Legacy for Generations into the future with this acknowledgment the Creighton School District formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an inspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations and Miss Michaela can you lead us into the Pledge of Allegiance please all right that brings us to roll call we have MS Gibson McLean here Ms mcchafree myself Miss McCaleb and Miss Ayers and our far more welcome statement we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address the board parts that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for two cards why cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda this is per reference policy bedh and we go to recommended actions um I move the governing board approved the agenda as presented all those in favor hi all right and that brings us to public comments we have some quite a few public comments we do three minutes all right and our first is going to be Dorothy green good evening it's been a while since I've been up here because I've been really good about stepping back um I just wanted to do a quick technology department shout out tonight I've actually been holding on to this comment since November I've been attending the last couple online rather than in person but now that I'm here I want to make sure I give this public comment and shout out to the technology department I'm not sure if you guys are aware but the special education department has been understaffed this year in terms of we have a lot of teacher vacancies at some of our sites so the other teacher on assignment and I have been along with teachers at the actual sites as well have been covering extra caseloads so we've been holding our own IEP meetings oftentimes we serve as District reps but for these particular students we've been having to run and facilitate and run the whole IEP meeting had one of those scheduled for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and had a lot of work to do over the Thanksgiving weekend I get to the meeting I'm about an hour early because I got some things to do and print out my laptop won't work and I'm like panic mode so I quickly text Robin Griffith who works for the technology department and it serves on our assistive technology team so I know her well and we work together well Robin what do I do and we kind of sort of brainstorm some of the things that could have been none of those work within 15-20 minutes um Tim and Andre who just happen to be on the Gateway campus where I was doing this IEP meeting come rushing in to the rescue they figure out what's missing there's a court the cord is not fitting in correctly or something weird is happening I'm not a tech person and they leave and come back 10 minutes later with a brand new cord and I am able to get my laptop we all do everything through Synergy now with special ed so it would have been a mess if I hadn't been able to do that so huge shout out to them two weeks later maybe my cat walked across my keyboard not exactly sure what happened but something went wonky and I had to go to the actual help desk in person that time and ranel helped me spent half an hour gave him my advice and he fixed it and they're like magicians to me because I am not techy so and we forget sometimes how critical that technology has become for us to do our work so huge shout out to the technology department Russell does a great job and all of their Manpower do a great job so thank you I am also not a fan of technology so I feel it and I appreciate it as well um our next public comment will be from Kelly blakesley please forgive my frog voice I'm working over at full tier and also forgive my notes for the cold break as well um this evening I have just a couple of points that I want to bring forward the first is just a quick meet and confer update so as you know we've been meeting um since we returned from the winter break we've had three meetings now as a group actually in this room so Good Vibes um we adopted the policy last year to have the association have an official seat at the meet and conferred table and that went forward with its bumps and hiccups last year and I really feel like this year um we're fleshing out the process more and I just want to shine a light on the team members and the people that are really committed to being transparent and engaged in the process both on the district side and on the association side it just feels like there's more voice and more space for questions more space for Big Ideas and and for for us to really come together and collaborate in that same vein we are having to add an additional meeting because of how thorough the process has been we have a new facilitator as well which has been a really positive experience too because she's been very thorough in training um not only the new people that are new to to the team but a refresher and just being really clear in the expectations of what this new policy means and how we can unpack it together um so I just want to give a shout out to the team and to the process because um so far it's been it's been great it's been like I said transparent and members have been engaged with that we know that the legislature has a lot of work still to do and we have a budget that is not wrapped up or um hasn't begun just yet so we need to still make some decisions based on how much funding we're going to be receiving and what that looks like which is typical to the process so we know that our work within the district is not done and then our phone on the site level is not yet determined and historically what we've done is created sort of a then list and so that's our plan as a team this year again is to make sure that we prioritize all these big ideas and how we want to tackle each one should more funds become available um and I am based on how the process has gone so far very trusting of making sure that the team is able to do that work and get it done and then if we do need to meet after this even additional meeting we've talked to the team that we're okay with doing that and making sure that we're thorough and getting the process done right even if it does take an additional meaning or two um with that we want to show our support for the recommendation that the team has put forward which is to continue to have the district fund um the health insurance so we know that um the rates have gone up but the number that we received from is it Jameson is that his name this is the representative from Valley Schools um was able to give a thorough presentation to the group on probably more information that we needed but ultimately it boiled down to um the rate that we can all agree to so we want to give our um our recommendation for that and then finally I want to make sure that I get this in here we do support the contract timeline as well we worked backward to make sure that we um fit in what we needed to to be able to issue contracts we know that other districts around are doing that so we want to show our support for that and then finally we do want to make sure that cea is included in um all decision making for moving forward with the big decision of selecting a new superintendent so we know that a meeting happened a couple of weeks ago and we didn't really get information on that until I actually received a message from a board member so if we could just be just as transparent as we are with a meeting convert process moving forward with a selection of the new superintendent as well um as I like to say we want a real proper chair and not just a folding chair at the table so that's what we're looking for thank you for your time sorry thank you so much um next we have Ariana Sanchez here Madame Republic member of the board my name is Ariana and I am here to share my experience with special education um services and why I choose to move my student out of the district my son ended up injured by the first time they left his elbow broken and the second time and he ended up with a fight with another Sterling while he had his broken elbow and the five poster by the student on Snapchat and Tick Tock and I chosen to move up from Creighton and now he's been through a lot of bullying that this new districts so I just wanted to know I have videos and everything pictures like if you can help me with something do something about it thank you Miss Sanchez I appreciate you coming to us and speaking to us um and we can't really directly I just wanted to let you know the process that we can't comment just because the board law doesn't allowed us but we have different people here that have heard your story I'm sure somebody will be reaching out to you so I just wanted to let you know that okay thank you um next we have Nicole Marquez hello everybody my name is Nicole Marquez I'm a mother of three Creighton School District students I work for the Creighton Community Foundation as a community health worker doing snap Outreach enrolling families for food stamps SNAP benefits and I also helped found the Creighton Academy PTO I currently serve as the president there so I'm before you today I wanted to again congratulate Dr Lewis on her retirement and also comment on the upcoming hiring process so um personally one thing that Drew me to the school into the district was the focus on the duo language also the emphasis on the social social emotional learning promoting diversity and obviously with what's going on um in the state with the new state superintendent I want to make sure that here at our local level that we maintain that Focus that we push back where we can on and that we stay strong in supporting our students and supporting our vision keeping dual language in our schools and focusing on that social emotional learning because I know as an adult too I mean imagine if you had to forego all your social emotional needs and work every day as if nothing happened like that's we can't expect five to 17 year olds to do that you know and we we can't either so um you know hopefully we we can um maintain that so thanks again for all your work and I look forward to getting to meet more people and being around so thank you Miss Marquez I appreciate your words and lastly but not least we have Jesse giambra oh good evening Madam president members of the governing board executive team esteemed public great to see everyone I wanted to give an update for the good and Welfare I have been involved in the garden initiative and so I wanted to share an update that's not directly related to the district's work but related to kind of the garden movement overall and the Outdoor Learning experiences that um you know I just started seeing like wow there's so much support it seems like it's rolling out all over the country um so let's see two weeks ago I was able to have the opportunity to work on a micro credential for climate Justice with the National Education Association and I was able to get together with different people from around the state and the reason is because the Nea chose Arizona to be the example for climate Justice for the entire country and part of that has to do with the work that we're able to you know focus on with Outdoor Learning and with you know Garden education education and Hands-On learning as well so it was a really cool experience to get together with different people and talk about climate Justice and it really in the course of the past year of having our garden initiative it has become a lot more obvious to me the positive impacts that are truly this experience is is necessary for students to make progress in environmental or ecological issues in general if they don't have that you know grounding in their Elementary and primary years I don't see how they would really be prepared to experience and face those challenges that our entire world is up against and so we're doing something really right by having this Garden initiative and um you know at the same time I also got reached out to by The Yuma school garden Summit that was had and I was able to give a keynote speech about school Gardens and so I'm so excited about the positive things that I've seen in the garden as we've been able to bring more cultural experiences that are tied in and all I can say is I think that we can use them more more still and I think we can communicate even more just it's I was not always open-minded to it even as a child I might not have been but it comes through that experience of you know gradually taking baby steps to get in there but that modeling for like having staff meetings in the garden or or basically you know teaching us teachers how to have a class in the garden it can only be positive and beneficial and we're on the right um you know like in the right wave of the movement right now because we also have legislation that's just being dropped in the AZ legislature around Outdoor Learning and garden education so all I can do is you know I just wanted to share that because it's a little outside the scope of our garden initiative but at the same time I think we are the most exemplary district for this initiative and so let's just continue to put a lot of energy into like making it flourish to supporting the physical work and also to supporting the professional development and the connections that being outside can make to future career paths to the academics to the social emotional learning to the equity to to the connection to the land into nature so yeah it's all positive and let's keep going thank you thank you so much that moves us to our next item for a superintendent report everyone um first of all my mother passed last week and I want to thank so many people for the love and the Outreach and the cards and the flowers and the stories and the support bereavement of your mother is certainly a life-changing experience as you go into and through a deep sorrow of an anchor in your life so your support and and beautiful Outreach has been much appreciated I really do consider you family thank you um I know we have the state of the union for the president tonight and we're going to be interested in what some of the highlights may be as we focus on some of the uh attention to our social uh needs and educational needs um I am watching continually we all are watching the aggregate expenditure limit we have a step in the right direction this continues to be on the edge of Crisis some of us have kind of of course they're going to lift the aggregate expenditure limit of course it's going to happen and we're watching some of the horse trading gamesmanship that might be going on so let's just keep our ear to the ground on that the house did go through a third read and passed it and that was um the house only so there's still more stages to watch so let's just stay on top of that um we we really do have a sloppy Plan B that we're ready to move forward on but it's by no means our first choice if necessary so let's just keep our ear to the ground on the AEL lift through the legislature um it's national school counselors week so we want to acknowledge our child Justice Advocates and our partnership with Southwest Behavioral Services and carasolas we really appreciate as I think one of our speakers said earlier Nicole the the social emotional well-being of our children is critical to our well-being academically and our well-being in terms of intellectual curiosity um I want to thank Jeff Guyer and Yvonne Carvajal for Saturday's work at the job fair um the job fair probably had 30 districts there and probably had 50 possible candidates there if that gives you any indication of of the scarcity that we continue to face but thank you for your Outreach and I I know you felt connection with with several possible candidates and we will keep scrubbing that uh I also want to thank Leslie Owen and her team we had a marvelous um you know I love resources I heart resources for our families at the Family Resource Center we had 15 Partners there with us and just so grateful for the many resources we are able to provide for our family um and next I have some recognitions I hope you stand ready for some photos I want to first begin with one of the hardest things to achieve in the nation and in Arizona we have a marvelous Advocate who just retired Kathy webkey uh a national board certification and it's one of the most intense processes you'll have to have to ever go through again and we have a nationally board certified teacher who not only got it once but has now gone through it again to maintain her certification the national board certification was designed to develop retain and recognize accomplished teachers and to generate ongoing Improvement in schools Nationwide it's the highest certificate or certification a teacher May obtain national board certification is a public assurance that teachers have met the professionals High professions highest standards for accomplished practice it also signifies that teachers are up to date on the knowledge and best practices in their certified area and I'd like at this moment to invite Jody Hernandez to come up and be recognized for out standing [Music] well good evening thank you for those kind words Dr Lewis Dr Lewis had asked me to share my story a board certification to encourage other teachers to apply um a few years back I was going through a rough time in my career the am I just a teacher stage I Googled our teachers professionals and discovered and applied to the national board for professional Teaching Standards how hard could this be I thought I soon discovered it was a rigorous process which included writing papers taking Pearson assessments videoing lessons analyzing student work samples and data cringing while watching myself teaching the videos re-taping not passing the first attempt persevering researching and changing and ultimately improving my teaching practice um in 2012 I earned my national award certification which lasted 10 years this past year I completed a similar smaller process and maintained my certification for five more years benefits include individualized professional development networking college credit hours and an annual stipend from the district I'm currently the only board certified teacher in the district so I'd like to take on a new role hahaha um for the first time in my life I'd like to be a cheerleader a cheerleader for more Creighton teachers to become nationally board certified I encourage all principals and District leadership to help grow the number of nationally board certified teachers in Creighton thank you very proud of you we have several other recognitions and I'm sorry for the time that I'm taking but these cannot be ignored the Arizona School of Public Relations Association recognized Creighton School District for its Publications under public education Publications and electronic media for its Multicultural Outreach campaign and specifically it's curriculum dashboard equity and diversity so I'm not sure Emily if we have somebody up here to receive it and Michelle come on up that's right because this is your baby oh well finally again I apologize um the aspra the Arizona School of Public Relations Association not only recognized Us in that category but through the Multicultural Outreach campaign once again Creighton has recognized Statewide for the Native American Family program I would like to have somebody come up and accept that Michelle no more for you we're very very very proud of our curriculum team and the Outreach support um and finally who do I invite up for our Apple award where are you this evening we're very pleased to welcome two professionals distinguished professionals from Apple uh Carla mishkar with whom we've worked probably for six or seven years as we've worked to deploy one-on-one technology devices and whom I just met this evening but has been a valuable partner in the a plus process um and finally who do I invite up for our Apple award is that what you sound like that is not me it's not me I I sound much more loyalty so I'm pleased to introduce Dr George Chung from application Dr Lewis and board community members thank you for welcoming me to your community first of all um I'm saddened to hear that you're retiring and my condolences to your mother about your mother um I'm here representing apple on the part about something called Apple distinguished schools and what Apple distinguished schools is it's a recognition by Apple and if you don't know who apple is just take out your iPhone right um so I just wanted to make clear that this recognition is a very special honor when you think about the hundreds of thousands of schools around the world and and soaked that idea hundreds of thousands of schools there are only 728 and two of them come from your school district so I I put that in perspective because you need and the level of one commitment from all of the faculty on the schools on those two campuses as well as the leaders themselves so I want to separate this idea first of all that I'm going to introduce both of them at the same time because each of them need recognition on their own and so first I'd like to introduce Biltmore prep uh Preparatory Academy Dr Stephanie DeMar has been a phenomenal leader not only is she leading in this idea of making sure that her school is getting quality education she's making sure that there's bilingual understanding to there not just literacy but cultural and when you think about this for a moment when we think about the future over the for our students coming from myself as Peruvian chinese-american Spanish English and Chinese are the three main languages out there and what Stephanie Dr Demar I'm sorry and her team have really focused on is making sure that our kids don't just get a quality education but graduate to become biliterate in uh in Spanish and if you have not received this yet Dr Demar and her team will go ahead and pass this out to you this is a two-page story and one of the things that I've always said is in education we are horrible at telling our own story why because we just are focused on what we need to do day in day out which is educate our kids but I'm here to tell you that they need and this is what we need to do as a community is to really Shine the Light about what this school is doing and so if the rest of the community has not seen this by all means pick up a copy uh from Dr Demar and her team as well as I'm sure it's on their website they focus on this idea of and I might say this wrong because my Spanish is not as good or Google and that's the Tiger's Pride it is this idea of simply saying we are together it is pride that we have to helping our students Pride that we will be together and making sure that they have a future in this world that we're globally competitive so I'd like to welcome up Dr Demar as I present to her the award for Apple distinguished schools foreign I forgot to mention one of the things that you also have to recognize is that her school did not become an apple distinguished school once or twice this is the third time that they've become an apple design school which to me is the level of commitment not just for now but for the future and she continued continues with her team to show that she is committed and I hope that you all recognize her and her team and visit her school to see the great things that are happening with the use of technology and accelerating and giving new Pathways for her students the second School Monte Vista this school the interesting thing that I really want to point out is if you've ever heard about the world economic Forum the world economic forum is these great minds around the world it's talking about the skills that our students need today to prepare them for the future and so they said by the year 2022 which was last year they said creativity is the most important skill and if you look at what Dr Joel Lauren has put on his creativity is one of the big things that they focus on now you might be thinking this is school why are we focusing on that aren't we supposed to be focusing on academics aren't we supposed to be focusing on standard tests those things come what we need to help is help them achieve higher think about flying to the moon and the worst thing you can do is actually fly so when we think about that for a moment and he talks about six houses one family he isn't talking about just creating a school he's actually talking about creating a culture and if you think about that we all know how important culture is if that drives us to our families that drives us to our groups that we belong to because that is what he looks at he accepts the children for where they are and builds them into these houses and then creates a family so I I just want to help you recognize he has led his school not once not twice but three times as well and think about that again this is 728 schools around the world trying to get it once is already difficult enough but doing a three-peat while the numbers speak in itself with that being said I'd like to welcome Dr Lauren to the front so I can present him his award thank you again and if you have not had an opportunity uh for the community to see this please check out their two-page report or their two-page story that really emphasizes and if you have an opportunity to talk to them thank them for all the uh tireless effort that they've done for their students thank you thank you so much um that brings us over to item 4D governing board reports Ms Ayers would you like to start us off sure good evening I just have a short little story I'll try to make it short because I know it um so I was contacted by um a friend of mine asking if I wanted to go to the NFL experience with my students because I am also a teacher um I ended up inviting um Papago as well contacting Sylvia and so we had um set for all these students to go unfortunately due to buses in both districts um we weren't able to get Sylvia a bus in time um and I really like to thank the bus people here because I called them and tried to rent a bus from here and if it wasn't half day I probably would have gotten one um and Sylvia probably would have been able to go but I just think it's a sad thing that we can't get buses to go on field trips and our kids are going to miss this wonderful field trip because we have these obstacles in our way and we don't have enough buses we don't have enough bus drivers um but um I do want to say congratulations to Kelly at our site because the Cardinals who we are partnering with really came through for Sylvia and they're still planning on doing something really great at their school um so they don't have to go somewhere but um Kelly one of their teachers at their site got Super Bowl tickets um and so that was something uh really cool for her and I ended up getting Super Bowl tickets so I guess I'll see her there so I just wanted to say um say that so thank you thank you for sharing that um Miss McCaleb not too much just want to double down on school counselor a week um all of our staff um I mean teachers also sometimes play that role but um truly just appreciate the emphasis that we have in this District on SEL it's been mentioned already several times tonight um and with everything looming in our state um I think it is that much more important that we just recommit ourselves that that is you know the learning can't take place if the kids are not emotionally ready to learn um so I'm really proud of all the work that our staff do we are so appreciative of our counselors child Justice Advocates um and everybody that makes sure that our kids are feeling okay before we get into the nitty-gritty of the learning um also um just continue to be pleased with emphasis on the Outdoor Learning I think we really are doing something amazing um our leaders got to go out to voice Thompson Arboretum and leaders and some other staff members um and so from a leadership perspective learn about how important that is which I think is really crucial because we can have teachers who are all in we can have kids who love it but also that needs to be really taken seriously by our leadership to be sustainable um and there was very good feedback um I'm now getting harassed in my district about why my district didn't get that opportunity um so Creighton made people jealous um and then um doubling down on celebrating the tech department here all of the staff who earn the Apple a distinguished award that is a huge huge feat I can tell you that just as a whole our district Robin Suzanne isn't along with our district but the people that we have really looking at transforming what tech integration can do for our kids to differentiate for them to help meet their needs to make learning exciting to open up opportunities to speak to people all over the world and learn about things that are you know outside of their neighborhood those are huge opportunities and I just really appreciate being a part of a district that takes that so seriously being a teacher a flip teacher with iPads and with apple program in this District was what careened me into the edtech world and it really is important I've seen it transform the way teachers teach I've seen it transform the way kids learn so huge shout out to the Apple distinguished schools and everyone else who does an amazing job making sure our kids have effective and creative use of technology in our schools thank you Miss mcmah live Miss Mick shepherdy Gibson McLean um hi everyone I'll just introduce myself one more time because I think last time I introduced myself to like three people um whoever was sitting in the back there um so my name is Katie Gibson McLean I um am a public defender during the day for the county so I represent people who are charged with felonies who can't afford an attorney um I live just down the street two blocks away in my childhood home my family's lived in this neighborhood since 1985.
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I would like to welcome you tonight to our work study and brief board business meeting Tuesday February 7th thank you for those who are in attendance and are watching online or we'll watch the recording we will begin I've called this meeting to order and we'll jump right into the presentation and discussion topics we'll start with 2.01 Master Capital planning committee update Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members again welcome to everyone tonight um 2.01 are Master Capital planning committee update as many of you know and some of you may not know we've had a master Capital planning committee for a little while now and we thought it would be a good idea to have a little update considering the fact that we have a couple new board members here so again trying to help get everybody up to speed and I'll turn it over Bonnie Betts is heading up that committee and working with orcot Winslow and so I'll introduce your guest okay great yeah uh thank you good evening Dr McCord um president wood board members um this we thought it was timely we have some data that we can share with you and wanted to make sure that you all were aware that we are going through this process but to begin I definitely wanted to share our Master Capital planning Partners so next to me is Tara Grenier she's with Orcutt Winslow along with Sarah nanbala who's been a key principal in the project as well as Scott sawinski and a myriad of other individuals that have been playing a role in addition when they responded to our request for proposal they partnered with another company amaresco and it's their software solution that will be used to actually collect all the data surrounding our Master Capital plan so today's report we want to talk about the mCP partners and the superintendent committee some details on that we are sharing some facility belief statements about the leadership team went over and approved I had our last leadership meeting we'll get into the facility assessments and pilot results which is related to the three pilot schools that we opted to do and we did that back in October finally just to walk into some qualitative metrics that's part of this master Capital plan that Tara will share with you and then getting through the details of educational programming versus technical specifications and then giving you an example of a technology chapter associated with those educational program specifications and then I'd be remiss if I didn't make sure that I introduced Albert dutchover so hopefully he's you're supposed to sit right behind me anyway he is a very key component to this master Capital planning process he he did have in his possession a master Capital plan that was developed in the 2010 time frame which represented a massive spreadsheet and it just had all of our facilities listed and all of the the larger components associated with each facility so you'll hear me use the component word many times so that would be roofs would be a component central plant HVAC equipment all those would be specific components bathroom Renovations carpeting even flooring interior and exterior paint so we so that's the tool that Albert and I have been using over the last four and a half years to determine our priorities associated with the bond spend so as we are getting further into that we were judging all of our next projects based upon the life cycle of each individual component instead of a facility assessment so we both felt that that was a hole in the data and so that was when we came to you last summer and requested an approval for our partnership with Orcutt Winslow and amaresco to begin this master Capital planning process so kept Mass Capital planning why and of course we need to manage our Capital assets I wanted to make sure that you all were aware of our footprint here in the town of Gilbert and a little bit in Chandler and a little bit in Mesa but our footprint we have 39 schools 26 elementaries we have five Comprehensive High Schools we have a 712 Academy which is GCA along with global Academy and then on top of that we have six large district office complex facilities so over um over what did you tell me Albert for thank you 4.8 million square feet of property and assets that that are part of Gilbert public schools in addition if you would like to I shared the aquifer with three of you Jill and Lori were already received your your copies but in this document you will see our Capital asset grouping and our total booked value of all of our Capital assets is just under 500 million dollars so that's a sizable amount and that's just the book value so it's not the market value it's not the replacement value but it would give you an idea of the amount of the quantification of the value that we are responsible for here in Gilbert Public Schools so that's the why of the master Capital planning process so Asset Management best practices most of this I've stolen from from Orcutt and from from amaresco so our goals are to understand Capital renewal needs and establish consistent data management practices so I shared with you this massive spreadsheet that Albert and I have been using well it's really difficult to get back in there and just record well what did we do and how much do we spend and which component did we update and then keep that going because you know well this is what it was in the history do we add a column do we add a year in which we replaced it we were supposed to replace it in this year do we put another year in there so that's when we actually replaced it so it was very difficult so it's important that we have an ability to collect consistent data and be able to look at it and report on it in the future established facility and component standards I shared some of that with you our educational program specifications are very important in that area and then finally develop a data defensible so our goal is to make sure that the data is valid and the quantification of the needs is valid and then that we can prioritize not just about facility condition and Graham Maxwell who is our mresco partner who who will introduce himself later to you and he is online he will share some of those actions and prioritization schemes that we we would use so it's not just the facility component what its condition is whether it's poor fair or good it's also what is the what is the um the vulnerability of that particular component if it doesn't get addressed so as an example if we have an HVAC unit that goes down in three or four of our classrooms at one of our elementary schools it would shut down the educational program at that school because especially in the um early fall because of the we wouldn't be able to keep it cool and it'd be uncomfortable for our for our students so that's just an example so and those are kind of some of the some of the conversations that he will have with you later I have one question we still have state standards and statutes about the sizes of our classrooms and the number of people that are allowed in those classrooms and specifications as far as square footage and things like that correct correct um and I believe there's a portion in the presentation that we'll talk about the qualitative measures okay that we're using as a benchmark for some of the questions that amaresco is seeking as they go through their analysis of the properties okay thank you and in addition Orcutt did use a lot of the state facilities board standards in developing our educational programs to start with so that's our starting point so um so the RFP process of course I've already shared that with you the master Capital plan is a superintendent the master Capital planning committee is a superintendent's committee so we we set it up initially to meet quarterly we may have a need to meet more often depending upon the data and some of the decisions that we need the the body to to make as we get into the process of establishing our educational program standards Etc it was also very important that this master Capital planning committee represent all stakeholders so not just all the various Geographic areas in Gilbert Public Schools but also the the the types of stakeholders whether it's a parent a Community member we've invited students from the superintendent student Senate we've invited teachers and administrators and district office personnel and we do have a contingent of about five professionals at the district level that are there to offer technical support to the committee as we're navigating all of this data so um we expect to that that they they will actually make the recommendations for the facility and Equipment standards we would present that to them for them to approve uh we would um we want them to help determine the prioritization so is security the highest priority would we prioritize HVAC over exterior paint those types of questions would also be requested of our Master Capital planning committee also establish and review the actual product so annually or biannually probably is what we'll end up doing we will be presenting a formal document and and that will be approved and created annually with staff of course with support from the master Capital planning committee so before I go any further are there any questions about any of that okay great so um over the last month or so we have met in in the superintendent's cabinet regarding what would be our facility belief statements here in Gilbert public schools and um and how should we communicate those out as part of our Master Capital planning process so we've drafted these five statements the intent is for them to be presented and discussed at the master Capital planning committee that's scheduled for Monday night the 13th of February and they will go through all these to determine if they wanted to add any if we've covered everything or if there are some some things that they don't think we need you know those kinds of things so I'm not going to State these for you but um but if you have any questions about those let me know and we we can send that to the master Capital planning committee for a further discussion so anything else on that okay great so the facility process and GPS pilot results at this point in time I'm going to hand this over to our friend that's in New Hampshire and he has agreed to um to participate remotely for us so Graham are you there and can you say hello hello everyone so I'm Graham Maxwell I'm the senior director of operations at ameresco and I'm leading the facility condition assessment for the master capital planning project I should probably check in can everyone hear me yes good okay so next slide then Bonnie if I kind of go through some of the concepts here you bet okay okay there you go Graham thank you so everything we do rolls up to an ASTM uniform Act 2 classification system and I say that because Bonnie just spoke about components and I just want to kind of break that out a little bit so ASTM uniform Act 2 is adopted by the GSA the federal government it's just a way of talking about buildings and the things within buildings and within uniform out we refer to buildings and sites as assets and an asset contains those kind of key attributes like building size number of floors what year of construction it is maybe even the address and within the building we talk about elements so elements are those major components most common to a building that include your roofs your windows your foundations but also there's mechanical systems like Chillers and last but not least we talk about actions actions are the things you do so when a chiller fails what do you do about it can you repair it can do you replace it based on life cycle Etc and we show this hierarchy because everything we're kind of about to talk to looks like this speaks like this within the database the work that we're going to talk about next slide please Bonnie one of one of the other key Concepts is the facility condition index so again this is an industry standard this is a unit of measurement of risk um for you for any school within your portfolio any building within a school or your portfolio as a whole it considers all of those actions those renewal costs and it divides them by the current placement value not to be confused with the book value the current placement value would be the cost to replace that facility in in kind this year so when you take the renewal cost and divide it by the CRV the current replacement value you get a percentage ultimately which which can be kind of categorized as good zero to five percent fair five to ten poor 10 to 30 and critical just a little I'll just point out critical when a building gets to cryptical that's when reactive things start happening the roof might leak the chiller might fail on a more frequent basis and that is when the property is kind of migrating away from you in terms of putting good money after bad money next slide please Bonnie so those will be kind of more common themes as we kind of look at polio as a whole for now what we've done is a pilot where we took three of your schools all the way to the Finish Line in terms of the facility condition assessment process those three schools were camper very high oak tree and South Valley Junior I believe if I'm just just checking my notes Here camper Valley was built in 2009 oak tree 1999 and staff ballet Junior in 2004.
