what's with the foreign thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] okay [Music] um [Music] thank you again [Music] right now right here [Music] thank you order all set okay with that we are in there thank you
that was quite a long time ago I don't want to go I don't want to spend an hour two hours going into the depth of what happened that many years ago um we we all know we have been um receiving um very serious concerns about Staffing and I have very specific questions about um how we are able to address our students needs when we have when we are losing staff at such a rapid um case we lost a school psychologist today that we voted on so my question is are you open to collecting data from your staff regarding retention we have always done that when actually that comes through the HR department so when staff exits everybody has an exit interview which we feel is very important as well we do monitor that that is reported to Ade what some of those results may be some of it's moving out of state some of it's um they're leaving the profession for a variety of reasons but we do collect that information and again I don't do exit interviews that's not my role um and I think it's important that it does come through HR from a party that is not directly involved in you know the special ed realm do we do exit interviews because I've been told we do not yes the practice for the Department is that we do exit interviews and then also the principles engaged in state interviews with the state interviews is to get the input for those highly valuable employees and to give the feedback of why they're always coming back and staying in our district so we do those types of interviews exit and stay interviews so when people who have left tell me I would I wanted to leave an exit interview but I was not there is no such thing where's the disconnect in that some employees um they're just turning their resignation letter and decline the exit interview they may have other channels to provide their input they can do it in writing if you don't want to meet with somebody but there's other other venues in which they can express their discontent or their feedback as they move into a new environment okay they've specifically told me they were not allowed to give an exit interview so there's a disconnect with with that um so are are there compliance issues when it comes to the implementation of iaps so if we went through this data um you would see exactly the areas that we're focused on okay which I think is important for this board to understand this process I have questions about I mean again we went through this it's it's been really challenging to create questions with with the way this presentation is presented um and and the eight the Ade monitoring process is not what my questions are about it is why we are having staffing issues within the special ed Department um and that is why I want wanted to discuss doing an audit so this is not what I've requested this historical document so I have a question um do we have any audits that give us information on retention of and and I know Jessica our attorneys right behind us because we're going off subject but just for um because she's talking about employee issues and not the audit that's what I was about to do oh okay yeah does the audit this artist that we're talking about have data about retention or how we're treating or staff issues that Miss Chef is talking about does this specific audit or is there an audit out there that exists that specifically there's actually uh one portion of the annual data information that I need to report is on teacher attrition and the information on some of the questions I actually obtained through HR um specifically reasons that people do leave other questions that they ask is like how many psychologists you know how many slps how many so they look at that number as well and then out of that number how many were new in a given time period um so they certainly have that um that's that that is really the only thing that I report to the Arizona Department of Education um informally if if that's what you're asking for and if you informally do that there's a way that we could get it back maybe like in another board report so we can keep looking into this like if you do have the data is there a way that that can be given to us so we again as a board look at it and then if we form more questions on that data because she says she does report it to somebody and then maybe yeah so there is data that we can pull that can be given to us um Dr Lewis if that information could be given to us so we can get a better grasp on it and see what's going on it's one piece of information about attrition very little piece yes but and and again I obtain information through HR you know and then we have our own um like Staffing counts that we do as well but that's something that you do annually as part every year is part of the annual data report it's it's a portion of this large report okay Mr mcshaffrey when we met yesterday um I thought your questions were so important and so aligned and I was extremely excited to come and present this evening and I didn't get any idea that when we had that one-on-one that I was off off base and what your request was so in my mind like I said I understand if you feel like well I didn't understand this it is complex it is deep it takes a long time to understand all of this information and honestly I think monitoring has a lot to do with teacher retention and why people stay or why people leave um you know part of monitoring too is seeing is student achievement and looking at that because we have amazing staff that work very hard and if we're not showing the results we need to pay attention to those results so I see this really as encompassing everything that you're asking for okay we had 10 minutes yesterday so and and you know we did not get through like two slides so um I finally figured out what was going on which was you know these are bullet points that you are now going to fill in for us but it is it is how the monitoring process works and that's not what my concern is I am concerned about what is happening with our employees and why they are leaving um and I have specific questions about about that that I would like to ask okay it's about compliance too parameter on it though too just because your agenda topic is audit so it needs to be within the framework of audits so for getting into individual employee complaints that's not going to be the subject of this agenda item and then any employee complaints need to go through whatever the relevant complaint process is either it's complaints about Personnel or it's a grievance about work conditions or they have a concern about um students not getting their needs met or if there are concerns coming from parents parents also have similar complaint problems which wouldn't be answered with this kind of discussion it needs to go through a process parents also have what's called their procedural safeguards notice where they can go directly to Ade if they have concerns about the particular Services of their students so I just want to put parameters in place because this agenda item was about special education audit which is kind of it's an overview and it's very Broad in programming when you Whittle down to individual complaints so I understand all of that um I had requested that the board discuss if we would like to do an additional audit on the special ed department just like we did in 2016 Dr Lewis at the last meeting you said hey yeah it's time for another one I initiated that internally on my own and I brought in an Ade monitor as the auditor Joanne Phillips who did that in 2016.
so we haven't seen any reason to increase or decrease that really even in 2020 when we saw the increase oh man have we just turned and we're going to start growing again we were still very conservative not knowing what the what what really will happen so and here we are any questions on any of that okay great so these budgetary considerations are are assuming that the aggregate expenditure limit is waived so we have to decide are we going to do it with it waived or not waived and so we opted to do it as if it's going to be waived based on the information we have today so we're going to start with the mno budget capacity projection so in this particular year because of the governor's the governor's proposed budget for 2024 she is proposing a budget with an amount to the base level amount that is greater than the statutory requirement so at this point we thought well let's show the budget capacity assuming trying to do it with both ways so the statutory budget would assume either an increase to the base level amount of of um the lesser of inflation or two percent so because of inflation going up we presume the two percent and then the governor's budget uh is making a recommendation of a 3.04 percent on the base level amount so we're considering both so you can see the base the bla is the base level amount which is that number multiplied by the student counts and the Tei that gives us our Revenue control limit here in Gilbert Public Schools okay so these are always our budget capacity assumptions so the student counts are based upon December data so again we always base our future year um ADM numbers on the current Year's numbers subtracting 400 from that so we're starting in this particular projection it assumes that we started from the 100th day data as of December and we have seen by looking at our data that most of our student loss is at the elementary level so we have opted to be a little bit more conservative and assumed 300 at the elementary and 100 at the high school because the weight of high school students is slightly higher than the weight of elementaries so we have done this the last two years I think it changes a little bit the the distribution between Elementary and and high school but generally we have done that the last two years [Music] um the aoi full-time and part-time are set equal to what that number was in December and then the total add-on weighted counts as part of the formula remember all of our special education categories receive additional weights so we just make the assumption that those weights are going to stay exactly the same and so we just put that into the formula as well so you see the base level amount increase depending upon whether we're using the governor's budget or the statutory budget and then our teacher experience index it's the one thing that's notable Jill you had asked about the average salary having an association with a number of years of service it does of course but we have seen many retirements over the last three years that have continued to bring down our teacher experience index which is that measure of how many years of experience our teachers have in Gilbert public schools in comparison to the average in the state of Arizona so that that loss due to that that Tei is over a million dollars in the calculation and then the trcl which is the transportation Revenue control limit is also set equal to 2022 we have completed the 100th day report in transportation and that is true right now we know that to be true that our Revenue our transportation Revenue control limit will be the same next year as it was in the current year okay so the preliminary maintenance and operations data you can see these are all the elements the unweighted ADM with the Arizona online you can see the total weighted count again that does include the add-on weights associated with our special needs gifted the opportunity wait for free and reduced lunch students Etc and then you can see the teacher experience index so you can see in 2022 it was 1.019 in 23 1.016 and now it's declined to 1.011 I have a quick question money and if you just refresh my memory I should know the answer to this question but um at one point they weren't giving us the full amount for the online kids they are now correct no we're still still we're still cutting we're still cut so the um Arizona online students are funded at 95 and that's the full time and the part-time are funded at 85 percent full amount for them even though they're full-time correct that's correct so these are the preliminary mno budget capacity numbers associated with those assumptions and one thing that's really important here is note that we have excluded the budget balance carry forward due to decisions that we've made and in some cases um just the extraordinary circumstances with our federal dollars our budget balance carry forward was normally in the past between four and six million and the last two years since 2021 it has been as you can see oh well yeah you'll be able to see it on the next one we'll address on the next one but it has been 42 million and this year it was 33 million and next year we would project it would be 12 million it was important to us that we not muddy The Waters by including the budget balance carry forward in these in these uh comparisons if we did that we looked at 2023 versus 2024 where we have 33 million of budget balance carried forward in 23 and then our estimating 12 million in 2024 that's an automatic 20 million dollar reduction so um it's just not true and so it was important to see the impact of the ongoing money in comparing what's really happening with our Revenue control limit and those other School Finance formula data points so you can see that with the statutory projection our budget increase year over year would be the 1.34 million so you can see under this statutory projection here 1.34 million dollars more and then if the governor's budget is approved it would be just under 4 million dollars more in budget capacity note that we asterisked the revised number one the budget increase decrease year over year that 42.21 that goes to your question Mrs wood and remember that that 42.2 million dollars was associated with the 20 million dollar you can see the RCL to unrestricted Capital here in revise number four so it's um it's sort of not really true I guess it was just a decision that we made so I wanted to make sure that we're asterisking that truly the Delta was more like 20 million dollars okay any questions before I go any further okay so here's the annual budget limit and the budget balance carry forward it kind of gives you an example of how things had been in the past so that 4.26 that were that we're focusing on for the new year the fiscal 2024 is what our Target is our our um our policy DB budget carryover Target trying to get close to that four percent but you can see that at the end of 21 our budget balance carryover can contributed 12 percent of our total budget capacity in 2022 it contributed almost 16 percent of our budget capacity and in 2023 contributed 11 of our budget capacity but again remember in 2023 that 20 million dollars is an unrestricted Capital so I just want to make sure that that's clear okay any questions on that well so we did the 20 million moved to unrestricted capital and then we have encumbered money to go to prepayment that's true and that is resulting in that expected 12 million dollars going into 2024 yes that's correct the the prepayment for the asrs correct okay which also we can earn interest on that's correct which we can't earn interest that we can spend if it's in the m o that's correct okay again it's that same category it's a it's a the budget balance carry forward is one-time money's in nature and so we'd be able to use it potentially as a one-time spend to potentially help offset uh increases or budget capacity decreases in the future Why did the budget limit increase in fiscal year 2024 if we're expecting a projected drop in students of about 400.
3.65 percent 2015.35 percent 2016-17 1.81 percent 1.05 percent our budgets were increasing at that low rate while our contracts were going up two and a half to three percent so we've had major challenges um in the past that now with inflation at an even higher rate we're trying to make up so I think this is an interesting slide for all of us to take a look let's go to the final the final bar here is uh inflation is going up on average 2.58 yet but our budgets are 1.92 so that's the uh that's the message and if we would have extrapolated that 2.580 over the past 12 years it would predict us to be right at where the budget request is today say that again if the educational budget would have grown at a 2.58 rate consistently over the past 12 years on average it would be exactly where we're proposing today so we're right which John's saying it's not unexpected that we've come in with a 7.9 increase so I always want to be able to point out what our average class sizes will be at the elementary level because that's something that um we all are concerned about one of the major priorities of this budget was to keep class sizes within the Board of Education policy so you have a slide in here stating what the class size policy is and you also have a couple slides that go you what class size policies are in area districts and I'll draw your attention to the class size report for Cherry Brook Primary School so this gives you data over the past few years it gives you data for what we expect next year our projections so um you can see that we're going to continue uh to have two preschool classrooms each preschool has two sections so that's why you see we have four sections so as you know one of our preschools is at Canton Intermediate School this year but it's this for preschool purposes it's listed on the Cherry Brook report we um we anticipate having approximately 104 kindergartners based upon our projections that number can readily change as um kindergarten families register it's always a moving Target we have our enrollment projections and then we have the actual number of people that register some people choose to have their child um linked a year before they enter kindergarten so we're working on all of that right now but for Budget purposes we're planning on approximately 104 students six sections which is what we have this year with an average class size of 17.
um so one of my issue right now is there has been little to non-com communication regarding what all this means and anywhere I'm asking for question and the answer is always I don't know I'll look into it and it's just crickets after that and so what I'm hoping is there will be some information talking about like what's going on with the three positions right now half of us is thinking oh we're gonna get rid of five three teachers some of us are thinking we're going to get rid of these position to sell But the teacher is still going to remain so what it's exactly is going on so hopefully soon you guys can give us more information about what's going on with that but kind of I'm talking about some of the things that these teachers and students talked about is prop 28.
so to replicate that it it's important that the new governing board understand you know the historical development of what are the elements of the audit if you didn't read the 2016 audit I think it's 60 pages um and it's something you want to begin with to think okay what have we worked on and what has been developed and then what has gone through corrective action and what programmatically needs to be sure that we're meeting with procedural safeguards making sure the IEP timelines are met making sure child fines handled you know making sure the elements of the department are in place so that's what a special education audit is and means to me um so thank you Chris for all of your hours of work to put this together for the board if the board would like to hear the elements of the audit and would like to guide me to go towards an audit I'm interested in the board's recommendation have we ever had have we ever had an external audit done that was an external audit in 2016.