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television I'm sorry I should hear that heads up right um for our February 7th meeting tonight's meeting is going to be primarily and specifically on the superintendent's budget proposal to the Board of Education so we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance then uh we'll go right into the public forum and then we'll go right into the superintendent's presentation okay so if you stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance please pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America foreign okay thank you very much we'll go right into public comment and I do want to say that I have a public comment which will be in a minute and everybody will get the letter from a Jennifer Abel uh talking about the school zone traffic study making the crossings safer for pedestrians so we'll we'll leave that into the uh it'll be in your consent agenda for the next time around okay right so I have that uh and then here we'll open it up for public forum anyone online if you'd like to speak to the board of education on public forum you can go ahead and raise your hand if you're joining us uh tonight you want to make a public comment and I'll call on you by your Zoom name let me just um again if you're online and want to make a public comment tonight you can go ahead and use the racehand feature zoom and I'll call on You by using them okay so I do I do want to recognize three Board of Education members are on a video tonight so uh Cindy Motors on Felicia Jordan and Ryan O'Donnell so we do have a uh with the exception of Kim Sullivan who's ill tonight so I just want to make mention that public forum for anyone in the audience sure how are you how are you doing I'm Margaret Lynch at Courtesy um I have contacted the high school principal about this but I haven't heard from it in about two weeks so it might have things that might have changed I'm coming now and then but um uh I would like to know why the athletic department is not allowing the use of physical cash to pay for tickets to support for our sporting events expressly after the sports boosters have requested a cash option to be allowed according to the ACLU if Connecticut and their public written testimony for Public Act 2160 and acts concerning successful forms of currency as payment in local businesses which has been made law as of June 16 2021 and it states that packed must be an option there are several reasons why cashless stores are a bad idea first a cashless Society is bad for privacy when electronic payments or other payments that use the middleman are involved in transactions the middleman gets to learn about our purchases and can potentially mine that information for its own benefit based on weak privacy laws there are also a few prohibitions on the middleman but be it be a bank or a credit card company or the seller itself from profiting from our spending data cash on the other hand maintains equals privacy and keeps our spending choices confidential even more than that though a cashless Society hurts marginalized people in our communities low-income people often do not have the resources identity documents or spare funds to obtain bank accounts credit cards and other practice payment methods because of systemic racism in the United States and Connecticut this lack of access Falls unequally on black and brown people and other written testimony from the greater Harper Legal Services according to the Institute for Women's policy research many abusers use economic abuse to limit their victims options and make them financially dependent on their abuser credit cards allow abusers to track the spending of their victims through their credit card use using cash reduces the ability of an abuser to track a domestic violence victim by allowing the victim to erase the electronic Financial trial and from a community outreach consultant when consumers pay with cash they control what they buy and their purchases remain private and firstly when an individual uses electronic payments he or she leaves behind digital breadcrumbs of all purchases for merchants financial institutions and technology companies to tracks collect and sell each time someone uses an electronic payment he or she exposes their personal data making that person vulnerable to data breaches so domestic violence privacy concerns marginalized populations prohibiting the use of cash transactions is ignoring diversity equity and inclusion goals we have as a community I also question why the Canton athletic department does not need to follow the state's Cash's currency law why is it allowed to prohibit the use of cash and force the use of digital ticketing through tickets for it this company doesn't even list its privacy policy online and is also not listed in our District's student data privacy approval list so hopefully going forward we can offer cash we can let people use cash in our school system from here on out thank you thank you for that comment I'm going to let Mr Case address that because I think he has some thoughts on that sorry thank you Mr Daniels and Mrs Williams thank you for bringing this to our attention I am aware of uh the email exchanges first of all I want to thank you for bringing it to the attention of Mr Department High School principal um because you did bring it to our attention uh we checked with our school board attorney on the on the state statute and whether or not we were allowed to do this um currently there are some cases in court right now that have yet to be decided so our attorney is saying yes we can continue to do this we can continue to use the tickets ticket for uh ticket purchases for our musical performances for our athletic events I also um need to let everyone know that this is the direction the CI ciac has advised um all of its schools to um to not collect cash for athletic events um for a variety of reasons so we will continue to use tickets ticket however um in your comments tonight where you talk about the reasons that a cashless Society can be detrimental marginalized people um in abuse situations I mean those are interesting statistics so I'm going to submit into public so that would be very helpful so um I know the board and I will um we'll continue the discussion on that uh but we did check with our attorney it is legal for us to continue to do that but we will discuss it further but why why is it that public schools are are able to be above the law yeah um I rely on our attorney to give us that information I'm not an expert in that um I'd have to look back at his uh email that he sent Mr depipo and me thanks thanks for your comment so I we hear you and I look forward to reading the comments that you read to us so thank you okay all I have is uh administrative staff now so I don't think Jeff you want to say anything for Public Works no just kidding sandwiches okay all right so that uh that will close out I'll give it one more time anyone online that would like to speak to public forum before we close it out okay same none Karen okay so uh we're gonna move right into the uh into the budget presentation by the superintendent schools and thank you so much good evening everybody good evening uh board members and good evening to um Mrs Lynch and our administrative staff as I begin tonight I want to thank um all of our administrators as I have said in the past and I will say now that it used to be the budget development process was just a few months out of the year now it's a 12-month process so we begin the budget development process um early on in the summer for the upcoming school year as we analyze student enrollment projections we analyze our teacher staff ratio we analyze how we've used our resources in the past for instructional supplies and other items and we look at the goals that we have set for ourselves based upon all of the student achievement data we've collected and then we prioritize and determine how to use our limited resources to help move the Canton Public Schools forward so I want to thank our administrative team for for doing that um Rebecca Corto who's principal at Canton Intermediate School she um new to a family um issue she was not able to be here tonight but I want to thank her Jeff Moore principal of Canton middle school thank you for your efforts uh Mr dependpo principal of Canton High School also had a conflict tonight so he is not here but thank you to Mr dipepal thank you Dr Kidwell our assistant principal high school for your efforts and Barbara McLean our director of people Personnel Services thank you and Kim Hearth our athletic director Kim thank you as you worked hard to put the athletic budget together for this year so I do have a presentation that is in your packets uh that I'll be going over with you tonight my goal tonight is to give you a 30 000 foot overview of the budget this is the meeting where um after all the administrators presentations to Donna John and me this is the meeting where I share with you my recommendations for a budget that will help us meet our goals and move us forward and I didn't mean to leave out um Mr Bishop and this is this has been zakowski who also are instrumental in getting this budget developed um and Dad I know you've worked tires tirelessly over the past week to pull all of this together so with that being said I think it's important for us to start out with what we know about our fixed contractual obligations and our fixed costs so um you see that on the screen and it's also the one pager that you have in front of you so what this shows you is what the difference is between this current Year's budget 22 23 and next year's proposed budget 23-24 and you can see the increases for our personnel for each one of our Personnel categories for most of the Personnel in our district I'll remind everyone that they are part of bargaining units so we have negotiated contracts with personnel and I will let you know that according to the contracts administrators are receiving a three percent increase uh teachers depending on their step placement um you would see a different increase depending on what step a teacher economy of 14 steps based upon experience based upon degree level bachelor's Master's and six-year degree so their increases would vary depending on their years of experience custodians and maintenance Personnel will receive a three percent increase as well para Educators again depending on their step placement will receive between a 1.97 increase any five percent increase what you see here is a decrease and the reason that there's a decrease is because um we allotted um the funding for Paras to several grants so um so it looks like a decrease in our general Ed budget but it is not a true decrease overall so that just stands out and I wanted to mention that we have teacher extracurricular stipends um we have some new clubs that we're going to be proposing for this year which is why they increase there secretaries will receive a three percent increase as well we have a provision in our contract uh to pay out certified and non-certified sick leave for those staff members who are retiring based upon the contract language so we have funding available for that so overall our total known contractual increases amount to an increase of five hundred and two thousand three hundred and thirty one dollars tonight you're going to hear me propose some new Personnel positions and those include listed in bold um underneath the negotiated contracts area I'm going to be recommending a math consultant for the middle school high school we're going to call that position the math interventionist and coach I'm recommending three learning Labs special education teachers a structured literacy teacher at Cherry Brook and in an edition of three para educators that comes to a cost of 358 295 which is not included in the increases above any questions so far please so just a little different from this morning but you've taken 122.59 you've taken it out of this morning yes okay and you just moved it down got it okay I just want to be clear on that because yeah so that's something we noticed right after our okay the figures are the same shall we just move that amount to be more accurate and then other fixed costs are medical dental insurance is increasing by 329 which is about a six percent increase over this year's health insurance premiums our transportation contracts for K-12 Transportation according to our contract with Martel that is increasing two and a half percent and then we needed to add an additional bus run which is why the increase is forty seven thousand dollars I want to bring your attention to the utilities line item utilities and heat so these are huge increases this year utilities are one of the major drivers of this budget we're all seeing increases in our utility costs um here in our school district we're looking at an increase of over 200 000 just in utilities um to keep the schools up and running as they are now and then of course special education is a main driver we're looking at an increase of in-district Services of over a hundred and fifty four thousand dollars in out-of-district tuition and transportation an increase of 580 701 dollars those are the known fixed costs so tonight I'm coming to you with a proposed budget that represents a 7.9 percent increase over this year's budget before I go into more detail does anyone have any questions about any information on this street well Claudia I don't know if you have any additional copies for people in the audience of this you mean that yeah I'll just check with my board members online are you guys following you tracking okay okay all right thank you Peggy uh Peggy Joe and I had this this morning so and Russell sorry so if you have any questions just um I mean I'm assuming we'll get more oh yeah thank you okay I'll now uh turn your um attention to the um so of the 7.9 and this is done I would I kind of uh left your voicemail on this oh 7.9 what what what accounts were fixed in that 7.9 again oh you got that okay everybody I have a slide for that right yeah okay the first few um Pages um of my presentation um you've heard before so I will only use those when I talk to the community to remind them about our vision our mission and our values um and our vision of The Graduate so I just want to remind everybody that um all of our resources are aligned to ensure that our Canton Public School students graduate Canton High School with the 21st century skills we being important we want students to be um creative thinkers effective communicators effective collaborators critical thinkers and we want them to apply all of those skills by most importantly being compassionate and kind citizens so we align all of our resources to ensure that our graduates have those skills briefly just to remind everyone about the budget development process the administrators worked with their staff who identify the goals and to identify the needs based upon those goals they presented their budget requests to cabinet members the cabinet of our school district includes Donna our business manager Mr Bishop our assistant superintendent um this is McLean our director of people Personnel Services and myself I then considered all requests and made changes both increases and reductions mostly reductions so prior to um tonight um I reduced the administrator's requests by over eight hundred thousand dollars and you can see that on the spreadsheet one of the first colonies I'm presenting to you my proposed budget tonight February 7th we are looking for public comments uh we're asking the public to come out next Tuesday night February 14th um to give us uh their feedback on my proposed budget we will make sure that my budget and presentation is posted online tomorrow for community members um to analyze so we'll be looking for feedback next uh Tuesday and also on February 22nd those are our next two board meetings as you know we have a board of education Finance subcommittee the subcommittee met this morning to get a preview of this budget and we'll also meet again next Wednesday morning at 7 30 to continue to to do a deep dive of the line this board will need to adapt of the budget by March 6th according to town Charter that's a Monday so our hope is that the board will be ready to adopt the budget on Wednesday night February 22nd if not the board may consider adding a special meeting prior to March 6th excuse me so we have to adopted by March 6th yes by March 6th and that goes to the board of Finance yes thank you so once you adapt the budget it is sent off electronically and to the board of Finance on Monday March 6th the Board of Education Donna John Lou and I will present the budget to the board of Finance at their meeting on March 15th and that's uh here in this room at 6 pm the town Board of finance will then hold the budget workshop on March 27th the mail consider both the town's budget and the board of education's budget and then the budgets will be presented to Citizens at the Town annual meeting on April 24th according to town Charter um the budget goes to a referendum automatically and that referendum date will be set prior to May 11 2023.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
[Music] so Cara's gonna start it off and okay everyone so the purpose of this Workshop really just to kind of bring everybody back on board to the academy the purpose what we have planned from the very first time that we presented we lived a couple years ago and the board has since changed over so I think I've been at the pleasure of hearing other presentations but not not some you know in totality so um kind of bring a little bit of clarity around the work and also we're getting ready to start kicking off with some Community communication so that our families are more aware of what's Happening about what's available and the timeline of the process because there's also been some questions that we'll pass from I'd like to introduce a couple people at the table with me tonight obviously you know what the indomit is we have a friend's team tonight and mostly they do is our staff original administrator we've been all very instrumental and I will say yes with the other day we have the groundbreaking for the Academy which was very very special to me personally as many other people but there's been a lot of hard work that has gone into this Academy behind the scenes and Dan and I received some citations but Melissa could have easily received a friend I have a whole team at the University of high school has been working our group of Administrators have been working on a lot of operations behind the background of all the information as well okay with us for years to come with us so thank you okay so we'll get started okay I'm sorry okay um so as you you're well aware this is our DPS Vision about aspiring in 200 to advance all Learners to their Highest Potential and then our mission of course which really centers on that pivotal transformational learning word um which we're taking very seriously in the visioning of these of this Academy model so a lot of this work dovetails in and is part of our portrait of The Graduate so when we talk about what we want in terms of the vision for our students what we want student outcomes to look like and kind of experiences that students have that allow them to be well-rounded individuals that are ready for their world of work in college Beyond we have looked to our portrait of undergraduate to to lead the way in our thinking and to serve as the lens for all the work that we're doing and so there's been a lot of questions so how does this fortunately graduate the work on the academy and the shifts that we're making kind of all fit together where are we going to see how this plays out so we've been working through as you know developing a Continuum of the Portuguese graduate through delineating the characteristics of an advocate Communicator a collaborator an innovator and a learner and really having conversations about what that means at the high school level what that means of the Middle School level and now in development over the next year or so would be K-5 as well so that we have a K-12 Continuum of skills and attributes that were all working to kind of surround our students with and to support them so that they can achieve at greater levels um as we build curricular experiences as we bring on programming we will be integrating these attributes and experiences into the curriculum we're also going to be providing increased Early College opportunities which is super important um for for our students as well so in addition to nurturing these attributes making sure that they're well prepared for the walls Beyond Airway High School so the Career Academy concept is not new it's a little bit more new in this area it is part of New England we have seen many amazing models starting with our visit and trip to the academies of Nashville when we first started to understand a little bit more about the power of this model so career academies are designed to prepare students for College and Career there are schools within schools they help to personalize especially our large high school and to personalize the learning environment and they are schools that work deliberately with Community Partners peers teachers an instructional environment that Fosters academic success there are three key elements in a Career Academy and concept one is that we provide a much smaller learning community and you think of the size of Danbury High School you start to break that down and group students by like interest passions and games all of a sudden Things become more personalized or more meaningful and more focused not just for the teachers students for the families as well and that our community can come and support in these areas of Interest we are still providing the college preparatory sequential curriculum with a career theme this is not a technical high school but we'll be doing a lot of technical things with stem computers an amazing array of opportunities that only for students but all preparing students for college should they choose to do that what are the other unique elements to this is that there's an Advisory board that supports the school system and the actual academies and The Advisory Board is super important because that's where we bring in some Community investment piece so we're working with local areas like our Employers in the surrounding area higher education and community members so it's a true Community effort it's an investment and one that pays dividends down the road again to reiterate this is a rigorous career connecting curriculum is we are opening a wall-to-wall Academy so that means that every student goes into an academy we will have seven academies six that are eaten and one as a Freshman Academy experience we'll have up to 24 Pathways we currently have about 18 right now in development over time we hope to bring on on more as we build capacity you'll have access to the parents coursework will be a focused electives to achieve the students will engage in and these will also lead to opportunities to earn industry recognized credentials which I'll talk a little bit more about in the next slide a huge Focus around academies and career human academies is this idea of project-based learning so instead of the traditional talk at you teaching student teacher talk students respond kids are actually engaged in Hands-On real world projects that engage them in in their projects that they're that are related to the themes in their Academy but also other projects as well the selective electives if you want to call them usually Physicians kids to earn industry recognized credentials so a lot of students can end with industry credentials but also opportunities for our fed to shows out in the community so where did we get the ideas for the career clusters of the pathways that were selected so we've done a lot of research on this team Melissa may do is really really rigorous in her preparation for a lot of research that we use to develop the actionable academies and the pathways that we thought would be most valuable and important for students and we used National Career Cluster information we analyzed Regional Career Cluster information and then of course what we see here is the Connecticut career clusters so these are the career clusters that Connecticut has deemed that are in a high need area we also looked at the Department of Labor Statistics to inform the work so we're on the job opportunities for the job outlooks and then what are the local opportunities that exist right here in Danbury and in this area uh this is just a list of generic lists of Industry certifications to get an idea about types of certifications or other students it's not an exhaustive list and we will be pursuing these we have students these Pathways and building these over time so the timeline has been a little bit in question and I want to it's kind of important at this point to pause it to say you know we've heard a lot of there's been some confusion with parents as to when the Academy's opening when are we progressing and so while the building itself is not opening right for another year that it was originally intended to we are still progressing along our timeline and making some adjustments and some of that will be very complex on our part particularly on dance with the number of students that will be coming up to Denver high school but we're it's not going to stop the flow of curriculum the opportunities that we'll be working on for students in the intro so for example right now our current 8th graders in 2022 2023 will be our first cohort to come to the high school to be in the first graduating class of the Academies um in 2023 2024 it'll be the Russian sorry I haven't said that incorrectly 2022 2023 are your current eighth grade class the first cohort will begin in 2023 2024 and they'll engage in the initial career exploration course that we have prepared for that okay in 2024 2025 the essentials course um it will be for all students so that's really kind of a foundational pathway course so students will as they select their academies after freshman year they'll go in as a 10th grader they'll be in their academies and their Essentials courses the foundational course faculty in the area that they selected so for example we look on the second half of the stud at the bottom those are the foundational courses that will make a little bit more sense when we talk about program study guides and then in 2025 2026 those students will be headed towards their specialized courses so a student in eighth grade now um you know exit um we'll still be participating with us in this program regardless of whether or not the building was actually open just yet so that nothing's being paused in terms of the peripheral development so we'll still have those experiences if the building doesn't open um on time from the new with the new date that we'll have we'll have another some issues there but right now we think we can still continue forward I'd like Dan to talk a little bit about the academy and the sites and some of the programming that we have with us thank you all right here we are folks this is the most important thing not true that you have to take home tonight both of these because it came out not wrong but a little different when we first started this project both Academy sites fall under the umbrella of Danbury High School I think there was a lot of confusion when it first came out that there were going to be academies at this new site it was called Danbury career academies because that's your name the building important to understand that both of these these spots places Danbury High School and it was up there at the Danbury Career Academy is all under the academies of Danbury High School okay so let's all say academies of Danbury High School because I need you as the board events we make sure when you're talking to people that they understand because I still get a ton of them and get a lot of questions about that I'm only one so I'm hoping the more people we get to say the way it is which I know many of you have already had it'll get out to the families who made me want to that they are still part of dandruff High School there will not be a full-size auditorium at the new building to be refer to as the Danbury West Side campus it's DCA the public is known as sdca but we're going to call it the West Side campus for Danville High School but that doesn't exclude them from being part of our musical Productions sports teams there will be no Sports over at the Emory West Side campus I'm going to call the soccer club they're all going to come back to Denver high school they're still part of Danbury High School it's just in a different location one of the reasons that this wall started because we know in high school because of all socks as we were contemplating that three almost pre-covet it was how we were going to do that then Nashville came out and then we took this idea and said well if we're going to do it this is the model we want to do it this is the best thing we have going forward and we wanted it so the academies data roads so what does it look like the Danbury West Campus and the Denver High School main campus okay at Danbury West there will be two high school academies my classes are working emerging Technologies and scientific innovation and Medicine along with the middle school which we'll talk about a little bit later Innovation and design and thank you appreciate it and at Denver high school we will have a low vac shows for academies there are truly five because what's off of that slide is the one all the way up top where all of the students will be coming out of eighth grade we'll be going through Danver high school for that year for the grade 9 exploration and experiences that are making every student coming out of the heist of middle school and eighth grade will go to Denver High School from there they will choose probably in early January about late December when we're doing our expiration course which Academy the industry and then from there they may head to the Danbury West Campus as they hit 10th grade and the building's ready and four of those academies will remain at Danbury High School the plan right now has been to take those familiar with Denver High School the different levels in D Building create an academy on every level with you know we can't have all the new shiny stuff over on the west side so we've got some great plans going forward working with an Architects and things like that to happen here and chopping that huge another question that I received a lot of attention around was what happens to our ESL population as we know I think we are second in the state the highest ESL population this is for everybody wall to wall means everybody all students will be placed into academies from the moment they step into their real estate be coming into 9th Grade Academy all of them and from there our ell students will be choosing an academy just like everyone else we teach them along the way we do now with everything we will have ESL opportunities at both both campuses and anything that was offered at the one campus would be an offered I feel like when it comes to Max all right but with the exception of our newcomers for students that are brand new to us from a non-english speaking the country who need a little bit more support they will go to the new Commerce class or our new Commerce Academy majority over one majority of them are in ninth grade when they come here so they will be in a special Academy to get double the amount of the English language that they receive we have to separate it and from there they will choose an academy just like everyone else in 10th Grade on they will Reservoir Academy sequences Kelly you want to talk about I will say for Kelly Stark's same exact model for special education there are a little bit some exceptions to this but sure so as Dan said similar to our ESL population our special education students their IEP and support services whether that's direct special education support or any related service h-o-t-p-t so forth will be provided at both sides the only difference to that will be some of our very highly specialized programs will be offered at one or the other sites this is very consistent with the way you do things at the elementary level where Pembroke for example houses our programs for students on the autism spectrum that need a special program we don't have a need to create sometimes two programs so if that is the case only through the PPT process which is the special ed planning and placement team meeting will the student be able to place replace that one school or the other um because of that specialized program and that is for our students with very significant needs other than that for the vast majority of students receiving special ed services they will follow the process just like every other student at daycare so experiences it's all based on student experiences as you can see as we go through each grade has a specific experience that they will be led to our exploration courses and pathway selections is the culmination of the Freshman experience we are planning and working very hard for each of our freshmen to take the exploration seminar course which was built off of out of our early college opportunity workplace course which we had fought show great progress for our students and the exploration course will be in the first semester at that point when they learned about the academies and we've had our nighttime sessions with the different academies and they're asking what they're doing we will turn around and make a pathway selection and celebrate that with our our ninth graders from 10th grade everyone will take What's called the essentials course for their pathway everyone in that and for their Academy everyone in the academy will take the same 10th grade course I think you'll see when we get to the program guides that this is not I'm joining one Academy all of my classes at Denver high school or the west campus will be Academy driven there will be one course per year that is Academy driven with some selective electives if they want to take them but if not I'm the Academy of bioscience medicine and I decided I want to take a business class so we'll get to that a little bit later uh 11th grade we start talking more about pathway electives that they can take and we introduce job shadow Mr Dean Brett Dean over here is working very hard very hard to get industry partners that allow us to job shadow during the day for students I know right now our CNA classes do it at the hospital for internships and things like that they do some job chef and then when we hit 12th grade our Capstone class as it sits right now at Denver High School will change dramatically and themed to the academy pathway that they are in as a culminating project to show the successes and relates directly back to the portrait of a graduate and all the attributes that are required hopefully we will have a tremendous amount of internships for students and it's going to be very difficult to try to place upwards of 800 students in internships and not everyone may have the time and they're scheduled to do it or the interest we are going to try our best to any student that wants an internship in the local business we'll have that opportunity so what is the Freshman experience as you know we've had a Freshman Academy for 15 years now I'll say I'll develop that before I took it over in four principles but we've changed it a little bit so that our exploration seminar course very important as I mentioned for us to have it in the first semester at Denver High School not just for them to be familiar with the academies there are a bunch of ways that we can do that from Nighttime through Flex to special presentations but all the things that you see up there the team building the research digital literacy financial literacy all of those we find are extremely important team building being number one because if we can start building a sense of community at Danbury High School early on in their freshman year that'll pay dividends for another three and a half years for us you know we have exciting classes up there already like peer leadership you've already put those things forward but that's much later in the students career we're going to try to front load them in this course so that students coming in will build that sense of what Danbury High School is even though they are splitting off some academies in 10th Grade they are all hackers the Career College exploration you know we're going to bring in a lot we've always asked our Partners not for money which is unusual for them the three T's the time treasures and talents and we ask for their time and that they send people to us they come in and if you're an engineer you're going to commit and talk to our engineers you're a doctor you're going to come in and talk to the Box science class we're going to go find these industry Partners who are willing to commit and we found that they love to do it overall majority love to give back to the kids and come in and have conversations and those students when they're there or being interested in something are going to be even more interested in the exact Academy that they chose and we'd love to know the opportunity we're working very hard for this right now to have at least one college campus visit like I said with our size it's a little difficult to bring that many but when you break it down into the small learning communities that we'll have for the academies it will be easier for us to bring a freshman from you know maybe going to this cabin in the second half of the year to something they find more interesting than just visiting account very hard with our local colleges and universities for this so how do we how do we get picked into our academies well as I said late December early January we'll have a lottery and the lottery system will be the same as it is for the elementary middle schools you're going to take and hopefully it would be awesome if everyone picked their got their first choice I'm not sure that would happen we're hoping that through our course that we educate them enough that they're making a decision for them based on their interest and not based on say social groups where their friends are going to choose because I want to go to the new building because I want to stay at the old building but something that they truly have an interest in and that will make school itself more interesting you know are we allowed to transfer students coming in and are students allowed to switch through academies we really haven't gotten that far yet as we're doing it but yes there's room in academy for someone to switch to then yes but the industry certification that they may receive at the end maybe in Japanese they need to go through all of the classes you can say sometimes transfer students will receive a lot of materials before making their pathway selection when they come in I think that's what's going to happen when you choose you know some some considered as a junior something depending on the availability but that has an interest in that good question Matt um on the lotteries it works similarly to the way the Middle School website works if you someone applies for a global or they apply first time so they have to pick them up a specific Academy that they want to go through pick three give us your top three okay maybe you know and we're trying to shoot everyone get their Wanda you know I don't see how it's going to work uh everyone in May you know we did an interest survey with the staff pretty interesting one Academy came out a little bit more than anything else but then the rest of the staff it was kind of even going around it was very interesting to find out that credentials and what teachers did before they came on Board of Education because there is a just a there's a you know right when we went to what part of our visit in our learnings we went to Nebraska and we visited a really amazing Academy out there and one of the questions we've had was around the lottery process as well and Brett was followed up and has been in contact of the executive principal at that school system because they used a company to facilitate the lottery process where they they have a very high percentage of getting students within their top three choices so it's almost impossible to give everybody their first choice but it's possible it's possible to to randomize so that you get everybody within their first couple of choices that they're that they're interested in and so there are there are ways for us to make sure that we're you know satisfied with many children as possible and the choices um and so the first year the lottery process we also talked about winning the lottery as a backup so that they make sure that we're doing this uh not just the first time with one facilitator that we haven't done it up as well I know sorry why a lottery versus doing it based on student interest and Merit filling those top choices first and then having discussions with children that you know that you know they're not fitting into those top choices because they're not putting forth as much effort as you know say there's a child in the 40 and there's a child with a hundred and the child with 100 doesn't get into their Top Choice and the 40 child does like why isn't it okay it's my lucky day sure um we've had this question before right we've actually already had some conversations around these things so first you know the lottery the lottery process it's not we're based in the sense that you're you're a smarter student you're an academic so you get to pick you get to pick your passions and pursue your passions this is about all kids and so we want to make sure and these these academies are accessible um to everybody so there's challenge within academies there are college level prep courses and there's events placed along with horses and college opportunities where you see so there are ways for students to Excel and achieve in all of the academies and at different levels um and so you know the idea of the academy is that one Academy is not more uh prestigious or so than another but rather it's based on our students interests lie and that they have a choice the whole premise of this is that students um areas that they are very passionate about and so if we start saying you're you know you get all A's um that's not what I'm saying I'm saying like a lottery doesn't guarantee and I know you're saying you can make it work however but it's just it's frustrating for me to hear that we're putting it as another Lottery like west side or you know it's just so frustrating because I just feel there's a better way to do it that children are going to benefit and families are going to benefit from actually getting into an academy they want versus like this Lottery and hoping for the best I just I understand what you're saying and I get it but I just I know there's a better way to handle it I know there has to be I'm sorry [Music] um this is the first we've heard officially that it was going to be a lottery yes and are you going to hire a company like Nebraska to do the lottery or if not who's going to do the lottery there's a third party so that's another cost to the budget correct just following up so this app and Tech I think they actually have the teachers weigh in correct habitat has the teachers way in and they kind of help guide that project right so it's not a blind Lottery correctly actually you know yeah like the reason or excuse me the reason for that poll was exploratory or we have a time frame that they go through all the academies kind of get a understanding of what they are and then they are kind of go with the teacher or the guidance and kind of together work hand in hand and select those three and then you know eventually we find out which one they get but and then it isn't just I'm trying to automatically we don't know who you are and lucky to draw so so part of the part of the part of the component The Freshman experience is to have our guidance counselors also to provide and shape and the freshmen the career exploration course there's opportunities also for guidance part of the curriculum experience would be the students will get to understand what each Academy offers and what that curriculum looks like and the rigors that are are within there so there is a counseling compete component embedded in that freshman experience to help guide students to and it's also about students exploring their course as well so what am I interested in where are my passions and how do how do these choices fit into that so there is a counseling component to it um it's not necessarily prescribed as I think you should only you know academies it's more you need more along the line these are all the academies offer what is of interest to you and do you understand the career trajectories with that I just want to add I mean to me personally I'm a fan of the lottery only because if you have a passion for something that let's say you're a student who doesn't do well in regular classes but you have a passion for you know business or something like that by getting it having the opportunity to get into that Academy you might thrive in that Academy that so and and Lottery base is is the you know best way to make everything equal across the board and that is what we found in our in our experiences visiting quality academies that we've been to and understanding um you know the real engagement Factor behind it is it is in the power of that which you just described this daily I don't like what you said either me as a group a lot of us tournament just said uh you know what we couldn't come up with the system that was when we take their first quarter grades in the transition field like that's where we got stuck I understand and I don't mean their academic classes I mean what they've been engaged in in their exploratory place as Michelle was saying like so you know if they pick one of the academies and they were really they didn't enjoy it and they didn't you know do well in it the teacher knows that right and they pick that as their Top Choice and they get in just because they feel that's going to be the easiest one for that or they take it for some unknown reason and they get in that Academy right as their first choice I just feel there needs to be more of just a lot of you system because that other child who picked it as their first choice who may have done better who may have been more successful in that exploratory phase I just I mean I know the answer and I'm just it's a I'm very passionate about this because I understand it can work better um it can work differently than a lot of nurses not better it can work differently just for clarifications on my side yeah okay just for clarification sake so we're still doing four years of English language and we're still doing so we're still doing language so the child still has the option to do four years of Chinese yes so these Pathways although critical introductions to a variety of different environments working post High School experience they're just a piece of the of the overarching high school experience actually so we're still taking math we're still taking science and Arts correct so I understand how complex it is to open the schedule and the complexity of my experience with the size of Denver high school so I'm going to suspect that there'll be students in the pathways who don't get the classes that they want anyway and that's just part of the highest normalized planning experience I understand about the lottery system that I think because the students are also going to be experiencing all kinds of things that the more traditional classes yes yes just to clarify too and I know they've been one of the reasons why we're doing this presentation again and kind of coming to the circle there was a there was a point in time and maybe looking around at who's on the board at the time when we first conceptualized all of this um here tonight but she definitely was at the table as well there was a really strong urge on the board at that time that the academies were going to be open to everybody that was that came through loud and clear and that was something that you know we have also held on to um in our planning and in terms of even thinking through accessibility for our second language Learners and our special populations as well and making sure that everybody has access to students I think um if I we could go through maybe the rest of the press I know this is we knew that this was going to be um a hotter topic than probably anything else in the presentation we can certainly feel Impressions about it and discuss it um at the end and maybe in to your point about the experience we have a program study guide which I would love to get to and show you that might that would be a concise the point that you just said given our 6 30 time frame I'm wondering if we may have to come back again just to make sure that the board has an opportunity to ask some questions given the workshop invitation tonight I don't know whether the appropriate place to stop but I I think it's important to have some time to ask some questions kind of giving the Investments you want to stop here I I well I don't remember what's left and I don't know if this is a natural transmission yeah a lot of them yeah so we'll just certainly you know for two Workshop but I I don't want to leave tonight yeah I mean questions start do we have access or do we have a quick child about your presentation um so this this will be posted on the website so you can share it with everybody here oh yeah perfect thank you you're welcome okay so also included in this presentation and the reason why this is very small um but we we wanted to make sure that we provided a little more detail um than some little other charts that are a little bit more high level and so these will eventually get posted on on the website for parents and for those two to start to look at so we wanted to provide more descriptive information about each of the pathways and sort of the intended experiences that so we're not going to read all of these to you tonight but you will you know you want to make these accessible to our to our families and to our students as we start to really spread the communication word about the academies so people can have an understanding about which each Academy is about and where the pathways contained with it and so the appropriate guide getting into more granular even than what in slides previous is really a program sheet that students will be able to understand the kind of the sequencing of those electives in their course of study and so along with your regular graduation requirements they'll see how those CTE courses and foundational courses and exploration course fits in and also some suggestion options that they might want to explore with their passions uh things are other profit that they're in and so the program of study is really just delineates and helps students to better understand and make those choices and also these are great resources to provide some without counseling on about where they find themselves where they would like to see themselves and the kinds of courses that they would be up for so some of the courses um the options again at different levels of college revenue and advanced study have different levels of breaker and students will see those in these planning sheets and be able to make some good decisions parents can see these as well and as well as their counselors okay so those are your typical all your graduation requirements are there those are suggested aligned courses your standard courses that all students have to take and then there are electives and whatever students have additional choice to be on the yellow kind of careening across the middle of that sheet outlines the sequence that is that is that defines really the pathway so primarily around the CTE courses so you see ninth grade is our acceleration seminar that's a happier course at the end of ninth grade students are really kind of making those those decisions about whether they want to be they'll have full access to these program guys so they can understand the courses that they would engage in in their in their 10th grade they take their foundational course all students within an academy the same Academy have the same Foundation course so when you're talking about a a an academy that's really focused on engineering and different facets of it the the beginning course the entry-level course is very similar to all and then it branches out in grades 10 and 11 and is differentiated with different electives wanted more introductory and we want one and more we have highly suggested electives that students who are interested in this uh in in this field may want English to pursue pursue but also again they're elective so they can pursue and choose other things as well if they have other interests but majority of the classes out there are your typical high school classes and the variety of choices that we at different levels that we that we currently have now so none of that is new in addition to the program study guides students will have an opportunity as we develop these further out to understand what Technical and career organizations they can participate in what are the work based learning experiences that might be of interest to them what are the industry level certifications that are available in this pathway that they can pursue any type of dual enrollment courses that are that that we are engaging in that we will be offering and also about ones that may be out in the community that they can do on their own in addition post-secondary curricular ties so programs that are um that are that go beyond the walls of Danbury High School that might be available to them and then understanding a little bit about high-wage high skill job and careers demands and so as we continue to build all of the resources around this these two shows these two will also build out and provide a lot of information for students again to help make decisions in Venezuela's parents to offer guidance and so how does all this curriculum get developed in these in the specialty elective areas and so that's where our industry Partners partnership comes into play a lot of our teachers have tremendous skills set um in variety areas and one of the the most interesting things is seeing when we surveyed our staff about their interests beyond what they're certified in jobs that they had before they became a teacher a mid-second career jobs or their hobbies and other things they have going on we had a a wide array of teachers with an amazing background and talents in the district but um it does not substitute for direct industry content knowledge in people who are currently working in the field and so we want to take those passionate people that are teachers who are interested in developing the pathway uh more curricular experiences and programming and pair them with industry partners and look that work looks like this spring is that we will select pathway development leaders so these are folks who've just posted this uh this work for teachers who are interested to identify a pathway that they're interested in participating in and working and serving as a liaison through schools who work to develop these more robustly over the next couple of years and that they're willing to sit down with industry Partners to tap that content knowledge that they have that only they can have to help provide creative and Innovative experiences for students and then to also partner with them over time and so February those folks will be selected we have a lot of people who more interested in that we intend to have an industry partner design Sprint and that's where we'll have a facilitated session with our industry partners and faculty leaders and our curriculum folks who supervise those areas and then we'll start to lay out the the outlines for the program experiences in the form of of curricular units for those courses and so the first year so next year we're really we have our Freshman Academy course and so then this year this spring and summer we'll be working to build that foundational course in all the academies it's going to be the first the first round of work and then the electives after that follow after that so we're very excited about the collaboration between managing partners and our teachers which will be very exciting and directly working really hard to bring those interesting parts to the table for us no pressure gravity a lot of it and then our teachers were very excited to have this and so I'll move through this a little bit more quickly I think I've mentioned several times before that the bar Foundation has supported a lot of our work in this area they've supported our professional learning everyone we won't meet all these two who have access to those but they've also supported us in terms of our ability to go and see these Academy models and stuff and to work with people who've been doing it to understand where their missteps were to understand where their successes that could applied and things that they would do again if uh if they had to so we definitely have learned a lot and continue to be supported by bar for the next year or so behind the scenes we have Staffing realignments so again is working hard but um thinking through where our folks would like to be positioned in the academy model the further development we're finding where the lottery process was clearly our classic questions around that uh refinement of our Career College our career exploration course we've got some folks working on that right now development of our electives establishment with academic Partnerships we're writing a communication Road shows to start having conversations with our with our parents and our families and especially our students and we have our teams engaged in continuous learning we are engaging in Industry collaborations already and we have some exciting stuff on the horizon of University Partnerships and early college opportunities I'm going to have Melissa to speak about our curricular advancements and some really incredible Partnerships that we have that we're developing now so the process that Carol just laid out working with our pathway leaders is some of the work that I'm engaging in in the last couple of years to Pilot some of the models of how we work with industry and what we've learned from them to inform our curriculum so the first opportunity we had was building tomorrow's Workforce with ready CT and this provided us with the opportunity to send our own teachers out into the field and I'll illustrate this with one example there's a local business here that I want to give an a free promos to them but they're right around the corner from us they're a manufacturing facility we sent teachers to go view what they do what skills they need from students and that inspired one of my science teachers to explore their least water management system and so through that exploration we have two field trips running for students to go to their facility and learn more about how they treat waste water there since they are a food packaging facility is as well so we're still hitting our science standards through this experience but it gave her the opportunity to really make that Learning Place based for the kids and it also gave the kids the opportunity to go and see that facility through our next Generation sector Partnerships we've been working with the Northwest Regional Workforce board on two collaboratives one in healthcare and one in manufacturing these Partnerships have been wonderful for the Northwest Regional Workforce board because it actually allowed us the opportunity to apply for two federal grants that are supporting the work in healthcare and Manufacturing for Health Care we've been working with new Vans and other local providers in the area to provide a experience during the summer for students to go and work in the hospitals experience different facets in the medical field so you know it's not just about nursing we need building specialists so through that internship process they'll go through and explore all of the different facets that let the hospital run and let medical medical facilities operate so that they can actually understand what it means to work in a medical field the manufacturing partnership is a little bit different it's exploring how to have more opportunities for students to learn coding and Robotics through from middle school through high school but it also is an opportunity for some of our counselors eventually to understand how there's numerous Pathways for graduates to enter the manufacturing field which is a very lucrative career and so that we can better inform our students of the opportunities that are out there and then finally um Erica which stands for the institute for real world education and curriculum advancements that's run out of Southern Connecticut University we have completed our Medical Technology pathway and we're just beginning to work on our communication and Design Academy and so the work that was done with the medical technology pathway paired us with two different industry partners and my team worked with them to understand well what does it mean to work in a field where you're designing medical devices to support somebody's Health like you have these very like very large engineering and also medical knowledge that's needed to coalesce into an experience so working Hands-On with those two industry Partners we were also able to send teachers out to their facilities but to gain a better understanding of how do you as a instructor put kids through opportunities to not only learn about how you're going to design a medical device but also what type of processes do they use so we were interested introduced to a process called the apqp process which is Advanced product quality planning so it's a way for kids to communicate around the design of something that they're designing from start to finish and getting input from others in the class to improve upon their design which you would be able to connect to a Pog attribute of being able to communicate and collaborate which are two skills that you would want to see in the workforce designed around Highway specialized pathway I'm just going to talk a little bit about our partnership updates from here so knock on Old doors has been paying off as you can see we have 50 plus Partnerships and I will say that our community is super invested into what we're dealing with as a school system so I'm really excited about what's in store for these students but also for the teachers as well so if you want to go through the next one I want everybody to understand that yes we do have business and Community Partnerships but we also have those Canadian organizations as Melissa alluded to that uh we're talking with different people for a reason so Torrington Waterbury Harbor area to talk about what those industry needs look like and how we can work with them as an educational system to make that into a reality so that to sustain our Workforce so we think it's time to get in front of the community to talk about our plans about the academies and how they can get involved so if you have certain things coming up so that our families can know what's going on making those questions about our processes and what we hope to do that as a school [Music] but this is going to be big connector in different housing areas uh departments within the high school um they have a lot of questions that I have to enjoyed having one of the ones with them but my most favorite event was coming over again February 27th event I think it's important for our educational staff to get in front of patient parents that they're currently doing their work outside of Connecticut so I have them connected with different people and Nashville different people in Virginia Pennsylvania's work so they can ask those hard questions about some of the challenges that they may be facing now additionally we have another event for our business and Community organizations coming up March 30th we need them to know what engagement opportunities are available for them I have different businesses and organizations connected with them as well uh those are from Nashville Tennessee I want them to go ahead and understand what the engagement opportunities look like and how they can also benefit their their company and how they can uh you know benefit our economy as a whole so it's not about that day and we're doing that in collaboration with the game Area Chamber of Commerce too so just going back with the makeup this makeup of this whole thing we have to understand too that advisory boards these things will help Drive the work that we do within these schools each student will be a part of Academy and we'll have all of these entities sitting at the table to plan measure our success and to do what's needed to ensure that everybody is grown you'll have all these people sitting at the table but success teachers will be there as well so when you talk about a student in an academy they will have the same group of teachers sophomore Junior and Senior year be talking about social media learning Behavior academics and attendance they are focusing in on that student and making sure they have those needs necessary to make it into the real world so these advisory boards will be crucial to how we move as a high school and I guarantee you with the business and Community engagement that we will see in time you'll see a huge impact our missing you're missing Board of Education remember on an Advisory Board should be the top of the list no what's that board of education members not on The Advisory board so you are business and Community Partners you are more than welcome to be your heart um okay so next Thursday sorry somebody should have told you before it's okay uh next steps which is creating protocols and it was beginning count partner time and best and support for people to know the amount of time our partners are putting to our students so we do start to see gains in every single area we need to know what that looks like and it's a couple of other things that we're doing behind the scenes as well to make this a little ownership um this this information was really presented in another budget meeting so I just wanted to make sure that that was in there history questions about our processary those are the that was from the staff and presentation a while back so [Music] is that what the I'd rather have my questions in the next and following Workshop you don't have to stop disability as many questions as you feel comfortable I send a follow-up sheet out as well and try to answer those as well Ms Cooper I just um want to ask the question because I I think when we're doing something like this it's best to at least have the student and a parent involved and my question my question would be I had to sort of get together but the once the lottery is over we know who's going in the academy in that particular grade is there any Plan before we put those students in that classroom to really sit down with those students and their parents and say this is what their expectations are for the student this is what we expect in a chance to do to help support those students oh people threatened because I think the degrees we're doing this is exactly what you said because when I do my March 6th presentation to incoming freshmen coming this year or when I do the open house at Danbury High School six seven hundred maybe come to that but now we're talking an Academy of each grade level about 134 and now that Academy director is going to be responsible for getting in touch with 134 fans the whole thing is to shrink this down you know so that it's manageable to do that there's no way that we can contact everyone at Denver high school if we can go at it grade by grade so you come into the Academy of biomedical you're going to have convenience you're going to have you're not getting involved we're going to do it we're gonna have some special things for them celebrations parent engagements but at that level it's much easier for us to invite 134 parents to the auditorium you can see this is specifically for your child for the next three years and get better engagement than just saying DHS thank you I wasn't gonna ask but um you said 134 that will be the initial number for the lottery right for each path we come in okay so what will happen I mean I know I'm way ahead well what happens if any of your students going through the same um umbrella I mean going through the same entrance in Danbury High School has what will happen to students if um once they decided to move out of the uh Academy two what happens if they get spelled because they might be missing I mean it's not the same educational level from one to the other and I mean what happens well we didn't say they will be sent out to the same I mean um programs that we have been sending send them in so far because I mean it will be like uh sure I see it is a kind of two different parts of that a lot of the student who's out there are high school construction sophomore junior year everything they're doing will go into another high school we receive transcripts from a new place where they belong when they come in we'll give you credit for this this and this and as you saw on the program guide that Highland Park going across is the one class that'll be specific to that cap so if you're in the biomedical and we have the essentials course going in there there's a science credit that can be attached to that in a different school you know so they can have that otherwise they're still taking this question before English net signing Soul studies it'll be algebra one on a transcript it'll be English one or English two on the transcript the difference is English too and this won't be reflected on the transcript will be specific tailored to a little bit same skills and everything that Melissa was discussing but has a theme around it and that theme will be that pathway how to be specific so when they're learning about English too it's a little bit different for an engineer than it is for maybe someone knows yeah so they're a big female okay yes but if I go out of your Academy if I'm starting them all the time and I'm taking engineering right I'm gonna meet those classes eventually at some level part if you get expelled and you get sent to to reach you will not be in the same amount in the same extensions classes as it is there because unfortunately it happens we will have probably kids expelled from different academies exactly but that's more Point how how we're going to balance that in order to get it back into the academy or back into the high school because eventually they will have different levels of Education yes yes so one right today I'll speak to what we do today right if I'm taking um piano at Danbury High School right we don't offer that course Outreach today what we do is we offer a comparable elective so that that student can continue to make progress towards their program so our students will always be guaranteed their core content areas plus electives if they go to one of our explosion programs um correct that we're not going to receive the biomedical you know information so we will need to you know work through upon their return where is the best placement for that student but they will have opportunities just like they do today to continue to make progress toward their graduation requirements in the core contents and then we tweak and make some slight changes to the electives the other thing that I can share just with um what we're looking to do with the reach program comparable is to also give them career exploration opportunities and experiences and some work out in the community as appropriate depending on the individual situation to the child so it will not be the same but they will also be engaged in career exploration and different project-based learning opportunities for program so that they can transfer back so it's not much different than what we do currently if you have a schedule right now with you know seven different courses on there you're guaranteed you're four or five and the core academics when you go to reach but most of the students have changes to their elective area courses just because we don't offer all 100 collectives that we offer thank you okay sorry um oh yeah just one question so freshman year they're going into the exploratory program um then we have the lottery the end of freshman year that will happen with their top four around that yeah so it'll take us a little time okay and so they get into say they're not they don't get into their number one they get into them is there opportunity to then move or once you're in an academy you're in that Academy and that's it for the three opportunity to move around depends on the availability of where they are I mean you know for some strange reason this student is over here says I want this is switch from here to this Academy this will sure well especially what comes into Jeffries if you do that say grade 11 or after grade 11 that credential or certificate that we're talked about then kind of becomes in Jeopardy because you may not have that course sequence to get all the way through so if you get there and one of the bonuses of this also is I'm going to be a doctor I know I'm going to be a doctor I get in there I'm taking my medical class to go through it guess what out of Kings so guess what I do when I'm going to college I'm not going to be a doctor so it saves time and money right then and there is it perfect can we offer everything like a college campus no I can't we just can't do that but yes there is opportunity for them to switch depending on availability if it involved thank you how much has it been cost for the lottery results for lottery the gender handling it or anywhere else set appointment three thousand thank you [Music] earliest discussions like I said this is the first time for it's going to be a lot of yeah [Laughter] what we already have will you be sharing the curriculum that's going to be developed for the for the academies yes so so the first the first stage is so you know we have what I would call a lot of resources right now that we're Gathering [Music] we have resources that we gather around all of these Pathways and we are going to be spending a lot of time so kind of a believer that we are we're engaging in lots of um university conversations um probably post-diversity as well they origami conversations with right now they also had a lot of curriculum to fit in the pathways and can also offer a dual credit for students so we'll be going through a process of of laying out the different curricular options along each each pathway the in terms of the actual development so we'll have curricular outlines or use totally by the end of the summer based on some of the work that gets done this spring but again that foundational course the kids are not taking the foundational course until the following year so the kids will come in and fall of 2023 and so the first course would be that career simulation course and so that should be ready to show probably by the end of the year for sure and then this group will be working to craft those foundational courses after they meet with the industry Partners to say what are all the initial Concepts that we want to make sure are embedded in this course that will provide a solid foundation make sure that we have that so we'll definitely talk about all those end courses those will be the first ones we'll be working on those not just in some of the further the course of the most that happens next year as well of course I'm going over time access to those um what's nice about this you know their students have you know they understand what graduation requirements they're showing showing the former study guide like this really allows them to see the different options and the way that they can buy courses um to achieve something and so while there is there's a lot of Industry credentials that are available to students not everybody's going to want to pursue all of those some will be embedded in courses and similar ones that students would say you know people put a 10 out of 10 hours worth of study you can also pass these two or three industry connections as well and they would work outside of that so some of the courses will by Nature being participating in the course of taking an assessment at the end and some will be a little bit more foundational to pursue those in addition to other things that we offer Kevin you were going to say before I I just wanted to make a board chair so I just wanted to follow up on the conversation about the lottery and I do think we're going to need further discussion on it the discussion one I'm very concerned about the idea of students getting in baseball Merit we I need the board to understand that we'll have issues with access and I feel like we can have concerns about liability for the board and for us as a district um I have concerns about access for special ed students I have concerns about access for our multilingual learning students and then I have concerns about access for all and so with the idea of defining Merit is I think a subjective term we can certainly make it objective but again if we take this hard line you're going to be a number of students automatically that don't have access to their first choice as an account so I I agree this is the first time you're hearing it and we do need to come back and I think have more discussion about it but I I just wanted to share initially like I have concerns about not having an objective Lottery process because I feel like it exposes Us in ways we I'm not sure because it will immediately make ensure that certain kids do not have access I'm not sure we want to be enabling but to your point there may be better ways to do this or other ways to do this you know certainly because you can explore those I heard the question about Abby Tech our numbers are quite different from that attack and it would require I think a lot of counseling from ninth grade going to 10th grade level trying to figure out what that looks like or a lottery is probably minuscule compared to the additional staff we would need to help pull that off every year just in terms of man first second third and fourth Troy training Council kids now but I again I I understand the feedback from this evening and understand the Republican needs some follow-up discussion on your gift so I just wanted to share that before of course thank you you believe any time we're the ones so just turn me again
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foreign ified School District Board of Education you would join us uh for item 4.1 flag salute we have Noah Nunez second grader from Dalton hi my name is Noah and I am in second grade from Dalton please Dad put your right hand over your heart ready begin I pledge allegiance to a flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all thank you Noah thank you let's give no our big round of applause moving to item 5.0 report or action taken during closed session there is no action um to there was no action taken during closed session and now for tonight's Main Event item 6.1 recognition of the 2022-23 Aziz Unified School District parents of the year good evening Dr Beau Board of Education cabinet and attendees it is an honor and a privilege to recognize Azusa unified parents of the year for the 22-23 school year the commitment dedication and effort of these individuals embody the spirit of what it really means to be the change that you wish to see in the world their selflessness and actions raise the level of service Azusa unified is able to provide to students in our community your individual contributions have made such a difference to our school communities your individual stories are an inspiration and a call to action you have taken the concept of giving back to the highest level our schools and classrooms are better today than yesterday because of you El compromiso dedication is there in el mundo to interest contributions Alto nibel ustedes join me this evening in recognizing Azusa unified's parents of the year we will Begin by introducing the principal and parent of the Year from Dalton Elementary School is Laura Clark good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinets and attendees my name is Laura Clark and I'm the principal of Dalton Elementary School I am pleased to introduce our parent of the Year Cynthia Patino she has been an amazing classroom volunteer and so much more Cynthia is a proud parent of seven and is actively involved in their lives one of her children was diagnosed with autism which inspired her to earn multiple degrees including Child Development Early Child Development and behavioral and social sciences she wanted to learn as much as she could to support his needs currently she is almost finished with a degree in sociology and social work and is a top student her college professor shared that she has been helping fellow students who are struggling including providing food assistance she is involved in various parenting groups trainings and organizations to grow as a person and as a parent she volunteers as a coach with autism spectrum Athletics and as a member of Dalton's PTA speaking of Dalton's PTA Cynthia has contributed so much to make Dalton A Better Community for everyone she has raised much needed funds by gathering sponsorships for PTA events she has single-handedly raised over a thousand dollars this school year alone Cynthia volunteers at our special events and has even recruited the police and fire department to join us through volunteering and helicopter flybys throughout all of this she juggles taking care of her children navigating her son's many therapies and appointments and being a part-time caregiver for her granddaughter she is a superwoman I truly don't know how she manages all of this and always has a smile on her face and a great attitude Cynthia provides significant leadership and inspiration to our staff students and families we are so grateful that she is part of our Dalton Community Cynthia we truly appreciate all you do congratulations this honor is so well deserved foreign good evening Dr Beau and Board of Education members I'm Dr Anna Park principal of Ellington school tonight I am honored to present Ellington's parent of the Year Mrs Araceli Ruiz Zuniga and as Sally was born and raised in Los Angeles California she is the oldest sibling out of eight children and since she artistelli was the oldest she had to help raise her Seven Brothers family always comes first for her how to sell and her family moved to Azusa California in 2012.
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before we begin may we have the translation information for our Spanish speaking audience absolutely thank you so much confidence gracias thank you so much great thank you so much Guadalupe um I'd like to call this special meeting to order Ramona would you call Rocco please Mr alvador here Mrs Estrada here Mr Lovato here miss Molina here miss Zubia here great thank you um this evening we have one business item resolution number 23-003 resolution and support of Senate Bill 23-071 judicial review and education accountability Act secretary Zubia would you please read the resolution happy too so resolution and support of Senate bill 23-071 whereas under Colorado Constitution Article 9 and 15 local school boards have a control of instruction in public schools and whereas control of instruction is not a one-size-fits-all approach and whereas Colorado Public School Districts have to address diverse student populations while ensuring their instructional programs meet the needs of their students and adhere to State Standards involving student performance and whereas the Colorado education accountability Act of 2009 the Act was designed to hold Colorado schools and school districts among other things accountable for student performance and whereas since its implementation numerous school districts have expressed concern about whether the ACT has a negative desperate impact on schools and school districts that serve primarily students of color disabled students students who speak languages other than English and low-income students protected student populations and whereas in 2017 and 2000 122 two Colorado school districts provided evidence to the Colorado State Board of Education known as state board regarding the acts that this uh disparate impacts on school districts serving protected student populations and whereas there are 15 school districts in the accountability system that serve rural and urban populations and all have a large number of protected student populations and whereas it is anticipated that 10 additional public school districts that serve high protected student populations with will be subjected to the accountability system and whereas because of the concerns about the ex disparate impacts on protected student populations the Colorado general assembly past Health Bill 21-1294 to audit the accountability system particularly involving the negative impacts on protected students populations and whereas on December 12 2022 the audit was publicly released and demonstrated the accountability system is having a disparate impact on protected student populations and whereas the state board has not addressed the despair impacts the ACT has on schools or school districts that serve protected student populations but it continues to issue final orders against schools and school districts in the accountability system and whereas the act allows the State Board to take numerous actions and issue orders against public schools and school districts that are in turnaround status and whereas the state Sports actions and orders May violate a school district's constitutional right to local control and other statutory rights and whereas the act does not provide Colorado Public School Districts the right to seek judicial review of any rule regulation or final order issued by the state board under the act and whereas Senate bill 23-071 was introduced in the Colorado Senate to ensure that every Colorado Public School District that is subjected to the accountability system and may be affected by a state board's rural resolution or final order has a right to judicial review and whereas judicial review of state agencies rules regulations and final orders Is Not Unusual in the state of Colorado and whereas judicial review ensures that Colorado Public School District's constitutional and statutory rights are properly addressed by Colorado district courts after action is taken by the state board and now therefore be resolved by the Adams 14 Board of Education thank you secretary Zubia may I have a motion to approve resolution 23-003 so moved second oh second oh thank you both um board members is there any discussion or comment no um uh I'll um I feel like I'm always the one to speak but I'm happy to do so um I just wanted to thank each of you for um considering this resolution this evening um I think Colorado's accountability Act was intended to provide a fair balanced incredible way to measure student learning however I think it's turned into a very unfair unbalanced and quite frankly biased and punitive tool to encroach upon Colorado School District's constitutional right to local control I think we've got to have some sort of checks and balances and I think this uh the Senate bill will will do so um if there aren't any further comments Ramona can you please conduct real call Mr Amador hi Ms Estrada I Miss Lovato hi Miss Molina I miss Zubia bye great thank you that passes unanimously um this concludes our agenda for this evening our next regularly scheduled board meeting will be held on Tuesday February 14th May I have a motion to adjourn so moved oh second okay thank you Ramona roll call again please Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato bye Ms Molina aye Ms Zubia aye thank you all thanks again for joining us this evening we are adjourned having
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huge thank you to Lionel rotary white elephant Grant and Mrs Grimes and her sixth grade students during enrichment for their health and making this project possible our Greenhouse also Mrs Cuevas is working with the gifted students on getting the greenhouse up and running we're currently obtaining quotes from electricians to see what we need to do to get that going um on the picture there on the left was one of the students who helped clean up that area for the Peace Garden and we have students on there measuring the greenhouse then developing a plan on what we're going to do to get that going and then on the picture on the right you see Mrs grime's sixth period of kids working on the benches that are going to be installed and thank you to Mr Schubert and two his wife Charlene because they um helped us ensure that we had the equipment and get the project going because they've done this project at their house with the similar looking benches so we thought it would be a nice easy way to get those where weatherproofing of the buildings we submitted a proposal for The Architects for the design of our weatherproofing project we're waiting for sfd's board meeting and once it's we get the letter from the sfb The Architects will start to figure out what we need with the new doors the windows and the elastomeric paint there will also be a structural survey done on the middle school on the northwest corner to address the major cracks in the brick roof repair and recoating the assessment of all the roofs have has been completed and we received a check from the trust for 148 000 for hail damage so thank you again Mr Schubert for submitting all the work and requests to get this taken care of we will start meeting with the architects in the coming weeks to determine the scope of work to prepare for the design proposals and once the proposals come in then we can submit to the school facilities board for approval and the project has an estimated cost of 500 000 to 750 000.