because of the is that the three percent yeah yes thank you yep okay so non-discretionary budgetary increases some of these um you have already seen and some you have not uh at this point in time we will be making a recommendation to the committee to the employee benefit trust committee to a to make a recommendation to you all of a two percent premium increase this two percent premium increase would include the add-on of an out-of-state Network which is about 0.6 of that two percent again this is um it's going to be an increase to the m o budget of about a half a million dollars and the recommendation from our actuary was up to 3.2 percent we have a very healthy balance however in the employee benefit dress we will go through this when we share this with you but but it in speaking with the benefits team both Mr McIntosh and Adrian dutchover it seemed a reasonable uh recommendation at two percent the hourly increase for minimum wage we still don't know what that number is going to be this is January of 2024 so we don't know what it's going to be yet we'll get that information another month or so and we will adjust that figure of uh accordingly a general on the minimum wage increase do we have also included just the minimum wage increase or enough funds that we can deal with the compression issue these are all non-discretionary so any any additional dollars that we would put on hourly wages would be part of our okay so it's not just a minimum wage workers because that's statutorily required we don't have any control of that okay thank you and then General inflationary increases we have seen at one point last year our fuel our diesel fuel had risen to about four dollars and 80 cents a gallon which was very much increasing our transportation expense so we uh we normally in the past have put in about nine hundred thousand dollars we did increase that by a half a million dollars due to the environment that we're in right now special education increases we have predominantly increased that by a million dollars each year we'll take a look at the actual increase to make sure that we're not overstating that and then the art teachers which you approved last week the 12 art teachers is 940 000 and then increased Arizona State Retirement in the current year there was obviously a momentary decrease in the Arizona State Retirement contribution and now that they're increasing it back up for the 2024 school year we already have that information of that what is the other 1.4 percent increase medical insurance premium going for I know there's probably a myriad of things but so the um the consultant we we have a benefits consultant and they have actuaries that take a look at our last 18 months of claims experience and based upon that and their actuary analysis they determine what they believe we would need to increase the premiums to stay steady so if we if we wanted to keep our fund balance exactly what it is their projection would be 3.2 percent so but knowing our environment and even our reserving policy indicates that we should be there is no maximum anymore in our reserving policy but the the recommendation is to to be right around 12 or 13 million and we're about at 19 or 20 million so we have some room and this was a really good time to add the out-of-state Network wrap around because um because we do have that available cushion because we don't know how much that's going to increase our claims that was just the administrative cost so this is someone travels out of state and they need to go to a hospital for some reason maybe a car accident and so that's come they can go to an index yeah there's two components to that but we'll we'll get in there there's the emergency component where it's a non-network provider but we are adding a network out of state so that we can get additional credits from the providers and it's also a benefit for our families that have a student that goes out of state to college Miss Spencer I have a quick question sorry um what is the special education increases what does that include so it's just every year when we when we prepare the annual financial report we see our special education total costs increase predominantly they're driven by salary they're our hardest to hire people hardest to hire teachers and so they're offered hard to hire stipends and we work very hard at recruiting them in addition often we are not able to find the providers and so then we go out to a contracted provider and then we're paying a little bit more for those providers at that point in time too she hit it we uh word we are a destination for people with students with special needs in the East Valley as well and so if you call the Department of Ed and you ask them for a recommendation for a school district who does special ed well they'll tell you Gilbert schools Realtors will do the same thing and so um the the amount of money we get from the state for special ed students does not equal the amount we spend and so that as that number goes up so does our cost so our special education overall spend is in the neighborhood of 50 million dollars and we receive about seven to eight million dollars annually from the federal government so then the rest has to be borne by our weighted student formula which isn't enough so our total increased need projected there are some assumptions in here but these are all the areas of the budget that we don't have any real control over um and then here budgetary increases under consideration we just wanted to make sure that you all understood the value of a one percent pay increase across the board three million dollars and then adding one day to a teacher's contract that was one of the items that was presented in ibbt we generally have completed ibbt and we just indicate whenever there's an item that they're requesting that has a budgetary impact that it will have to happen in the prioritization of budgetary dollars but it's a request that's out there so we will we will update this to you know some of the other strategies could be maybe we don't do a percent increase maybe we do a straight dollar amount um maybe we do um a dollar and so so my I had a meeting with my peers this morning many are considering somewhere between a two or a three percent pay increase and they're adding um a dollar at least three of the school districts that were on the call this morning indicated that they were recommending a dollar per hour increase for their hourly staff members so instead of a percentage increase yeah so so keep in mind that a dollar an hour is roughly about twenty one hundred dollars if you consider twenty two thousand eighty eight hours in a work year for those that are full-time working year-round so um give you an idea um this line item adding one day to teachers contracts so is that we're just are they starting a day earlier or is that is that to allow teachers more paid time to come in and prep their classroom or go through any trainings that the district requires them to go through or what what I guess help me understand what that would be so we wouldn't add school days right so this would be usually at the front end or the back end of a contract and usually it's for Teacher prep of some sort okay they were they were all so um complaining about the length of time to do the mandatory professional developments that we require so that has continued to increase with cyber security and all these other kinds of things so they were just saying well it'd be nice if we had some paid time to cover that 20 hours or so that we're sitting in front of the computer waiting so that was another one of the rationales for that so can I assume that it for every day that we add to a teacher's contract it costs us 780 thousand dollars that's exactly what we want you to assume in that particular case that's a calculated value it's not an assumption yeah and how did we land on and sorry if I oh you're good how did we land on one day it was just directly related primarily to that that conversation about about the fact that before it was only four or five hours and now we have to find time we often have to go home and do it over the weekends and all that kind of stuff so it was predominantly due to the continual adding of these required professional development courses that are compulsory like the suicide prevention training yeah the blood-borne pathogens the um sexual harassment sexual harassment bullying yeah those are statutory statutory requirements yeah um the ibut committee which is kind of like the negotiating committee correct yeah when was the do you know when the last time we added many days to the con teachers contracts was I do not know Jean ocean not not in the time I not in my recent memory from 28 years being here I think it's been very similar to this um the time that I've been here we haven't added a day we moved a day from the beginning of October to the first before school but we haven't added a day to our teachers correct the length has been the same we've shifted when they start but that's generally been it other districts you'll see other districts who will boast their salaries are x amount of dollars and they may be larger than our district or surrounding districts well you have to dig a little bit deeper into that because their number of days on their contract is also larger so it's not like they're they're it's not Apple for apple and so and this is this is just a proposal oh this is these are just budgetary increases under consideration we're not even making a recommendation to you at this point in time so these are just things that are being talked about and how I hate I'm sorry for focusing on this one line item but um this is what what committee is going is is considering this this is so it's the interspace bargaining team it's made up of teachers support staff administrators uh some from the Gilbert Education Association um some that are not so it's a great mixture of all of our employees and each year they they start the process in their primary responsibilities run through the memorandum of understanding and look at those things and then born out of that they may come with some thoughts and suggestions we may come with some thoughts suggestions and then uh we kind of it's it's it's a great process that lets a lot of discussion happen and then great suggestions come out of that sometimes we they're incorporated into a budget sometimes they're not and there might be some things that will be brought up that were like there's just no way we can do that and then there's things that we're like well yeah that's something great to think about so and then we they end up in the mou or in some other form uh to you guys have we have we gotten any feedback from teachers on what they think about adding a day to the contract not no not specifically we've never sent out a survey that I can that I remember I mean even within the ibbt oh within that group I think they're very favorable for it yeah okay so remember too that this is not what it costs for a day in Gilbert Public Schools it's a day for just the teachers that are classroom teachers I want to make sure it's clear that this is classroom teachers so they're not any of our academic coaches or those those are those that are tied to a classroom every day so our we're not talking about adding a day for a classified staff it's specific to teachers looking for some more time the other thing is to your to your question too this is the type of question that says okay well do we add a day or do we add a pay increase because we're you know we're talking about choices here and so under those circumstances it would be wise to go out and see would you rather have a two percent increase or would you rather have a one percent increase on another day of pay you know those are the kinds of questions that have to be asked and answered thank you I just had a quick question on and thank you Mr Thompson for all your questions honestly we're learning here so they're great questions um on the pay increase you talked about a dollar an hour versus about one percent up there does that significantly change the 3 million we haven't calculated it yet so I need to that's that's why as we go through this process we're going to offer a bunch of different options we actually deliberate over these options all the time in cabinet and we talk about them all the time so before I would present anything it would be do we presented or doing that do we not want to do that go that that direction um from a philosophical standpoint I would love to see that dollar that you talked about that the other District around us are doing like where that sits budget wise I'd be interested in that what's interesting is we we both have meetings with our counterparts and we walk out of them with some information and then we wait to see if it's actually accurate because a lot of times what we're told sometimes is not actually what comes up and that's okay because a lot of last minute changes governing boards get involved with well wait a minute maybe we should go this direction instead of that direction so I think it's a good ballpark there are already some districts on the west side that are throwing out large numbers of what they're going to put their base salaries at which I don't know what their finances are but I don't know how they could sustain something like that but that when when we bring something to you we want to if you see it in a stipend form that means that's money that we could um put out for the year if you see it in a percentage form on a base of a salary that means something that we could at least sustain for the next two to three years and that's important to us because as we predict a 400 student loss on a yearly basis we're a declining School District technically and so being able to give increases in a declining uh atmosphere means that Bonnie and her team have been handling our money extremely well and being as fiscally as responsible as possible so we're lucky to be able to do stuff like that to be real honest with you because we wouldn't we didn't take care of our money we wouldn't be able to do that well I think that also reflects a priority of making sure that we have we take care of employees that we have the best employees possible teachers staff otherwise because that is what really makes our district what it is so I think that's a priority that we've really helped you and set I wholeheartedly agree with that I think it's uh as we you know when Mr McIntosh and his folks go to meetings and come back sometimes he's his face is extremely red or you know he's calm as can be and that is because we have to compete and there's nothing harder to have a conversation with a potential employee who looks at you across the table and says well I can go down the road and make three thousand dollars more a year and money isn't everything and we all know that the culture really adds to what uh longevity of an employee but but when someone's brand new and they're 21 22 years old and they're starting a brand new job that dollar sign is extremely important to them so when I think as we deliberate in in the leadership team every Monday morning we're talking about well is it more important to put more money into their pockets or is it more important to do something that might improve their environment so when you talk about adding a day would that be accepted and improve their environment versus would they rather have more money in their pocket not have to work an extra day you know those are the kinds of conversations that we have all the time and like when you add a day like that and let's say you hit some harder Economic Times and you're looking ways to save money it's really difficult to take those things away that you've already given and so um we we have to be mindful of that too Okay so auditory savings as we project a 400 student loss we also project the associated teachers with 400 students so we we include the credit back for 20 FTE reflective of those 400 students and that's done through attrition right as because we have seen over a hundred retirees 100 teacher ftes retiring annually over the last three years I think yeah and I think what you need to know also is if you think back to length of service we did we had a lot of growth in the late 90s and and a lot of those folks are hitting that retirement age and they're taking it and they're ready to roll and so you'll see that in districts that have certain growth spurts during certain time of their existence and that's what kind of what we're hitting right now these opportunities to balance the amino budget so um definitely did consider that unrestricted Capital Revenue back to mno we still have the ability to bring that back if we needed to do that for for making these decisions um mno budget balance carry forward again I put that in there as a TBD though based upon the monthly financials we're projecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 million increase classroom site fund contributions to eligible employees we have more flexibility there with classroom site fund and there is a significant balance there we're waiting to hear what the new projection is going to be for classroom site fund so just a simple example of what could happen and I'm I've asked Jackie and her team to look into this but if we're going to add 12 FTE art teachers as an example since they're adding so we're adding to the program that supplemental can those 12 teachers actually be funded on a classroom site fund 100 which would offload the cost to maintenance operations giving us more flexibility that's just one simple example of the kind of conversations we're having in in the finance office to figure out how we could eke out a one or a two percent pay increase to make sure that we're maintaining a level of competitiveness here in the East Valley and still meet the ongoing requirements of a sustainable budget so and then again the same idea so classroom site fund we are always looking at what is that ongoing Revenue you could make a case and Sean has charged me with this more than once Mr McIntosh you can make a case that every year it's one time money yep I can make a case for that for sure I could um but we do have an expectation of a certain level of ongoing Revenue in the indirect Fund in the Civic Fund in jted in e-rate you know in Medicaid so right now staff is analyzing all those what is our one-time versus ongoing in those balances so that that could give us some flexibility as well and then just a reminder that classroom site fund it is expanded in terms of what we can use that money for in terms of the type of employees but it still cannot be used for hourly employees and for any uh any administrators or um support exempt staff that's like in my office or otm or technology services or operations capital budget capacity projections uh the governor's budget you can see that the 2024 statutory projection is flat Governor's budget includes a 3.0 for 3.04 percent increase to that District additional assistant amount per student so we've done both of those calculations as well we are being conservative and the interest earned assuming a hundred thousand dollars instead of 110 in 2024 but you can see depending upon whether it's the statutory um two percent or I mean statutory nothing for the um or the 3.04 percent recommended by the governor you can see too that the district additional assistance in revise number one is 17.5 million this is where it's gone down uh to your question Mr Thompson because the student counts in 2023 are less than the student counts in 2024 same dollar amount per student the expected revenue for next year will be less so risks and opportunities um AEL is not waived this is a big risk though I think Dr McCord's got some good news related to that you know he'll be sharing that well uh partial good news that the house today passed a waiver for the AEL and now I think it'll go to the Senate tomorrow and we'll see what happens there that's great we can always have a greater loss of students in the current year than realize that we didn't object to lose enough so we could have 410 or 420 students lost and then greater loss of students in the current year could be realized as well over the last two years we've actually seen the first two years that I was here the 100th day count continued to grow after the 100th day the last two years last year and the current year the 100th day count seems to be declining but after the 100th day which is an interesting thing I don't know why that's happening legislature could decrease the funding level classroom site fund Revenue decreases you know making it difficult to make other decisions with classroom site fund and then opportunities we could get more students in Gilbert Public Schools as we did in the current year at least more than we projected the loss the legislature approves greater funding and classroom site fund revenues increase so that's all that Jackie and I have on this topic [Music] so I don't have any questions but Jackie I want to say your color commentary was miserable yeah and we see this come across our desk and we we're expecting big things out of here okay we all got excited when she was people in the back were clapping they're like oh my God well there's nothing further yeah no more insults to go we're good so I'm sorry you had to put put up with that this is the first soap miss betz when will we see your next are we basically every month going to kind of get an update on the FY 2024 budget where we're at once a month or as as we get new information we will present the new information too okay so as soon as we get the information about the minimum wage or about classroom site fund um we will bring that back to you okay that would be great thank you yes thank you both of you thank you all of you Ashley's back I know she had a big handbook yes thank you guys okay that takes us to 2.04 the aggregate expenditure limit and government public schools Dr McCoy thank you madam president governing board members um for those of you that are here almost a year ago to the day I presented this and um this hasn't really changed much uh just the dollar amounts and it's it's just a few slides um talking about the aggregate expenditure limit and how that would impact Gilbert Public Schools this is something that I had a conversation with with all of our superintendent councils last week letting them know that this is a possibility of what will happen um or what could happen if the legislature does not give a waiver to our school district let me just start off with the aggregate expenditure limit started in 1980 Arizona voters passed a measure let me go back to that 1980 Arizona voters passed a measure that limits how much K-12 schools can spend in a school year which was done when the state implemented its school funding formula this limit is known as the aggregate expenditure limit which is the total amount that K-12 districts are spending as a whole each year this limit fluctuates based on the previous year student enrollment charter schools are not included in this because they did not exist in 1980 and most School funds are counted in the limit with the exception of funds such as Esser federal grants and budget overrides and so that's just the history of what AEL is all about and why we're looking at it today uh how much over the limit will Arizona be this year I've seen 1.3 1.4 billion dollars what impact is that on Gilbert Public Schools that's 48 million dollars last year was 39.9 or 440 million Dr McCart can I just ask or or make a comment yes this isn't that there's not the funds or the funds are available the funds are there in the cuffers we haven't overspent we haven't there's not a matter of we need to raise taxes to collect These funds the funds are there this is a basically because of the the formula the formula from the aggregate expenditure limit on in the Constitution that's that's what causes this to trigger not a funding situation that is exactly correct so there when the legislature we get more money for a lot of different reasons of course we budget for that we increase salaries we increase all kinds of different things because we're very thankful that we've received that money but that makes us hit that limit um now I wouldn't say quicker it just the calculations come out it's really easy to calculate in terms of here's the money that we've been provided by the state here's where the aggregate expenditure limit will lie and we knew that 48 million probably back in September of where that would be and you just don't know you have to wait for the legislature back um in the fall or in the summer there was a promise to hold a special session and that did not happen and so now you'll hear a lot about AEL and of course politically things have changed a little bit down there at the state and so there's a lot of different conversations going on about what the wants and needs of public schools are on both sides of the aisle and here public education is getting kind of caught in the middle of that and so this money is available we would be able to spend it but if we fall off what I would call the AEL Cliff then we won't be able to so that's how much dollars and cents um is impacted what does the legislature have to address or when do they they have to figure this out by March 1st 2023 what happens if they don't pass it by March 2023 school districts will be forced to reduce their current budgets and that would have to be done by April 1st and we would have to put into the state how we plan to reduce down 48 million dollars out of our already approved budget so our typical budget is 300 300 and some odd million dollars and 48 million is huge um and and I'll say this out loud um quantifying that in terms of people right um Bonnie calculated out that's approximately half is 48 million is approximately half of our certified staff now when I told this to groups last week I said do not run out and say Shane's cutting half of our staff if this happens and I'll say that again it's just something for them to be able to visualize of half of the certified staff is equal to 48 million dollars and so that that's a that's a big visualization yes sir well and as we just heard that's what we spend on uh special education exactly so that's the entire special education it's a lot of money a lot of people and so um how would we handle this that's always the question that was the number one question I got last week when I presented it to the councils um if we had to do that we'd have to end any kind of spending supplies payroll uh Etc we could reduce the school year statutorily we'd meet our required hours at the elementary by the end elementary junior high by the end of March uh 9 through 12 we'd hit that number by the end of April we could exhaust budget balance carry for carry forward that still would not be enough to to mitigate this 48 million dollars and so my message to those folks and anybody else that's listening is if we get to that point we will be huddling up not just my staff but I will also bring those councils in to have conversations with them as well as the governing board because this isn't um oh this isn't one person's decision this would dramatically impact our school district in a lot of different ways and we would need a lot of thoughts and ideas on how to mitigate that you'll hear other districts say they will be able to do certain things moving forward and utilize their budget balance carry forward to get through the year and next year you would still have to reduce 48 million dollars from your budget moving forward and so I I don't I would never recommend just totally using your budget balance carry forward because things happen and as you could tell from the preliminary budget there's a lot of assumptions and a lot of risks involved and so we would have to be careful with that we'd have to put a lot of thought into that um next year like I said we'd have to right size to a permanent 48 million dollar reduction uh what would that do that'd be a reduction in administrative certified and support staff for next year increases of class sizes unrestricted capital budget moved to mno if need be and just other potentially discretionary decreases and so my main concern would be to protect the classroom and and all those that are in it the students first and so you protect that and then if you had to trim down your budget by that much you would you would just start on the outskirts and work all the way in and try to stay as far away from those campuses and those kids as possible but we also know all of those things that are not in the classroom are there to support what goes on in the classroom and so it's extremely difficult but it's like stripping down a car to its bare minimum and and trying to move forward so it's a big deal and it's something that I hope I don't have to have a conversation with anybody about and like I said earlier we got some good news that the house pushed it forward so let's hope that the Senate does and we can concentrate on on important things like our students that's it any thoughts or questions well I I do want to give a shout out to representative cook that brought this to the house committee and made sure that it was taken to the house floor where they've just passed it yeah and I'm not sure where the Senate version is hopefully tomorrow hopefully in a day or two um I hope they will pass it as well but um you know it's he he gave a wonderful speech I was able to watch the video um explaining the value of our public schools and what a big impact they have on the communities around them that in almost every town such as Gilbert the public school system is the largest employer in the town so it doesn't just impact our family and students it's going to be an economic impact on the entire state so I I appreciate him doing that and look forward to hopefully hearing good news this week yeah so I've got some thoughts and some questions first my thoughts and speaking with some of our legislators um I'm confident that it will that it will pass okay and but I would I would mention that many of our legislators are going to be are extremely committed to some education reform measures that's what I've read yeah and so I just I just wanted to put that out there which I think I think could be could be good could be bad we'll have to wait and see my questions are what is the I mean what component is the formula missing that were 1.3 1.4 billion dollars as a state I don't know the exact number do you know what it's I think well it so it went into effect when our state formula went into effect and I think I think that hits it right on the head I I really think that um uh the way of thinking in in public education back in 1980 versus 2023 is totally different I mean you we went through a Litany of things just on the master planning committee on what a classroom looks like these days and so I don't believe the formula has been tweaked to the ability and to reflect the needs of what public education needs today and I think that's the bigger issue in my opinion not not anything other than my opinion in 28 years in education that we're avoiding as as a state conquering that and I think if that one day gets conquered we won't be having these types of conversations in the future and and I think it has to be done in a way that is one economical uh two Fair and uh three always focusing on making sure our kids are the most educated in the United States and so once we do that I think these other conversations will go away do you know why this is happening now I mean we we know the formula we know what the limit is so I'll tell you we've run up against this before okay in the past the most recent was last year before that I think it was like 2007-2008 it is and and back then it wasn't a conversation it was just kind of a pass-through of okay well yeah we're just gonna we're gonna approve this waiver and move on now I think it's become political whether anybody wants to agree with that or not um spending time talking to people that are in politics and related to education this is a great bargaining tool for people who want things done you just said it a few minutes ago I think it'll pass but the butt's always going to be there if this didn't exist that but probably wouldn't be there either so yeah so and I and I get that and I don't I don't disagree that this is being leveraged for for some political gain but if the schools around the state know what the limit is how do they spend one and a half billion dollars beyond the limit I mean I I get that it's different now than it was in 1980 but regardless if there's a limit there's a limit and so how do we go so far and and I say we and oh no I know what you mean I'm not let me help you GPS of course not no I get it and and I think that's what people need to realize we have approved budgets by governing boards and that's based on budgets given to us by the state the other question is is why does the state give us that money if they know we based on this we wouldn't be able to spend it like we like Miss Woods said earlier we have this money this money should be ours but because that limit exists and it's in the Constitution technically we can't touch it and so that either needs to be changed or waived and it needs to be changed if it needs to be changed has done constitutionally which you know legislature has to send it to a vote and it has to be done there so that's where a 1980s thought comes into play and it doesn't fit into that's why specifically Dr McCord there have been a few changes appear it's one was the when the legislature it's actually it's because the legislature has been has given us more money which has been generous and we're so grateful for the um one of it was when we they put the text they changed the text the 301 the 301 the classroom site fund when voters originally approved it it was not included in the aggregate expenditure limit but it ran out and the legislature fortunately approved it but not through the it just became now now it's now it's included in the limit so that's a big six fun checking money plus that now that a couple years ago wasn't added in as part of what we would spend toward the limit and now it's the same money or even a little more but now the way that it's um the way that they had to go about it through the legislature again being being generous to us and making that a permanent thing rather than how it was sun setting now it is part of our aggregate expenditure limit so now we bump up against it because of that funding which is there which we've been spending for the past several years but it wasn't included so that's one of the things and then I think just the increases in the 20 by 2020 and these other increases that that have been provided so that we could give more funding to our teachers specifically and all of our staff which the legislature and the governor and approved and and gave us which was again we're grateful for I think that has also bumped us up over the last couple years is that correct and and covid-19 hit yeah so in 21 the students that's what it was because it spilled those are the things we're bumping up against it if you don't mind um I was in high school in 1980 and there was no there was one classroom of special ed that had just started in my high school there were no computers no each there was like one or two telephones for the entire school um their education has changed and what we do for students has changed drastically since 1980.