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I went to school in the Creighton School District I went to Monte Vista and I went to Baltimore Prep Academy and I so that's why uh well there was no apple or iPads well there were that's just yeah it was old um so anyway my brother also attended school and was instead and Creighton then in a self-contained classroom for his entire educational career so I have that experience with my brother I went to Camelback High School I graduated there I was a first gen college student I graduated from Mary Lou Fulton I got my degree in secondary and social studies I did my student teaching at South Mountain High School and I graduated at the beginning of the recession and didn't have a job and decided to move to Portland for fun um and so my husband and I worked there in Portland Public Schools I was a wrap around services and kind of the role of a social worker there at a high school in North Portland I did a tutoring mentoring Crisis Intervention home visits sat in on classes pretty much anything under the sun and I was there when the sun went down so that was my job and then I decided to go to law school and I do this now um I guess what I'll say is this also I have some great lifelong friends who are distinguished Professionals in this community who are among you and you probably don't know who they are um and they are graduates of this District I know that uh I know where our district has come from and I know where we can go and so that makes me eager and excited I also have two children a three-year-old and a one-year-old who I want to send to this District I believe in public education to my core and I do my job every day and unfortunately I have to conflict off of a lot of cases and meet clients who are from the same neighborhood that I'm from or graduated from Phoenix Union it's very very depressing to do my job pretty much on a daily basis and so to be able to make a difference on the front end and be proactive in stopping things like the school-to-prison pipeline or making an impact on that is why I'm here among other things in my other perspective so I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to continue to get to work on so many things that we have already coming up on our agenda so thank you thank you so I just have a couple of things the first one is that on January 31st our lovely Governor Katie Hobbs did a national or not a national estate I wish it was National a stage of recognition of school board members and she did an actual Proclamation naming January 31st the school board day I know that January School Board month recognition but it's really refreshing to see somebody at a high level to actually recognize the service and the things that we do in endure our school board members so I wanted to let you guys know that that's what happened on January 31st Arizona School Board Association got a couple of their board of directors me and a few other ones um there so it was really really nice to see that and have that happen in front of us which has never happened before um also once the first time I decided to run for office I really stuck to how our communities and how different positions should intersect so a lot of the work that I do off of the school board is in the community in Dune direct at advocacy work so one of the things that I wanted to let you guys know is that we do have I volunteer with a non-profit that does expungements of marijuana um possession and I think that's huge because a lot of our children have parents cousins uncles that maybe have felonies or misdemeanors in that and we are changing lives so that expungement is coming up soon on the 18th and also the legislature just passed the law that if anybody has had a felony for a more non-violent family for a certain amount of years they actually can get it sealed off their record and it's completely changing people's lives because now they can get rental assistance they can you know apply for FAFSA so these are all like legit things that can impact the lives of directly impacted people so I wanted to share that information you can share to your parents whoever it is teachers and if you guys need information you can always reach out to me and let me know and um the last thing is that a while back I had pulled a whole bunch of different student discipline policies that we have at the district I have recently joined a school board partner's cohort and they advocated and they focus on anti-racist policies I just started my second class and it's really interesting to see what other people around the state are doing with policies so that's going to be coming up and I hope that we get the support from you guys in working into really what is the bare root of a lot of the system the systemic racist policies that we have set not not us as a district but just in general and being in that space has really opened my eyes to a lot of different things so that's a shift that I hope to see in the near future and hope that we can have as much as Community Support that we can um that ends my report so that brings us back to approval of consent so I move the governing board approved consent agenda items a through b and d through N I will be pulling C M yes so I move the governing I move the governing board as it reloads sorry I moved out of it so I moved the governing board approve a consent agenda items a through b e through L and n all those in favor I um I'll touch base on C real quick first which is um approval accept of donations I just wanted to point out one of the donations that we are receiving is from the bromo Prep Academy PTO they are donating fifteen hundred dollars to be used for expenses for our fourth graders to partake in the hermosi yo exchange program that they have so I just want to give a shout out to our ptos I know the hard work and the hard fundraising that they do to keep afloat a lot of things like libraries Librarians I don't know if you guys know but sometimes our budget doesn't allow for those things to occur and our PTO really really does step up so they're the forefronts of a lot of the things that we do in our school districts so that's the only reason why I'm pulling it to give that acknowledgment to the Biltmore prep PTO all and all our ptos in general but um the hermosio exchange was actually on our agenda and we're about to prove it so I just wanted to pull it so you guys know that um we always talk about making this more accessible to children and the accessibility comes to the parents and to the PTO and that's how we're able to bring more kids and bring more inclusivity to these type of trips that's my take on that so while you're on that item may I just add a comment first of all thanks thanks to everyone who made donations under this but I just want to call it Mac McDonald who is making another 800 donation well Melinda the Loma Linda Garden for uh I think like decades so a shout out to him for that yeah thank you for that too um so with that said with that with that I moved the governing board approved consent agenda item C in accordance with policy bedb Dash e all those in favor aye and then we move to discussion on item m M so I just wanted to pull this mainly for transparency's sake um um we are issuing contracts in a question is um are these all the contracts that we're issuing throughout the year or is this just some of them it's all right thank you yes these are all the employees contracts and okay so an administrator contract can you just name some of the job titles that that covers absolutely it is the 35 teachers the school psychologists a speech therapists occupational therapists physical therapists nurses certified support professionals administrators and exempt staff educational support personnel and notice of agreement and addendums for the 2023-2024 school year thank you and then there is um a couple so there's um paper performance and the addendum are just curiously signed by the clerk of the governing board which is me I'm just wondering why that is kind of odd isn't it it is I've never asked okay so do you just use a stamp for that okay all right and then the others don't have a line for signatures at all okay interesting okay um and then again just sort of transparency sake so we're issuing these contracts and then when we actually vote to accept the contracts um where we see like individual names like a whole bunch of people that happens in May or in June correct traditionally we want to make sure that the goal is to maintain an employees in many of our neighboring districts are already issuing contracts and they're giving about 10 days to 15 days it varies to return the contracts here in agreements with past meeting confer it's been 15 days in the inclusion of spring break so once we issue contracts our staffs have 20 days which they probably start for 20 days to return their contract which allows for looking around and doing interviews during the spring break so that's one of one of the things but again the goal is retention because if we go all the way till the end of the year and a staff member doesn't have a contract in their hands they're wondering do they want me back and we don't want any staff member to believe that we don't want them back we want to secure them we want to make sure that they continue or our families and for our students so we will vote on the actual individuals in after spring break then so all the contracts are with the contingency of the money in the budget being available right and so in the language that revised by the attorney from Udall chamwell considers the El AER approval and then the funds that are available to the district and so teachers will get uh the addendum as it states right now and then as the money and the budget is going prompt or solved then they will get an addendum with whatever recommendation whatever race whatever stipend is uh approved okay so when does that happen in May traditionally it's at the beginning of the year yeah and I just want to create Clarity yoga in my sidebar these come as a group as a blanket they do not come back by individual leaves so I don't want to create anything oh they don't understand okay that's what I was wondering okay so it'll come back to us in May as a group um what we'll come back in May is the updated salary schedules okay sometimes it's pushed into June depending upon legislature budget timing and then those updated salary schedules will be applied to the contracts which will then generate an addendum of Human Resources will generate more than a dollar amount um and then the same thing like this year we did stipends if there are stipends as those stipends are issued the agenda for those stipends will be issued um typically in the same week the stipended this issue to employees so if there's ever an individual contract that we want to address that would have to be done specifically as like a special agenda item we have our attorney here do you want to speak to it Jessica oh yeah I'm sorry Jessica I didn't see you there it's okay all right I'm getting over a cold so for individuals so for example for teachers all your teachers automatically get contracts unless they're probationary and the superintendent has recommended non-renewal of a probationary teacher all your other continuing teachers automatically get contracts so there wouldn't be any there wouldn't be any there wouldn't be any name for you to pick out the only reason Like A continuing teacher would ever not continue with the district would be if you were adopting a statement of charges to start termination proceedings same thing with your Administration and your classified staff typically everybody gets a contract unless there's a recommendation to you the governing board to non-renew their contract and then there's different rules for principals and psychologists and then typically there's a recommendation for anybody who's classified or um or at will there would be a recommendation to either terminate or non-renew but there's not really a process for board members to pick out names so unlike tonight where we had a Personnel um uh uh action where we have um individual names listed we don't do that for this process you typically and I can work with HR sometimes you would approve names right but you would not be you would not be taking out a name yourself as the governing board the only time you would be approving somebody not getting rehired is that the administration brought a recommendation to non-renew somebody or to terminate somebody okay because that's not my recollection of how we did it last year so maybe we can get a clarification um for the whole board that would be great we can do that I can work with human resources okay thank you you're welcome one more thing Jessica I'm sorry I just want you to sit down um maybe you could explain and this is just me curious um the addendums have signature lines is there a reason why the actual contracts don't have signature lines is it just been left off logistically or signature lines for whom we're like the teacher to sign some sort of acknowledgment that they've received the contract and are agreeing to it I'm just typically districts lately have been issuing contracts electronically so likely there's an electronic signature that comes through it and that would be why okay the document we have is just the contract and then literally nothing that says it's been acknowledged no date no side so that's why yeah most districts send it electronically and then there's an electronic verification okay and that is what we do there's they they accept it through our portal system that's attached to our financial system and HR System okay and then like I asked earlier these weird addendums have just the governing board clerk signature which I think is odd maybe you can take a look at that and I can take a look at that too yeah I can work with HR now you're welcome any other questions or discussion on itemm okay so I moved the governing board approved consent agenda item m in accordance with policy bedb-e by second all those in favor aye I I that brings us to 6A which is Gateway School update good evening Madam president members of the governing board it's my privilege to introduce Mr Andy Gutierrez and the team from Gateway School who will be sharing the work that they've been doing to make Collective continuous progress on their goals and create a strong community of Learners thank you all right good evening Madam president members of the government board and executive team my name is Andy Gutierrez Andy Gutierrez proud principal at Gateway Elementary School as you previously heard we are very proud of our work at Gateway we earned our first B in the school's history which we're very proud of and we had a meeting on Monday with the dart data action Response Team where we start to look at the data this year and kind of see where we're at and the nice thing is things look very promising for this year as well so we're keeping our eye on the prize we have a round of applause tonight you're going to hear from an amazing team that are going to be highlighting some of the successes and the challenges that Gateway has in alignment with the school district governing goals so without further Ado our team will introduce themselves when they come up good evening um my name is Georgina Russo are you she they pronouns and I will be talking about our Equity committee um at Gateway so our access diversity equity and inclusion committee strength is that it is a teacher-led working group that is meant to support Educators as they navigate teaching or school's unique population as we move into the second semester gateway's ethnic committee has shifted its focus from Gathering resources for educators to utilize in their classrooms we continuously work towards supporting our colleagues actively using these resources to educate themselves and um also create a more welcoming classroom environment and create curriculum representative of the students that we teach now for the fifth and sixth grade leaders we went ahead and we practiced or rather not practice but we did um the Yes program yes stands for the Youth Equity stewardship um so for the Youth Equity stewardship this is a program that happens sometime in September and it lasted for three days during those three days students from the entire fifth and sixth grade got the opportunity to explore the themes of community and what it means to appreciate each other as well as where they come from as an individual who is deeply passionate about equity and someone who works in the school setting I believe that the Yes program was a Great Awakening for students to think about equity and Community themes in order for Equity efforts not only to be meaningful but not but long-lasting there ought to be clear guidelines such as curriculum teachers can follow consistent great-wide yes sessions and lessons that teachers can utilize in their classrooms to allow us to continue sleep practice Equity work with our students in my language arts classroom about once a month we continue to practice sitting by the fire and writing in my one beats which was a lesson introduced by Benji and Wade during the Yes program although I have received positive response to this practice in my classroom it would ease the district-wide efforts if we had more of a structured program throughout the district rather than what we have now and now I will play some video um just a student um like student feedback from the yes I need those apples okay so this is America and she's one of my fifth grade students and what she is talking about right now is that she really enjoys that in my one beat because we do them about once a month in my classroom and she's talking about that um in my one being with this one was really good in my thoughts during that time okay I'm sorry before we do this um Alondra won she's a fifth grader um she's one of my babies and um she was in The District spelling bee so um we have to take her word into it laughs also learn more about geography it was really fun and we were always doing group games these games allowed us to have fun and learn a little more about each other the songs that they play were really cool and stuff they also showed slideshows and videos they asked questions about being courageous being a leader and being responsible when we answered their questions we spoke into a microphone in all I it was a great experience and or and show everyone there and I also enjoyed when we were all thinking about but we're going to like um so you could barely hear him but Angel was saying that he really enjoyed the in my one beats and he really enjoyed uh the his ability to be able to talk about culture and themes that he normally wouldn't have those conversations with his classmates during recess and whatnot so thank you for listening to me thank you for your time I have a quick question um do you as teachers are involved in the process because I know that we talk about what inclusivity and safety looks like for our kids but are we ensuring that that's spread out to a teacher level and how does the staff feel protected or inclusive in their own environment so do you guys as teachers get to partake in that too or how does that work um so in this is a I think well thank you for your question um this is something that we do navigate in the in our Equity committee and we do have conversations about the things that happen as a staff because teacher working conditions are student learning conditions so we usually navigate what can we do to feel safe as Educators what can we do to feel um like we are actually delivering the content that students need so that it's something meaningful and not just something that we're doing to like check boxes so these are conversations that we have within the equity committee and once we have these conversations that is why we started brainstorming at the beginning of the school year um what can we do like what are we doing what is our purpose here and that is how we came up with our first goal which was we need to start Gathering resources so that aside from all of like the district resources and wonders study sync like all these things we can have our resources that we use because the population at Gateway is different than the population at Papago and all these schools and so once we do that um we have these resources that we choose and then once we sorry I'm going in circles okay so we have these we have our resources and then we are able to determine the conversations that we have with our students and we are able to always support each other I've had many teachers come to me and ask me hey like I'm really struggling with this you are in the equity committee can can you support me with this and if we can support each other then we always go to admin to ask them for help yeah awesome I appreciate that thank you so much all right next up we have uh our PTO which you were just talking about we have an amazing Core group of 12 strong volunteers they're there pretty much every day working on things and then another 20 that come in and help on a weekly basis uh there are big pieces fundraising this year they've raised over three thousand dollars which is pretty good for a small group of selling shirts hoodies dollar dress down days and we had an amazing Carnival which we hadn't had in so many years so our PTO has done a great job next up you're going to hear from a couple of our parents who couldn't be here tonight foreign [Music] foreign [Music] assistant organization my name is [Music] foreign [Music] schools in our district that are able to have this grant um we're working really hard one of the struggles that we have is recruiting and retaining students you would think that oh I after school activities it's fighting tooth and nail to get students to be there and want to be there uh same thing with teachers our teachers work a long day and it's tough for them to be there till five o'clock at night so we're doing our best to try to recruit and retain those kids and so that way hopefully we can retain this grant because it's a great thing for our school and our community is the 21st century Grant separate from the 24 one 24th century I believe so I'm not a just 21st yeah okay maybe I'm wrong just kidding if there's another one we'll go for it I'm thinking really far ahead so um so with attendance or you can like are you guys just having trouble filling up activities we are we are so uh what we do things a little bit differently with our 21st century I know some schools they have where kids attend and they do math they do reading and then do an intervention ours are more student based so we get feedback from students but then also use our teachers and their expertise and their experience and organize classes for them so you can see a list of the classes that we have and it's both morning and afternoon that's what I was surprised because I was like yeah you know if it was just the reading and math I can see kids are like no I'm done but I'm like looking at this list and I'm going right so everybody want to be there and our biggest one is sports uh Mr gustillo and Miss uh Simpson they have about 60 kids that participate in sports alone so that's a strong sports program next up just want to share a few of our highlights those are all the Community Partnerships that we have I'm not going to talk about all of them a few I want to highlight though is our MVP foundation and that came on the consent today uh it's a group of uh former Sports agents that sponsor our kids to go to a camp in Williams Arizona and that's for male students and so what we did is worked with the Camelback Kiwanis Club to see like what can we do for our female students because we want to send them some more as well so they help us take some students up to Prescott Arizona that will be coming to you soon as soon as I work out the details with Scott Holcomb next up Jenny Strauss lawyers they provide backpacks uniforms books gecko store support and we're asking them right now to help us with our negative balance for the school for the food food I'm drawing a blank say that again Jay unpaid lunch balance thank you um and then they're looking to help our PBIS store as well and the last one is Career Concepts for youth uh they work with our sixth grade kids and provide them life skills the nice pieces they've always provided and maybe between 5 to 15 uh Thanksgiving dinners for our family they wanted to do more this year and they provided one for every single one of our sixth grade families so they all got a Thanksgiving meal this year so they're amazing so the next strategic goal that we're going to be talking about is the health wellness and safety goal um sorry my name is Brian Kinnon the assistant principal over at Gateway um and we have an amazing team that works on the health wellness and safety of all of our students at all times so the first thing that we wanted to highlight was success actually starts with showing up um we knew last year that we were struggling getting students into the classroom between coming off of covet and a few other things so we actually looked this year at the number of average absences per student in the first semester and that has gone down significantly having said that it's not all successes all the time and we know that so we are still having challenges with students who have missed 10 of the school year to date what we call chronic absenteeism we are working uh through the child Justice Advocate our community thank you I always forget what the acronym stands for our CEOs um and so we're working through them we're working through our child Justice Advocates we're working as Administration and behavior interventionists and teachers to really meet with those students who are struggling to make it to school and with those families find out what is in the way of them being here and then work to reduce those numbers also as of right now we are on track to reduce our chronic absenteeism from last year but it is not as drastic of a reduction as what we're seeing there we're on track for about a four percent reduction in that um which is still where we want to go but it's we have work to do and we're aware of that sorry name one reason why parents say that there's like an incident like why they miss school so much like what what's the stuff that you're hearing probably the two most common ones are we have students who are sick frequently um in that case we put them in contact with resources we have something called chronic illness forms um and so we worship them and their medical providers to find out what's going on and find out what additional supports as a school then we can provide because if the student is sick and they're missing school we want to make sure that we're providing them the education that they deserve okay and so we work with them through that um the other most common one is students just don't want to be at the school for whatever reason on that day most of the time what we find out on that one is there's an underlying conflict between the student and another student and that's where we're using our partnership with care Solace Southwest Behavioral Health Services and our child Justice advocacy program to work with those students and resolve the underlying conflicts most of the time it boils down to they got in a fight with their friend and they're afraid to go to school and face their friend again follow-up question regarding regarding the chronic illnesses I heard there was a form that you all have but um how often are folks with those chronic illnesses being offered or given the opportunity to start 504 plans um anytime at Gateway that we offer chronic illness form we review it and we determine whether additional accommodation thank you good evening uh Madam president among governing members of the board my name is Tim Yates I am the child Justice Advocate at Gateway and I'm very proud to be there um we just uh launched our PBIS refresh right after winter break um and what we really focused on was making sure that we were teaching or reteaching every student K-8 across the board uh to be kind to be courageous and to be a leader and what that looks like in various locations across our campus so the teachers were in charge of of talking about what PBIS and what being a gecko looks like in their classroom we discussed what it looked like being in the hallways so we actually took the time the very first very first week that we got back from school we took the time to physically show each and every student how to properly walk down the hallway how to properly enter into the cafeteria how to properly enter into the classrooms oftentimes we make mistakes and and make assumptions that students should just know how they should act in the in the classroom and oftentimes some of they're they're not taught that and and we get upset and get frustrated we find ourselves beating our heads against the walls because because we are just going around in circles and then we find that when we do a PBIS refresh or when we actually physically teach our students how to act or how to participate in the different areas amongst campus that PBIS Behavior goes way up and our our school becomes much safer our discipline our discipline goes our discipline goes down and we become much better and safer place and leading back to what Mr Kindle was just talking about making it a safer place for everybody where students want to show up so that it was our big launch for our PBIS refresh was to make sure that every single student knew what their responsibility was within within the hallways and within the within the classrooms and in the cafeteria um you see one of our students holding gecko bucks that is a big deal at our school they have they have the gecko store that is read by Mr Bowden and they love they love the gecko store and they love receiving those gecko bucks and they receive those gecko bucks by by being kind being courageous and being a leader across campus those really weird because I have a son in a different school and he's in middle school he's in eighth grade and for some reason that's still like he loves that like the fact that he can stash those up and use him for whatever they do he he just loves it so that's neat yeah it is it is very awesome to see we have we have some kids that they definitely they definitely hold on to those tight and and they they hold on to it like a bank account and they're just like ready to go in there and they and they're like Mr Yates get so many gecko bucks I have and they're like I have 150 gecko bucks same Chapel like this so awesome so yes it is it is a great program and a great way just to insensitize the the the the kids and uh just kind of give that extrinsic reward system so thank you guys thank you and I just want to add um one of the pieces you talked about you know this goes back to our SEO I just appreciate like yes there's gecko bucks and all the prizes but um one of the things you spoke to which is you know teaching them and not assuming you know if a child's struggling with math we teach them the math if they're struggling with behaviors we teach them the behavior so I think I just appreciate you know acknowledging that approach because a lot of times people hear PBIS or whatever reward systems it's not about that it's about how do you structure and what language do you use so exactly that's that's key thank you hi my name is Philip and Bowden when a student is experiencing a crisis or a perceived crisis at our school It's always important to provide the best support as they need when we talk about de-escalation or re-regulation we recognize that some students may need a quiet setting where they can receive very controlled stimuli while other students maybe need to go out and run outside for a short break or in a conversation with their preferred adult the goal is always to get the student back to the learning environment when they're ready to learn we know that whatever we do students our students children or children behaviors are going to happen um and so one of the things that we have focused on is what we call major infractions the infractions that require a formal uh discipline referral oftentimes a discipline consequence and alongside that every single time a restorative project or a restorative action of some kind maybe a conversation or something like that um as we were looking over our discipline data from the first semester you can see on the graph the gray is last school year the teal is this school year uh our number of aggressive incidents has been significantly reduced we went from 87 to 38.
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so as Bonnie transitions to the next slide here you're gonna see a chart on the screen nice one yeah so the other thing we're looking at here it displays the life cycle forecast of all of those uniform categories I mentioned earlier like Interiors mechanical electrical shell it all rolls up to the colors on this chart now in the first year which is 2022 we'll be rolling the database in 23 in due course but in that First Column you're seeing a deferred maintenance backlog of just under 10 million dollars for these three Pilots schools just just again for context there's 18 buildings within these three schools and it's not just the it's not just the the schools themselves right so um so so that 9.5 million dollars and if addressed in full would not carry over to the next year however each year with the backlog is not fully addressed this value will accumulate adding to the unfunded liability of the portfolio meaning if you address three to four million dollars of those needs in Year One the remaining 5 million would carry over to 2023 and 2020 40 on so this life cycle view tells you when systems are coming to the end of their life the cost to renew them but um they also presents an opportunity to kind of get strategic around how much funding do I need year over year and how much funding do I need on average over a 10 15 20 year period I believe Bonnie's coached me on this I believe you guys talk in five and ten year chunks so I don't need to go beyond that but we'll give you this long-term view so you can see what's coming so Graham just to ask a question because you've coached me on this so generally speaking you do present out to 2051 so out 30 years right so why why do you go out that far if we're really interested in the next five to ten years I believe 90 to 95 of the building components or elements will come to the end of life within the third year period meaning over the next five years to 10 years I could be wrong by plus or minus a year when we look at the condition of the elements within a building but cumulatively over a 25 to 30 year time frame the that that unfunded liability cost of doing nothing over 30 years is 90 plus percent accurate that that's the idea of that so you've got certainty over 30 a 30-year period of how much you should be funding on an annual basis on average but in that five-year tactical window that you guys look at um we could be wrong by a year something might come to you may actually need to be replaced one year early or one year later but over time you get more accurate and then the other follow-up question Graham the values so first how are the values calculated so these are these are our schools our three schools represented here but how did you come up with those replacement values what was the algorithm or the data that you used to determine that yeah great question funny so we start with RS means as a basis um we don't think Harris means is 100 accurate because it looks at National Regional averages but it tells us what the cost per square foot should be of a school within Arizona for example you can further refine RS means with the multipliers and geographical factors to kind of refine where Gilbert sits within Arizona um so that's our starting basis and then within a template which is what asapana has with three billion square feet of buildings so over time if if Iris means tells me or ashrae even tells me that a boiler lasts 22 years but we've seen practical life of boilers around 30 years we we lean towards what we consider practical versus theoretical life because maintenance matters I.E if you're a proactive in your maintenance practices and doing preventative maintenance you can extend the life cycle of any asset so custom and renewal time frames are interlinked and influencing what you see in this chat and then just my question before we have the board ask some questions tell me the whether you are escalating the cost of these components year over year to to try to guess what the future cost of a replacement would be yeah we we steer away uh predicting the future so everything that we show is in current year dollars and we have a process every this time right about now where we roll the database into we'll be rolling database into 2023 where we show you our research we show you what construction indexes look like in terms of inflationary values and we roll the database into the current year but every year after that we keep encouraging dollars what one last point I'll give you Bonnie is everything you're looking at is hard cost only we also don't predict the soft costs associated with construction so you're talking about um architectural fees that sort of thing permax architectural fees and those those extras okay board members do you have any questions just at this point I know we're going to keep going but I've got a question about this chart that we're looking at does each year assume any carryover from the year prior or is this chart showing us we have in 2022 we have a backlog of 9.5 million if we were to settle that in 2023 there would be a completely new cost Capital needs cost of looks like a little over 4 million is that am I understanding this correctly that is correct okay thank you that's only for three schools though correct okay that's correct I have a I have a question I have a question just and maybe it would be your answer Bonnie or Albert um when you talked about like um the air conditioning units and things like that do we prioritize that obviously um you know like roofs and um the things that that we can't have school for as opposed to flooring and desks and things like that how do we how do we prioritize that so we we have been doing that but this master Capital plan will allow us to put that information into the software solution that will inform our priorities as well in each of these so you can see that all these These are going to include exterior and interior paint you could make a case that that that's a lower priority than replacing HVAC or something like that so this is all of the needs considering all these components that you see are all these groupings that you see at the bottom for each color so just want to make sure that's clear too I I had one question just about um hard versus soft soft costs so a hard cost I presume would be the components plus the labor to replace them and the soft costs would be other things like the fees or other things that come up yeah it would include the labor to install okay yeah thanks for the strength I understand thank you did you have a question go ahead um I'm just trying to understand how we came to these numbers did somebody go out and inspect these three schools from ceiling to floor end to end so Graham can you answer that yeah yeah so ultimately yeah we sent a couple of assessors out they did visual non-intrusive non-destructive assessments so they walked the buildings I think Albert escorted them arrival's team let's go with them they um we captured a lot of photographs we captured a lot of information and then we did some costing back in the office um to reflect what the true cost would be for construction and so we with that determination we feel like we got everything like there wouldn't be anything else that would come up in these numbers so um that's kind of why we want to make this presentation because this is just the assessment so we have some areas of the school district in which we are not to a standard and so this is just a condition assessment but but when we when we determine what those standards are going to be my favorite example is the Press boxes so we had a situation at Highland High in which one of our coaches I think was up in the Press Box and stepped through the roof of the Press Box and then he grabbed onto a handle that also almost failed because it so is anyway it's so those are some of the examples um because the press back is is very small now they would their assessors would go out and determine what it would be to replace that particular Press Box the question is is that smaller Press Box than what's actually being created or recommended do we want to just replace like for like or do we want to consider an up grade to meet the standards that that we would be talking to the master Capital planning committee about so it's a multiple process and Tara will go into more of those types of details thank you so I just had one other question kind of along those lines too so going out to each of these schools you looked at the condition of of the things that you mentioned here as well as then took into account the um spreadsheet that we had that showed when the original thing was you know built or input or all of that you included all of that information as well Graham yes that's correct and you know I could go into a lot more detail around what the process looks like but ultimately it starts with the blank slate but with construction new the templates within buildings of these types then we did a series of interviews with Bonnie and Albert to kind of ask questions about hey have there been any major additions or just to be clear mostly Albert Albert is the one who knows all the information yeah but but you know adding the color to the database that all happened off-site and you know it if a school was 35 years old and you replaced the boilers 10 years ago it doesn't assume a 35 year old boiler anymore it assumes a 10 year old boiler and maybe Boyle is the wrong term in Arizona I should have said Chiller but I live in near Boston so it's cold here but um but then we go and do the assessments so the assessments are kind of like that next layer of validation and verification we we do as much as we can with institutional knowledge to digitize it but then we walk every square foot of that face to kind of further validate so whether that's name plates whether that's whatever information might have been available from drawings to to update those records so that when we think of a score we think of what was the last action I have one more question sorry um when we're looking at this uh is this just buildings are we looking at the buildings and are is Furnishings separate from this master Capital plan um go ahead Graham yeah so so the let's define that a minute so so in terms of Interiors we we look at all the kind of things like partitions fitting all finishes for finishes ceiling finishes but generally in generally we lost you Graham how about now Bonnie oh good we got you again thank you yeah sorry there's a three second delay so I keep hearing myself but I what I always say to that is pick up your building turn it upside down shake it the things that fall out that are below 2500 to 5 000 based on your capitalization threshold those aren't in it everything else is in it so you get your ceiling finishes your floor finishes your fittings but furniture for example might not be a capex consideration versus an Opex consideration it just depends on where your capitalization thresholds are so things like Auditorium seating would be included but maybe desks in the classrooms are not included that's probably important okay okay thank you Mr Thompson yeah I want to go back to this chart again and I'm sorry if I am just slow on the uptake here but so this chart is basically in 2022 we're not assuming that the building is new we're assuming the building is basically this is a snapshot of where it where it was in 2022 and you're saying that the life cycle of these these three schools these three campuses is 30 years what what happens in 2051 are you is that a complete tear down and rebuilding and in this case because the buildings aren't brand new does that happen much sooner than 2051 or is this assuming is this taking the snapshot and saying we have 30 years from now just to address that this is the cost of doing nothing on the screen right when things are going to to come you guys are investing in your facilities you you are doing Capital planning you are doing Capital renewals so this is that snapshot that says hey you need 9.5 million dollars to address all of your needs this year four million next year 500 in the following year right but um you what what I said earlier that 30-year point is a kind of a cost of doing nothing view of what what would my average annual funding be to kind of maintain a certain level of building standard to maintain the quality of teaching and learning that you could get 50 60 100 years out of these schools with the appropriate amount of capital renewal it's it's all about how do you how do you keep these buildings fresh and how do you continue to adapt them to their educational suitability standards of today does that answer your question yeah yeah I think so I think um just to follow up as an example so in the 2022 um stacked bar it includes the roof at South Valley so the roof at South Valley and I don't know this to be true but my presumption would be that the roof was categorized by the team as very poor meaning it needs to be replaced quickly well we're replacing it right now so this particular information does not include the upgrades that that are already that have been done probably probably even well since October for sure and so I just want to make sure that that's that's a caveat the other thing and Graham I don't know this for sure but we have as you said we have made Capital investments into our buildings but I don't think the data that we had to substantiate that fact was clear enough that you could consider that what you did consider though is that if we replaced a piece of um of HVAC equipment two years ago you would identify that equipment arguably as good right and so therefore there would be no reason to include it as a need to replace am I right on that yeah that that's roughly right so so the way to think about it is if you build a building in the year 2000 is 23 years old today and on average ashrae tells you that an air handling unit is 20 to 25 years okay so in theory it's showing up in the first five years of this chart that each year that air handling unit however if you've done a lot of preventive maintenance if you've done the right level of capital renewal along the way we've seen practical life of our handling units stretch up to 35 years meaning if it's in good shape it doesn't need to show up in your five-year View right so we're trying to we're trying to move away from theoretical life cycle manufactures warranty type life cycles to practical life remaining and that's and and that you only get extensions to Life by doing the right things along the way so it's reflective of good maintenance management practices and good Capital planning but um where that's not in place everything shifts left what I mean by that is the left column goes up and everything shifts towards it but when you get a scatter like this it means that you're doing some good stuff along the way and and I should say that we we've done a lot of school districts and a lot of um Across America and so we've seen every type of profile but what I typically what I'm interested to see is when we kind of bring this up to the 4.8 million square foot view which is your entire portfolio what does it look like and that's where we're going to right Bonnie yes sir yep I'm a little nervous about that if this is just dark three skull well I would say a couple of things so there's both there's two things to that oak tree has not seen any renovation on our listing at least since I've been here so they're the next school up for this summer so their assessment probably indicated a great deal of need South Valley we knew about the roof but Campo isn't arguably probably in pretty good shape being that it was built in 2009 so it's hard it's hard to know what's going to be yeah it's our new school right all of our schools are many of our schools are much older than that we have though been doing remodels especially the last four or five years so it'll be interesting I just think again it will be important to have a realistic prioritization so that we can even start to I guess that's the most important thing to me and why I've been asking for something like this for a long time is that how do we prioritize funds are always Limited at some level so how do we prioritize exactly where they go to and what makes the most sense today so anyways I've got one more question there you go ahead go ahead and stop okay thank you um I agree that these numbers they look I mean these are some some big numbers right but I also I think if I'm understanding this right this is just the cost of doing business in the school district this is the cost of if if any if any entity was building a building they would have the same the same costs moving forward at you know probably similar intervals um I guess the my question is if we take care of all of these items on each of these bars does it change the look of the chart moving forward so for example and again I'll go back to 2022 if we spent the nine and a half million and took care of everything in 2022 would 2023 look different and if we took care of everything in 2023 would 2024 look different than it does on this chart because you said this is this chart represents if we did nothing what if we did everything what would how different would this chart look the way I would approach that one Bonnie is if you added everything up and divided it by 30 what is the average [Music] it looks like it's around about 4 million maybe maybe four and a half and and the reason I say that is that's what it would look like over a longer term view over a 10-year bond cycle for example I think you guys do five but um it would look like 45 million a year at these schools sorry 45 million over 10 years of this course but the way you're looking at it here is yeah you've got big gears you've got small years right look at 2028 there's nothing in that color but it doesn't mean you should have built your capital reserve if you so so what most what what a lot of good asset management looks like is averaging this out how do I average this out because it's it's not just about spending the money someone's got a project manage that like some you you that's disruptive to your schools right so can you even do that much work within the time frame so if you can average it out I think that's the answer to your question so it's having the foresight to be able to do that thank you Miss Humphries well my question was um we are inspecting these buildings but what about structural issues when would those um become noticeable or how would we account for those I mean I'm thinking of those two schools in Glendale that they had to shut down school and send the kids to other schools in their District because all of a sudden there were structural issues that were a challenge and a safety issue so Graham your assessment would catch that right I didn't actually catch the question sorry I'll I'll speak again go ahead so what about structural issues so things that we may not be able to see as foundational or something like foundational or um just I remember maybe about eight years ago they had already started school in Glendale and they actually had to close the schools and find an alternate place for the children because the schools were found to be structurally unsound so I just wondering how we prevent that issue here in Gilbert as schools age I I think that's a really good question and I don't want to kind of fumble together and answer to it because it's a very you know it's pertinent but what I would say is again foundations have life cycles and there are periodic points along that life cycle where you should maybe do more intrusive testing and assessments where I would recommend a specialist comes in and does what they do to kind of read Baseline how much light you have left in that foundation and also trigger events would be something I'd want to kind of react to so I don't know if you get earthquakes in Arizona we do sometimes yes I had structural issues in my house because of an earthquake yeah yeah yeah it's a trigger events but also periodic preventative type studies would be what I'd recommend there we're not catching that we're not doing an intrusive or a destructive test right now and the foundation is visual but it's a great question and something that should be considered all right thank you I appreciate that Bonnie just I I just on the question before that about if I did everything would it change the Outlook and all of this and I'd love to just say one more thing on that at least I have a client in Colorado and they didn't do any Capital renewal for seven or eight years and because they were tightening their belts elsewhere well what happened was when we did a five-year kind of backlook analysis on their operating costs we found they were operating their buildings at twelve dollars per square foot the um one of the industry standards for o m they they say that most buildings should cost around 5.50 to six dollars per square foot to operate and maintain I.E these guys were paying twice the operating cost per square foot to maintain and keep their buildings running so they made a decision not to spend capital but they spent it anyway they just spent it reactively of unplanned funds versus proactively our planned funds so that's just another kind of tidbit I'd love to kind of give you that the cost of doing nothing ultimately will catch up some way somehow and it's better to be proactive and planned strategic like you guys are doing here versus reactive and kind of behind that April thank you Mrs page has another question just real quick just so I can get this in like wrap around in my head and maybe this is something Alfred's going to go over what is the process of when something does break out of school and is it labeled critical like these these uh these levels that we had what happens to that and do these numbers include routine maintenance that we do these numbers do not include the routine maintenance but Albert you want to come up and and give her an idea of what happens and I think maybe the the Ashland Ranch failure of the that one or Neely yeah thank you Alfred you're welcome um okay could you repeat the question again I'm sorry I know what you said we have a catastructure I'm just trying to get this all like connected in my head so if something does go happen at a school what if an air conditioner goes out a bathroom light completely like whatever do they fill out a work order send it to you what is the process is it labeled then immediate urgent or can wait a week how do those work orders and what's the process of that yeah so it's a little bit of both so um on a routine basis yes the school would would notice an issue and they would submit a work order work request and we would assign those emergency we'd assigned a routine I mean we don't by no means wait for a work order if it is an emergency we we deploy right away so that being said that that's our routine basis um secondly our Mo or our first I should say is as we do preventative maintenance and we have preventative maintenance program so we could hopefully identify a lot of these prior to them happening uh happening or predict the catastrophic issue or at least work on it now rather than later like working on an AC unit right now would be totally ideal compared to running into an issue in the middle of the summer again that has happened we've had a couple incidences in in recent uh history that we've run into but I feel like we were able to deploy quickly enough to hopefully minimize School disruption as much as possible but we definitely keep an eye on both ways and multiple ways not only from a school level as well as preventative maintenance and then again just routine just kind of walking through and making our own assessments in-house so thank you board members do we have any further questions at this time what are we going to do with this information well we have more we're going to have more still process I don't need more of this presentation but do you want to answer that right now right so I I just wanted to share that these were the three pilot schools and um amaresco's teams have been here since the start of the school year this is the start of the second semester going through and assessing all of the buildings so they're doing that assessment right now and I'm not sure how far along they are can you share with that that with me Albert I can um we're down to I believe we're finishing off the district and GCA this week and I think we're going to do a one-week break and then we're going to come back and finish off three out of the five remaining high schools and then all facilities will be assessed and are they assessing the district office facilities as well Albert currently they're doing that right now okay So based upon that all the data will be collected and this graphical representation will reflect Gilbert public schools in total and at that point in time with the other additions which Tara will share with you that will create that Master Capital planning document that just expresses what the status of our facilities are here in Gilmore Public Schools what that average need might be that Graham talked to and then some strategies on how that could be funded so that would be that's the plan with the master Capital plan thank you so are we ready to move forward I'm Graham thank you very much so if you could stay on just in case there are some uh ending other questions at the end that would be great thank you so at this point I am going to hand off if I can get this to work there we go oh that's why because I made it bigger sorry so I'm going to hand this over now to Tara grineer here you go Tara thank you thank you all right um so part of um what we are also assessing is the qualitative metrics so Jill you had you know asked the question about State Standards State Facility standards there's also um the Arizona administrative code within both of these documents Liv's standards so um in particular like we're referencing here as an example under the Arizona Administrative Code you know it talks about classroom lighting it talks about what the foot candles should be to satisfy an educational learning environment and that you know there's a certain percentage of that like I think here it's 30 foot candles of light is provided by LED lighting so that's a standard that's at a state level State facilities board has very very common requirements as well you talked about square footage it talks about mill work it talks about you know lineal footage of um technology things like that you know writable services so there's there's a whole list of things that the state um that has and so we use those qualitative metrics as at least the Baseline for what we'll roll into as our suitability standards that we're also developing in conjunction with the school district so do you want to flip to the next page so out of those qualitative metrics what we've been trying to do is is look at those as the Baseline and and write a series of yes no questions and so out of these yes no questions we're sharing that with ameresco and then they're building that information into their assessment so as they're going out and looking at you know the facilities across the campus are at across the district they're looking at all of these standards as well so they might be looking at the square footage they're looking at here's an example again of you know is a classroom outfitted with LED lighting yes or no if it's yes you know is it sufficient is it meeting the minimum standard of foot candles and there's a there's a way that you can you know measure foot candles in a classroom again it's a yes or no and so there's prompts that as you go through that series It ultimately will provide you the data that we're we're interested in gathering and so then that will be output data that can be shared you know again as an output for for these different modules so it'll you know determine there's a report that could be run line that says x amount of your classrooms are deficient you know they don't meet you know minimum foot candles you know if that's one example um and if it doesn't you know again then it goes to a prioritization here's what we would have to do we'd have to go in you know you might have some incandescent lighting we'd have to change those out so again it's it all is interrelated data that we're collecting we're looking at these qualitative metrics setting up what we were what we call our suitability standards or educational standards and we'll talk about that in a minute quick question so did you include these in their pilot assessment of those three schools we didn't have them ready for the pilot right so these kinds of things we might still have more than the that would be included because it would be more money suggested if we don't have the lighting or if we don't have the that would be part of it they've been using them since January though right right yeah right so the next right so the next 36 campuses will have this we'll have this okay so we had a we had a whole series that addressed pretty much all of the state standards at a minimum and then we've been working with um with Bonnie and Albert also to understand you know some of those high-level District standards so having some engagement um you know with some of the different departments and again starting to develop what do the standards look like Beyond just a state minimum so what are and those are what we call like our suitability standards which we'll get into here okay this kind of touches back to the main Expo since we were talking about the the standards so we do have an assigned technician who is our evening PM technician who follows the protocol based on the sfb or state standards so when we go through quarterly we do quarterly inspections of every school so he that's his job to consistently go through and he carries a light meter and he goes through classrooms and he goes so to make sure we're I hate to put it this way but at bare minimum we're following the bare minimum standards and we log those we take those and we report those to the sfv as well we create work orders based on those inspections so if we do see a deficiency we may we again deploy to make those Corrections right away so we at least meet that standard but again we're talking high standards that we have as a district which the majority of our facilities if not all our facilities exceed these base standards but we do follow we do not drop below those so we're constantly looking towards those and like I said we have a technician that that is his sole purpose is to go through and do quarterly inspections from one end of the district to the other and make reports as needed so so we have no schools that are out of compliance with State and District standard yes and so as well I'm going to speak lightly to that so as anything we know as of now no we do not um have any any deficiencies to fall below that so except for maybe that Press Box and like I said these are bears State minimum standards so they're very kind of love yeah well I I have a question just and I I don't know if you'll have the answer but because of the age of our schools most of them have the taxpayers are already funded the full cost of building that school we're just on the cost of renovating and keeping them up are there any schools that have not fully been paid for like maybe camp overdie that we've paid off those bonds I don't think so okay yeah because I mean we haven't gotten a bill on anything okay so I think we're good well I'm just saying that that the cost of construction that's that's a big cost and the fact that these are already paid for and so we can just continue maintaining them the taxpayer has a real investment that we want to honor and make sure that their investment is honored by keeping these schools up and thus saving the taxpayer money there may be a little bit of Debt Service still left over but very minimal for during the 2009 Campo Verde build because we've been on a on a a schedule of just seven to nine years of amortizing our bond so my guess is all those all those schools have been fully paid for by this time okay but thank you all right so um kind of moving on there's uh there's two um different elements that um that we've also been working with as a team and with the district and so there's the educational specifications which we also call um the educational suitability standards as well and so these are basically a written and graphic means of communication between the district and design professionals so I always kind of look at it as um it's almost kind of like you know my Bible or something like I'm going to follow this to the T these are all the standards that I need to to um to make sure that we're accounting for when we're designing like for for instance like a brand new school so if you're going to go in and build a brand new school and even if you're going to do renovation this particular document it'll talk about all of the key components that need to be like in a new school like you need to have your you know this is what administration needs to look like this is what the classrooms seem to look like these are what specialty classrooms look like your media center your cafeteria space your your Fields your site so it talks about all those elements that make up or the components that make up a new school you can also use it utilize it as I mentioned for program spaces if you're doing renovations you know as you move you know move forward in your teaching and learning you may not have some of these programs at certain schools so as you go back and potentially add them to schools you know there would be a standard that would be created so then you start to have that Equity lens you know if you're having it from one school to the next school to next school so it really is it's a way to address all of the different components that go into the school in terms of space so and then everything that goes into like the square footage adjacencies and and it can touch on High level Concepts like you know we want to have natural daylighting we want to have a certain level of of lighting levels we want to have certain technology in there but it doesn't get into the specifics and so the Civics are really found and captured within the technical specification the technical specifications you have to think and think about are all of kind of the elements so it talks about like if you're going to have a flush valve you know on a toilet it'll I describe like is it a manual is it censored is it it'll give you more of the finite detail of all of the the different elements that make up you know that go into the building and so those are those are usually non-proprietary specifications because as a public entity you know typically they don't you know you have to have non-proprietary specifications if the school district has some standards that are proprietary meaning like for example if there's a technology or a PA system PA system's a good one and you know you want all of the different PA systems to all talk to each other they all want to interact the same they all want to be maintained by the same vendor the district has an option to bring that forward to a school board and to have that approved as a standard and therefore you do you know if you approve that it doesn't necessarily have to be non-proprietary you can write that into your specification the reason why most of the districts you know prefer to have non-proprietary standard is because then it gives you a little bit of um you know kind of buying power you know you can as long as they're similar or like items you don't want to ever go with something that's not a similar type item to your standard so so basically um you know we're writing these technical design standards which the district already had in some level we're just making them a little bit more well-rounded really trying to capture a lot of like different components that really weren't there before and again it's a tool that is you move forward in your design processes with your architectural vendors or or you know not even architectural vendors I mean they can be a direct source like an HVAC vendor or a technology vendor something at least the standards are documented and again it sets out the priorities for the district so another specific example um prior to to my arrival Albert had decided to go to carpet squares so that would be an example of a technical specification but we don't really care who makes the carpet squares we just want to go with carpet squares but not with rolled carpet that's another simple example of non-proprietary where it's just a what we've adopted as a standard so so we're um right now we're we're Gathering all of this information we've been working with the school district um we've been gathering information with Albert we've been working with Bonnie and you know coming up with um with all of the different types of specifications and working with some different departments and so you know this was an example of you know kind of the technology example um that we're writing into the educational specification that the classrooms will have um an interactive method of communication so in this case um you know you have the interactive screen in the middle it'll be flanked by writable services so you know that's that's a high level standard that's in the educational specification when you when you talk about your teaching and Learning Classroom per se that may be a little bit different um you know in another space but you know for a typical classroom that's kind of been the sooner that's been set up and that's part of our a that's part of our av refresh effort that we started that John's team started um gosh just a little over a year ago now so and then I I just wanted to share this is one of the you've already seen these slides that John shared when we did the bond and override report but it's just fun to see the students interacting with those interactive boards so based upon that we are through with the presentation and ready for any other additional questions that you might have what is the timeline for um having all this information and then giving us a complete picture of what the costs would be similar to the Chart the 30-year chart I want to be ready for shocking yeah um well right now um as uh as Bonnie mentioned um we we were still in development of gathering all this information at least from the educational specification and the technical design guideline that information um we're we're continuing to close the gap um so we're hoping to have all of that information gathered and disseminated and out to amarusco to to start doing all of their field surveys and so we're hoping to have all of our data and everything complete here you know I think it's by the end of April I think is what we had marked we're trying to get gather all of that information so that we can bring this back to the school district I believe we had said originally like in June I think it was so okay and then then Graham when when do you think the assessments will be done and then how much time does your team need to actually scrub the data and put it in the right format so that it can be reported on yeah it's it's a similar timeline like probably in the April time frame is what I'm thinking because like Albert said if we're kind of going through mid to late February there's there's normally a one-to-one ratio between time on site and time off-site on the on the qaqc process and costing let's see Jetty I have a question that that about the state facilities board you were saying that you have to report things like the um lighting and all of that to the state facilities board is that right yes okay then originally the state facilities board was created in order to bring school districts even several years ago I think it was Bishop versus the State of Arizona but we know how successful that has been um how how much are they giving us I mean do they give us anything right now yeah it's it's going to be case to case I think the last time we we did a project through the state facilities board I mean a couple examples would be we did Highland High we did a weatherization to So speaking back to miss betz's painting of a building through the through a true evaluation it may not just necessarily be Aesthetics it may be true moisture penetration and some other issues that come along with that um so we did we did that with the school facilities board as well as Roofing but it has to be defined purely in the past as a failure so for example Gilbert Junior High at the time um it qualified for I believe two buildings to have the roof redone the other building the other roofs they they had to remain the same we were able to refresh two roofs those that deteriorated and so when we went through and did it again just here this past year we we did it ourselves with through bond funds and and did the entire site so everything matched like for like so as of right now we haven't received anything since um 2019 I believe that was that was the last the weatherization project was the last thing so basically we just have to report to them but we aren't getting ready yeah it's more of compliance so than when we do and we do have a catastrophic failure we've done our due diligence to maintain our facilities and we haven't let it um basically we we haven't let it get out of hand to where we've created the failure yourself going back to the maintenance piece so we we're trying to stay aboard with that this page just one question do we have anything like this for our transportation um so in what way I guess just for standard you mean and yeah this is so interesting I just wondering do we have our buses and transportation on a similar plan oh I see um yeah the other equipment so I actually can request Mr Toby when we hired him oh gosh two and a half years ago turns out that he was a a fleet expert and so he has been upgrading the fleet and making decisions on the fleet of do we need the big 80 passenger buses do we need 50 passenger do we need more 30 passenger and he has been purchasing buses based upon available resources to meet those needs but I will go ahead and have him give you an update on where the fleet is we regularly eliminate Vehicles we auction them off before we auction them off we actually pull off transmission or any single workable component that could be used as a spare in the event one of our newer buses fails but he would be better able to answer those questions I know we're not talking