you can see that we'll continue to have six classes of first grade six classes on second grade and we will only need six sections of third grade next year because we have 106 students moving into third grade which would give us an average class size of 18.
so as some of you may be aware over this last election cycle prop 28 was passed and it's written to our state constitution that one percent of our school budget is allocated for music looking at the preliminary numbers right now we have roughly 1.2 million dollars allocated for music now this number is probably going to change next year just due to our on decline enrollment and this enrollment does reflect how much we get but with that eighty percent of that is for Staffing what does classify or certified or just any coaches or speakers that's what those monies are for 20 19 is for supplies for like for example for us could be for music for Arts could be for paint supplies and things like that and one person's for administrative work I'm hoping that you guys will start be able to consider how we're going to use this money efficiently to help grow the program because now we're at a unique situation where we can reimagine how our ours program can look and we have this funding from the state that can help with that and I I hope by next May we can see the report that you have to pull out put out regarding how we're using this money and see the money being used in the right place to help grow the music and the arts program in this District thank you thank you Mr Ma uh mrtigas does this conclude all of our members of the public or do we have anyone on Zoom that hasn't been populated on this list anybody else on Zoom we have no hands raised on Zoom I'm sorry one more time we have no hands raised on Zoom thank you this concludes item 7.1 a public comment on agenda or non-agen agenda items moving on to item 8.1 comments reports and requests by the Board of Education uh we'll begin with uh board vice president uh Rodriguez Pena good evening everyone I want to um say happy concerts week to all of our counselors that is a unified school district and I want to thank them for helping our students um find their dreams reach their dreams I should say my counselor in high school helped me see the potential that I didn't even see myself so culture is not just a concert just gives you classes they wear many hats and I really we really appreciate them we really need them at our school sites and I also wanted to say um I did go to Bluffton High School to the annual faculty art gallery that beautiful artwork and ceramic work from the secondary staff and art teachers uh I went to Azusa High School at the uh Azusa eighth grade Expo there was Full House and parents and students were able to see large varieties of programs and classes classes offered at Azusa High School entertainment was fantastic speaking of the music program Azusa High School and Glaston High School band jazz van Taurus visually impaired student Brianna sang the national anthem was the ASL students using the sign language right beside her it was really beautiful to see and she is so talented she also sings in the Mariachi program so it was just like to see she's a beautiful student um I went to Paramount Elementary at their after-school program at their STEM Academy with Mr Hartman I want to thank him for inviting me to his classroom there were many students there after school very excited working on their projects they were doing um catapults they were making they had to design their own catapults first of all and then they had to put them together and if it didn't work or didn't match up they had to figure out you know how does this work because at the end they had battles against each other so it was really good when it was time for them to go home he says okay watch this he said okay students it's time to go home they're like no we don't want to go home they really enjoy being there so I want to thank him for his invitation I went to Dalton school um coffee with the principal and Tulsa uh Julie McGaw was did a really great job with parents working with the working with them and showing them techniques and how to use math at home just even in their kitchen you know how many uh chairs are sitting there or how many legs or they're going to the store the The Kitchen upper grades you know the mom was mentioning that she gives her son the five dollars to the one dollar and wants him to make the transaction so he knows how to count money so I really thank her for doing that and I also have a comment I have a comment that I do know that we have many talented students in the music program I go to most of their concerts and most of their um the plays and of the Arts I strongly believe in the Arts and and I want to know you know how are we going to continue our music program with um with cutting no more Staff first question um and how are we going to continue our programs are they going to be overcrowded or are students not going to be able to participate in the music program because it is too crowded or how is that going to work if we have less students are we going to have more excuse me less staff are we going to have more students in there I'm very concerned about that because Iran or Jasmine all our bands they're fantastic and I and I am I do have that concern and have we do we have any comparisons of other districts of our enrollment our future enrollment approximately you know how are the programs working for them are we just doing this um you know I do know that we have a Cuts I do know the the reorganization and there is a process and there's a necessity in our district but I still really want to know how is it working at other districts with similar enrollment and regarding the overcrowding and I am concerned with students you know um they love music they don't even know their talents singing dancing drama what whichever and I want to give them that opportunity thank you board member Rodriguez Pena and now our board clerk board member Ariana's board member Benavides please I just have a few comments and I wanted to say thank you to the students that did show up tonight to speak and it's nice to see that there is a passion and that you enjoy our music and arts program but um I know that um Miss uh Yolanda Rodriguez Pena also stated that there is a process and uh I I know the board is looking at everything um you know through the lens of trying to keep everything as positive as we can and we want to make sure that um we continue with the programs we can for our students so thank you for being here tonight board clerk Ariana's I I would like to wish everybody at home here Happy Valentines you know I'm gonna share a quick little story my my daughter's like why do we celebrate Valentine's and I said to remember that we that we like each other right but most importantly I said you know one thing that Valentine's we don't talk about is like before you start loving other people you got to love yourself right so be your own Valentine so I challenge all of you guys to be your own Valentine so happy Valentine's second um yes we're going through a lot of this year and and I heard this tonight um a lot of a lot of readjusting reimagining right and as this is a work in progress um I appreciate the comments the concerns right we cannot have a great District if we don't and I'm being completely on if we do not reimagine this right but what at what cost and so thank you guys for being here and sharing your concerns um I would like to look at that a little closer and um and then take it from there and I trust in our cabinet that they're looking at those numbers as well so when you know they do tell you certain things trust I I trust them so thank you cabinet for working really hard during this time as we make this transition thank you and parents um congratulations again to all the parents tonight that we're here congratulations to all of you guys at home parents grandparents just for being our village again thank you thank you board member bariana's um I too would like to Echo my colleague sentiments around the importance of our art and music programs um my older daughter spent her first two years in another Local District where she had music and art and unfortunately our school closed so I've experienced School reorganization personally as a parent and I as a parent I continue to Champion the Arts and the impact that art has on math and on social emotional development and I would encourage our district to continue to be creative and find ways to explore and expand what we have to be able to go deeper and also to expand our art and music programs down to the lower elementary grade levels moving to item 9.0 comments and reports by student board members superintendent and cabinet Mr Ortega good evening uh Dr Beau uh and board members uh just a couple of things number one I just want to uh also formally uh congratulate uh all of our parents of the year uh tonight uh what a great example of uh our our parents uh giving not only to their students but to the uh Community the larger Community uh as well I also want to Echo uh the uh Happy counseling week um want to show our gratitude to our counselors and the work that they do for our students I want to personally uh say thank you to Miss Donna Flores Donna Flores is a special education instructional Aid at Foothill Middle School and she allowed me to Shadow her for three hours and so I got to spend the morning with her and so just really uh grateful that she gave me the opportunity to download get to know her better but get to know the position better as well and then I also want to just say thank you to the art Department I was able to go to the glasson high school staff art show um and if you had not have not had the opportunity uh it is breathtaking uh the the pieces of work that are on display and the only thing I can I can think about is just how again just how amazing uh these folks that are producing this art are the same exact people that are investing and teaching our kids and so I just want to I want to say thank you for that thank you good evening good evening Dr Beau Board of Education I too would like to congratulate all of our parents of the year I had the pleasure to hear from all of them and it was so powerful and moving um to hear of the selfless commitment that they have to all of our schools and how much they give to our school communities so I want to congratulate all of them and all of the other families who Provide support and volunteer and are engaged in all of our schools I also would like to recognize our counselors this week on National Counselor week for all of the support that they provide to our students in Azusa unified thank you good evening I would like to follow suit and um welcome um all of our counselors and congratulate them for um this week um I know this is just one week of the entire school year but we thank you for all you do year round I also want to congratulate all the nominees and our district um parent of the year um additionally I want to congratulate um I was able to purchase RC the Gladstone boys soccer senior night as well as the glass stone girls varsity senior night and it was exciting to see our students out there I'm putting in work so thank you and good evening I also want to follow the course of congratulations to our parents of the year um and also recognize the board of education for putting this event together and helping us just recognize and uplift the wonderful work of our parents uh of the year um at all of our sites it's something that in my Third District this is the only District that I see do this on a regular basis and coming back in person truly is special and I also want to take the opportunity to also recognize our counselors for the work that they do in a previous life I worked very closely with counselors and really had a chance to see that the impact that they have on individual students uh really working behind the scenes and really being a champion for for students and in many cases being the kind of the motor Behind these students really get into the finish line and doing wonderful things in life so thank you counselors for the work that you do thank you cabinet and now we'll hear from our student board members we'll begin with Miss Carolina Dominguez from Gladstone High School good evening Board of Education I would first like to say that I have a sore throat so please do not mind my voice but um the Gladstone High School admin students and staff would like to thank superintendent Mr Ortega and the rest of the cabinet for coming out and supporting our soccer and that soccer and basketball teams in their final varsity game at Gladstone High School speaking of soccer Glaston High School would like to congratulate our boys and girls soccer teams for qualifying in CIF playoffs the boys played at home today against San juansito Valley and one one to zero they will play at Gabrielino on Thursday at 5 PM the girls will play at home against academy career Expo if they win their time and place will be determined by other teams outcomes Good Luck Good Luck gladiators highlights of events coming up Wednesday Wednesday the 8th from 9 A.M to 1 30 p.m ASB Mountain View League's Symposium at Workman High School Tuesday the 14th from 9 A.M to 11 A.M parent Google Workshop number four will present on Portal for parents Thursday the 16th from 9 A.M to 10 30 a.m copy with the principal Tuesday the 21st from 9am to 11 A.M parent Google Workshop number five will present on Google Docs and Tuesday the 28th from 9am to 11AM parental Workshop number six will present on Google Docs practical usage writing and formatting a letter printing thank you and do we have our other student board members here online Daphne and Natalie we do have Daphne online uh Daphne Pineda from Sierra High School please good evening Dr about Board of Education members superintendent Ortega and cabinet this week at Sierra our soccer team played their third soccer game and are currently undefeated their next match will be on the 16th at nine in the morning at Gladstone High School on February 9th the leadership class will be hosting a Red Cross blood drive in the multi-purpose room our parent group continues to meet at Fridays at nine in the morning in the parent room they will participate in the mental health class on the 10th and 24th on the 17th they will discuss the book on Mango Street which they have been reading for a book club finally the last week of February students will be taking finals for the end of the second trimester thank you Miss Pineda and I'll go ahead and read Natalie's state report for on Azusa High School so this is from our student board member representative from Azusa High School Ms Miss Natalie De La Cruz Azusa High School would like to congratulate Maria Russo as the AHS parent of the year and offers congratulations to the Azusa unified parent of the Year Pedro Palacios Azusa High School is proud of all winter sports athletes soccer and basketball and is looking forward to seeing the lady Aztecs in CIF action this week congratulations to coach Miranda and the team for their hard work in the Mountain View League this year last night they won their first CIF game against Hawthorne High School 2-0 and will have a match against Saint Mary's in Inglewood on February 8th azuzahai is seeking participants for the Azusa rotary four-way speech contest Azusa rotary is asking high school students to write a speech that quote imagines the world that deserves our best where we get up each day knowing that we can make a difference high school students that are interested should contact their English teacher for more details Aztecs and Gladiators are making plans for college readiness next year by either choosing the ECP or the early college program or the IB the international Baccalaureate program we're excited about all the programs that are coming together next year there is an early college parent meeting on February 8th at 6 PM in the Azusa library for parents of 10th graders parents of glad Azusa and Gladstone 10th graders are invited to attend this very important informational meeting Azusa High School is hosting parent technology workshops every Thursday at 9 00 a.m we are excited to see parents learning about different Google applications the courses build upon skills that parents learned in the first series of workshops and we hope to see Natalie at our next meeting moving to item 10.1 approval of the consent calendar May have a motion motion to approve and the second second moved and seconded we'll move to a vote and the motion passes moving to item 12.0 curriculum and instruction Miss Camacho good evening Dr Beau Board of Education I would like to invite up our director of multilingual and categorical programs Dr Krista Fairley who will be sharing tonight about our dual language immersion transition to the Middle School all right thank you Dr good evening Dr Beau Board of Education cabinet and attendees I'm so excited tonight to present about our dual language immersion transition to Middle School all right so just to frame our conversation tonight we just want to review briefly the history vision and mission of our dual language program here in Azusa we want to outline the transition to our secondary program and talk about next steps in our process so Azusa unified launched a district dual language immersion program in the 2015-2016 school year those students now that begin in that program are now sixth graders and they are ready to head to middle school so we're excited right now to transition we have about over a hundred students in DLI currently and we have 99 the 99th confirmed and committed today that they will continue on to our fifth and sixth or excuse me our sixth and seventh grade program at Gladstone Middle School we want to continue that in our commitment to dual language immersion and our goal of bilingualism and also by Literacy for our students so our ausd English learner vision is so critical we truly have this goal and vision to have our students become Global Citizens in this multilingual and Multicultural world and we can provide that through this opportunity we have three focuses we focus on a rigorous and Equitable language instruction for our students we build on their linguistic strengths and we address their individual needs so there are three pillars of dual language immersion the first one being bilingualism and biliteracy we really want to develop those high levels of listening oral reading writing in Spanish our second pillar is academic Excellence we want our students to achieve excellence in both content or in content in both languages and we also want to develop and nurture Multicultural and Global competence our students we want to really Foster and facilitate positive cultural understanding and appreciation so just a reminder and this is what I told our parents there's a lot of research about the benefits of dual language immersion and why districts like ours have really committed to this program first and foremost our students in dual language immersion programs have increased results on standardized testing our students reclassify right now we've reclassified almost 200 students this year but our students in dual language immersion reclassifier at higher rates um I like this one personally the executive brain function that our bilingual students there's a research that shows that they paid more focused attention they're less distracted and probably because of that dual language are able to switch back and forth between tasks and finally our students in dual language immersion have higher attendance rates and increased levels of Engagement which is so critical especially as students transition to middle school we want our students to have their people their group so what is it going to look like next year at Gladstone Middle School here is a graphic of the program that we offer and we're planning to offer here in the next years in Azusa so you can see the image begins with our elementary DLI programs at both Hodge and Valleydale we begin with a 90-10 model in the TK Kinder grades and we move toward fifth grade at the 50 50.
and did it report to the board or to Administration yes it reported to Dr Lewis it did not report to the board it was a public document for the district which is what we all represent okay I guess my question then next question is who um who informed or decided or worked on the parameters of that audit and what would be explored with them it's an industry standard that Joanne Phillips is an expert in I don't know if she's still conducting them that's who I think would be somebody to call but we can put out a RFP or an RFQ if that's something the board would like to do so if you want to look it will be aligned with the elements that Ms hartsoff has put together this evening I don't think that's what Ms mccheffrey's interest is I I honestly think that um what I was going to offer for this conversation if you would like to jump to the audit I can show you the outcomes you're not going to understand it as deep because I haven't been able to really give you the ins and outs which I would love to do at some point but I can tell you what we did from that particular audit to make changes within the district if that's of interest to you and that was an outside audit the agenda item is to for the board to determine if we want to do an additional audit beyond the 2018-1920 ETC um State monitoring I think it's important to look at last time we had an external audit while we were in corrective action what we did to get out of corrective action and what place are we in right now the Ade default monitoring is very intensive so I just want I'm not saying we shouldn't look at another audit I'm just do want to point out that like that's it's not just a yeah it is super intensive and they look at every single little thing and you can have 10 people read every single IEP over and over again and they will find one thing that needs to be changed and the whole process starts again but I think information on where like what happened in the lot in the last external audit how we made changes since then are there concerns that would Merit us then looking at an external audit again I'm hearing some things that feel like the lines are getting blurred between the external audit and the corrective action plan that's the result of on-site monitoring that was determined from the programmatic monitoring Yeah by two separate things and so I just want to make sure we're keeping those separate and so I guess my question then is was there any corrective action or plan from this audit or is that solely from the Ade cycle corrective action is used from the Ade cycle from the audit that we did in 2016 it helped us get a map to guide what would be the most and highest priority to make sure the Special Education team was getting towards being ready for a monitoring because we we had many issues that we needed to unpack in 2016.
so the way this was written into the con for the voters to prove and put in the Constitution was that they would taken them out and then they would increase it so much for inflation and so forth so it doesn't take into account all these changes of Technology telephones special ed all kinds of different things that were not available I mean even even banned wasn't that big in 1980 I think the whole budget was 350 for all the band students to go on their trips so everything has changed very greatly I guess if if our approved budget is 300 million dollars then that's what I feel I should be held to right if I I won't spend more than that but if I if I think I should there's statutes in place that can put me in jail and that's why I love Bonnie so much to keep me out of jail but but that's that's our point is is that money's there and that's what we budgeted for and every District in in the state has assumed that and then now when we get to February we're playing this game of you know here I am I'm talking to councils I'm talking to you I'm talking to whoever's listening now and people freak out about this and that's that's if that's a political game I don't want to play that I just want to be able to spend the money I'm given and then if I'm not doing that right hold us accountable for that okay yeah and I would say that we have the most transparency of any um what do they call it Lea education group school boards and school districts are held to the highest standard for transparency on budget on curriculum on who we hire and how we check their backgrounds there are private schools that are now receiving those taxpayer funds that are not held at that same level of accountability and Charter Schools also are not held to as high a standard although they they do have a standard so when the legislature frequently when I go down there I get frustrated because I feel like they don't understand how their own public school system works and the level of transparency that we have and so when they talk about they want education reform understandable I want transparency and I think every education uh entity that receives taxpayer dollars should have a level of transparency and and we have the most transparency so I would like to have that discussion with our legislators that if you're interested in transparency um I'm more than happy to be as transparent as possible but we need to look at some other areas that are also receiving taxpayer dollars without that transparency so my last question is and this may be Miss betz could answer this I don't know why you try to slip away just stay here so my last question is I understand that we it wouldn't be wise to use our entire budget balance carry forward to mitigate the the losses if if the limit wasn't waived but could we um I I mean we're allowed to we're allowed to okay that's all thank you okay we just don't have to make the cuts next year I mean even if we could do it the cuts would actually I mean they'd go into effect next year but they'd be realized this year with notifications and all that good stuff so the year wouldn't end I guess what I'm saying is even if we made it through to the end of the school year on whatever we can do when we Face the budget for next year and the next school year in 20 20 23 24 we would still have to make some major Cuts because I just can't I mean I I've already looked at it and 48 million dollars yeah we could just take every single fund balance that we have and pay that back right but I don't know how to cut 48 million dollars knowing that even if we took if we were not required to provide transportation except for special needs so we could cut maybe eight million dollars out of transportation and just keep a skeleton crew to transport special needs students I I don't know and even nutrition services which really doesn't impact us but their budget is 19 million so 19 and eight I mean that's 27 I don't have any idea where you've got I just don't don't know when it was a year ago and I remember Bonnie calling me and I'm getting ready to go into an eye appointment oh yeah I did that to him and and this is when I think is she I think this is when it actually set in that this is a lot of money when it was 39.9 she wasn't yelling at me but she was screaming numbers at me and I was like oh my God but it it does when you start trying to quantify it and match it up to certain things it um it I mean I don't need to tell you you guys know that's a lot of money and when you're in the business of people it impacts people and big and small Shane just one question is there any any discussion about looking into doing something differently constitutionally about the AEL yeah there's there's always a lot of discussion um it just depends on what they'll be able to get through and and I don't know I I really hope I I I really hope both sides are able to come together and have a conversation and put aside on both sides this isn't just one group or the other everybody needs to step back and and rethink about what are we doing for our state and what are we doing for our kids and I would love that to happen yesterday the Arizona Chamber of Commerce came out very strongly along with a whole lot of people who are coming in for the Super Bowl yeah that want me want to relocate in Arizona about this I watch too much news just you know well we got the waste management we got the Super Bowl it was really good it was a very good yeah you know but if they changed it constitutionally that would take care of the problem I would take care of a lot of it I think um I believe Jennifer Pollock representative Pollock has filed the bill to do that I don't know whether it's made it to committee foreign [Music] so we wanted to just discuss that but we are hopeful that we will not have to worry about it this the rest of this year so we will hope for that at this point thank you okay I think that takes us to the adjournment of the work study and so I will call the brief board business meeting to order and I will ask Mrs Wilson for a roll call please cute here thank you that will take us to the consent agenda and I would ask is there a motion for the approval of consent agenda items I move that we have approve the consent agenda items as presented thank you Mr Jetty it's been approved is there a second second thank you Miss Humphries it's been it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items as presented all those in favor please vote by saying aye and any opposed with nay thank you that pests 5-0 that will take us to our action items 6.01 FY 2023 revised budget number one Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members as presented in our work study we bring before you the 2023 revised budget number one thank you board members is there a motion I move that we approve the FY 2023 revised budget number one as presented thank you Miss Humphries it's been moved is there a second second thank you Miss C Jetty it's been moved and seconded board members is there any discussion I just wanted to remind everyone that they need to sign the signature sheet on the revised budget so don't take off thank you so we discussed this in the work study tonight and we were able to ask questions and and hear what was needed so seeing no further discussion or questions I will call for the vote all those in favor of approving FY 2023 revised budget number one please vote by saying aye aye any opposed with name thank you that past five zero and that will take us to the adjournment board members is there a motion I move to adjourn thank you Miss Humphries it's been moved as our second thank you Mr Thompson it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye and any opposed thank you thank you
this year we have seven sections doing in the moment next year we will only need six I've already taken that into a pound in our budget a reduction of one classroom teacher are there any questions about enrollment and charity work okay moving on then to talk about enrollment and Hanson Intermediate School um we will continue to have six sections of fourth fifth and sixth grade um you might wonder why we had seven third grade sections and we're not continuing with seven uh that's because according to board event policy we can do with four I'm sorry with six sections and that helps with our teaming concept because our philosophy our overall curriculum philosophy um at Canton intermediate schools that teachers uh team teach in Partnerships um having six classrooms will allow that to be done very effectively we found in the past when we've had an odd classroom if we had seven classrooms there would be one teacher working in isolation that has not worked well in the past so we're learning from the past so we'll continue to have six sections of fourth fifth and sixth grade with very appropriate class size numbers are there any questions about that okay so when you talked about the fixed costs now we want to talk about what is included in this budget request these are the items that will help us move forward as a school district in accordance with the Strategic goals that we've stated for ourselves and you can see there are there's a main driver here and it's all about student support so the top few items are all about supporting students the last few items are all about providing students additional opportunities so this is very student driven we're requesting a math interventionist and instructional coach to work at Canton middle school and Canton High School there's a need for this position because when we look at student achievement data in the area of math we're seeing a dip in scores at the middle school level it's unacceptable Mr Moore has been working with the staff to identify the learning challenges that students are having and we're looking at bringing in a person with a math content background and also expertise and outstanding teaching strategies to work as a coach with the teachers in the classroom in collaboration with our math department chair who evaluates teachers to make sure we are all in alignment and all using research-based strategies to help our students in math it's a definite need foreign budgets you're always going to hear about our special education budget because that budget changes on a daily basis and why is that because the needs of our students change on a daily basis as I said tonight we've had eight additional student outplacements most of those student outplacements you would expect we might expect to think it's because of academic needs but it's not the case we're seeing students with behavioral needs social and emotional learning needs that currently we in this situation we cannot meet their needs our director of people Personnel Services um Barbara McLean is presenting a proposal as part of this budget request where we would have an additional learning lab teacher at Cherry Brook Primary School at Canton Intermediate School and a Canton middle school and high school to work with behaviorally challenged students and she's going to talk about that in a couple minutes um we're calling this this um proposed program the Thrive program so when you see thrive in parentheses those Personnel would be in that thrive program and again Barbara will talk about that in a couple of minutes those are the positions we're looking for for additional student support we had a request from the friends for football for our Canton Grammy Co-op team they were looking for additional funding to assist with transportation currently in our budget we've only provided I say only that that's a judgment sorry about that I'll just say we've provided four thousand dollars for the cost of a football coach that's what we provided in our budget for the past few years the request was to assist with transportation between Canton and Granby and um I put that additional request in at an increase of eleven thousand dollars which would go towards transportation at a small cost I'm recommending we add a middle school into intramural volleyball coach and we continue to provide additional Club opportunities for our students last week we heard from our student Representatives about the wonderful save club at the high school that's just one example of many clubs happening across our schools and overall we're looking at increasing the stipend account by three thousand dollars which would provide more opportunities at the high school for a chess club a literary Club Science Olympiad at CIS we will have disc golf and at Cherry Brook Primary School we'll continue with the program where we that we just started last week where every Wednesday afternoon we have 127 students staying after school for chorus so we'll be able to continue those opportunities at a small cost which I'm very excited about so so can I ask a question or would you rather just finish your job that's okay so the three the 376 or 96 302 that is is thrive 15 3 of that is called extra curricular type that exports in it and only only 59059 is really um specific right and so that 350 that 376 496 that's the small part going on top of the fix to get us where we are yes so so the only really new initiative is Thrive um and we're addressing Jeff's name uh as far as a map uh specialist right yes do you have a requirement for a new uh is that yeah so um we need to purchase new shot clocks yeah that's at a cost of nine thousand dollars where does that show up right that shows up in our athletic budget Donna do you know what oh it's totally in the budget what's in there okay okay so um stated the hard part here is that we're faced with um fixed costs of what 7.6 did we say 7.7757 and then the only enhancements enrichments that are going on is a small poultry 376.
of course right now we currently have sixth graders but they'll be moving on to Gladstone middle when students arrive at Gladstone Middle School they'll have two courses in Spanish they'll have a Spanish language arts course and a social studies course that social studies course is required and instead of taking it in English they'll be taking it in Spanish and as the students move on to high school the goal is is to continue their language focus and success so in seventh and 8th grade our Spanish language arts curriculum that we typically give at the ninth grade level will actually be given at the 7th and 8th grade level so as students move into ninth grade they'll begin with Spanish speakers too they're able to then move on to AP Spanish language and then by the 11th and 12th grade they have some options they can continue with AP Spanish Literature or if they're into language or another area of Interest they can continue with those choices so just here's another image that we've shared with our families so that to understand the transition when students go to middle school they have six periods instead of just one teacher it's a fun change lots of um new friends and new teachers all students in sixth seventh and eighth grade will take PE a science course language arts and math in English and then the the courses that are highlighted in kind of the orangish color there are the students that are excuse me are the classes that will be taught in Spanish um so the social studies curriculum and the DLI Spanish language arts I did want to make a comment we had several questions from parents about this course progression this is a a very common when when students progress to the Middle School level typically social studies is the content area that our Middle School schoolers take in that second language all right so here's an example schedule I really like the thinking on part of our future um principle of Gladstone Middle School offering some options for our students students can take a six period day so the first schedule shows their eight o'clock to 2 10 schedule with a first period through sixth period I feel like I'm echoing into the microphone I apologize um not not necessarily in that order but it's an example of what a student might take for a student that really wants to take an elective and Middle School having been a middle school principal it's about the electives and we have a lot to offer at Gladstone Middle School we're offering a zero period PE that way students can get PE out of the way in the cool of the day and also be able to choose an elective of their choice so there's an example schedule for a future student at Gladstone Middle School that maybe will have seven periods and we can't forget that the ultimate goal of this for our students is to achieve that state seal of by literacy and um that recognition and award is on their transcripts as they move on to College and Career and their future and is given to those students who have attained that high level of proficiency in speaking reading and writing in one or more languages so I just want to thank you for the opportunity what a great year to land in Azusa unified that I get to be part of this work and if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them Dr Philly I have a question um last year how many of our high schoolers graduated with the cliff by literacy I will get back to you on that because that is a goal we're going to raise thank you so much moving to item 12.2 our resolution 22 23 22 recognizing National School counseling week Mr Chang good evening board president Dr Beau members of the board superintendent Ortega cabinet student board member as well as the Azusa unified community thank you board of education for the soon-to-be resolution recognizing our counselors and allowing me a few minutes to share just how amazing they truly are as you know this year has been a year of transitions which has prompted us to adapt quite quickly to the changing landscape at Azusa Unified not only are we still dealing with the effects of the covet pandemic we are transitioning with our reorganization yet thankfully our counselors have continued to do what they always have done they have provided a semblance of normacy while dealing gracefully with the many challenges that these transitions have brought for example counselors are still having individual and group counseling sessions doing classroom presentations regarding gpas graduation credits College and Career awareness and course selection they make mental health referrals take risk assessments facilitate peer mediation and even take on additional roles as ASB coordinator or as community outreach coordinators they have translated at parent meetings IEPs ssts and supported newcomers dealing with language barriers they have had heart-to-heart talks with students parents and even staff and yet each and every day our counselors shared the message that our students can they can persevere they can go to college they can explore greater opportunities and they can be better so please allow me to recognize these counselors by name and if they are in the virtual audience you know how I feel about you the district feels very um thankful that you are working for us and with us Dominique Perez as Slauson Middle School Karen desabio Center Middle School Steve Scott Foothill Middle School Maricela Casas at Ellington Sandra Wyant as Sierra High School Daniel Soriano here at adult end we also have the Gladstone High School counselors Joyce de Leon and Christy Calderon Azusa High School counselors Jackie Hoke Crystal Mejia Laura Ortiz and Anna Sanchez I would be remiss if I did not also take this opportunity to recognize two very important people who help our students in counseling support Karina Hernandez at Azusa High School and Lori Madden at Gladstone High School are two career center techs who do so much to counsel and support our students such as having access to scholarships grants financial aid for their post-high school graduation and so much more both Karina and Lori are accessible and welcoming to students and find ways to support those who choose a career path with internships and work programs choices that are Beyond or other than College as a matter of fact Lori teaches coaches are are gosh I believe it was basketball um yeah Lori teaches about and coaches the basketball team so they do so much Beyond um what their job entails um lastly and on a very personal level I wanted to share an experience last November the counselors and I were gathered in their room about to share a meal also to review California colleges which is on the concentric calendar today we're also talking about our fpn visit we're sharing some laughs and I remember looking around the room and just smiling I recall how honored and privileged I felt to be working with such a passionate and dedicated group of Advocates advocates for our students and for their futures throughout that meeting we laughed and joked as we always do we share the challenges we face but with always the understanding that we have to move forward with optimism and strength they continue to persevere through the transitions that continue to laugh and they continue to remind me of all that is great about Azusa Unified oh and by the way if Stella is listening to this we had an incredible meal prepared by the nutrition services shout out to them um delicious Thanksgiving dinner for me again thank you for the resolution and thank you for all that you do to uplift our support and support our counselors have a great rest of your evening thank you Mr Chang may I have a motion for item 12.2 motion to approve 12.2 is there a second moved and seconded any discussion seeing none will move to a vote we do appreciate them yes go counselors woo and the motion passes thank you and congratulations to all our counseling staff moving to item 12.3 review of our second quarter Williams uniform complaint report Miss Camacho so we have attached the review of our Williams complaint uh quarterly uh Williams complaint report and we had a report of three missed assignments that have been resolved thank you very much moving to item 13.1 presentation of new laws affecting Board of Education meetings Mr Ortega thank you uh board president uh Dr Beau tonight uh we have with us Mr Carlos Villegas who is going to be walking the Board of Education through two new bills the first one is assembly Bill 2449 which is going to change um the manner in which board members can attend a board meeting in a virtual setting and then also Senate Bill 1100 uh which uh has some new guidelines uh in terms of the board of educations uh powers and decision making in terms of how handling uh meeting uh disruptions uh so I'd like to uh turn it over to Mr Carlos Villegas thank you thank you Mr Ortega and good evening members of the board and cabinet and members of the public one question I have what's the easiest way for me to toggle the screen or can I just kind of give a signal okay great I'm going to move through this pretty quickly because I understand that the board is already received and reviewed the material so I'll go kind of quickly through this piece and then we can get into some questions if anybody has it I don't think the legislature has helped so I'll just kind of start there is that now we have this overlapping kind of three different sets of laws that potentially apply to remote and teleconferencing rules for the brown act so the traditional of the traditional setup was you had to have at least a quorum of the board physically in one place and then you had to post where you're going to participate in by remotely right so if you were for example on um on a river somewhere you would have to go out and post that and you'd have to invite members of the public to join the remote place with you some of the changes that you're going to see here first started in the middle of the pandemic with assembly Bill 361.