about that tonight I was just curious yeah I think that would be a great great future work study so I'll have that conversation with him thank you for that anything further no I I appreciate the in-depth work the this that this is I know that we've always had something where we monitored and known you know when the school was constructed when we placed like an HVAC system but I think getting in depth and making sure that we're doing everything that we need to and understanding what the costs are I think that's a um it's well past time for us to do that I really appreciate the efforts on this I had question was what is the importance or value or why you know to have school-wide standards or district-wide standards why do you see that as a benefit or and a value Tara Tara or Albert Albert too well I think Tara's the one that asked us initially we we asked the same question you did and so I'm just saying that was the hardest question probably for us to answer in terms of what are your standards what do you want all your schools look like what is the what is the Baseline for everything that you guys want in a school that's that's a hard thing to answer yeah it is and so and why does it you if you look at some of the answers to that question you'll see that they're not specific in terms of of of like everybody will have this type of desk you know they're more of a philosophical in terms of they're going to be safe and secure they're going to have proper facilities and a lot of different categories and so then we go back and as we are ordering equipment or things to put in those spaces well we're going to look at okay what is the industry standard on some of these things what is the cost of these things I mean sometimes we can't outfit them at that specific rate just because of where the market is and you know as we go back and we didn't mention it you know when you look at if if that timeline would have went further back to 2008 and then came up and you talked about what kind of repairs we were able to do in our classrooms and in our schools it'd be minimal we wouldn't have the money and then all of a sudden the daa started getting replenished and we have bonds that we were able to utilize thanks to our public and so we're able to do a lot of different things related to that so I think what they look for and you correct me everybody else does it's really easy but I I think that is just like philosophically what do we want to do as a school district and what are some of our areas that we think are very important as we move forward because this I think will help out the school district long after everybody around this table is gone and that's what's most important to me to be real honest with you because then future boards won't be sitting here going well we ever done anything like this what do we do and like you said you've been asking for this for a long time and luckily we're able to get to this point to be able to have a document in our hand that'll help guide us through so and I guess I would just add to that is that the reason why standards are created yes there's the high level you know philosophical you know underlying Life Safety you know that we want all of our schools to be safe but when we start looking at it too it always kind of comes back to me from an equitable standpoint you know right now there's a lot of competition you know and and schools have to be competitive with you know all the different options that parents have now but you know looking at it from a standpoint of you know are your classrooms equally sized are you offering the same types of programs you know at schools um you know and there's there's specialty schools and programs that are going to be at different schools but really starting to look at it from an equitable standpoint you know as parents you it's typical you know you'll go into one school and oh this one looks like this and it looks great well why does my school over here look not so great you know so when you start developing those standards it starts to help kind of ease that Equitable lens As you move forward and so um whether it's an early planning if you're going to build a new school what is that new school going to look like what are all the different components and stuff to it versus like a renovation you can have a renovation project look like a brand new school you know if you're following kind of some of the same standards the other reason why you create standards is you know you don't want to have inferior products so if you want to look at it from a technical design standpoint your maintenance you know they don't want to have to they have to maintain all of these facilities you know and when you have all these different standards they're trying to keep up on all these different parts and all these different you know place cases of Manufacturers and all that sort of stuff so if there's some sort of standardization that helps from an overall operating cost as well so when when you were just when you were just talking and you said equitable what I was understanding was having these standards makes us competitive is that what you're is that what you're mean competitive with the charters and with the private schools and things like that well I'm just saying from kind of school to school as as a parent and I you know you look at when these schools Renovations happen you know if you go in and it looks like hey all of these things are happening in my school why aren't they happening in these other schools that's what I'm saying Equitable in terms of your own School District not you know yes you're always competing with you know other options and every you know Charters go up and everybody's like oh they're brand new and they're shiny and they're this compared to post I mean that happens in every school district but at the same time we're just saying is as if we have these standards that are created you know you're setting yourselves up for Success because you're going to have you're creating you know facilities that are are great learning you know environments for students you know you're setting up what you want each of these campuses to look like and so when we go back and we have the high level conversation not every school is going to look identical and and districts don't some districts love that and some districts don't so it's really kind of like how do you want to look at it from from campus to campus within the school district thank you did you have something to add oh I was I was just going to Echo what Tara said it is truly Equitable and I guess from my end I'm looking from the lens of a maintenance and upkeep so when we've done everything we've done we we put it all out there and we're waiting for the next five or whatever years that we need to to maintain these buildings I look at it as a point of just to the point we're not hunting different parts we're not juggling multiple um components or or technologies that helps me as well is again to train staff to Plug and Play staff to be able to handle um being understaffed at times I could put guys in situations where it's you know if I use an analogy as far as a guy working on a car well I only work on Porsches well I only work on Fords and he's thumbing through while the school's down and it's just related to an AC unit okay well then I got to get somebody else out there well that's not Equitable to me because now I'm wasting not only one technician at the time of the students being uncomfortable I'm wasting the time of another technician to go there where we could be utilizing them at another facility so standardizing it really helps out um helps me from that standpoint as well as not only provides I feel like buying power at times when we are buying carpet squares where it's not this school's rolled carpet this school is x-carpet or exploring we're able to buy in bulk and and have flexibility on how we pivot and make moves uh down the line with our facilities so thank you on that Equitable comment that you keep making I love that um when your report comes back is there anywhere that you guys add any type of suggestions to make us more competitive what we could add into our schools um on on this particular one it won't necessarily be that reporting it's reporting what you have um and so but I think um you know with the create the creation of educational specifications and the creation of technical design guidelines and then how well those are followed over the course of of the lifetime of these schools I think that that's that's going to help set up some parameters for Success you know so um and I think you know having the engagement conversation with the facilities group to understand what are they looking for you know as as a group as a district what are you looking for that the the district's going to look like over the next 5 10 15 20 years and that's that's the whole premise of creating a long-range you know strategic plan um or facilities master plan so and I think all the work that we've done over the last so I don't know four to five years with John Castellano in technology Services Albert and even Trace we've been really focusing on what what would be the standard for our classroom instructional wall which was that AV approval from a little over a year ago so that's going to be standard and we went with BenQ so now from technology Services standpoint they know the BenQ boards they know how to work the software they know how to repair it and that just facilitates the process district-wide that's just a simple example I I would say just I mean looking at this boardroom which was recently done redone what two years ago um those chairs that we had previously were probably 30 years old at least two of us couldn't sit in them because they made our back hurt um just upgrading things so that everyone has workable um space to learn in I think that's just really important that we don't have a school that looks like um we haven't spent a lot of money there at another school where maybe donations have been more generous and they've been able to do more I think it's really important that every child feels that we value them and they have a school that they can be proud of and curb appeal I think is also you know something we've really worked on in the last few years updating our um Marquis fixing the entrance to Highland High School so it looks more professional Institute of somebody drawing a I when I went there before I always felt like somebody just took a piece of paper and said we want this and it didn't look very aesthetically pleasing so I do think I'm not sure if that's in the the philosophical statements but aesthetically pleasing to the community and having that curb appeal is also very important on your Ed specs yes and I was going to add since I'm up here blabbing my last Kumbaya comment um I I think it is you know Gathering some of the stuff we've done and we've looked at it I think it also just brings the district together and unifies it just to the point of the east side is better than the West Side the South Side everybody we've created the standards so everybody's equally touched and everybody's equally benefiting from it so that we can basically fill these schools from east to west north to south with our students and everybody feels just to your point like they're in a school that they can appreciate and that they're appreciated at so it's my last two cents anything further board members well thank you great Graham thank you very much sir we can let you off the hook now thank you again thank you Graham thank you Tara thank you Albert thank you Bonnie and a lot of teams that have gone to this it's done and we look forward to the next meetings and the um the feedback that you'll get from the master Capital planning committee because I think the more feedback that we can get as far as just getting this out and letting people know and then getting understanding what are they looking for at their schools and do they understand what the you know what the costs are what the ramifications are all these things that will just be helpful I think so thanks thank you Tara thank you Albert have a good evening thank you do we want to take a break a few minute break do you want to sure is is now good or would you rather later I'm I'm totally fine I just let's do it after this one okay I just want to make sure everyone was prepared for a little while yeah unless you have to take it no I'm totally good okay maybe after this one I think no no no thank you thank you I just usually get up yes yes and one or something okay so that takes us to 2.02 FY 2023 revised budget number one Dr McCord thank you madam president this is our first budget revision and our presentation to you for this evening this item will appear on the action items at the end of this meeting so again I'm I'm going to hand over the presentation to Jackie matinin and I will just be the color commentator for this particular part of it good evening as um mentioned this is our first budget revision for FY 2023 good evening all right oh sorry excuse me I'm slow on the uptake here so we'll start with an introduction and talk about some data that drives the budget revision student counts uh we'll talk about the FY 2023 revised mno budget and the unrestricted capital budget we'll talk a little bit about other funds average teacher salary and final finally final tax rates so here we have an ADM comparison from FY 2022 to FY 2023 revise number one so you can see the columns there the FY 2022 final recalculation comes to us in about July so you can see the uh in person Arizona online and part full-time and part-time FY 2022 revise number four which we presented uh last week I believe and then the FY 2023 adopted when we adopt the budget we use an estimated amount and we subtract about 400 students assuming a student loss now the FY 2023 revised number one the 31 587 those are actual numbers so the uh we're on to the m o budget capacity for FY 2023 so we're going to compare again FY 2022 the weighted student count again at the top Revenue control limit which is driven by the weighted student count and our base level support so again FY 2022 revise number four the total budget limit was to 268.42 million FY 23 adopted again using projected numbers for the most part was 296.5 and this revision that we're sharing tonight is 301.7 million so the increase from the 23 adopted to what we're presenting tonight is 5.2 million I just go ahead you'll just remind us where did that 30 million come between 2022 to 2023 just generally so you can look in the revenue control limit the 229.7 up to 231 that's just under 2 million dollars that's directly the result of the um of the fact that we we projected a 400 student loss and only lost 250 students so that a roughly two million dollars is accounted for there there is about looks like on the budget balance carry forward so I'm just going to show you here looks about uh three and a half million dollars there there are two components to the budget balance carry forward not only as we finish the year do we have a an unencumbrance of purchase orders and stuff like that that we didn't need so that results in a higher budget balance carry forward but in addition in 2022 during that recalculation process we gained another nearly eight hundred thousand dollars of budget capacity that rolls to the budget balance carry forward so that's another component of the budget balance carry forward and then those were the two main contributors also you also uh approved that revised number four which gave us the additional 35 million dollars uh sorry wish it was 35 million thirty five thousand dollars in mno override which also contributes to that budget balance carry forward again so those were the two main components the revenue control limit increase of almost 2 million plus the roughly three million dollars in budget balance carry forward so that's the abducted versus the revised okay tell me remind me how did we go how did we gain 30 million from the revised number four to the FY 2023 adopted and we did describe this a little bit better on the next presentation but um but the 193.4 million dollars represents the revenue control limit with 20 million dollars moved to understand capital okay so because of the way statute reads you can see that our budget balance carry forward was still 42 million dollars right in 2022 we weren't we're not allowed statutorily to transfer from mno into understanding Capital we have to re-class the revenue coming in so we had to take the 20 million dollars from the revenue control limit put it into unrestricted Capital thereby reducing so that that change is really um you know what do you have there 30 million dollars minus 20 it's really about a 10 million dollar change thank you yeah I was just trying to remember what that was yeah I know it's very confusing sorry do this and you do it but it you get all these numbers and then after a while you forget what exactly happened and why we made that I remember a lot of what happened I'm just trying to remember exactly yes yes and when they start looking at the numbers so we spent a fair amount of time ourselves what's the story there again we'll move on to unrestricted capital so again FY 2022 revised number four shared last week fy2023 adopted again estimating because we adopted in July and then the revised number one the daa district additional assistance is 16.54 million textbook allocation is nine hundred thousand the budget balance carry forward is 28.66 which includes that 20 million dollars and interest earned is about a hundred and ten thousand dollars so that brings us to 46.2 million dollars for this revision which is about a two hundred and sixty thousand dollar increase from the adopted any questions on that one so I wanted to share to you would intuitively expect that if we had another 150 students we should be seeing an increase in the district additional assistance but this is just a reminder that the district additional assistance is calculated on prior year student counts so I just wanted to make sure that's clear to you and then I also wanted to point out the hundred and ten thousand dollars in interest earnings directly related to the decision we made to move the 20 million dollars out of Maintenance and operations into District additional assistance two reasons maintenance and operations the money just sitting sitting there does earn interest but we're not allowed to spend it it just stays into our cash Reserves at the county in unrestricted Capital there is a component of the formula that allows us to capture the interest and increase our budget budget capacity with that interest earned and you can see in FY 22 we earned about 16 000 in in interest on Capital so we're up considerably um because of that transfer okay well and we also thought since that was one-time money it seemed like because at some level it makes sense to put it usually our Capital our unrestricted capital is more of a one-time spend either curriculum or building the different building remodel different things that are more one time spent so it felt like it was a first of all we'd make we'd capture the interest that we can actually spend and then also felt like it would give us an idea of how to spend it best since it's a one-time spend right so some other funds that we thought were notable we have the 2022 revised number four compared to the adopted and then finally the FY 2023 revise number one so classroom site fund is 42.79 million instructional Improvement is iif that is 2.37 million state and federal grants is up to 59.47 we included some other cash funds tax credit auxiliary operations and donations and that is 18.65 million nutrition services we're at 23.31 Community Education and their grants 11.9 and 6.7 respectively these are many of these are cash funds we took the beginning fund balance and added their current balance and added anticipated anticipated Revenue through the end of the year and whatever Revenue we had so this is a pretty a pretty accurate snapshot we feel of these of these cash funds and the reason for that change primarily this response to the annual financial report which you guys approved back in October so all that information shows our spend and so then that's what that budget that new budget balance carry forward is calculated on which resulted in all in all these increases in the budget capacity for revised number one yes are these ones that we apply for every year or they standing grants many of them are entitlement grants so we have Title One idea some are application grants but most are entitlement grants where did the almost six million dollar increase in nutrition services come from um the Deering covid the um we had Universal free breakfast and lunch so regardless of your socioeconomic status everyone in 21 and 22 were able to access breakfast and lunch for free the reimbursement from the federal government is much higher than our normal fee of around three dollars and So based upon that even though our costs to make those meals increase the reimbursement was that much higher giving us an opportunity to increase our fund balance so which was greatly desired because now in 23 we're off that Universal free breakfast and lunch we are presently in this in the process of right sizing our nutrition services program as natural attrition is occurring we're not filling positions because our participation our number of meals at breakfast and lunch has gone down substantially so that's the main reason just due to the uh the decision to have the universal free lunch and and all of the reimbursements from the federal government we may have also seen a swing there as that 17.09 for the adopted was an estimated amount so we may have been pretty conservative there yeah that's foreign so the average teacher salary this grid is required now on the front page of our budget we also have it on our website and it's on the AFR the average teacher salary we recalculate this every October for the first revision of each budget so this is reflective of the staff that's currently or that was currently employed in October of 2022 and that average now is 67 676 compared to the prior year of 57 to 28.
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so those are the important dates to remember as we go through this budget process any questions about that so as we develop this budget we had four priorities in mind first of all to determine well let me know priorities is the wrong wrong word these are the steps we follow to develop this budget we determine staff and student enrollment projections we looked at the major non-discretionary accounts to see what changes we could make we prepared reviewed and prioritized school and program requests and then we re-examined and re-prioritized expenditures and made potential reductions prior to bringing the budget to you tonight the budget was developed with these four budget priorities health and safety and school security high quality instruction for our students social and emotional support for our students and support for our students with special needs the next slide answers the question the chair had what are the known issues with financial impact that we entered this budget season with these are the increases that we have just to maintain what we currently have to open up our school doors on August 28th of 2023.
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her two boys Nathan currently in eighth grade and Christian currently in second grade have attended Ellington school since kindergarten I met Araceli at the first coffee with the principal where she asked how can I help at Ellington School this year she has offered her time by sharpening the eighth grade field trip to the California Science Center and USC she helped supervise our school-wide stem mobile Museum and handled the food fundraiser with the school counselor during the winter festival she is a member of the schoolside council and has attended the monthly coffee with the principal meetings aracelia is friendly loves to make people laugh and someone that you can always count on when I asked her son Nathan how would he describe his mother he replied like a purple tulip purple is her favorite color and tulip because she is kind and loves nature her younger son Christian described his mother as the best mother in the world thank you Araceli Ruiz is going to go for all that you do for Ellington and congratulations on being Ellington's parent of the year thank you good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Jeanette Flores and I am the proud principal of Hodge Elementary it is with great honor that I introduce to you Hodge Elementary's parent of the Year Dulce Baron accompanying Dulce tonight or her husband Marcelino and two children Aaliyah and Noah who are both students at Hodge go cougars Dulce attended Hajj Elementary when she was a little girl herself since then she has lived in the community and now her two children attend Hajj she expressed having fallen in love with our school and Community back when she was a little girl when asked why she volunteers so much at Hodge she answered I do it for my children because I want to be a part of their life and their education on our volunteer days Dulce can be found single-handedly Manning the copy machine or the laminating machine she is the first to volunteer when it comes to a creative project and will volunteer in the classroom when needed Dulce shares herself and her talents with the entire school when volunteering on campus she goes where she is needed and does it with a smile she's already I'm sorry if she's not already at Hodge she's only a phone call away when Dulce is not volunteering at Hodge she can be found taking Noah to Mariachi basketball or football or driving Aaliyah to softball practice or or to the scouts where she also volunteers with the troops her smile and positive attitude precede her everywhere she goes we at Hodge are are happy to have Dulce as one of our parent volunteers we hope to strengthen our relationship with her and hold on to her positive attitude and willingness to volunteer for many years I am very proud to recognize Dulce Baron as Hodge Elementary's parent of the year for her hard work and dedication to Aaliyah and Noah and for her involvement at Hodge Elementary thank you yeah like that thank you good evening Dr bull Board of Education members cabinet and attendees I am Diana Rojas the proud principal of Charles H Lee Elementary School and I along with the entirely staff parents and students are excited to recognize Mrs Alicia Rodriguez as Lee parent of the year Mrs Rodriguez is an amazing woman mother and wife with her husband Mr Enrique Rodriguez Jr they have two children at Lee Elementary School Enrique III a second grader and Layla a first grader Mrs Rodriguez makes her children's education a priority by having high expectations demonstrating the importance of learning by attending school meetings and by maintaining constant communication with her children's teachers and School staff in spite of the fact that Mrs Rodriguez is busy raising two young children and working a full-time job she is a dedicated parent partner who makes time to volunteer countless hours to our school and her excellent leadership on past VTA and our current parent group along with her creativity flyer making poster making on popcorn making skills have contributed to many successful school events which students and their families have enjoyed while also raising funds for field trips supplies and materials for our classroom in addition Mrs Rodriguez has become an advocate for our school and for all these students by speaking to other parents about our school programs by attending board meetings like tonight and by collaborating with other schools PTA groups and closing I will end with a fun fact about this classy lady she is a huge Metallica fan so with that said congratulations Miss Rodriguez and keep on rocking it um oh okay good evening Dr Beau members of the board cabinet and members of the community my name is Jenny Lee director for the early childhood education program physician Unified School District it is a pleasure for me to represent the Longfellow School community in recognizing and celebrating the school's parent of the Year miss Genesis Lee there are countless roles that a successful parent must perform and perform well in raising a healthy well-adjusted child who would achieve at his full potential among these role Miss Lee feels her most important roles are her sons Joshua teacher and role model she is creative in teaching well whether while she's sitting down and working with a Joshua on a specific skill or while they do laundry together she understands that learning will not always go as planned and when it does not she will focus on actively finding resources and support to work with him she focused on always the positive Ms Lee tries to see things from Joshua's perspective he's a preschool student in our preschool program to better understand and to guide him she works closely with him and those who work with him to know his current interests and motivations as they would change as he grows she allows uh she this allows her to determine the best way to provide meaningful learning opportunities that he enjoys Joshua loves geese therefore going to the park to watch ease is a frequent activities that the family enjoy together Ms Lee second this is her second year at Longfellow she has consistently demonstrated a great commitment to supporting the school's program and Community she works and attend school she's a very busy mom yet she makes time to participate in the English language advisory committee The District Preschool advisory committee the parent advisory committee Plus Pack plus Miss Lee attends coffee with the director each month and participate in parent trainings and discussions she even volunteered to train other parents in the families in school reading roads she communicates with parents and teachers to have their voices heard at the school levels and at The District's level she advocates for all families and all children when Ms Lee has a concern or an ideas she does not hesitate to share and because she is solution oriented she always can prepared with proposed ideas or Solutions so I love when she visits because great things will be happening it is apparent like Miss Lee that helps programs and school to continuously grow and improve so thank you Miss Lee for your dedication and support of Longfellow School foreign good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees I am Marcela fonsica I am the very proud principal of Magnolia Elementary School and I am privileged to present to you our parent of the Year Mr Jesus Carrillo Jesus is a company tonight by his proud wife Kristen and his two precious daughters one of whom attends kindergarten at our school Jesus is a dad who brings a very special energy to our campus when the Carrillo family joined the Magnolia Community last year they were eager to find their place as new parents of a school-aged daughter but Jesus answered a greater calling in growing into an educational partner and advocate for all children and parents he soon found himself Rising as a leader galvanizing our community to learn about and become involved in the decision-making processes that affect our educational programs he told me you coordinate the meeting dates and times and we will bring the parents coffee and donuts and he did just that he made connections with other families learned their stories and inspired them to use their voices and presents to support their children in their own educational journey in addition to being a valued volunteer and generous donator of goods in time Jesus was elected to the school site Council his thoughtful questions and input always lead to valuable discussions about decisions made at Magnolia's School during his parent of the Year interview Jesus said he is inspired to do what he does because of his wife and children he wants more for them than what he had and in a small way he is thankful for the pandemic because it afforded it afforded him the opportunities to spend more time with his family and prioritize what matters most and as a result the Magnolia Community benefited too Jesus is an amazing dad valued volunteer cherished Community member and deserves this recognition thank you Jesus for all you do for Magnolia School we are so proud to name you as our wild parent of the year we look forward to you being a Wild Mustang for many years to come congratulations we appreciate you foreign Los Padres maestros Los pares principles principales sisters in Murray definition is Escuela Los Angeles opportunities the auto Ence foreign good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Antonio Flores and I'm the proud principal of Paramount Elementary and unfortunately tonight my parent of the year is not with me today uh or tonight uh her kids have a karate tournament so apparently they must be doing very well because she was going to try to make it afterwards but that just shows her dedication to her family she puts her kids first but let me just show you I'll share a little bit about Mrs Nava our parents of the year is Mrs kisela Nava she's been a parent volunteer for over 10 years now and since then Mrs Nava is someone that we can depend on to volunteer to help with our PBIS store and special events Mrs Nava also remains 100 engaged at our school she routinely attends meetings such as elac coffee with the principal and various parent workshops she she always manages to Foster positive discussions and bring the best out of out of our other parents we are lucky to have Mrs Navas part of our Paramount Community she is a very giving person and always looking to help others with their students by sharing her knowledge and experience so from for me and from Paramount we want to thank Mrs Nava for everything that we do and once again it's my pleasure to announce Mrs Nava as Paramount Elementary's parent of the year good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Jenny wiebe and I am the proud principal of Powell Elementary it is my honor and privilege to introduce to you how school's parent of the Year Mrs Erica Salinas Erica is joined here tonight by her beautiful family her husband Jaime and her two fantastic children Andrew and Karina Andrew is currently an eighth grade student at Foothill and Karina is a sixth grade student at Powell both kids have gone all the way through Powell so it is very fitting that in this final year for Powell Elementary we honor Erica who has been a steady and consistent parent supporter all of those years that her children have been with us Erica has a positive steady and calm personality she has always been one of those moms that would volunteer for field trips and help out with school events in these last few years she has increased her commitment by serving as a member of our School site Council and this year she was voted in as our co-president of our Panther parent group she told me that her daughter Karina was the one that encouraged her Erica is always encouraging her kids to put themselves out there Step Up for leadership try new things so Karina told her that she should put herself out there too and she did Erica strives to be involved with her kids in what they do and asks them a lot of questions she supports their interests listens to them and tries to understand their point of view she has worked hard to build trust so that her children can share their feelings and opinions with her besides being a wonderful mom and supporter of Powell School Erica is a police officer she brings her professional understanding of working with people and working within a community to Powell and we are the better for it thank you Erica for all the years of support that you have given to our pal Community please join me once again in honoring Erica Salinas Powell's 2022 2023 parent of the year good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is oracio Trejo and I am the proud principal of Valley Dome it is my pleasure and honor to present our parent of the Year Jody Gonzalez joining her here in support are her husband Salvador and her two daughter Estonia who is at Gladstone High School and Selena who is one of our sixth graders Miss Jody has not only been a dedicated and loving parent to her own children but also a valued member of our school Community as a staff member and PTO super volunteer she has given countless hours of her time to ensure the safety and well-being of all students during lunch and after school hours she is an advocate not only for her children but ours when she sees a need or handles a student with a social emotional issue she will take them under her Wing as a helper at lunch or she will come to me for advice or with a suggestion she is the voice for those still learning to use theirs Miss Jody has been a driving force behind many of our successful PTO events and fundraisers which have benefited not only her kids but also the entire School Community she has taken on these responsible abilities while balancing the demands of family life and she has always done so with a strong work ethic and with such a positive way of doing things that we just don't want you to ever go Miss Jody like ever your girls are blessed to have you as your mom and Champion I love hearing during your interview that Selena loves having you around our school in her words thanks to you she is famous at Valleydale I loved hearing about the reading that goes on at home and you doing what it takes to help your girls in whatever form is needed your dedication and commitment to your family and to our school is truly inspiring and you are a shining example of what it means to be a truly engaged and supportive parent as your family is blessed so are our Vikings so thank you Miss Jody and congratulations foreign Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Dr Anthony Contreras and I am the proud principal of Center School it brings me a great pleasure to introduce our parent of the Year Mrs Crystal Raza Ms Razo is joined today by her daughter Aaliyah our ASB president and her son Miguel who attends Powell foreign along with the spirit of the entire center community here tonight to celebrate her contributions to our school Crystal has been a valuable member of our school Community for the last two years she personifies involvement in care she is a super parent and volunteer her hand prints are all over the school and as you can tell by her sign over there it's the one with the handprints crystal is ready to lend a helping hand to a variety of clubs and student functions if there is a fundraiser or a need at the school you will see her there we have witnessed her helping students with setups decorations attending field trips as a chaperone and even warming up the cheese for the nachos Mrs Rosso brings a cheerful and helpful energy that is a welcomed addition to our school site Crystal attributes being a young mother and not having support adolescent with her passion to ensure that she was involved in her students education and overall growth she says if you are not sure give it a try and try your best Mrs Roswell wants her children and all students to not only to not only give 100 to their academics but also try new school Endeavors such as Sports and clubs a number one cheerleader for students at Center and always ready to pitch in Crystal is a gem it is with great pride please help me celebrate Center Middle School's parent of the Year Mrs Crystal Rosa good evening Dr Beau and Board of Education members I'm Miss Fieri and I couldn't be prouder than to be here with Miss Rocio garduna and her family as we celebrate Foothills parent of the year Ms Garduno Jara grew up about two hours north of Azusa and began raising her family there however four years ago she decided to leave that area and move here to Azusa she enrolled her students in Azusa Unified Schools and says she has felt so good to be part of the Learning Community here currently Miss Garduno has two students in Azusa schools one son Raymond at Azusa High School and her son Ricky at Foothill Middle School and she has a very excited two-year-old toddler waiting in the wings who can't wait to go to school with her older brothers sometimes it's not easy for parents to find time in their day to volunteer and be active as a School site but miss carduna will have none of that she says she she knows how important it is to have her a stay in her children's education in fact Miss Garduno sets the example in her household by herself returning back to school to earn not one but four separate degrees Miss carduna has taken that education and now works in the security field as a security director she says I've gone to college to make sure my kids understand the importance of Education in any career they may choose and she adds I came from a household where Spanish was only spoken and my parents found it very difficult to help her through her educational Journey so she wanted to make sure she didn't she did everything possible for her kids not to have that as an issue and she demonstrates that by her commitment in serving Foothill as part of our School site Council and our d-lac committee we have been blessed to have such a wonderful parent demonstrate to us that involvement is important and staying active in our children's future is a priority and so for these reasons and so many more we thank you Miss Garduno for your generosity in helping Foothill Middle School do the best for our students no okay good evening Dr Beau members of the Board of Education cabinet and attendees I am Yvette Walker the proud principal of Slauson Middle School I am pleased to introduce to you this evening Alejandra madrigo flossen's parent of the year as a proud parent of a seventh grader at Slauson Middle School and a fourth grader at Hodge both her daughter's education is important but it doesn't end there she's also supports our school in many ways here are a few of the ways she attends our committees our fundraisers and being actively actively involved in not only her daughter's learning but all student learning in addition to being a mother Alejandra currently works as our temporary Community liaison and also the permanent Community liaison Ed Hodge where she is also able to help both front office I'm sorry at Valleydale Alejandra is very busy Alejandra has supported with many events at Slawson and to name just a few she has supported with additional additional activities such as school registration back to school night our school website translations organizing and planning parent meetings and phone calls as needed Alejandra is a dedicated individual who is enthusiastic about working in a school environment and supporting our students and staff in any way possible she Prides herself on her connections with people and is very organized in everything that she does she demonstrates genuine concern for students and parents and treats everyone with a first class service Alejandra's excellent communicative and bilingual skills have helped her build rapport with our community her creative knowledge of Technology writing in both English and Spanish is invaluable when necessary Alejandra uses her creative skills to also create flyers and invitation keeping parents informed of events taking place at Slawson it is always a pleasure to be around Alejandra her friendly demeanor makes it easy for parents and students to approach her please join me in recognizing and congratulating Alejandra as slawson's 2023 parent of the year buenas noches Dr Beau miambrose is Russell common Western Azusa is Azusa High School hey yes secondary Azusa illustrito area is Sierra Perseus is the upper and there foreign Azusa distrito and Finn apart and Western Community Azusa Felicity good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Kent Stout and I'm the principal at Sierra High School it is my pleasure to introduce our parent of the Year Anna Phoebe Beltran this is actually the second time I have the honor opportunity to share how amazing Anna Phoebe is as a parent in our district back in 2018 she was actually Gladstone Street's parent of the year when I was principal there so this is the second time I get this opportunity Anna Phoebe has been living in Azusa for 17 years with her partner Mario Garcia they have four children Daryl Jocelyn Juan and Delilah both Daryl and Jocelyn graduate from Azusa High School her son Juan is currently a senior at Sierra and Delilah 10th Center Middle School all four of our children have been attending Azusa Unified School District since preschool and If Phoebe has been a volunteer since day one she says she plans to continue to volunteer until her youngest Delilah finishes her education as a Sierra parent for the past two years she has volunteered in many different capacities she has been on multiple committees she has been our d-lac representative on elac on wasp parent Roundtable School site Council and volunteered for our senior women's tea event she attends all her coffee with the principal meetings and participates in our weekly LA County Mental Health parent classes as a parent Ms Beltran believes that open communication with their children is the most important impact she could have on them she lets them know they can always come to her with any issue or problem they have no matter what and she will always be there for them and if you be tonight we celebrate you not only as a positive parent impacting your own children's lives but also the lives of the students attending Sierra congratulations on being Sierra High School parent of the year it is it is now my honor and privilege to present Azusa unified parent of the Year from Gladstone High School Mr Pedro Palacios they make a great team good evening Dr Beau board members tabbed it and attendees my name is Sam Perdomo and I am the proud principal of Gladstone High School it gives me great pleasure to again present Mr Pedro Palacios as Gladstone's parent of the year and the Azusa Unified School District's parent of the year what makes the speech so different from the other speeches besides presenting a wonderful parent is the fact there is no time limit so Ms Kramer turn off your timer without further ado I would like to bring in my prolific speech Miss Camacho if I hit 20 minutes please stop me Mr Palacio is joined tonight by his lovely wife Luz his daughter Ashley who is a senior at Gladstone High School his son Alex who is a fourth grader at Paramount Elementary Mr Palacios attends all coffee with the principals elac parent workshops back plus meetings to name a few Mr Palacio expresses and consistently reminds other parents that they should not make excuses for their children but rather work together with the school to develop a viable solution moreover with respect to Mr Palacio being involved in his children's education Mr Palacio feels that he must always be involved with his children's studies this is evident because his daughter Ashley who I mentioned earlier has maintained a high GPA is being successful in an early college program AP and honors classes in addition Mr Palacios feels being present as children's social and educational development is of the utmost importance Mr Palacio also promotes healthy discipline and feels it is a key to productive decision making in particular with shared intelligent responsible decisions should be practiced now I would like to tell you a few anecdotal stories that involve Mr Palacios the first was last year when I instilled stricter policies at Gladstone High School the word must have gotten out because at the second coffee the ghs coffee of the principal Mr Palacios thanked me and appreciated me for holding the students accountable he added and stated to the parents that their children are here to learn and need to be in class learning my friend but this firm policy ties into my next story that is when it was time to tell Mr Palacio he was Gladstone High School's parent of the year um I had my community liaison called him to make an appointment so Mr Palacios asked Miss well can you believe that by the way it's all blank right there ugh good thing there's no time limit darn it okay where was I oh yeah um Mr Palacios asked Miss Miss Marlene he said what is this about and she says I don't know and he's he became really nervous and he said can you please come to the meeting with me and I was thinking why is he so afraid of me she's all I don't know he's afraid of you and I said I can't imagine why why anyway I think uh one of the last stories that I that I um like is that uh I was walking out of the district office just this past uh just right before Christmas and I saw a bunch of parents adults Christmas Caroline around the district and who did I see right there right there leading the charge was Mr Palacios and I thought to myself this is such parent of the Year material and and here we are with Mr Palacios so finally at the district period of the Year interviews Mr Palacio stated something very profound and it took me aback took the panel back and what he said was that our children are on loan to us and they eventually leave to do their thing therefore it is up to the parents to make them as successful as possible and guide them in the right direction that is so true ghs is so lucky to have Mr Pedro plus use as a contributing parent and we are so lucky to have him at ghs congratulations Mr Colossians suppose foreign [Music] Jesus senor foreign congratulations to all of our parents of the year and now I would like to turn it back over to Dr Beau thank you so much Miss Camacho let's have another big round of applause for all of our parents thank you so much moving to item 7.1 public comment on non on agenda or non-agenda items um hope do we have any can we say something can we see something to the parents yes okay so I'd like to congratulate all the parents that received any award today and also you know to forgiving of your time because I know sometimes you spend hours at some of the schools sometimes I thought some of the parents were employees but they were not because they spent all day working there and helping in the office or hopping in the grounds or with the children so I really appreciate you spending your time at the school sites with the children Palacio thank you everyone good evening everyone and and thank you for being here tonight and congratulations on parent of the year they say a job a job of a parent never ends and I used to hear that from my mother all the time but I really want to you know tell you the how much we appreciate you for your dedication your hard work and for being there for our students here in Azusa and thank you for all uh your time and hours that you put into our community and our school district here we appreciate you gracias [Music] ausd is lucky to have all of you guys here you guys have no idea like how how happy it makes me like look I I really like giving the awards to the teachers you guys teachers you're great classified but again like I say it takes a village to raise a child how do you say Village foreign as parents sometimes you'll see parents come in volunteer for I was one of those parents that was at the school all the time giving my time and I learned so much and how to be a better parent and better you know teacher to my to my child and just want to let you guys know we're in a Souza Azusa Unified School District family so thank you family good evening thank you parents family members Guardians caretakers anyone who's playing a family or parent role you're so important to all of our students and as family members we know that we are our child's first teacher and so in partnership with you we recognize your daily effort from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep and even during your sleep I know that you're thinking about your children you're working hard and we see you we hear you and today is just one small way of celebrating you and recognizing your daily effort so on behalf of the board the governing board of the Azusa Unified School District and all of our staff we celebrate you today thank you so much and this concludes our presentation and our formal celebration for our parent of the Year ceremony as a board we will be taking a five-minute recess and then we'll come back to continue our board meeting thank you you guys are all welcome to stay or watch Us online have a great night for those of you guys leaving be safe oh that's okay no no no no no that's not right yeah yeah I know like on Netflix no no problem no don't worry it's all good I know you I have all these notes for that I'll forget foreign good evening and welcome back to our meeting of the Azusa Unified School District Board of Education we will continue with item 7.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items we do have a number of uh participants wishing to make public comment and so we'll go in order with uh Ms Martina and Miss Martina you have three minutes testing one two okay thank you good evening Dr Beau and Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is viridiana marcena and I am currently the itinerant music teacher at Center Middle School and three elementary schools here in the district I have worked in the district for 16 years and I come to you tonight to express my concern over the certificated particular kinds of service list that recommends that three music full-time reductions should be implemented for the new school year and I strongly disagree with that by eliminating these particular kinds of services you will be essentially shrinking the district's music programs some people have been saying cutting you're not cutting our music programs because we're still going to be offered but they will shrink instead of grow with the new reorganization of our school district our vision should be for the expansion not elimination of the music programs the new high school should have a minimum of two full-time non-itinerant positions and the new middle school as well should have a minimum of two full-time non-itinerant teachers and with the reduction that leaves one position to cover all the remaining elementary schools grades four and five we currently offer General music band marching band jazz band choir orchestra Mariachi piano and guitar and unfortunately we're not offering the full spectrum of what we could with those classes because we don't have three levels for each each subject we don't have beginners followed by intermediate followed by advance so we don't we're not giving our students that opportunity to move forward in those programs in those classes [Music] um excuse me by reducing three music positions uh oh I lost my place we should be offering three levels of each class by reducing three music positions it will prevent the district have the possibility of offering everything we currently offer plus more our vision is expansion opportunities growth giving our students choices within the music program within the music program oh giving our students choices within the music program offers more opportunities for them to grow within the music programs please consider removing the three full-time music positions from the PKS list before you vote on it thank you for your undivided attention thank you Miss marchetta Miss Mary Turner please good evening whoops all right good evening president Beau board members cabinet and attendees my name is Mary Turner and I am the district music coordinator I am here tonight to ask the board to reconsider eliminating three of our secondary music positions before 2016 we had 12 music teachers every secondary school had two music teachers one for band one for choir and two at the elementary level today we are discussing eliminating three more positions in reducing the music staff to five members almost a 60 percent reduction within six years if we have two music teachers at Azusa High School and two at glasstone middle school we will have only one teacher for elementary schools since I am responsible for creating the master schedule for all music teachers I am unsure if we can continue meeting our contractual obligation to offer release time to fourth and fifth grade teachers with one staff member a successfully implemented music education curriculum is like raising a fruit-bearing tree from a Seedling the music teachers are the arborists who use their knowledge skill and Devotion to plan care and love the ceiling and raise it into a sapling a young tree they focus on the root system or the music feeder programs so the tree can mature and produce sweet fragrant fruits which would be our top-notch award-winning performing groups it is a labor of love the cuts made in the last six years have been deeply harmful to our root systems instead of having beginning intermediate and advanced music classes we have one course for all levels where no student can grow or succeed it is similar to putting beginning Learners in the same class as our AP or IB students with this type of curricular structure be acceptable to parents Guardians Educators and business and Community leaders if this occurs in other academic subjects before you approve the discontinuation of the music teacher programs please take a moment and think about the quality of the music education that you would like to see in the future think about the inequity we create in music education for our students compare what the affluent communities can offer their children versus what our parents can offer do our students deserve less music can increase academic achievement and success and assist the social emotional growth that many of our students need why would we choose not to provide the best for our students let us meet and talk about our vision what we want for our students let us plan first and before reducing teacher positions to ensure that we continue to deliver the best music education for all the children in our Care thank you thank you Miss Turner next we have MS Heather Sierra good evening Dr Beau and Board of Education members my name is Heather Sierra and I attended Azusa High School and graduated in 1994.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so we're cool happy that's going to be covered by the sfd Transportation update Department of Public Safety inspections occurred it was our yearly inspection it was on February 1st and 16 buses were inspected 15 buses passed inspection on the first try one bus had a brake chamberlink that occurred during the inspection so Parts on order and it is expected to be repaired by February 8th so again way to go Transportation team thank you Mr name for all your work in in that area and ensuring that we're up to par and our buses are running we also are short bus drivers so again if you know anybody that wants to drive we currently have Mr Lane Mr Nathan uh Miss Roxy and Lupita or Food Service directors also are certified bus drivers so when we talk about all hands on deck it really is all hands on deck so thank you and it's trying to recruit our bus drivers the 0.5 K tot Trot thank you again for all who made that possible uh preschool raised a little bit over two thousand dollars and thanks to Stephen Palm photography we got some awesome pictures that were going to be um using some of them to put student pictures up on the walls here in our boardroom a lot of fun sweetheart data please support us Saturday February 11th at 6 PM it's CPAC um Friday the 13th we were at the La Posada for around the Cracker Barrel so um Mr osterdy myself Miss Clark Miss Julius cindoli were on the radio so I don't know if anybody listens to around the Cracker Barrel it's kind of fun but that'll be Saturday we've gotten a lot of donations so we're very excited um staff members as a reminder you are free and spouses pay 45 and there's tickets by Miss Julie cerulli and information so if anybody does not have their tickets please call us I'm here at school and we can make sure to get you on the list for the gala we have a silent auction that will be starting and we'll be sending information um I believe the cited function starts on Thursday February 9th and then it ends after the gala January 27th was the 100th day of school there you see Mrs Cuevas always a good sport doing her best rendition of being 100 years old with students in class as well here she comes she has one of that day so um average daily membership ADM which was projected for our budget next year has been maintained so just a reminder it used to be that they counted all the kids that were present on our data school if you remember it was like make sure you come to school on that day actually it's the enrollment of that day so it doesn't it's not necessarily that they're absent so the enrollment on this day was 654 and as a reminder our preschool fed kids are the only ones who count um for ABM and half of the Kinder students count towards ADM as well okay do you say that right okay love of reading week is next week guest readers are welcome please board members and any parents please let Ms nayali know if you'd like to sign up as a guest reader we have literacy and art night on Thursday the book fair is on so please get your shopping done by books and we're also accepting donations for books to be placed in our meeting Peace Garden thank you have a great evening and a Happy Valentine's Day that completes my report appreciate all of you for being here tonight great thank you and the main reason all most of you are here tonight is for our next section is the cult of the month um just this is the fun part congratulations to everybody that's here and couldn't make it so with that we'll turn over to the to the team um go ahead and come up and bring your papers with you that your teacher wrote and then we'll start when we have preschool all the way up so um all right so we'll have to go ahead and these families were welcome to come up and record and take pictures okay so go ahead and say your name my name is um [Music] okay yes so maddox's teacher Mrs Nixon Heights Maddox is a super student overall she's kind to others asking new children to play she's safe and follow safety rules at school and on the playground she's responsible and always follows through on what she says that she will do congratulations foreign [Music] teacher Miss Jeanette Mills writes Andres thank you so much for always working so hard I have seen you grow so much from the beginning of the year you complete all of your assignments and you always show so much responsibility you set a great example for the other students on what a kind and safe student looks like thank you for always being so amazing congratulations foreign flowers says it's an honor to nominate Jacob for this award you know that person you can always count on to be there for you or is cool letting you pick the game up the next recess that is Jacob he sets the tone in the classroom first one to raise his thumb to let me know I'm ready Mrs Flowers first one to get his table poop quiet for the next set of directions and the first one to tell you I like your T-shirt Jacob is funny witty super sweet and can throw a frisbee better than anyone in this room he's responsible with his belongings monitors himself well in the classroom and always gets his class working homework done picking a pulse of the month each month is one of my favorite things ever and it's a pleasure to have this award go to a deserving student like Jacob well done I'm one proud teacher I can't wait to see all that you can accomplish this school year love Mrs Flowers thank you my name is Zoe Lugo and I'm in fourth grade great so Zoe's teachers Miss Jones and she writes Zoe shows kindness to everyone she interacts with she follows school and classroom rules and goes above and beyond in her academics great jobs congratulations thank you community chimney if we could have our Cult of the month go ahead and stand up here one more time right now what we're going to do is present our Golden Horseshoe Awards which is like our employees of the month Awards and this is very special because this is voted on nominated by our our colleagues here foreign so our first one is to Mrs Eva Brown hey right there so I was Eva your employees right that was a huge help in our front office and with our front office staff she's always willing to help in issues that arise her hard work compassion for helping our families especially during the holiday season means so much to our school Community she has been there since day one this gal has helped me from the day I first walked in to register my daughter in the middle of the year I was so nervous and she told me it's going to be okay I have so much respect for her Eva is always going out of her way even with her busy schedule to help us teachers out she's always so positive and amazing at what she does thank you Eva for all that you do here's her nice Golden Horseshoe award thank you I'm sticking with you and I'd like to think about my first year here she walked me through a lot too she helped me a lot with learning the ropes especially in the front office and I thank you for all of the help that you gave me my first year and every year after and and to this day so thank you okay our next Golden Horseshoe award goes to Janice Des camps if you could please come forward and Mrs descamp's colleagues right Janice is a five-star co-worker she always has a smile on her face never complains and is as responsible as it comes even though this was her first year teaching in the Middle School it feels and it felt like it had been many for her or many that years that she'd been here she's a true marigold her addition this year has created a more positive environment for both teachers and students Janice did an excellent job teaching art in middle school she had the students create tie-dyed shirts painted pumpkins beautiful Christmas ornaments she used her personal time to create the ornaments the students painted I know she'll do amazing things with our elementary students Janice has stepped up and has reinvented herself all year she made the art experience for our students educational and fun she worked hard to better Continental congratulations want to say how much I appreciate these two because Eva and Ms descamps they are the epitome of when you need something done or you need help they step in they help out they're everywhere they know everything because like me when I came in at the beginning Emma was the one who really was here to show me the robes and let me know what I needed to do immediately but both of these women and the students know they see them they're open they're available they're helpful and truly are we truly are a family here at Continental so I appreciate you being part of the Continental family and the special employees that you are I think we know people think this is death camps too thank you because you you really did just step it up this year in something new that we have art with Mr Boyce in middle school but you know we we were looking for a music teacher and Janice her expertise was Art so our students were able to have it more throughout the day throughout the week and he jumped into something brand new and you did create it so thank you for bringing the Arts to our campus and continuing on with our elementary students ideas for scheduling she has to make it work the teacher saying the students there and what we're doing so thank you boys and girls help us give them a great big round of applause and last but not least we are I'm celebrating um government board appreciations appreciation month so we have some special cult cookies for our board members so Mr President Mr osterdy can you please come on up thank you and he's been doing an amazing job not only as our board president but as a member of our foundation and always looking out for Continental if it's Food Supplies help whatever we need we can help Mr osterly and he knows people who know people who can help us out always and he does a lot of it himself as well so thank you so we appreciate you thank you Mr mcgibbon stay up here for a picture Mr mcgibbon is on the line so he is not here with us today but we have his cookie and his card and it was his birthday so he probably decided to call in so we win it publicly sing happy birthday to him so Drew we know you're on the line so happy birthday and thank you also for sticking with us on the board we have Miss Kelly Ellen come on now Cali also is a week and count on her for um noting the positive and always staying positive with our staff and our community and our teachers and just being the cheerleader on the sidelines attending and supporting us and we really do appreciate what you've brought to the table as a board member so thank you and our newest member Mrs Amadeus has been a cult for a long long long time because her son who is now in college started kindergarten Here at Continental for a long time also a member of our foundation and um very involved with parent advisory and she was part of the site Council before I was even superintendent here so she's had a love and a passion for Continental for a very long time and since her kids were here she was actually the one who pushed me to get my superintendent certification and she said you can take this school when the superintendent's ready to retire so now she's on board to continue to support us so thank you very very much foreign do you want to change the background please together one two cycles all right good thank you very much thank you very much well that's the end of that part thank you guys so much if you want to stay for some of our regular work feel free or grab a slice of pizza and uh we'll take about a one two minute break here please take Pizza tomorrow morning [Music] okay with that we will move on to item number nine the consent agenda with which there is roughly 12 or so um different items in there this is a motion item s uh for the consent agenda I will second any discussion on the consent agenda Oregon yes yes Mrs Allen yes Mr ostrich and yes all right that will take us to item 10 the climate survey results and highlights okay so you do have copies of the climate surveys we did decide to keep um that's right we met with parent advisory and we realized that there was some difficulty in parents finding the link on the website which we're also working on to um to improve because there's a lot of steps on our website so I'll be a project for us as a leadership team um this Freeman in the summer but it really is nice to see the results and the consistency of what parents and students and staff are saying in terms of safe and orderliness in terms of the instruction kids are receiving we still we spent some time on discussing last night with the parents of the bullying and some of the behavior and the difference between bullying and kids just um being of purple with their words but it's so we're trying to explain the difference between because a lot of kids will say they're being bullied with it's just been a one-time event but we are still really trying to work on public and private voice we're gonna have to have more of an initiative with that next year because we have talked to a lot of the students and um the Mr Nathan and Miss Cuevas have spent a lot of time talking to students about appropriateness especially on the bus when we have the older kids with the younger students so that will be something that we need to work on but overall the in the last six years that we're looking things are very um they're they've improved dramatically so we're very excited about that so once we get a little bit more parents to respond because we only had um 66 responses from parents which is low compared to the number of kids that we have we do have 302 students who did respond so that's a good picture and then I'll be meeting with the students during student advisory next week to discuss the results of student survey how about staff the staff also we are I'm going to keep it open to increase um dares but when you look at like I said the commonalities and the consistencies are pretty clear and favorable amongst the three a lot of sometimes you'll see a discrepancy in the percentages but you can truly tell that parents and students and teachers are seen and building the same thing in their responses so we look forward to just having more conversations in terms of what you can do to make the adjustments and the improvements at our school thank you and the exciting part the first reading of the new board prophecies so again these are just policies that are inadversity um one that I want to point out is the um parent s there's the one here on parents series but on parent rights and parent um notification so when you read it you'll see there's it's the new policy that has to go into effect that if parents want to request curriculum or request to see certain items of what we're doing there's a formal uh form that they have to fill out that they submit to myself or Mrs Cuevas and then we have 10 days to respond so that's new in policy so as you review them so just a reminder next month we'll be talking about them and we will um either adopt them or not okay so this is just the first reason if you have any questions there is the exhibit um when is the exhibits on the parental consent but a lot of these are not things that were not already following so it's not anything new they've kind of changed the exhibits are added information we've been talking about them I knew they were coming down the pipe okay and this is a action item this is actually just a first read right so it's just discussion information presentation next month it'll be an action item where people actually discuss them so to kind of dovetail into the discussion on policies so when Kelly and I were at um we're at the bolts meeting that last week or the week before they talked about a policy review that should be done every three to five years where asba really comes in and just kind of helps clean up things and just to make sure it's all current and up to date um and it's extremely reasonable I think she said the cost of the district's like 500 and it takes them well over 80 hours of their work by PhD people that that's all they do is policy stuff my thing but their presentation was really good and I talked to um doctor afterwards and so she thought she sold me on it good I thought maybe something that they will put it in the next chapter perfect sounds like a good idea because there's so many that you know we have to be looking at them to revise them and read them and update them and they're not looking for a fault just want to make sure we're currently nothing slipped through the cracks because if you have a policy Nazi come in you know you never know right good okay thank you an open enrollment this is right yes okay this is uh just really to keep the same open enrollment policy that we've had so we're looking for a motion to approve that and if you approve the open enrollment vision wait a second any discussion um I'm just saying that the heading should be 23 to 24 school year just assortments are correct but down in the text it does address the right yes so the only and just um the only grade level that we're concerned about right now is um fourth grade is obviously our higher enrollment so as we look at students who come in for open enrollment we will more than likely have to put fifth graders next year's fifth graders will have to be on the waiting list for sure but we do give priority to students that are open enrollment that are returning and staff members and then we'll open it up to others what about first grade since kindergarten was a big this year so we have to look at came to Roundup is coming up so it came to Roundup we'll have to see how many Kinder students enroll if we do have the need to keep five kids or teachers we spoke today with Mr Schubert and happy to possibly add a more teacher to first grade or if not we'll move whether they give their teachers to first grade to accommodate if the numbers don't support a fourth Kinder teacher okay thank you any other discussion okay Mrs amarillas yes Mr mcgibbon yeah Mrs Allen yes Mr Osterman yes and I am 10d is suggested changes to the governor board goals which is a pretty minor investment but it is something that needs to be forever so again we were looking at since our goal was efforts in achieving an A and we've achieved it so now the efforts in maintaining the a rating from the state and we did based on our discussion from last month and insured growth for all students because we really are looking at growth as well through NWA that was the only change we have the motion I moved to approve the suggested change to the government workers a second second okay a new discussion okay yeah yes Mr mcgibbon yeah Mrs Ellen yes yes and next Mr Schubert the district financial report February 7th so you have the district um Finance report in front of you it's um open for any discussion you may have any questions that you may have anything major happened in the last month in the last month uh my daughter got married Saturday it only took her 32 years when she finally did it um no there's nothing major um we did get a check from the trust uh right around 174 thousand dollars that'll be found once we actually get it in into the system you'll find out how to find 550 which are insurance proceeds um and that will go towards the repairs and the maintenance or the repairs and recovering of the group um also the trust and this is but the trust is paying for on Thursday we have we'll have a crane on site at 6 30 in the morning to replace an AC coil on the Middle School and they'll also be brushing out the fins on the buildings to for any hail damage that we have received but financially no not all not a whole lot of that nice big check on the trust um I take that back one other thing we did get our our guaranteed savings money it's the check is in the mail um with our solar program um so that's eighty four thousand dollars that will be coming to the district could you give us just a quick note version of the trust so the trust is our insurance carrier the trust does our liability insurance our property insurance our professional liability um it's think of your Farmer's policy but all encompassing and that's what they do and it's a pooled insurance plan so just specializing in public schools you think in public entities so they also the insurance for some cities some some other um like rural metro you know so they do have other government type of entities but it's a tool plan so even if we didn't say use our prepaid legal for the year there still may be an increase in prepaid legal because TUSD used a whole bunch of it or Yuma used a whole bunch of it or whatever somebody used a bunch of it so that that plan it all goes to get up so slight Zone like the claim that we made for the hail damage everybody will will reap that uh increase for that gotcha okay but that I think we need a motion I'll move to approve the district financial report a second okay any more discussions yes Mr mcgibbon yeah Mrs Allen yes Mr estrogen yes that's pretty much the last of our voting the next is our boarded School events um before you go into that I think Kelly has just a real quick comment on something that we learned at the bolts that we just might want to add in here the um the ranking lawyer of the asba uh Stephen I got to talk to him after his presentation on open meeting love he recommended on our agenda and website where we post the public events in order for the board members to attend we should also note it could be a possible forum so he suggested like um board and school events and possible just to cover the open meeting law requirements we're more transparent I guess the biggest thing that jumps out of me is the sweetheart Gala yeah to support our students yeah it's actually it's actually for what it is it's actually a pretty good time thank you okay so we'll move on to governing board information and discussion and part of that is just to kind of if you have anything you want to just throw out there or if you have something that you might want to put on next month's agenda um that would be one of the times that you could do that it's not limited to right now but and then when it gets to be my turn I'll talk about two minutes about the bolts uh um they wrote Kelly and I both will um that we went to um my major takeaways from the bolts um conference was um making sure we add that verbage in for open meeting laws and the policy audit that was probably the most boring section of the whole conference and since that's all they do I feel like it really would take a lot of the responsibility of all of us to get that audit done um I do have a question regarding middle school bullying my daughter was able to do the peer mediation program back then do we still do that okay I mean I don't know how many arguments she was able to resolve among her peers but it did um I feel like it really equipped her a lot and it just talking to her friends or giving them advice on how to resolve things a little more maturely and I think we could get a lot out of that so um now that you mentioned that just thinking yesterday at parent advisory we were looking at money that we have available for character education so that might be something that we can look into getting that program back and getting our kids trained to be different mediators that was only not only that it was called Big anti-finaling the posters and assemblies and the whole hey yeah it wasn't ready when I came six years ago so it was it's been a while but I know I've seen finders and seen things from that so we'll definitely look into that again she's she's graduated and everything and she's still the one that her friends come to foreign yes so um she is she's using council's choice and talking about your words and so she is providing that and teachers also follow up as well in the surveys it was what's nice is that students are saying that they're aware that there's bullying but it's not a large percentage but they also say they know how to handle movies and they also say that they know that um there's enough adults for them to go to if they need help so the the good news is that our kids are telling us and talking to us so we we're aware and we're meeting with the kids and instilling consequences for them um as we hear about them so it's just a matter of kids know that we're taking care of it so again it's just mainly on the bus or in transition time so but the counselor is working on it too and we do have this Scott who is working on her internship as a counselor this semester finalizing her degree so she works well with middle school kids so she just started with us semester so we're hoping that she can help us also get our middle school students taken care of okay and then just a couple of other quick getaways we do need to do a board self-evaluation it's an online tool um we're thinking of May June just because we have a new member hopefully we'll have starting maybe next month if not April um so that was that one the other was um you know to continue down the superintendent evaluation which we'll be picking that back up following the SBA guidelines and we may want to bring Julie back for that because since we have the two new members okay um which would be good um and I think Kelly kind of talked about the open meaning war and we talked about that policy review and we did talk for a good half hour about the budget in that and um specifically specifically you know that that's where it stays you got your regular in your bed and your transportation it's okay to drink no but not between those three but the line items yeah that was kind of what it was um it was a good day actually for you know they did a good job relevant things you know you get a lot of that stuff you're like the lunch wasn't so good [Music] okay and just one last thing I did hear from you coming soon um office so we do have three applicants for the board state it closes on February 13th and um Dustin Williams and the deputy assistant too and the public relations the director will be conducting those interviews and appointing and they will have them sworn in there at the office have our board member and then so hopefully we'll be on get our new board member by March or in the latest statement can I add one thing real quick it's actually really good news yeah and it's not my daughter getting married Saturday um about two hours ago the house voted to approve expenditures above the aggregate expenditure limit so now we'll go to the Senate and as long as the house and the Senate both pass it we're good there's no reductions to the budget okay is there any talk about getting rid of that or making it a five-year thing so we don't go through this every year the last I heard is they were going to take it up in a special session with this special session never happened uh so if it comes up during this next legislative session I have no idea I haven't seen or heard anything in a bit yeah it was the vote was 46 to 14.