do you have any other I mean I'll ask my questions throughout the presentation I guess I mean you can't talk about special special education without talking about um employee concerns and compliance with IEPs do you disagree I'm not I won't answer that question because that isn't that I don't believe that's part of what we should be and talking about there can't be a discussion of employee concerns in this meeting because if an employee has concerns they have processes that they need to follow before the governing board can address it so I'm not saying about a specific employee or their specific concern what I'm concerned about is that we are losing staff because um we're trying to address I think what you're trying to get at and correct me if I'm wrong is addressing systemic cultural issues in Staffing there seems to be maybe a theme or that there seems to be um consistent consistency and folks leaving and reasons for leaving and so there seems to be a pattern and so we're trying to I think address that pattern with the audit among other issues so you'd probably be talking about doing something like a climate survey to see what kind of things come up but again an expression one way about a concern if it's going to be I mean you could address maybe themes in a general overview but but those one-way concerns don't also take into account you know if they're complaining about staff or working conditions it doesn't it doesn't take into account the other side of that which is the point of a grievance or a complaint process is that then the board would get to see if someone actually files a complaint back and forth with all the information both sides being compared to determine if there's some kind of policy violation or some kind of problem so that's what I'm thinking an external audit would do it would take all sides of issues no Ade does not do not monitor any of this I mean any of staffing issues an external audit still wouldn't go in and go employee to employee and ask what their complaint they might do something like a climate service yes that's what I'm asking for but specific grievances or complaints need to go through the process it can't just skip the process through an independent auditor doing these surveys right really when you're looking at special education you're looking I mean you're looking at programmatic items procedural items and it is extremely complex I understand that and I'm asking for are we open to doing a climate survey so anytime that there's been a climate survey or any surveys in the past all staff are included in that so we probably have results from years past um we also you know we do look to see we've had years where we have high retention we have years where retention changes but it's everybody gets the same you know climate and the schools as well you heard it from Gateway they're checking in with their staff routinely how are you feeling so that that's going on all the time in our district for all staff so when is the last time we've done a climate survey in the special ed Department it's not separate so I don't know we've been partnering with Panorama and so we've done Panorama surveying of staff and in staff like classified Personnel teachers and we did that last year we've also done it we just wrapped up a survey window the current reality with Panorama is that the partnership with Elevate through Ade was paying for that service Ade has severed that relationship with Panorama under the new Administration so we believe it's worth the district's investment to continue that on our own but we have to do some administrative work in order to to repurchase Panorama services but that's been part of our routine survey process for the last couple of years and we have every intention to continue it so who follows up with the staff from those surveys if they're in say special ed Department what I need to what I don't know off the top of my head is whether the the results that we've gotten to date are specific by role usually they're disaggregated by school but they're not necessarily specific to what kind of teacher you are if that makes sense or what kind of staff member you are so we would have to redesign the survey in order to collect that information in order to be able to follow up with specific individuals that said do get Trend data from it and we're able to pinpoint as was discussed themes topics issues and then usually what happens is that information is brought to staff leadership teams team leads full staff conversations in which the the outcomes are unpacked so if staff is feeling if there's a culture that staff is feeling they will face retaliation if they were to put something on a survey um who how is that to be addressed I guess so I mean that just goes back to staff and we are getting off topic so you want to stay on topic of actual special education audit so any staff who have concerns need to file a complaint and then the district has policies that prohibit retaliation that that is your process there's no other process that LeapFrogs over that okay so we can't survey staff within a specific Department okay um okay as a future agenda item that might be a future agenda item that you could talk about just a bit yeah okay um okay so then I move that we table this topic for a future agenda item and I actually asked a couple questions first yeah and and yeah if board members have questions I do have a couple questions actually I'd still like answered um but I don't again to respect everyone's time I did not request this historical audit so I don't know I I understand it now after you know working with YouTube and it's not what I asked for um uh so I don't want to go through an hour presentation and I don't want to put everyone else through it too when it's not what I asked for but I I do have a few questions and I'll if you want to start um maybe go ahead excuse me sorry so I guess my first question is where exactly are we within the programmatic monitoring cycle right now which year are we on right now so I think they decided the fifth year sixth year sixth year it was confusing because of the covet yeah thank you oh my goodness thinking I'm like on this okay um anyway it was confusing because of kova going through coven um we like what year were we in so right now we're in the sixth year cycle what's exciting I just recently looked at our risk analysis so there's three different kinds of monitoring um one is the on-site which is what we just went through which is I think it's a good process to go through especially if there's systemic change that needs to happen and then there is self-assessment and then there's just data review based on our newest risk analysis now we've moved if we were going to be in year four today we would do a self um assessment which is a huge celebration as opposed to um on-site still a ton of work um but again it would be directed from us so that's huge that's like Yay right that's the first time I've heard that so it was pretty exciting I I see that we got a packet here that said that that's a corrective action plan and I see the dates on there and so I see the monitoring close out date was 122.
into the entire District's budget okay I just wanted any questions so far no Eric are you good online you guys you guys okay okay all right yes Tim thanks for coming hi Lou I just I just wanted to tell you we're at the superintendent's budget okay Tim legit is one of our selections so um word is 7.9 that's where we started so the superintendent is making his presentation right now where it is 7.9 and he's going over and he's he's cut about 804 000. so he's going over our fixed costs are running at about 7.57.6 of that there's very little in terms of former Educators so or maybe not a former once an educator always an educator he said I like being a parent you know exactly so I just wanted to give Tim just that uh that quick well I don't think you'd be surprised that you're not going to be an outlier of numbers like that sure the town side is going to come in Steve as well thanks again but I just want to give you a little update so as you know the biggest driver of our budget is one of the biggest drivers is special education now Placer um Barbara McLean is here tonight our director of people Personnel Services as you know Barbara started with us in November I believe it seems like she's been here forever which is a great thing Barbara is really doing a fantastic job and in the short time that Barbara has been here she's been able to identify a major need of our district and that won't be of any surprise to you and that is the need to support behaviorally challenged students especially after the pandemic where we're seeing students who lack socialization some students did not go to preschool and they're entering our kindergarten in kindergartens across the country as their first school socialization experience and students need a great deal of support Barbara is proposing a program tonight which is a a short-term investment that will save us dividends thousands of thousands of the in the future in my opinion so I've asked Barbara to be here uh to talk a little bit about her vision of this Live program so there are some slides in here and Barbara thanks for being here tonight thank you for having me again becoming a regular we like that uh good evening thank you superintendent case for uh that nice introduction and thank you Lord for having me here tonight so Thrive um where the name comes from it's not an acronym uh but by definition uh it's about growth and at the heart of all students um and we care about every single child in this District we want to see every single child grow and develop to the greatest extent possible so that they can reach their personal Excellence um so that's how the name was chosen a little bit about the program so special education is not a place it's a service and through the Thrive program what we're hoping to do is to provide some in-district therapeutic behavioral and academic supports so that all of our students are able to access and that are getting their their needs met holistically so this goes beyond the basic reading and writing and math and it's really taking that Equity lens and it's looking at what areas do we need to continue to build upon and develop in terms of Behavioral expectations and social emotional expectations um so it's a learner Focus with the holistic View um the focus of the program is to keep the student to teacher ratio small we want to keep it around a one to ten we're using our multi-tiered systems of support uh which is something that we're focusing on district-wide to support all Learners uh this program will allow us to partner with some of our resources that we're currently using such as our behavioral Consultants the hater technicians physical therapists otpt speech and language but we'll be using them in a much more efficient model where they can provide intensive Services they can complete evaluations we can can complete in District 40-day diagnostic placements to determine if a child really needs special education or if they just need some intensive tier three behavioral and academic supports so it just it's it's a way to work smarter and not harder essentially and it's a model that I've used in past districts so I've got experience with getting it off the ground and running and what we need in order to make this happen is an investment in certified special education staff and along with an additional uh three para Educators with some Ada which is applied behavioral analysis training for the next slide so what I did um initially when I was uncovering the need as I wanted to be thoughtful about the needs in the district and I presented this to you already so I won't go into the nitty-gritty of how I got there but things that I looked at are were our projected numbers in the learning lab from this past school year and then what we're projecting for next school year and part of that analysis what I found was there are certain students a couple of students in each learning lab program that really don't fit the neurodiverse complexities of a student that required this free trial and it's non-verbal there are other students in that program that have that um are able to access the instruction but they've got a behavioral need that's getting in the way and that's that's a little bit of a nuance and a different thing and it needs a different type of programming so that's where Thrive comes in we also have a number of students in District that we are supporting through Paris support in the classroom um and being case managed by the rest of our Special Education team and depending on the grade level they have a different case manager and it's stretching our resources so this model and Thrive will allow students to get what they need by a focused One Core special education teachers or case manager and when they need intensive specialized resource room support they'll get it and the goal is to move to the at least restrictive model as soon as they're ready and available to access their learning and then they'll move back into the mainstream the goal is to get them our students all back in the mainstream in the least restrictive environment that's where we want all learn years to be but they have to be ready and available to access that learning and this program allows us the flexibility for students to come and go because sometimes we'll have kiddos that are on a good path and they're making progress they go in the Gen Ed and then something happens and they kind of take a step backward they need a place to go in the meantime and this this program will afford that with minimal demands on spacing I'll need one extra classroom at the primary school one extra at CIS and then uh you know looking at creative options potentially even the ability to share some spacing at the middle and high school through our learning lab but that's where those bottom numbers come from and the little ass Earth those are students that are currently here they're just being programmed for in a different model right now so total students estimate wise uh that will benefit from this program we have 26th um and we're requesting those four additional certified special education teachers the repairs at a cost of just under 300 000 299 235.
and with that bill you were allowed to have virtual participation I understand the board did some of that during the pandemic but one of the requirements was that the board had to make factual findings every 30 days to justify the remote meetings and there had to be a proclaimed state of emergency right and so we had that state of emergency that was proclaimed by Governor Newsom but that state of emergency C is going to expire on February 28th so ab361 I even though it's going to technically be in the law for a little bit longer I don't think it's really going to have any bearing for Azusa or any other boards that we work with okay which brings us to ab2449 which is the recent Brown act teleconferencing rule that was just passed it's really a hybrid model of both physical and remote attendance you'll notice some of the requirements are are similar you still have to have a quorum of members participating in person from a single physical location that's identified on the agenda there's more information about that in the news flash that I believe was also provided to all the board members and some of the other requirements for ab2449 is that if you have that physical attendance Quorum meaning three members of the board are actually here in person then a member May request virtual attendance at the board meeting under two circumstances either just cause or emergency circumstances or just cause I have a kind of a list here of factors that are from the statute I won't go won't go through them in particular but it's kind of all kinds of different family situations that may arise for for board members go to the next one here now when a board member is requesting to participate remotely under the just cause exception they have to notify the board at the earliest opportunity including at the start of the meeting and they have to provide a general description of the circumstances and they can only use that exception up for two meetings for the calendar year one little wrinkle that that we're kind of keeping an eye on and let me just take a step back because this is a new law and I mean brand new there's no case law on it there's not a lot of interpretation about it we're going to have to figure out how all these things are going to fit together but I know one issue that has come up is whether or not just cause requires a board action when I look at the statute I don't see the same language that is used for the other exception which is emergency circumstances so I think the conservative approach would probably be to have the board take action to improve either request whether it's just cause or emergency circumstances but I wanted to point out that the legislature did use slightly different language when talking about this exception as we roll into the emergency circumstances this is the physical or Family Medical Emergency that prevents a member from attending in person some of the requirements are still the same the board member has to make that request to allow the the member to meet remotely it has to provide a general description and and make that request as soon as possible the brown act does use specific language that says requests to participate remotely under emergency circumstances it says the board must take action so that part is a little bit more clear but that action really has to be taken at the beginning and if it doesn't allow sufficient time to be placed on the agenda then the board may act at the beginning of the meeting and I'll go to the next one now before any action let's say that you're you are participating remotely under ab2449 so I'm going to get a little bit more into the Practical slow down just so some of this resonates here but if you're participating remotely under ab2449 before any action is taken you must publicly disclose whether any individuals 18 or older are present in the room at the remote location and the relationship between you and so this is just something to keep in mind there has to be at least a statement if you have family in the background somebody's over 18 you could say we have a couple family members here and and you can proceed I don't believe this was intended to apply to children so just keep that in mind the member who's participating remotely must also participate through both audio and visual so they must have the ability to go two-way you can see them and they can hear you I understand that you can't turn your camera off if you're participating remotely that is a requirement so they have to be able to see that you're doing that the the number of times you're allowed to do this under the emergency circumstances is set up on a kind of a different time frame can't be more than three consecutive months or 20 of the regular meetings for the board though the board meets fewer than 10 times only for two meetings if these issues arise please work at the superintendent and uh superintendent may get our feedback just on which particular scheme is going to apply in that situation all right so uh traditional kind of requirements for these virtual meetings notice agenda and public access the difference between traditional teleconferencing rules and I talked about that example if you're on a river somewhere you have to post it you don't need to post your location um for teleconferencing under ab2449 and the public access only needs to be assured here at say a Core Physical location where the majority of the board is going to be everything else really is is largely the same under the brown Act and we talked a little bit about the two-way audio visual so I won't belabor that point um and then on public comment board boards prohibited from requiring public comments to be submitted in advance to the meeting and specifies that the board must provide an opportunity for the public to address the board and offer comment in real time so just keep that in mind I don't think that's an issue here that we're tackling but I want the board to be aware of it now if you are participating remotely and at some point you your internet goes down we lose you something happens with the broadcasting we have to restore that broadcast and we don't want to take any action while that there's a disruption in the service so just keep in mind if you do take action while somebody their internet went out that that action that you take could be subject to challenge all right so we tried to in in one slide or so try to kind of weave together how these different laws are going to apply um I think the the most important thing really is to focus on the second bullet point here because we're going to get to the end of February here pretty soon after that you're going to be looking at Just ab2449 In traditional Brown act teleconferencing rules and after January 1 2026 ab2449 will also be gone and then I think we're going to Veer just back to good old-fashioned Brown act um for what it's worth all right I think these will help the board as well the Practical considerations for ab2449 you want to make sure that you're coordinating so there really has going to be some communication and I think the safest way to communicate with the superintendent if you're anticipating that you're not going to be at the board meeting the superintendent is going to need to make sure that we have number one a quorum so that you guys can actually conduct business and then once you get the Quorum then we can kind of figure out who potentially may need to participate remotely so that is going to put I think an administrative obligation to figure out and keep track of these folks um and then we have to keep in mind what circumstances being used is this emergency circumstance or is this just caused and there's going to have to be a little bit of a balancing in theory the board is there it has to take action on requests for emergency circumstances and so um the board is going to have to kind of hear probably more than it needs to hear because there needs to be a general description of what the circumstances are I think we can move to the next one all right we talked about administrative support and record keeping and the you know which more board members have requested to appear remotely how many times has this occurred and what was the basis for for doing that okay I think we can move on all right disruptive meetings I think this uh please Carlos before you move on to SB 1100 um just I I have uh just a question uh I know it's in here but just so we all hear it so uh I have an emergency um more president uh finds out about it or I find out about it that vote does not have to be agendized if the board member who's calling Under the emergency um calls us at 4 pm the day of the board meeting yeah and I think because the statute allows for the request to be made at the beginning of the board meeting I there's no way that the board could properly agendaize that because I think you're relatively safe doing that but I do think that conversation needs to happen right at the beginning so it's communicated to the public and it's completely transparent all right so we were getting to some practical uh or actually SB SB 1100 disruptive meetings I think this largely came out of um some of the things that we were seeing at board meetings during the pandemic but this allows the presiding member of the board to remove or cause the removal of an individual for disrupting a public meeting if they choose to remove an individual then there's a section of the brown which requires a presiding member to warn the individual their disruptive behavior and the consequence of potential removal and if they don't promptly stop then the individual can be removed um with all with all Candor this is going to come up every once and again I don't see it very often at all and even though you have this new law that says you can remove disruptive members in my mind the process for dealing with disruptions in board meetings is largely stays the same I think through good communication with the public through support of our partners whether it's you know folks on campus whether it's law enforcement I think you guys will be able to navigate those situations but know that you do have a new tool at your disposal to potentially remove folks from the room we could go to the next slide what is the disruption what would actually qualify to be removed you have to engage in behavior during the meeting that actually disrupts disturbs impedes or renders infeasible the conduct of the meeting my focus is on actually so if somebody comes in they're making a scene but the meeting is going to go on and at some point they are no longer disruptive I think in in that instance they are not no longer actually disrupting the meeting and I'll give you another example um and my mom was in CTA for a long long time and so CTA would like to come and they'll wear wear t-shirts and they'll support a certain position for the bargaining unit that's not necessarily an actual disruption can the board still proceed even though there's people wearing a certain color T-shirt absolutely I don't think that would be an actual disruption so just focus on is there something preventing the board from doing its business if there is this makes this statute may come into place um one other thing we should just mention because I think it is important uh apart from failing to comply with reasonable and lawful board regulations there's behavior that constitutes the use of force or a true threat of force I think if anything that would be the focus where if you know as a board member if something like that is occurring then you may need to have somebody removed can I ask you a question at this time this is Yolanda um so what about if someone is speaking and they're using file language is that disrupting disruption I think if they're yelling over the board and the board cannot call for a vote the board cannot conduct business no I mean like if you're just talking or speaking on Whatever item it is and but they're using cuss words because I think about us you know we have children watching our meetings and we have parents watching our meetings you know I'm not saying it's different than any other but because we are the board of education at school is that I mean can the what president stop that person is that considered I don't think that it actually disrupting the conduct of the meeting I think it's offensive I think it probably violates some of your other policies but under this new SB 1100 I don't think that by itself like for example I mean just to be um to use your example if I dropped an F-bomb somewhere in the middle of my presentation be wildly inappropriate but I don't think it would disrupt the conduct of this meeting but can we kick you up uh yes yes ma'am anytime I serve at the pleasure of the board so I think the the focus in my mind is is going to be on that use of force or threat of their use of force good and if someone's like a personalizing someone a use of threat right if you're like you know saying you know what remember Rodriguez Tanya you're whatever is that you know because they're calling out a person a a certain Ward member sure and I would I would suspect that this comes up often yeah you you are you know all for the most part experienced board members you've seen a lot and so my thought is it's not intended to prevent public criticism so somebody says I really don't agree with the votes you took I don't agree with those issues to me that's fair game you're elected officials that's that's part of what we signed up for and kind of putting ourselves out there um if it is a personal attack that makes you fear for your safety makes you not want to walk to your car to leave then I think we're getting into something else and so I think the way to think about it in my mind is as public officials as public employees you've put yourself out there to a certain amount of public criticism and there are specific laws that prevent the board from trying to prohibit public criticism but I think when you when you cross the line from good old-fashioned criticism to now something that is threatening now I think the presiding member of the board is entitled to remove you if that's the case okay all right so and one last thing no warning is required and I think that to me is not entirely consistent with the other piece about telling them that they need to the that they're going to have to be removed but I think here's the here's the difference right it's the true threat of force so I think for something like that you don't need to kind of go through a process there's a true thread for the force there's a sufficient indicia of intent and seriousness um and what does that mean we can unpack that at a separate governance training but I think if you think the threat is real then um you're entitled to remove that person okay um I think at the end of the day the way that you guys normally conduct business in terms of disruptive persons is probably going to hold true for you it's probably going to still work um so we do have another news flash on that particular topic and I think that brings me to the end so if any questions I was watching my watch here so try to bring it in time are there any questions or comments from the board thank you Carlos appreciate it of course thank you moving to item 13.2 approval of resolution 22 23 18 release or reassignment of certificated administrators is there a motion motion to approve 13.2 and is there a second moved and seconded any discussion seeing none will call for a vote the motion passes moving to item 13.3 resolution 22 23 20 reduction or discontinuance of certificated particular kinds of services is there a motion motion to approve 13.1 13.3 and is there a second second moved and seconded is there any discussion yes my only discussion is I would like answers to the the questions that I asked Mr Ortega in our next packet please thank you any further discussion all right move to a vote and the motion passes three to one moving to item 13.4 resolution 22 23 24 to decrease the number of classified employees due to a lack of work and or a lack of funds is there a motion motion to approve 13.4 and is there a second second moved and seconded is there any discussion seeing none we'll call for a vote and the motion passes moving to item 13.5 resolution 22 23 19 release of temporary certificated employees is there a motion make a motion to approve and a second something moved and seconded any discussion seeing nine will call for a vote and the motion passes 13.6 20 resolution 22 23 23 to establish a facilities advisory committee and appoint committee members is there a motion make a motion to approve 13.6 second moved and seconded any discussion seeing nine will move to a vote and the motion passes moving on to item 14.1 acceptance of the 2122 District audit report Mr Mall thank you um good evening Dr Beau and fellow board members and cabinet it was my honor to introduce you all to miss garima our auditor from harshall this is our first year with this Audi firm and she will give you a brief overview of our audit report thank you thank you everyone respected board members and cabinet I am garima representing harshwal and Company as mentioned we are auditing for the first year and uh I before I start I would like to thank Latasha Shannon who has cooperated Us in the audit first year is always tricky but we got enough cooperation from your team members and uh we are glad to inform about the results so I'll take you to page number and I can I will let you know all the results so summary of auditor result is unmodified opinion unmodified opinion is a clean opinion which means there is no finding internal control over financial reporting no material weakness identified non-significant deficiencies were identified and there was no non-compliance material to financial statement noted for federal Awards internal control over major programs no material weakness significant efficiency none reported and our audit opinion was clean unmodified opinion on the state Awards we have a modified opinion again the clean opinion no findings material weakness no material weakness were identified no significant deficiencies were identified we have also conducted a performance audit which was in accordance with applicable standard containing government auditing standards I'm happy to let you know that district is in compliance with performance requirement as reflected in Proposition 39 outlined in Article 13 a and our results our test results indicated that the district expanded building fund major K only for project approved by voters in accordance with uh preposition 39.