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uh when we're talking aggressive incidents we're talking anything that would be documented as a fight as physical aggression or as assault and so we were able to reduce those significantly it was not a magic Band-Aid it was through a lot of hard work you heard Miss Rambo didn't talk about it yeah Mr Yates we're teaching the students how to function when they are upset we're teaching them explicitly okay we're upset with somebody else how can we use our words to get through that and how can we sit down with an adult in the room and give you an opportunity to talk through what's going on to prevent you from getting to a point where you feel like the solution is to use your fist to solve some problems um and so that has definitely paid off um unfortunately we did see a site up to you in the use of tobacco and marijuana on campus they were all in the form of vaping cartridges um we are working with I'm working with the assistant principal team we are all working to try to come up with solutions to that we're working with the child Justice advocacy department and I have reached out there is a police officer that I have met through the course of my work at Gateway School and I'm asking if maybe the Phoenix Police Department has any educational resources to help us show the students why this is a poor choice so that we can prevent it again it's always about teaching the students what is a better choice for you how do we want you to interact with this feeling and what this situation are there any Community Services like Southwest Behavioral that you can actually have come in and have those conversations instead of identifying you know police officers to come and talk to kids about that are also working with Southwest Behavioral we are not asking this department to come in and talk to them but we're asking for on this specific police officer is through their community outreach programs if they already have access to educational resources so that we can take those and adopt them and then use our staff to supply the actual instruction on it um the last one that you'll see up there is ditching this was a little bit strange when we were looking through it and trying to figure out what was going on we are offering electives this year to Middle School courses that they are choosing to ditch it was our Middle School electives um the pro the classes were chosen by the children it's a lot like our 21st century piece where they developed what was going to be offered as the courses they chose their courses and they were choosing not to attend them we were finding them hiding in different places we did develop a program in conjunction with our middle school and our special areas teachers for this semester where if a student is caught ditching their class then they are going to use part of their research or recess time the following day to make up the work that they've missed in that class so now leaving class just saying I'm not going to be there is not a way to avoid the work for the class and so it's actually easier for the students just to go to class and do the work than it is to do anything else we are seeing growth with it we've identified from this number there are about three students that we are still seeing consistent problems with we are in the process of working with families through home visits different things working with the students trying to figure out the underlying cause so that we can again go through and teach them what it looks like to function moving forward I have a follow-up just not to get super into the weeds but I think it goes back to something um Sophia mentioned in her board report earlier when we move on in the future and get really start to dig in into discipline policies I know you defined aggressionist fights physical aggression and assault um fights seem pretty self-explanatory but I'm curious what y'all's definitions of physical aggression and assault are okay so assault is a situation in which a student is functioning in the same form as a fight but the other student is not also pursuing that physical interaction so someone is striking another person someone is striking another person and that other person is simply trying to get away protect themselves and get to a safe environment it is a one-sided physical altercation physical aggression is one where we have physical interaction that is accompanied with anger it may not have resulted in that strike it may not have reached that level and it's kind of a gray area of the difference between the two but what we look at is we're determining it is what is one what is the level of harm that's caused what is the intent of the harm that is caused but in all cases in order for it to be documented in this way there has to have been the intent to cause some form of physical harm associated with it otherwise we don't consider it one of the aggression pieces thank you so much I'm a state the state provides discipline codes and definitions as well yeah I've I've looked at our discipline policies and also our handbook and there's no definition of like what does aggression mean so I was just like trying to break down how how subjectively these things are determined on a campus level thank you uh again uh Madam president members of the board Dr Lewis Dr dupin I just want to start by thanking you guys for the awesome opportunity to be serving in the best role that I have served in my 19 years as an educator um just a little background about myself I have spent like I said 19 years in education I spent 10 of those years in the classroom I coached basketball I coached volleyball I coached baseball I didn't then spent eight of those years as an assistant principal and I can truly tell you that being a CGA a child Justice Advocate has been the most rewarding aspect of my career and it's only been since November since I've actually landed the job so it is it is truly awesome to receive the Seesaw messages from our students who I have just worked with saying thank you so much for working with me uh and providing me coping skills on how to deal with different situations I've received so many emails from students just being grateful that they're there I had a teacher swing by my classroom by my office the other day and just thank me for uh working with one of our fourth grade students who tends to be one of those physical students when he gets upset um he was he was showing signs of being upset and getting ready to show aggression and she just reminded him to use the coping skills that I had went over with him and he calmed himself down he was able to calm himself to back down within five seconds and he was able to stay in class as opposed to having to go up to the office or come come in to see me so so it has been it has been a wonderful program and I just thank you guys and the Creighton School District for allowing me to have the opportunity to do that and what we've been doing is uh Community circles so uh we had discussed a little bit earlier about you know sometimes we have people that are just not getting along well with friends I had a group of I had a group of sixth and seventh grade girls who were were having a tough time and it was really just boiled down to they were just looking at each other wrong and they thought that there was something that was being said and they were all getting fired up so what I did is I sat down with them in a community Circle and brought them all together and we had a discussion and as we left every one of those girls felt 100 better and I still check in with them on a regular basis and ask how's everything going they say everything's going great so it was just me being able to bring a little bit of light and some insight to them that just because they looked your direction doesn't mean that they were talking about you and stuff like that and you know let's find some other avenues and Pathways to go instead of thinking automatically that we want to fight them or or we're scared of them because we feel like they're intimidating us and stuff like that we have developed social skills groups I've I provide I provide lunch lunch for many of our students who are struggling socially so I have them choose a couple of friends and they they come in and they eat lunch with me and we just have just gin weed sometimes we talk about how to how to help out and practice skills and sometimes we just have conversations with each other and the kids are kids are loving it we uh had a we had a third grade student who was trying to skip class A whole bunch um I got her into one of those lunch bunch and now she is getting back into class and where she should be and learning so it has been it has been awesome to to do to just have the opportunity to do that work so again thank you guys and then I'm gonna pass that off to the social emotional Wellness to miss twist and she's going to talk about that for you guys any questions about any of the social emotional learning and what we do oh one last thing sorry I just want to do the plug that all the cgas in the district we just got back from the so it is school counselor week we just got back from the school counselor at Arizona school counselor conference out in Fountain Hills it was absolutely amazing we have come back with a lot of information and loaded and ready to go so uh just be ready because there's a lot of a lot a lot of excited CJs out there with a lot of new plans and ideas of how we can how we can fix the world out there so here we go my gosh that is a tough act to follow um I'm Marie twist I'm one of the instructional coaches at Gateway and one of the things that we really have been working on for the last couple of years as a leadership team is connecting personally with our staff and how do we create those safe spaces how do we ensure that people feel heard and that everyone feels heard not just the loudest voices in the room so in addition to all of those formal and informal conversations that happen one thing we've done is intentionally set aside a couple of minutes of time every single week where we do a staff check-in it's technology it's just a Google form it's super simple there's always two rotating questions sometimes they're functional things like hey we need your feedback how did this routine that we've tried to put into place how did it go you know you're on the ground so give us feedback on it sometimes it's fun tell me something you're excited about that's coming up over you know the upcoming break but we always ask them to rate themselves how are you doing personally how how are you doing professionally and is there anything that leadership needs to know anything you want support with how can leadership support you and then because it automatically color codes for us we go in immediately and check in and do triage okay who who said that they need something who and then if they need something which of us is the best suited to actually address that problem and follow up so from there we take ownership over who can fix that problem or which of the leadership team who has the best relationship maybe with that staff member or with that teacher that they might feel comfortable speaking about with so and that's really been we've had a lot of positive feedback from our staff like some schools maybe they don't ask you know usually um what the percentage of teachers actually respond to those we do it during staff meetings so about 90 perfect we carve out that three or four minutes every week to make sure because if we know if we just blasted it out in email teachers are busy their priority is not saying what's on their mind necessarily so we've made it a really intentional focused part of our routine every week I know this is only for teachers or is it all staff this is actually for teachers okay yeah thank you awesome thank you you got all the parts we've got a lot of parts to play it happens sometimes so one of the things as Mr Frontier spoke early on is we are a b School this year and we are keeping our eye on the prize on doing everything we can to maintain that and with that comes in this focus on academic excellence and so as we're looking through that we've done a couple things as one we're getting back to the idea of data Focus every second everyday data Focus but it's not about us being data focused entirely because ultimately I can know everything there is to know about the information about our school if the teachers and the students don't know it then it's not going to help anybody move forward and so what we've done this year is we actually have student data folders um in grades foreign first and second they are tracking their reading ability as they learn to read more words per minute they are also tracking their attendance for this first year we're kind of minimizing it in those grade levels as they learn to just get their feet under them and tracking it as we move forward and then as we go through in grades three through eight they're also tracking their reading per minute their attendance but they're adding in um some of the high leverage standards that we know are going to be important for them to master in that grade level and they're tracking their progress on it after each assessment that they take as well as we move forward they are setting goals with it so it's important to know not only where we're at but where we're going and so we're working with our students to teach them the idea that they want to know where they go and so in classes before they take an assessment they're looking at okay this is the content that's going to be coming in where were we last time and what do we want to do this time and what have we done to get there and then after that assessment okay where are we now where do we want to be next time and what are we going to do to get there and so we're really working on that and it's all tying in with our mtss process as well which is looking at individual students and their success I apologize we're taking long we're going to skip some of these slides um and honor the people that are here and they're going to share really quick we have MS via who's our teacher of the year going to share really quick about structured literacy uh good evening to everyone and thank you um so structured of literacy I started doing some research into it last few years it really really was interested and what that brought on to our kids in the primary grades I teach first grade and I know that is a very essential developmentally just it's one of those years where they learn to read and they learn to you know just believe in themselves they have that success that they can read they have all these words that they can read and so structured of literacy to me was just opening the doors to that and so in the classroom I have seen a big uh just Independence and when it comes to how do I spell that I'm not hearing a lot of that anymore so uh what we do what I did different is instead of having a ward wall we have a sound wall uh we teach a lot of the articulation in the mouth and so they're able to go get a mirror and they're able to go to the wall and they're able to say Hey how do I spell this they're able to do that on their own and so that's something that I have noticed that's different their literacy and writing skills again they all come together so when they're writing they go up to the wall and they just get a mirror and they just look and they go oh ah okay so so you know so they're able to do it on their own um so um also focusing on the phonological phonological awareness skills um letter and sounds when it comes to um their sight word learning it's not just memorize your words it's we can decode the words and we can look at those parts uh the word part by part and so they're able to go oh I can do it you know when they're reading they're doing the same thing so it's not just memorize it like there is there is some um science behind it um and then just the uh student engagement we do uh our practice every day you know taking from what the curriculum design um has for us to do taking from wonders and taking all of that and putting it into a structured literacy form for them to practice I have seen Improvement now this is the first time I'm trying it out I'm also currently doing the lotteries training so that has taught me a lot of how the brain works and why it's so essential for students to um go through the structured of literacy and I do believe that wonders provides that not a hundred percent but it does provide the steps that they need for that and so we have just kind of Taken and go okay like we can map these words high frequency words we don't have to just air write them like we can decode them you know Sound by sound for phoneme and so that's what I have seen in my classroom with structured literacy um and just going through the letters training and learning all of that just keep implementing that this year and the next year and just to see what is the growth that I see in these students um any questions thank you hi I'm Kayla Stanford instructional coach here at Gateway um in addition to all of the structured programs that Ms via talked about we also are using our data driven culture to inform the professional development plans for teachers and staff throughout the year we've been working on our classroom walkthrough data which indicates that we're still we are seeing an improvement in teacher Clarity and communicating the learning to students our next steps are helping to students to have ownership of that learning and bringing in some language development strategies we've had amazing Partnerships at Gateway with asu's teacher and Residency program hosting many residents um student teachers who have gone on to become full-time very valued very effective staff members and as Marie mentioned we have walkthrough data that we do share with teachers um so here is Marie mentioned teacher Clarity so in showing that students know what they're learning and that they have the roadmap in order to do that so um these this is from our walkthrough data so about 60 of teachers are posting their learning intentions so that teachers know um where they're headed as Marie said we are it's still still work in progress um and in addition to that we also have the student engagement component they go hand in hand if students know what they're supposed to learn as well as how they're going to learn it um has a profound impact and we're seeing that grow in our classrooms as well um with regards to the PD's are are there opportunities for differentiated PDS depending on like different uh different departments or subjects or grade levels so at our site we do diversify chunks a bit um and the district as well we have affinity group so teachers can um each site is a little different in terms of what they deliver to their staff but then we also have the opportunity as a district as well so some of the stuff we've done um is uh teacher Clarity um and our ELD team has also been delivering PD to our staff okay and our most previous facilitated by instructional coaches are our Educators given the opportunity to facilitate something that they have a special interest in so sometimes it's instructional coaches that our ELD committee is run by teachers and they are the ones who deliver um that component to our teachers and also our Administration Mr Kindle has led a good number of PDs over the last couple of years and I think that there's really a lot of value in having principals and assistant principals provide development as instructional leaders as well all right I apologize that we took a little bit longer I promise you it didn't take this long during rehearsals but any final questions any final questions I know you asked questions throughout but thank you so much for your time thank you guys appreciate everything and congratulations on that beautiful beach all right that brings us to our next item which is 7B and it's the special education audit um special education audit we're going to speak to specific policies and procedures that we do we would not be talking about specific employees or anything it's just structurally on what we do and how we are keeping in the coordinates I guess or to the loss of special education so I'll hand it over to whoever's presenting well real quick we just remember Mick Jeffrey had made a request to have an audit of our special education programs and service we felt like the best way to start in that process would be to share the regular cyclical work that has that's done as part of special education programming monitoring with the state of Arizona we can also share the most recent monitoring and the outcomes of that and the certification that came as a result and that will help drive the conversation and give potential Clarity to where we might go from here so with that Ms hardseff is going to lead our conversation this evening as soon as I get hooked up right thank you so much Madam president I'm governing board members Dr Lewis and the executive team it is an honor to be here this evening to share all of this information I will start out with saying to you it is extremely complex so I'm going to do my best to really break it down and give you actually some tools to look at that will help to break it down and so then that will help you be fully informed so you can make decisions you know moving forward with with whatever that may be upon your request before I get started um we have people in the audience that have been sitting here for quite some time and they need to be recognized because monitoring is not a one-person job it is a we and so we have different staff members that are represented representing uh different um roles that they play in The District so if I could just turn around a minute I'm just going to have different people stand up and I want them to be recognized for the extremely hard work that we went through collectively together the hard work was worth every minute and when you're in it you wonder a lot of Blood Sweat and Tears but when you get on the other side you can see the system changes I mean you can really see the strong impact for our students and that's all that really matters um in in the end so I want to start with um start with our resource uh representation if you would stand up as resource teachers colleges our preschool teacher oh she's preschool also our assisted technology specialist Dan um Robin I'd like you to stand as well because you're part of our accessible design team we work closely with it which really helps with accessible design um our department and I would also like to thank the principals because during this process they too were a huge support in the shifts that we were making at the site and also being there for staff as we were going through this process so thank you all foreign what I hope to do is basically I'm going to start out with a broader view um I think it's important to bring in the historical information because there have been monitorings through Ade over the course of time monitorings by Ade or like audits for special education they're very deep they look at everything possible Under the Sun and which is important for us to know and we want to get down to the raw data to really know the systems that we need to change so I think it's really important to share that and then there was an outside audit that was conducted in 2016 and we're going to share some of the outcomes from that um then we're going to take you to our most recent monitoring so there is a timeline that we're going to be going through um and the outcome from that and then we wanted to share so what have we done so what so what what changes have we made um as a department um always making decisions um for children and and how can we better serve our children so I want to start out with there's kind of I think if we if I can explain the forms that I just put in front of you um this is going to help as we get into the depth of the actual presentation so you will have I have a couple questions before we we begin the presentation um if I may um I've been working on this with Thursday since Thursday since it was posted for us board members um and I met with Dr Lewis on Monday and Miss hartzoff was pulled in to um help answer some questions we did run out of time um it was challenging for me to understand what this presentation was trying to tell us um because it's a lot of just bullet points without explanation behind it it was helpful on Monday to kind of go through that with you both um but ultimately um this presentation does not address the questions and concerns that I have which are more about Staffing and compliance issues and whether meeting the needs of our students from a day-to-day basis this Ade monitoring process is a very low threshold actually and it is random unless they find um you know issues which then they will go deeper in as we discussed on Monday um what I have issues with is is Staffing um so I would like to ask a few questions about that um what do you know about the staffing issues in your department like keeping high quality people and losing high quality people so for this evening's presentation um I wasn't focused on HR that isn't my that was not my understanding of the request the understanding I and I come to board meetings was that you requested the monitoring you wanted the monitoring and an audit and this is what I prepared for this evening so I don't so I did not request the monitoring I requested a board discussion of whether or not we would like to do an audit we did do an audit in 2016.
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the increase is ten thousand four forty eight on average and that percentage is 18.25 on the adopted um it was 66 869. is there an average length of service for the I mean estimated for the person the teacher that's making this amount of money so um remember the details that went into this calculation so we we did with the change in statute with classroom site fund we were we were not constrained to the 40 percent of the revenues going to pay for performance and because of the competitive environment for teachers at that point in time we made a recommendation to move about close to fifteen hundred dollars out of the pay for performance and put it into ongoing salaries so that occurred so from year to year though it wasn't a true increase but that's in there yeah because because they received that money beforehand right but it didn't count towards their base that's correct and then if you remember the Advent of the budget going into 2023 was very favorable for all school districts in Arizona and that that we were able to give the three percent pay increase that was one time in 2022 we added another three percent increase and that was on top of that fifteen hundred dollars or so and then on top of that we added another forty five hundred dollars per teacher to provide that beginning salary being fifty two thousand dollars a year for our teachers okay so all that collected resulted in that 18 uh percent increase but that's not based on the average um tenure of a teacher correct it's not it's not I know it's not considered in the calculation I just was wondering and the it's the really the the teacher experience index that captures that and we'll share that with you when we do the preliminary budget okay all right thank you Bonnie um that I know that you include you know the pay for performance and all that near 67 000 what about um insurance is that in that it is not nor is Arizona Arizona State Retirement or any of our payroll um benefits those are not in there either so so technically this could be higher if you if you at if you put in the the benefit of the insurance in particular in terms of our total cost per ftes well in in terms of the teacher salary too yeah this page but thank you um where does this put us comparatively with other school districts in our state with this average teacher salary we have not done that analysis yet but it's on our list of things to do please keep in mind that we have to check a lot we the only data that we can get is by actually going out and looking at all the surrounding school districts and seeing how they're reporting we've been we've done this every year we will we will be sharing it again but there's lots of caveats because everybody has different definitions for teachers and they they put in different amounts for the average teacher salary so we always pull these notes too to make sure we're appropriately representing it this is our last slide um so so we did make a recommended uh an estimate of our tax rate when we um when we adopted the budget the first time in June the legislature completed very favorably and that resulted in a different tax rate because our portion of our state aid or a portion of the formula that comes from the property tax was impacted by the the state legislature and so as we were putting in the the second adapted budget in July that was right at the same time that we were preparing the tax levy for the 23 school year so this is just reflecting that we estimated that our savings would be roughly 24 cents it resulted in just under 22 cents on the total tax rate to include the primary and the secondary it is based on everything including the override that's correct yep the override yet everything that we have our tax rates still went down that's correct yep that's really good probably if you if you could show us how that compares maybe if you're doing comparisons to other school districts you know and if you bring that back to us at some point as well you bet okay that's all that we have on that okay so remember this is this is revised budget one because due to our student counts basically is the main reason that we can revise it and capture more budget capacity along with the annual financial report which reflected our spend from last year okay so I'm just reminding myself and everybody so we we will pass a budget usually June or July and then after the Anna financial report comes out December and the 100th day count is that the main number that we're looking at the 100th today for students for in the current year in the current year then we will come back and typically we have a revised budget about this time everybody's budget number one right and then we'll continue to look at student counts and continue to revise budget up or down depending on our student counts is that correct and our student accounts even though we're past the 100th day with all of the corrections from our all of our attendance and registrars at the schools they're constantly making changes and updates to make sure that we're reporting accurately so it does change from now until actually the middle of July when they do the Statewide recalculation okay so I just wanted to kind of thank you let us know that timeline and see if there's anything else we should mention about that do you have anything else you thought the final budget revision is due the middle of May so okay we will definitely bring at least one more back to you okay and this is what we will vote on tonight in the action item 6.01 the only other thing is that statute does require us to revise by December 15th if we have overstated our budget capacity by that time so fortunately with uh presuming a 400 student loss we've been pretty conservative and so we we have not had to revise our budget down for the last four years okay so that's good to know that's good to know I'm glad that we didn't lose as many students as we thought we would but I'm always sad that we've lost students if we can keep maybe we can talk about that later on another time no there is that's on that decline in birth rates that has been ongoing so that's part of the reason and our aging demographics like me I had five children in Gilbert public schools and now I have zero children Gilbert Public Schools so those are a couple of the reasons it's not necessarily that we're not doing everything we can there's demographics of play okay anything further I just I think there's a lot of factors in that and I'd love to maybe have a work study session regarding that at some point that's something that'd be okay okay well thank you I think we're good for the revised budget number one for 2023 and that will let's take a five minute recess is that okay yeah and then we'll cover how many budgets can we break in our head we need a five minute break just keep coming looks like we go one more sugar okay [Music] all right are we ready thank you everyone all right we will now go to 2.03 FY 2024 preliminary budget bets are you ready yes sir this is our preliminary uh shot at the budget for right now as many of you know the legislature is in session and they're doing what legislatures do and that is haggling over how much money they're going to spend so we'll the question is is when will that be solidified for next year and I don't think that there's a solid answer for that yet so we'll just keep an eye but right now this is kind of taking some things into account and a little educated guessing to a degree based on history and so here we go okay so Jackie and I are swapping roles now I'll be presenting and she will be color commenting this this is our preliminary budget um it's a very very much a an estimate based on what we know today so we're going to share with you the adapter budget timeline which we generally do share with you at this point in time we'll talk about the student counts and show you the yearly comparison that we've seen actually since 2019 and then we'll share the m l and unshaken capital budgets those are the only two budgets that we're going to talk about because those are the ones that are fully impacted by the actions of the legislature and the governor of Arizona so these are some of the details non-discretionary budgetary increases discretionary strategies and opportunities to balance the mno budget focusing on that and then risks and opportunities and when it comes to the unrestricted capital budget as Lori had shared earlier Mrs wood had shared earlier we have largely considered that a a zero-based budgeting um a fund because the monies are largely one time in nature and so um we we will not be having a need to provide a strategy for balancing that budget it's just whatever's available is available and we just control how we are allocating out the monies based upon the zero-based budgeting process okay so um this is the budget development timeline we have shared with us shared this with you already I think it was at the retreat that we shared this we're going to focus on underneath the arrow now the budget year fiscal year 2024 so in December we did begin the process as a leadership team looking at what are all of our additional requests that's where the art teacher request came from was through that process in January I think Dr McCord shared with all of you that he attended the opening session of the legislature which was in January wanted to point out that the GPS 100th day is on January 17th again just a note about the 100th day it changes from now through the middle of July so even though it's a hundredth day and the 100th day is achieved it continues to change um you can see that we are sharing with you the fiscal year 2024 preliminary budget in March we will be finalizing the 2023 ADM average daily membership which is the basis for our projection going into the new year we hope to have enough information maybe to provide tentative approval of salary and benefit increases though our plan to date we do have information regarding the medical benefit recommendation that's going to be shared with the employee benefit trust committee tomorrow and so that recommendation then we'll go to the trust board next week and then we'll come to you for a recommendation and approval with a recommendation with possible approval the last meeting in February and then you can see throughout March through May through June maybe July we will constantly be updating this board on what's happening at the legislature some changes and making recommendations to you about salary increases or any other budgetary increases that might be put forward for your consideration Misfits legally when do we have to adopt a budget we have to propose Let's see we have to adopt by the 15th of July right and so um and so we have to propose at least 10 days of advertising prior to that we have historically not had board meetings in July so we have proposed and adopted in June thank you okay so fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2024 student counts we thought it would be kind of interesting to share with all of you the history of our student counts here in Gilbert I'm going to quickly go to the next slide Jackie prepared a graphical representation of this which I think is easier to to read but you can see in going into the 2019 school year there were some some assumptions made even then that we would lose 400 students we did not lose the 400 students into in 2019 either but I think we lost like 350 at that point in time then we moved into 2020 so remember the fall of 19 was when we went out to the voter requesting an increase to our m o override as well as 100 million dollar Bond ask during that fall we actually increased in student counts for the first time in I don't know 10 years or something it was about we projected going into 20 or 400 student loss we actually saw an increase of of 165 students so we had a net gain budget capacity associated with over 600 new students which was pretty cool then of course covet hit and so in 2021 you can see the impact of that reduction and then in 22 jumped back up again and now you can see the the small decline going into 2023 and then again we're still projecting that 400 student loss going into 2024.
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keep everything the same we would need um a 2 million 239 328 increase which is um a 7.57 percent increase over this year's budget and that's just to keep things the same why is that it's because of the increase in special education costs for our students who are outplaced you've heard in our discussions on this year's budget that we had eight additional students needing outplacement five of those eight students moved into our district over the summer we had no control over that along without a district tuition comes out of District transportation which is a major increase and then the utilities and overall increase of 259 000 for heat and electricity and then our employee benefits the 353 000 increase so just starting out of the gate we were looking at a 7.5 7 increase and I'll stop right there and see if there are any questions or see who painted any questions online so far you're tracking everybody's good yes good Erica you're okay [Music] so I I you know I think it's important um I don't think we can emphasize enough the fact that um the budget right now 7.57 is is are fixed we really don't have any control over you going forward and that that's that's part of the story I think that we have to uh begin planting those seeds if you will I wrote an article today for the Farmington Valley and I said we were more like six percent fixed and nobody nobody fixed nobody changed it but um you know we're well over six in the fixed uh costs so so it is what it is which leaves very little or academic enrichment enhancement and those types of things so okay now the next slide this is a slide that Mr Bishop put together for us just showing the comparative rate of growth of inflation versus our budget increases over the years so you can see all the way back to 2011 uh the um the first bar is the U.S inflation rate for that year the second bar is uh the percentage increase of our budget so you can see the years that we've had very very very small increases um zero percent in 2011 1.51 2012.
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Azusa High School has been my place of employment for the past 14 years as a parent and an employee serving in this community I cannot stress the importance of a PE Aid on both campuses regardless of the student's age currently with this merge of Azusa High School they will be eliminating two very needed positions my position and my current role as a PE Aid at Azusa High I have impacted and mentored so many young girls I have provided much needed oversight and helped maintain the school's property and gymnasium the need for this position will still exist at the middle school level as they merge three middle schools into one Gladstone Middle School taking over the existing High School allows for more students at a bigger facility the facility the facility will require the same amount of Maintenance and oversight the Safety and Security of these young boys and girls will be required maintaining the school property grounds will still be required my job will still be required so eliminating these positions cannot happen I know that the school board is committed to the safety of the children in this District so I am requesting that you please keep these very much needed positions thank you for your time and consideration thank you Miss Sierra next we have MS Charlotte Ruiz me number s Charlotte Ruiz I feel like the orchestra and Mariachi should have younger kids in their groups I want to play the cello and violin like my sister Emily I would also like to have a wire in all the elementary schools thank you adios thank you Charlotte next we have Mr Philip via good evening good evening superintendent Mr Arturo Ortega cabinet members of the board and student board members and audience my name is Phil via and I'm currently a sophomore at Boston high school I'm here to speak to you and express my feelings about the importance of our music programs and the need for our district to keep in up positions available to continue with a successful music program I'm currently a very well involved music student within this District this thing that's that includes a marching band District Orchestra and Mariah our music programs in aosd currently start from fourth grade to 12th grade with props 28th that passed on November 8th I would like to see our younger students from third grade and Below to experience all Arts whether it be band choir Dance Art piano guitar anything that is anything that is offered in our district so far starting Young starting students younger will definitely make our art program stronger and be a positive gateway to encourage them to be able to want to continue into the middle and high school years I myself was in a position back in fifth grade when I decided to join band my mom as well as as my mom as well as their siblings were in band and they absolutely loved it I absolutely loved it when I started and I knew right from right there I wanted to pursue I wanted to pursue music further I got to high school started at Gladstone with the glass and Gladiator Alliance and I loved it this year I was able to experience something new and exciting with joining forces with Azusa High School we became agma if you didn't know agnet is our name and that stands for Azusa Gladstone marching Alliance This truly made a wonderful addition to the music experience and built a sense of community I didn't know how to feel at first but after all that we went through throughout the season we truly bonded and made it our own being a part of Orchestra and Mariachi since sixth grade has also opened my eyes to other musical opportunities Beyond High School if I would have been in music at a younger age if I had music available to me at a younger age honestly I would have taken that on so many different levels and I would be in so many great places Beyond high school right now music has played a strong influence in my life and I hope that that with this funding from pop20 our district can influence younger students in the Performing and visual arts direction thank you very much and have a good night thank you Mr via we have miss Emily Ruiz good evening board president president Beau Mr Ortega and cabinet I'm a junior at Azusa High School and I love my community and school districts in third grade I joined the martial group in our district and the following year I joined the orchestra group in our district when I compare the growth of Orchestra and Mariachi it's sad because I see Marty actually growing and thriving because Mr Rios an amazing teacher is supported with two additional instructors as it should be and we're very grateful for that but with Orchestra Miss Turner has absolutely no support meaning she has to teach three different Orchestra classes in three different three different levels all by herself and on top of that she teaches the choir and piano classes and is a high school as you can imagine she is overworked yet she still is here because she loves her students and is willing to sacrifice her time for us when the orchestra is no longer alive who's gonna play at the field of Glory ceremony who's gonna play at the Azusa leaders for learning fundraiser every year after this group of students graduate the orchestra will likely be done because there is not enough students advancing Azusa unified will never truly have an advanced Orchestra because you can't you can't learn a violin you can learn how to play a violin a cello a viola or base in four years I'm in my fourth I'm in my seventh year and I still don't feel as though I have mastered the cello playing a string instrument is very hard and it takes years to train your ears and your finger muscles it makes me sad to think that I'm the only Advanced cellist in the whole school district I have been stuck in the same level though because we're so small and we can't even break out into our truly designated level groups I'm an IB student I'm an IV student as well as um interning with City of Hope applying to competitive Scholarships in so many clubs and Orchestra and Mariachi are the only place where I can relieve my stress and feel like I am taking care of my mental health Elementary schoolers are already creating the stage for torture music because the only option given to them is banned there will be only five music teachers for this whole district and only one for all the all the elementary schools I was so excited about the reorganization and merging of schools because I thought we were going to grow and strengthen our programs but we're doing the exact opposite by eliminating these music positions you are setting up choir and Orchestra to fail thank you for allowing me thank you Mr Reese next we have Mr Emmanuel Serrato good evening okay good evening board president Beau Miss Ortega and cabinet as well as all attendees I am a 10th grader at Azusa High School and I have been an orchestra and choir since the sixth grade so I've been doing this for four years this is my fifth year now from this from these programs I have found this passion and love for music that I know without it would have completely changed my Direction as a student and as a person in this world through music I was able to find discipline and this sort of feeling that I don't resonate with any other subject in school and I don't know how my life would turn out without these programs because it's been so life-changing for me and from what I've seen from this district for the four years I've been in these programs is that it has been reducing and shrinking all my my classmates I try so hard to make them join to share my love for music with them but it is just so hard with the lack of support given to not only the students but the teachers too and um excuse me I I hope to see all the future generations of ausd students be able to experience the love and joy of music that I do because before joining these music programs I had no interest in music at all until I was able to experience it myself and yeah I want to see in the future when I come back to visit once I graduate all these students with that have hidden passions like how I did in elementary school find that passion and take control of it um thank you for listening thank you Mr Serato next we have MS mayor Rico good evening Dr Beau cabinet uh sorry uh board Mr Ortega cabinet an attendance my name is Mayra Rico and I'm here today um as a parent of three amazing ausc students one that just graduated last year and two that are are still here I'm here this evening supporting this amazing group of um students that are so well-rounded and just love the Arts as you have heard they all are very passionate about one of their favorite subjects music I'm here to Echo their concerns one of the best ways for students to express their emotions is through music and the younger they start the more beneficial it is for them we have been very patient hoping that the orchestra Inquirer would receive more support but it hasn't we don't get to go to competitions we don't get to go play at Disneyland or Knott's Berry Farm yet our students remain committed we were extremely excited about the reorganization hoping that we would finally have a strong big Orchestra Inquirer this amazing group of students will soon move on to other amazing experiences and what saddens me the most is that the students that will not have the opportunity to learn to play classical violin Viola cello and bass our students love their amazing music teachers we cannot let go of another music teacher please reimagine the music program thank you very much thank you Ms Rico next we have Mr Jackson Jackson strong uh good evening board I am Jackson strong I'm a sophomore this is a high school and a piano student um I first started band back in fifth grade and I very much enjoyed the opportunity to not only connect with my peers but to learn about a subject that meant something more than just physical it had a lot of meanings man and eventually during Middle School due to my interest in other fields I took a step out of things and this year I have come back and joins piano and it has been an amazing experience however due to the cuts to the teachers I am very much concerned about the lower amount of classes there will be will be prepared for us as I would very much like to not only continue in piano but try out various different subjects if given the opportunity it would be a great Misfortune for many students like me to have to go through all of this work just to be unable to advance properly to our through our music class levels I appreciate your time thank you very much thank you Mr Stone and we have Mr Jason Ma good evening Dr Beau um Board of Educators and the cabinet my name is Jason Ma I am the band director at Gladstone High School as well as two other three other elementaries today I want to mainly talk about the the the three secondary positions that was set to be reduced or eliminated due to the whole organization response a little bit about prop 28.
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