um did we meet all of the requirements for that closeout date is that why you're saying we would be in a position to do the self-assessment in the future so basically what happened our monitoring started in January 21st of 2021 the normal is everything has to be completed within a year we went beyond the year but what I want to say is there were many of these items that were actually closed out within the year there were some components that kept we had to continue to send files in some dropped off then in April some dropped off in May and then we had like two left that carried us over into the summer and then the final was we closed out August 21st of 2022.
question Barbara can you talk about um our hope to bring back uh students who may be currently outplace yeah so a long-term goal uh would be that with this program in place to Pilot it next year um that we will be able to bring back at least two to three students which would well overcover the cost is closer to half a million dollars in savings we're able to do that um so not sure that that would happen as soon as next year but I am talking about the following year so 24.25 that's something we'd love to do and then the year beyond that our goal is to make this a revenue Source where we can open up slacks to other area towns and students can join so so this has been a Board of Education wish list for years Mr scheidler has talked about it in the past and Ford Finance member Andrew laid labor he had called that special meeting to see what we can do about special education so this is this is a uh this is a bit of an investment with it with a pretty good Roi at the end of the day so um the only question I have is so I I see the the addition of Staff would there be any reduction in staff because of these is there some offset or net net that comes out of this potentially so I appreciate the question and that's something that I would take a really close look at next year uh to see right now as it stands I'm not comfortable saying yes but that would be something that we'd look for down down the road 425 budget so we kind of absolutely make this investment yes talk to the board of Finance about what this investment can do something that they've been looking for you know how this can help us reduce special education costs by limiting the number of outplacements yes questions Joe yeah I'm delighted with the concept uh I think there's a step in the right direction the couple of quick questions there's 26 junctures you're envisioning being involved next year uh they're all currently in District yes um would it be possible that some may wind up we don't have this program being out of this absolutely um the room you mentioned the classroom in church where the classroom at cas ual Middle School same space concerns or uh so that to be completely transparent I'm still working out so I'm working with Mr Bishop on taking a look at space and what that could look like I've been creative at the middle in high school and wondering if there's an opportunity to use some of the current spacing that we have within special education to share space so it wouldn't be an additional room there but there's always a potential that I might Circle back on that and say actually we need to look at a different a different space for that as well so we're in the very beginning stages in terms of identifying space um but I'm pretty confident that we're going to be able to to get the space we need at Cherry Brook and CIS for next year for next year I'd also be concerned about the following year because while there's there may well be a classroom available at church but next year the following year is anybody's guess right and I assume to be successful you need space yes particularly at Cherry Brook and CIS yes so I guess I guess I'd ask you and John to look at that we need to be thoughtful in our planning for that absolutely we need to make sure that sustainable over time um so I don't know if you want to add to your comments but while I look at our projections going forward and the um the required the required space need for that we've been in conversation all along with this to be able to say our capped for Need for space is going to look like X Y and Z based on program but also based on classroom they need so we're taking that into account as we're working with us it would be a shame to get this off the ground next year and then out of a place for it it's a Halloween this has got to be sustainable for us and that's what we're what we're we're working hard on and I had the same question that Lou had in terms of you're going to add three ABA trained parents which is very important in their training yes which should relieve pressure on cairo's and especially teachers and possibly we might not need all those patterns it's possible it's possible but I I would caution that we just pause and leave our resources in place for this year to be certain we um have been very stretched but Staffing there are shortages and it hesitant to make a change on that I want to make sure that we have what we need and that's that's really important it's all about these programs in order to keep them going and sustainable it's about the staff that you put in place so I couldn't agree more yeah so I I will make good on my word and look at that and analyze that in the future um um like 24 25 25 26 and hope that we can find efficiencies in the training for the parents which is crucial you can put that in the budget too someplace so that's kind of as you said earlier baked in to contracted services within special education we have contracts with our behavioral consultants and part of the bcba's job is oversight in training for our parents so that that cost is is already accounted for so it's not an additional boom I think it's a great way to go so English success thank you any other questions can I have a question yeah um just looking at the the learning lab teacher editions that all of the schools and then the structured literacy special ed teacher yeah I'm just wondering knowing that we already have a literacy specialist in Cherry Grove why there would be a need for a question an additional one yes I appreciate that question but still what we are seeing at Cherry Brook um and throughout our our elementary level is we have a significant um more than half of our identified students are presenting with sld sld dyslexia so there is a need for investing in our staff for training and structured literacy specifically Orton Gillingham which is a special um philosophical approach and best practice for teaching reading to students with disabilities so it hits at the heart of that learner academic need and foundational reading and we believe that if we intensify our services at the foundational level and can hit through our multi-tiered systems and Regular Ad so here's one two and three and then give that extra you know extra ounce of of support through special education um that we're going to be making really solid gains because our goal is we want to have all of our kids on greeting breathing on grade level by the end of third grade so we need to close that Gap that we have for our Learners in investing at the primary level is where we need to kind of place those bets foreign budget resources in special land because of various issues and challenges so are we being properly staffed at this point I hear you saying are we a proper Staffing level based on what you've identified as our needs we are working toward it actively so we should have proper Staffing levels but because of Staffing shortages and I believe we've talked about in the past we hire a para and another one leaves we have ongoing para support needs for yeah so so there are still openings at that level um and so what we've done to try and triage some of that as we've contracted out with crack and delta T and some other staffing agencies all Point care and Allied Staffing to help fill those support needs um so we're we're actively working on it but it is it's just something that's that's always in motion so when I hear that we're working with outside placement companies there's fees for that yet we're placing pairs in a very I mean we're minimum wage for our pairs if we just went up on on on what we were paying our pairs we wouldn't need outside placement agencies because we're getting picked off by a minimum wage is at 16 and I heard that Avon's offering 19 to start so that that's that's the dilemma I think we have I mean we're paying placement costs and if we just took those placement costs and we paid our pairs what they deserved we would have less turnover and we wouldn't be fighting this battle all the time but I guess that's a question for another today with me there's something for our negotiations committed to um you bring a ballot points okay thank you I just wanted to be validated but yes you did okay all right let's keep moving thank you for that presentation excellent thank you Barbara um I always want to be transparent uh with the board in the community about the use of Grant funds um what I've listed on the next slide are um what we're using from the open Choice attendance Grant um the philosophy is that we use Choice attendance grant funding to um to support the majority of the students in our district so we traditionally use that funding to offset the cost of educational technology technology replacement Equipment Technology infrastructure we pay for our Magnet School tuition costs which we're projecting to be about a hundred thousand next year and for newer board members um this is an unfunded mandate where citizens have the right to send a child to a Hartford area magnet school if there are seats available there's a lottery in some cases but the local Board of Ed is required to pay the tuition to to attend that magazine the state pays a portion of it then the Board of Ed needs to pay the other portion we never know how many students will be in a magnet school until August but we need to plan for it so our tuition has been between 85 000 and 100 000 per year that money has always come from the open Choice Grant and then we also have salaries for our non-certified special education staff who are working with um Choice students coming from this grant also so we're looking at using 1.1 million dollars of the choice grant funding for these purposes now a Community member requested at the last Town Board of Finance meeting that the Board of Education be very transparent with all of its grant funding which is why the spreadsheet you have is so comprehensive on this budget spreadsheet that shows every line item of our budget you will see various columns showing all of the grants that we have so we have in the third column from the left we have what's called our surname ARP is American Rescue plan um this is the funding that the Biden Administration uh um gave to school districts in towns and we have until 2024 to spend that grant funding you can see where that grant funding is going in that College then we have the open Choice attendance Grant which I just spoke about and then moving to the right we have the open choice this is an acronym a-s-s-g academic support Grant I don't know what that other apps academic and social okay academic Student Success Grant and then we have title grants which are awarded to US based upon student need student poverty level students at a pre and reduced lunch so we get certain title funds that need to go for academic support so we use those funds to support salaries of our teachers and tutors we're also billing for Medicaid which you have heard about and so you can see where that funding is going and then we have our special education grants the idea grants um and um we have the sr3 which is another American Rescue plan grant that we received and then a forty thousand dollar Grant we receive from crack that we're using to offset again non-certified staff so we couldn't be more transparent with this spreadsheet every grant that we have every dollar that we have in our grants to use we're using to fund this budget so that was the high level look at the budget like I said every line item is listed here you can look at the increase over last year and um we'll finance committee will have the backup for all of these line items and we're happy to provide each of you with a thick binder with all of the budget information if you'd like but we didn't want to assume that you would want that big one so if you're not on finance committee and you like that binder just let down and we also have it the ability to just put it all uh electronically do you still have the information so just let me know what you want um which is better for you so again I thank the administrators I thank Donna and John for all of your hard work and collaborating to make the difficult decisions that had to be made realistically we knew we couldn't fund everything be fiscally responsible at the same time because of our fixed Costa shareit and may I asked a question even so he said you weeks of going through this what do we miss it are we missing anything I mean you did a good job getting it to where it is Jeff you satisfied I mean eight hundred thousand dollars was coming right so there are ideas out there about how we can move forward and invest and none of those are bad ideas my no one here was proposing anything irresponsible of course but we also have to play with the parameters within which were presented and I am completely supportive of these as the priority areas and expenditures so given where we're at these are the Right Moves to make but I've got great ideas for next year don't worry I'm going to save them and come right back like you can have this year's memo next year I'll just change your name so what I just want to add to what Jeff is saying what Jeff isn't saying is that um he proposed some new positions um which would allow the Middle School to operate on a different schedule because right now we share positions between the high school and the middle school so Jeff is being Progressive has worked uh diligently with the staff over the course of the year to look at what a different schedule might look like um he's going to come back to you next year with a proposal to add the staff this year just didn't seem like the right time to do it um Jeff will tell you he wanted those staff members okay tell us why about goddess Springs but we also as Jeff and I talked known that Jeff will have an improved schedule next year with the resources that we have available but he'll come back to you for the 24-25 budget um in a very thoughtful way and how to change the middle school schedule and Jeff you can add to that no good work is ever in vain right so we've had good people working for a long time on what we need and I presented you through my annual report what some of those key areas are a lot of those good lessons and insight and focus areas are not dependent upon Personnel or special expenditures we'll take the good ideas and we'll Implement those and we'll keep getting better and then as we can and when we can make a request additional people allows additional flexibilities to dive even deeper so we'll take the good ideas and we'll run to those and we'll make things better right now and next year and then we'll build it as we as we can you've done a good job planting the seeds about the scheduling change we've been hearing about that like to hear more about it in the spring again and keep watering those seeds so we'll do it yeah I'm surprised to hear that that was I I was under the impression for curriculum that that was one of the top priorities for the middle school so that would be an additional 80 000.
so yes I am so happy to announce that we have a clean opinion clean audit this year and over to you and open the floor for the questions thank you board members are there any questions for our audit representative congratulations Mr mall and your entire department thank you um this is an action item is there a motion for 14.1 acceptance of the 2122 District audit report make a motion to approve 14.1 second moved and seconded being no discussion will move to a vote and the motion passes this brings us to item 15.1 adjournment is there a motion motion two approve 15 Point second moved and seconded we'll move to a vote thank you our meeting is adjourned at 9 31. have a great evening
a state will only allow you to do that they really gave us Grace because it was all the aftermath and the midst of covid was part of it but they saw our progress like we take you know we take ownership we're in this to learn it we don't we give raw files what you see is is what we're doing and that's really important for us so um because they saw that growth as I just explained things kept dropping off we had met a lot of those areas within that year they gave us that Grace the worst thing that could have happened is that they would have held our idea funds but that did not happen so we were like that was exciting sorry oh that's good to know I I mean reading the pro there's this there's a programmatic monitoring handbook and I'm a nerd so I was reading it last night good for you and it seems pretty much like cut and dry and so it's nice to know that the like I'm guessing do the psms have like an ability to have some discretion and that's why they're allowing you okay also with that six year cycle the state still they can decide that you're going to be in instead of that waiting the fourth year they may come in two years because it's there's so many things that aren't working right um so that can happen the norm is like the fourth year is your deeper you know year where you're really doing that intense digging in a and a lot of file review um I gave you a copy too of the student swarm that aligns with the guide steps then that you were looking at that you downloaded from the online um and and I think what's important to understand is that when you see those sections if you look at the student form itself yep if you look at the student form there's the main heading so first it's evaluations and re-evaluations then there's another whole section on individual education plan and then if you notice under some of those sections like 2a2 there's many sub categories that have to be met if you're out with one of those you're out you are out of compliance so it's it's not like 80 percent you're in one out you're out it's All or Nothing yeah it's all or nothing yes and then like the prior written notices there are like 20 sub categories that we have to meet on the different kinds of Prior written notices that families receive um so again if you're out just one you will be considered out which is that just that gave us the structure of um our professional development um you know over time that's not going away we've built in process and procedures to really sustain uh where we've been and where we plan to go and um so other questions aside from the kind of the normal stuff that's required by idea and Ade to fill out in regular or special ed processes do we have like an internal special ed policy or Norms regarding note retention and record retention and if so is that written down somewhere can we get a copy of those so we do it we have our policies and pre procedures governing board policies and procedures um we also hand that out in the procedural safeguards for our families so they know how long records are kept um and we follow we always look at the state every year to see if those years have changed if it's five years if it's seven years and we you know we do that we store those records um what was there was another part to your question I think note retention so like psychologists I assume are sometimes doing clinical evaluations or doing other types of evaluations or folks are doing stuff that involves notes um I'm just curious if we ever do we have a retention policy for those as well our staff have their own working files but but what's in there typically because everything they do is through Synergy so they would just be doubling up their work so they're capturing their their their uh they're testing the child you know using the test um that they've chosen based on all the factors that they considered and then there's a test booklet that they're jotting things in or a child May write in as well they score it those would be things that would be kept in their working file because those protocols um really we keep those at the school all the originals of the met and the IEP those are sent to district office for the the um originals are sent to us and there is there's there's specific guidelines in how long those records have to be kept and then you say you shared that with um parents to share that with staff too do they have a way to access those guidelines so policy is anyone can have access to our governing board policies as well um our trainings whenever we do trainings and like in our monitoring they're aligned to um like the Federal Regulations State Administrative Code ARS if there's case law that drives some of it we'll have conversation about that if it's really shifted a practice so we're learning that um many people just have a hard time accessing the policies they don't know where they are I mean is it something in the professional development that talks about um how long records should be kept we certainly I I think they're pretty clear on how long those records are kept because that is um you know like we have the gal in our office that communicates that need as well and how long when those files can be stored at what point are they stored we do the same thing in our office as well and where they're stored um just because we live in such a legal legal and relate to this legal department um those are just non-negotiables for us to make sure that everyone understands um that process and if by chance there wasn't somebody then we would you know I know we just Revisited and had that conversation at one of our um sped leadership meetings um just to clarify and then that goes out to their groups to make sure that everyone has clear understanding and again we quote law or regs or you know wherever we're going to pull that from um on Monday we did um talk about the world um tool and I have gotten some concerns about that um the world tool yeah that and so Dr Lewis you asked yesterday is that tool something that we created um and it is um but there are concerns um that it might be a Gateway um to um getting kids to an IEP or to being evaluated um what what are your thoughts on that I would I would say it was the opposite um what that what the process was for one of our findings which we felt was our ultimate priority was under the term called language dominance we've always looked at language proficiency we look at acquisition over time I've been through many audits this was the first time we didn't I didn't finish one in a year so Jehovah definitely had that impact but um language dominance was the first I had actually this monitoring was the first I actually had heard that term it makes sense though we need to know when a child has two languages what is their preferred language so regardless of what their proficiency may or may not say like if they're pre-emergent emergent they still may prefer make perhaps the English language or they may prefer Farsi or they may and so it's really important for us to understand that another example is a child could visit their family in another country for the summer and they come back and now their language dominance dominance has changed why that's important is we have to make sure that we are using the appropriate um test to measure their outcomes accurately if we're not doing that that's when we're doing kids a disservice that's when kids could qualify and they shouldn't be that's when maybe some kids that are second language Learners end up identified as special ed and they never should have been so that I mean that was a lot of work that took us the longest to get through but the outcome has probably been the richest in shifting some of our thinking so would you be open to collecting data on how this in this instrument is influencing students access um because it's my understanding it's not evidence-based and that's you know one of the reasons people are having a problem with it so I'm well aware of that of these conversations and so basically what happened was we had to flip this really quick and so we had our bilingual SLP who all of it was research based it's survey it's like a Criterion referenced like a screening process whether a psychologists um because you know they're they're very accustomed to standardized types of Assessments what we did because we had to start somewhere to get us off the ground to try to meet this year um deadline was we brought in surveys so we surveyed parents survey students survey teachers plus a lot of other data that we're Gathering to make the determination parents signed for that so we decided we wanted to make sure we had their consent and that they understood what we were doing was was not the same that we were doing for all kids so we got their consent that got us started and then over the course of that year of monitoring we pulled a committee together than to dig deeper and and actually you have it um it's one of your links that you can see what that is for the language dominance committee work that was done some of the psychologists are here this evening that were on that committee um and we were able to put together a menu so people have Choice which we believe is very important we had to get started first in order to start making Corrections we have some staff that prefer to use that simple easy quick we have others that prefer to go with standardized and that's their choice as it should be as long as we get the information so again would you be open to collecting data about um whether this is how it was developed and what evidence was used in its development I think that's something that an audit would be helpful in just double checking I guess I would ask what like what's the purpose like what is it that we're trying to figure out I need more clarification because obviously I didn't I wasn't clear on what your request was and and I don't want I don't want to waste any of your time um you know presenting if that's not what you truly want as a board I'm just looking for are you open to data being collected on whether or not this is an effective tool like an outside impartial um uh expert um is there such a thing probably from um you know we have I was thinking that the group from NAU yeah probably the group we have some professors from NAU that specialize do you remember who that is I don't remember off the top of my head but we also have Hanover research at our disposal which is a research service that would be in a position to design a study around the effect the impact potentially development and effect and influence those are the three words I heard you use the development or the design the effect and the influence yeah I mean again isn't this something that an audit could include in the audience I don't think it's a standard practice yet it might be in development in the board direct the external Auditors on certain specifics if they have a touch of standard yeah if they I mean we don't direct experts experts bring a standard well this is the tool that we're using to determine whether or not kids are eligible for Specialists if we're trying to assess language dominance Effectiveness or language proficiency Effectiveness I'm a little it's language dominance because we look at proficiency we use the azella obviously so we know the stages of acquisition that they're in um now there's an ALT azella which is good to have now um warranted and needed and so basically you know that manual is put together it isn't one way to collect the data the state knew we had um like qualitative data and they wanted um quantitate they needed numbers so then the survey was able to say out of x amount of questions for the student you know they answered two out of six in this language or three out of six in this language that's what it's that's what it was set up to do and again it's not the only option it was it was a way to get started but we moved into committee work you know right away because it was work we had to do over the summer to begin with and then started committee work one thing I'd like to request from Dr Dubin and I think it addresses this and other things on a broader level would be um the district-wide demographic breakdown of students who are enrolled in special ed by um by Race by sex and by ell status just so we can get an idea and then be able to compare that to the total District population demographics to try to see if there's over-representation happening or if we can pull any Trends from do you know off the top of your head Chris yeah there's we're good we're not over represented um based on our pea determination and um our percentage based on total population to the total number of special ed students is within the range so I mean we can look at that data but the states okay thank you really like the um the manual by the way I think it's very comprehensive in defining the different levels of language acquisition language dominance and like you said there's there are research-based assessments on here like there it gives you options to ensure that you are making sure that we are not dual labeling kids or you know over evaluating kids um and making sure that language is not the factor that's getting them into special ed thank you on the idea indicator slide I don't there's no page numbers on this but it's right after the cycle one slide third one in yeah slide four I think it's four yeah I'm going the opposite way here yes yeah so again this is a was a really tough one for me to understand what is being what the story is with this um is there what is the performance data that is associated with these indicators do we have that so basically the state average what we're looking for is 20 in ela and math that was the last one um and we're under that 20 so we could be five percent six percent we actually decreased unfortunately during um covet time um when getting into that process um so I mean that's still it's all part of what that what yesterday question is on my question um our strengths suspensions expulsion um can we see that data like how did they determine that's a string I can I can print out the report okay I mean and also again to to Katie's question like do we have that disaggregated by special ed designation so everything that I do um in my role even though I do you know I have experience I'm gen Ed special ed principal director so I do I do look at the broad but in the department as far as reporting goes it's specifically based on kids with special needs identified needs okay so you would have that information it's it's through Ade and the and the exceptional student services department so that's their focus when you say the report are you talking about the Pea determination we have a pea determination that I can print out um but you can already see on there that we've met met but then we also have the risk analysis um that you're welcome to look at now I notice on here and then last night when I was on the ad website I I'm just curious why maybe they're lagging because it just ends at fiscal year 2020 when do we expect to see 2021 and 2022 so basically what happens is is because you report for a full year so let's say some of the data isn't even due it's really now sprinkled throughout the year it used to be due all at the same time and now it's sprinkled like throughout the year so I think the last data reporting is in August I think when it closes so everything is always in arrears because they have to get the full year in order to have that data and so we have to enter suspensions and all of that information when they talk about environment that's you know least restricted least restrictive environment you know how often how much of the time are they with Gen Ed teachers for example so when we track that and so we are just to confirm we are currently not in a corrective action plan no we completed it we we're done so and do we have kids right now um that are not receiving their IEP minutes if we do um and I'm not aware of it and you have information I need to be informed because we will we will look at compensatory Services I'm the first person that will stand up here will not let a student go without their services I too have a son that was in special education so I am adamant and strong about this so again and what do we say with Services an example we've if we have somebody that's out on FMLA um and you know Staffing is trying to cover what they can do um if we end up anytime that those minutes are short many times we can make them up over the course of the year if not we determine when are those going to be made up I mean as the Director I would hope that you would know whether or not we we are meeting those minutes and whether there are kids that that are not receiving those minutes I mean with the Staffing situation the way it is I would be surprised that we're not in that situation so again that's why I would like to look further into having an external audit again just like you did in 2016 Dr Lewis um I think it's it's just time to re-look at it and and and try and determine you know why we're having these issues so I moved to table this item so we can discuss it further at our future board meeting item or is it a genderizing that's what I was okay thank you you're welcome thank you very much I appreciate it thank you you're welcome thank you thank you you're welcome that brings us over to 6C this is a discussion about an asp policy advisories number 739-743 this is the first reading um I hope everybody had an opportunity to look over these so we can just table this to the next meeting unless anybody has any discussion now on any of these items I specifically didn't but it wouldn't be tables sorry I didn't mean tabling I might just I'm like wait moving it over to the next meeting sorry do we have any discussion Dr Lewis do you have any uh foreign okay further discussion okay great all right and that brings us over to 10A which brings us to representatives from the Arizona School Board Association will provide the governing board with an overview of the search process search team scope of work duties and responsibilities of each party posting an application process thank you so much for being here at 8 41 PM you all are doing the work of the people so we appreciate you obviously as the Arizona school boards Association we appreciate every bit of work that you do and celebrate you for your service I'm Tracy Benson I'm the associate executive director at asba and also the search administrator and I wanted to take some time with you this evening just to give you an overview of the superintendent search process I wanted to start off by saying though first of all we are really honored to be supporting you in what you know is one of the most important decisions that you will make as members of your governing board on behalf of the staff of the district and the students of the district and the community that you serve so thank you so much for your trust in us as an organization to be with you on this journey um as you are aware asba has a long and successful history providing superintendent search services to um School Board governing boards around the State of Arizona we really pride ourselves on a process that is transparent and collaborative and board driven and so just know that that's what you can expect from us during our time together going through this process over the next few minutes I am going to take you through an overview of our search team the process the different components of it give you an idea about the timeline for that as well and then of course entertain any questions that you might have about the overview so um I want to introduce you to our search team I me I am the search administrator for asba and and you can kind of think of me as sort of the Hub in the process sort of coordinating the different elements of the superintendent search process also a part of your search is Keith Greer who's the newest member of our superintendent search team and is on board as a consultant with us Dr Nick Clement is a long time consultant of ours doing superintendent searches around the state um uh Dr Devin Del Palacio um Devin Del Palacio who is our strategic initiative um an advocacy specialist is on the team along with Heidi Vega and their role in the process is really part of the community engagement and involvement aspect and they'll be um part of part of our team working with members of your community and staff and gaining input into the search process Ben Adams is the right hand man of all of us he works behind the scenes to make everything happens properly in the search process and then Julie bacon who's our leadership development manager will be working with you and your new superintendent um once selected to provide some transition facilitated dialogue and that sort of thing to make sure that you all get off on an excellent start with your new executive um the search process I'll be going over this evening you see up here on the screen and I'm just going to go through it um component by component briefly though because as Ms McLean pointed out it's 8 45 and I know um it's been a long day for you um so I want to talk a little bit about the timeline for the superintendent search and selection process you can really think about it in six phases and um well I'm going to add on a seventh phase which you'll hear at the end but phase one is really where you are right now it's developing the profile for the candidate that you're seeking to be your next superintendent it's thinking about the timeline and approving the timeline for the search process and then it's the community engagement piece whatever that will look like for this governing board in this District you all will will determine that this evening I believe that's one of your agenda items then phase two is really the piece about um posting the opening advertising the position recruiting candidates was which is the work we do on your behalf and also Gathering Community input through a variety of means which I'll describe a little bit more as we move through then phase three is where you all work to screen the applicants the applications that you get against a leadership profile that's developed by you with the consultants and with Community input community and staff input and when I say community I may not say staff every time but I do we consider staff part of your community and so if I don't think community and staff know that I'm including staff so I hope you'll be thinking of it that way too phase four then is where you get down to the interview process with your candidates and then your finalists there's an option for Community input at that phase of the process as well phase five is really where you've selected someone you're entering into contract negotiations with them that's where your attorney your legal counsel will step into place and then phase six is where the board approves the superintendent contract and as I said I'm going to add on phase seven and that's really that transition phase where the board is really working to build a relationship with the new superintendent and you're introducing that individual to your community and staff quick question yes between phase two and three some of us had had concerns um is there an opportunity if we get like a bunch of responses and we're not thrilled what does that look like if we're wanting to reopen or has that come up how do you address that in the past yeah so that has come up um not frequently I'll say but it you know it can happen where you know maybe you get a dozen applications and you you feel none of them are quite right for interviewing we can reopen the process um and um if they're a particular attributes or types of individuals that you're looking for we can more heavily Focus recruiting efforts in those particular areas if it seems to be that there's a gap in who the applicants are where they're coming from yeah thank you so follow up on that Tracy yeah I wasn't sure exactly where this fits in it but um you know one of the things that went through my mind is that perhaps it would be good to consider an interim I don't know if you can talk through what your experiences in pros and cons for um considering an interim my concerns are um you know when when we first hire a superintendent there's a honeymoon period that maybe lasts about a year or so and then 2024 the board turns over we'll have three seats open and then new board members come over and give the superintendent the benefit of the doubt for a year or so because they're new they don't know each other um you know I feel like we're we Face a lot of challenges right now in this district and and that there could be a benefit for us to um consider an interim what what are your thoughts on that in your experience um I will say it is not typical to approach it in that respect um typically if there is an interim place it's either that the superintendent it's typically that the superintendent leaves for whatever reason Midway through a year um we find that um I think that there's there is a a element of trust that comes with a permanent leader for the district and so I think that's why most boards choose to go with a permanent candidate um from the start um but I hope that answers your question um yeah I suppose so yeah okay um all right so one of the very first pieces so I just want to clarify kind of going on what Miss Gibson McLean said so because I'm my understanding is tonight we're going to approve a timeline as presented but if we get to a phase like just because we approve this timeline are we able to some point say we need to come back and readjust this timeline yes absolutely and the the items when we get to the point about screening applicants first round interviews with candidates finalists interviews all of those have a flexibility built in and and at the end of the timeline we make sure to have this sort of statement this asterisk that says this timeline may be adjusted with the agreement of both parties and so that really is to account for any you know eventualities that might come up that's why I assume I just wanted to clarify and yeah it's going back to transparency like yep good point thank you for asking that um so one of the first pieces and this is something that you'll be discussing tonight is the position profile that's really looking at the basic qualifications that you want your new executive to have and um you will see when you consider the position announcement that there are uh position requirements that there's preferred credentials and then there's characteristics that are involved in development of that position profile you'll also see when we get to that piece of your agenda where you're looking at the position announcement that there's a piece about salary uh compensation and so that is something that we provide uh a background for you about so you're having a competitive salary range that's Based on data that we've collected Statewide it's based on like districts and recent searches that we've done that are comparable so that's another piece of the process um I just I think the next slide shows our superintendent salary and benefit survey which is something that we've conducted every year for I don't know as long as I've been with asba and that's been about 15 years so it's great longitudinal Statewide data that that's based on the next piece of it is once you have created the the posting document you've identified what your requirements are we use our online application process which is Frontline the industry standard you know for Education application process post that online then we really get into the advertising and recruiting piece of it right where we're we are out there on your behalf um looking for the best candidates for this position we do it Statewide and we do it on a national basis we reach out to sort of the standard professional organizations we also make sure that we're reaching out to organizations that um that really work to nurture and develop diverse candidates for leadership positions like these and that happens in phase two the next piece of it is while that application is open is um Community participation and the per the whole purpose of community participation in the search process is really to add transparency for your community and for your staff but also to give you those insights so that you can use that in your decision making we we use that Community involvement and input that we receive to develop what we call a leadership profile that we present to you and you then in turn use for decision making about screening applicants about developing interview questions all of those kinds of things that's uh we call that the discovery phase and there's a variety of ways to approach that there is an online and paper survey there's Community input sessions um and sometimes districts will do focus groups so there's a variety of choices for that and I believe that's something that you'll consider later on in your agenda tonight Tracy and when you mean paper you mean that stuff can be mailed out to the addresses and everything right that's what you mean by paper you can mail it out you can distribute it from your school sites you can do a combination of the two I think that that's what most districts find to be most effective is to do that combination and you know you truly know your community best and what's going to be the most effective way to share that information out with them whether it's posting it on your website phone notifications social media whatever it might be or printing out paper copies and having it in school offices backpacks however you decide to distribute it so that you get an excellent return rate and really hear from all the different areas within your community so that's something we have a challenge with um is that it's not alone yeah is that something aspa can help us reach out further you know if we're not getting a lot of interest I think we can help you with um strategies and tactics to do that you have you have a much better communication channel for your community within your community than we do but we can absolutely share you know best practices and and strategies that have worked really well with districts like Creighton okay great for sure um there's another opportunity for Community input when you have selected your finalists and this is something we recommend and that many districts do and that's a community finalists Forum where um the finalists for the position um come before the community it's usually done on the same day that you all do the interviews with those finalists community and staff come in they have an opportunity to to submit questions for the finalists the finalists make opening statements questions are asked of them then they make closing statements and then every member who is at that finalists Forum has an opportunity to fill out a an input card which we then collect and share with you so that that can be a part of your decision making process how the community and staff are feeling about those particular finalists you chose so they're giving you information up front to help you develop that leadership profile to do the screening then when you get to the end where you have your finalists they're also providing you feedback on how they they feel about the choices this might be an asba question this might be RIT and Communications or working together but with that I definitely want that um but also can we is there an option or have you guys worked with districts where um they also either video that forum and their answers then and we can have that posted on a website or have them answer questions in another video I just know physically getting to events like this you know can limit how many people and so being able to have those videos like I know I've watched videos in my previous districts have been looking for superintendents and it was really helpful to make sure that we get access for that yeah absolutely both for the um Community input sessions and the finalists Forum um if you have the technology uh if you have the technology you can accomplish this someone's just been volunteered um but no truly you can we can have an interactive um online presence as well where folks can submit questions or ask questions or or provide comments that sort of thing so yeah if you have the ability within the district to do that we have done that and we can accomplish that for you yeah all right um next piece is screening applicants um this just so you know these next meetings where you're screening applicants interviewing candidates and finalists are going to happen outside of your regular meetings you'll need a special meeting to accomplish that um depending on the number of candidates you get a screening meeting could last anywhere from three hours to six hours I mean it could last longer but you know you have to control yourselves and now um but it they can be lengthy and so you'll you'll want to set aside special time for that and that again is where the position profile comes into play and the leadership profile comes into play and your search team will develop tools to help you sift and sort through those applications know that every single application that is submitted and complete for this is going to come before you so we're not going to hold some back that we don't think are appropriate we're going to bring every single one of them to you we're going to present them to you in a way that says here's the one that most closely meet the criteria and the leadership profile but here's the other ones as well just so you know that this decision is fully in your hands and just to clarify for transparency sake we heard tonight folks want to be involved you said special meaning what I'm reading here is executive sessions so we do the screening application applications in executive session which is not open to the public what I mean by a special meeting is it would be a meeting that's not your regular board board meeting time so it'd be on a different day than your first Tuesday of every month but wouldn't it be an executive session so yes some some pieces of this will be an executive session and screening the applicants will be interviewing the candidates and the finalists will be an executive session and I think that's important like kind of going back to that transparency like we absolutely want to have as many pieces of this that are by policy and by law and not violating uh FERPA and all those things um will be in the public but there will be stages where there are executive sessions so I think just being clear about what those pieces are yeah absolutely and you'll see those identified when we get to going over the timeline exactly how that plays out um and I think it's a really important to note and I have this on one of the final slides but that is the responsibility both of asba and this board in terms of confidentiality when it comes to the applicants and the candidates and and all of that so we really have to hold that closely and carefully um to maintain that confidentiality and I've had a question about that already so they can be kept confidential until they become a finalist probably right okay okay all right yeah okay position you don't like share out everybody's applications and resume and say these are all the teachers we're looking at and this is who were discarding and I mean there's a Personnel piece of it um the next piece is interview preparation and this hat this will happen during a meeting in public in Open Session and that is really where we work with you all the board to talk about how you want to proceed with the interview what what are the themes of the interview questions that you want to ask again they'll probably be aligned with what what your priorities are and what you hear and we hear from the community in terms of what their priorities are um the next piece is candidate interviews we are with you um the whole time throughout this process which I I think is important and hopefully you find reassuring um just to have someone in the room with you who um is experienced and who can help guide you through the process and make sure that um all the questions get answered and um asked and answered and in a proper way so we are we are with you for that that's part of phase four and then we're also with you when it comes to decision making once you have had your first round interviews with candidates your finalists interviews um you've had your community Forum we're with you during the deliberation process as well again sort of helping you work through that with the leadership profile and the rubric that's been developed to help you um make decisions that are aligned with the priorities that you have identified as a board for your candidate or for your future superintendent excuse me and then once we get to this phase contract negotiations asba steps back it goes into the hands of the district and your legal counsel to do those negotiations we talked to I mentioned salary range up at the very front the salary is going to be determined in this phase of the process we're going to identify the range up front so your candidates know um sort of what what the possibilities are but that really gets determined and finalized during this negotiation phase and then the last piece of it as I mentioned is the transition phase and that's really about building that stable foundation in terms of the relationship between this board and your new executive and then helping you be really successful in introducing that person to your staff and your community as as your new leader and executive um the last bit is roles and responsibilities and there's a lot of them they're in the search agreement I've talked about some of them here but the the key ones that I really wanted to point out have to do with protecting confidentiality and making sure that that as this process unfolds that we're doing it in alignment with the law and ensuring that we maintain confidentiality that we abide by you know the open meeting law that all the elements of the meeting are posted appropriately so that this process just goes right down the line as it's intended to and those are the items on the next slide that I point out um as well for asva's responsibilities um in addition really just so you know we are here for you um we are your search agent we're here to consult with you throughout the process it's your process it's not our process and so just know um that that is our philosophy and you can count on that and um the last piece of it is for us responding to you know public inquiries media inquiries and those kinds of things we're there to assist you with that as well and so with that um we're on the questions slide two questions one I think this presentation was really good at going Beyond just a bullet point of the process but it's not posted on our board Docs I didn't find it either where the power points are okay it would it be possible to have it I can add it to the agenda item because it was okay within the 24 hours well I was thinking in terms of other people accessing it because we get questions about the process I guess to follow up on that because this is going to be my jam I think board docs is very inaccessible for the public one of the things I would request if possible if we could talk to Tech about this is creating a temporary page that's like a sub page of our website for the superintendent process and we can share resources and information like this that's more accessible to the public and to our staff and students and Families that's a process that other districts have employed as well kind of a One-Stop shop you can put the link to the community survey there meeting dates you know that that are going to be open to the public related to that because I think this is a good like where are we at in the process like if I can quickly direct somebody to this it's much easier so full disclosure I didn't send this over until about 3 30 this afternoon no that's fair I just it was in my head and I'm like I want to make sure that that we have access to it oh and that's why we're not seeing it because he'll just put a link to it because I usually do that I just got it so yeah that is fair it is in the folder with the PowerPoint gotcha okay my second question is like when like a little kind of nitpicky things like looking at additional references like reference checks Beyond just what's provided and stuff like that is are we is that guidance for right now are we meeting with you all again to kind of hone in on that guidance like kind of as we get through each step yes so um I I'll address that also in the timeline piece but when we get to um you you've done the screening you've selected candidates to come in for your first interview um reference checks um what we call due diligence comes into play there right so there's reference checks and then we also look at sort of the publicly available online footprint of the individual as well so that we're doing our own um reference checking through those channels as well so we're bringing you as complete a picture of that um individual as we can and follow up on that um are you or will you or are you able to um do further reference checks and just what is listed yeah on their references uh you know I we typically check the references that are provided um and I would I would actually defer to Dr Clement on that because he is the one um in the search process who does that so um and I I suppose I don't know the legalities of it but I know it's done and I suppose you could do it by asking one of the listed references is there anyone else that I could talk to you know about this candidate something like that if you don't know you know if you're not it's a small town you know but it's but we're going National so so uh thank you for the uh opportunity to be part of the team and thank you for the question so as far as doing our due diligence there are a number of steps the first step is prior to the screening um I do a internet search and looking to validate or find issues that um might might be important for the board to see during the screening and I validate that it's not just one you know I will validate that with a number of articles that for example I had a situation and I'm not violating any because I'm not giving any names with a hit and run well that hit and run did not show up in the application so that's the first due diligence is to do that that type of search then once finalists are identified we do do um reference checks if something warrants doing a reference check beyond the application we can do that um as long as the reference check is following certain guidelines the um and also while that's going on with finalists asba will do a formal search through a third party that will find parking tickets and and that information will be brought to the board and then you decide whether that information would would be important in your decision making is that more like a background check yes and the company Universal so once and they we do the contacting the finalists and get the sign off to do the universal um so so I mean no one in the right mind is going to put down a reference on their resume who's going to give them a bad reference right so um but you you have to check them um I guess it would be nice if we could if we could talk to us yes talk to staff or you know someone who's not listed as a reference but who is a colleague or um an acquaintance through you work something like that you know I know it's done again I don't know of the legality of it I mean it happens probably very informally and by accident in many ways um what we have to do is make sure if we're doing it for one we're doing it for others and then um to be quite honest with you and I did HR for six years and people are a lot less open to doing a reference check um than they have been in 20 years ago right so but the way I do that reference check is I I will contact the person via email and ask to give me a time window to do phone phone calls so I talked to that reference check on the phone or do a uh or do a zoom it's my generic croissants when I get called for a reference yeah yeah so Tracy I do have I've got about two and a half pages worth of correct questions for you and I separated out by by each point that we were voting on so do you want me to wait until before we voters okay so um we're gonna go into 10B which is governing board we'll discuss and consider proving timeline for the superintendent search process so this is where we would ask I mean you can do your spill and then whatever questions discussion that we need on that we can specifically talk about the timeline okay um would you like me to run through this timeline document and as you have questions you could ask them I read through it um I I'm hoping everybody else did too so if we have questions now instead of running through all of it we can ask the questions and then if something doesn't make sense then we can elaborate on it perfect good news you already answered all the questions that I had about the timeline oh anybody else have any questions or discussion on timeline um I guess my so the timeline itself makes sense I know it's doable it feels like a lot but I know that it's it's doable um my and I know that we can adjust if we need to my only like from the get-go concern is the application period opening February 14th which is seven days from now um it being open for four weeks is fine and adequate but how much do we feel like in the next seven days we can advertise and tell people that this application is going to be posted I guess does that feel really crunched we begin um the advertising and recruitment process when the application is posted and open so that's when we'll start promoting it and we will start right on that day um the application opens and we start immediately posting it sharing it out in fact that very weekend February 16th to 18th is the double ASA conference where we will be having um an executive Search Booth an area where folks from all around the country will be coming who are interested in superintendencies and um we have a postcard designed and developed already to promote this this particular search which I think is going to be one that's very attractive so anyway we'll start right right from the get-go Miss McCaleb um promoting that so that that forward and that's the way we do it for almost all the searches we do and that period of four weeks definitely seems to be adequate if it seems that we're not getting the volume or the quality of applications we would reach out to to this board and say you know what we feel like we need to extend it by a week or you know whatever that might look like and then and extend the period for you that's why I was like I know this has been done it just seems like foreign do you have any questions it's not about the timeline though okay I don't either I just kind of have a like knowing that we will have additional this is kind of for the board to keep in mind knowing we will have additional meetings that we'll need to schedule throughout this can we make sure that we are proactive in setting those dates and maybe ahead of time yeah um I was just thinking about because I really want to make sure that all five of us are at all of these and some conflicts can't be avoided so yeah it has had has everyone checked their schedule on these um proposed dates I have so the way I looked at it most of them say week a lot of them say week of yeah so clearly for me that would depend on the day um so yeah that's the only issue I had with some of the meetings and this you know obviously is going to be based on what's convenient for your board um and you know we'll need to be here with you right of course so our schedule will come into play a little bit but we probably have more flexibility as one or two people versus you know your whole team as a board so would would you recommend that we we do set schedule like set dates with Hilda after this meeting and we can kind of go back and forth I wouldn't want to spend the time tonight yeah doing that although we like have some kind of calendar of like these dates in this week and be like who's available what date like almost like a Sign Up Genius kind of thing and then think about it but it looks like the first date would be a week of March Tuesday March 23rd March 7th the week of March well March 7th I believe is your regular board meeting okay where we we'd be here to provide an update for you on um the search status and also the review of the survey results which we would have I would close a few days before that and then any other components of community and staff input that we've received at that point um but yeah the the first meeting that isn't that needs to be scheduled is that meeting three where you do the applicant screening we have a recommended date there of March the 23rd which is a Thursday but you know obviously it is um it's your decision well then you said that screening meeting can take six hours yeah I mean three to six hours so you need to set aside a pretty good chunk chunk of time are we talking about like during the day whatever is convenient for it could be done on weekends too right if they have to do it on a Saturday yep you could do it you know from four to I think sometimes we started around three you know it depended on what was what worked it's just that some of us are teachers and we have testing and March I know I was like I was like I was like testing I couldn't take off work yeah that's like a no yeah okay that would be better than the State Testing is just the big that would be the weekend would be better for me too because the 21st is a board meeting and I also have a Phoenix Union safety meeting on the 22nd so a third night of child care is a lot yeah we can discuss that I think we should go through you right with schedule okay the only date you would probably you would want to I think have on a weekday would be your finalists interviews um in order to incorporate that Community input portion of it I might imagine like we do signs similar to community council right [Music] generally speaking then you gave us a time for that that's a rough time estimate for them then for the first round interviews do you have a rough time estimate of how long that usually takes it kind of depends how many candidates you know you bring in I mean say you bring in two or three which is probably pretty typical um you're thinking it probably an hour um for each one of those some prep time on the front end with the consultant you know talking about the questions for the interview kind of getting yourself situated on that um the community Forum itself usually lasts about 90 minutes you're going to want a breather between your interviews and that of a half an hour to have something to eat or what have you so it's you know it's it's gonna take up you would do all the interviews and then we would do the Forum right okay yep and then most boards then will um go into executive session and have your deliberations immediately following that look at the feedback um from the community Forum talk about your own impressions of how the interviews went and um you know make then come out and make announce your decision so meeting five is potentially the longest day yeah probably because you're including that Community Forum in there okay this is possible action if we have no further discussion and we're ready to take action in this and accept this is that we can make a motion now and just do it do you guys have any further okay get ready to spend a lot of time together guys I move the governing board approve the timeline for the superintendent search process as attached all those in favor aye passes perfect so that brings us down to 10c um discussion and consideration of approving an online superintendent leadership quality Community survey as component of the superintendent search process do we have any um discussions or any edits that we would like to do on this so um I see the board it will be taking the same survey I assume we will disaggregate who is taking the survey when we get it back to us as a board yeah it absolutely can be disaggregated and um in addition to the board taking this survey I should have pointed this out earlier but during that Discovery process the search Consultants will be calling each of you individually and asking you some key questions about what um the strengths of the district are and you want to see more of what the challenges are what particular qualities you want to see in your new superintendent and also any other considerations that you think are important so know that you know obviously you have a lot of say in this process but also that your individual viewpoints will be considered both in that way and then you know on this survey if you choose to take it so I think we need to also as a board consider how we're going to use this survey to inform our decision um you have thoughts on that in your experience um meaning you know um I'd be interested in how aligned we are with the community and if we're not what do we do about that you know yeah I'd be interested in the like stakeholder disaggregated by stakeholder because what parents say they want versus what teachers say they want can be the same or it can be very different and it could be quite different than what we as board members I think we want you know right and and you know that will be um that will be part of your discussion um at that meeting too on March the 7th when you're talking about the community survey um the Consultants will already have spoken with you about your you know feedback so um I I would guess that though there's probably more alignment that than you would guess but you know time will tell right and and that'll be a discussion that you'll have at that point so how do we how do we utilize this and present this when we bring this information back to the board we bring it back in a summarized fashion where we're sharing with you what the top responses were for each of these um seven or eight different categories that this survey addresses and we're also summarizing the comments that are provided in each of those open-ended questions you will also get the results of the survey so you'll have you know the data um not in an Excel spreadsheet but you know in a in a graphic format yeah and you'll be able to see what the comments are so so you'll have that um but when we when we bring it back to you we will have it summarized and we will have um in addition to the community narrative input right the open-ended questions um your input will be incorporated in there in summarize in there as well not separately but as a part of that whole bundle that will create the leadership profile um this these survey questions um there are a lot of them and I just wonder just thinking out loud really to my fellow board members um do we want to narrow the questions down a little bit um I you know I'm usually for more information than not but um and all for a couple reasons it's it's going to take a longer time for people to take the survey they may get tired of it by the time they get to question you know I don't know I'm assure you have you looked into I guess following up on that drop off with these and there can be you know persistence issues um sometimes there are where um you might have 700 people who respond and and find that only half of them complete the first half you know the the um eight leadership areas um but then you get a ton of um comments in the open-ended questions or it could be the opposite it really depends on it really depends on the community I wouldn't say there's a trend one way or the other in terms of survey persistence but it's something that you know you'll see when you get the results back this might be really technical does this show up one question per page how does it look automatically I'm sorry I don't remember we used Survey Monkey to host it so there is a way you know to show just one page at a time but I don't remember I know some people might be tired if this is one for a page I don't know I was just curious I mean I guess so quiet like I don't know if this is kind of where you're going with it uh Amy but like are there like these are all kind of sub categories were you thinking like are there three or four subcategories we would like to move to the front of the survey well in case people don't finish for instance I mean but let's go to number nine budget and finance there are a lot of says pick two but that's a lot of things to read and as a community member like what is most important to me you know that's a tough one um can you know what is most important to our community it just seems like maybe if they had four choices and they could pick two it might be more telling to us well and I I the only reason why I like these options and my perspective is is that we don't want to pinpoint people into certain boxes if we only have four options then it's almost like we're telling the people these are the already four qualities that we've decided so now choose from these two this gives and I get it some people won't fully do it but I think with the community forums and all the different aspects we're going to be able to grab the different people like somebody who may complete the survey might not be interested in coming to the community forum and and vice versa somebody that looks at this is like I don't want to do this but they'll come in person and give their public comment onto what they want or not so I personally like this just because it doesn't make me feel like I'm pinpointing my community on certain topics already it just gives a very vague and it really gives us a sense to see what what their understanding of it all this is at first and then what they really want to see in in somebody right so I mean I was thinking it would be very challenging for us to narrow it down to four that's the only problem it comes to Gathering data you have to think about the validity and the liability of a survey and it's really hard it's a very fine balance I do think the final page 10 and 11 are probably two of the most important questions though and wonder if we could move those up towards the front after we take oh I like that demographic I don't like but yeah sure I mean we can absolutely put those um as questions two and three okay if you want to get those right up front if I would avoid fatigue like right we can get their most pressing concerns out of the way yeah I mean there is a flip side of if they go through the questions and the topic sometimes people come up with things yeah that they hadn't thought about so my only caveat to that would be if we move them up could we have moved them up and then at the very end say is there anything else anything additional you want to add yeah that's always a great box to include it's a terrifying box to include and creates a dump of thoughts but that would be the cat like I really like having the questions up front because people are gonna pull out things they already know and feel passionate about yeah not feeling fatigued by all the questions but I know that I would fill this out and then go well man I wish I had put that as a strength or a challenge so so we can utilize a question that is one of the questions we use in the community forum and it's basically other things what other things would you like the governing board to consider in making it's just yeah yeah I think that'd be a good closing with regard to the when each question folks have the ability to identify a trade that's not listed do when you present us the data do you tend to try if it seems like it fits within one of boxes that wasn't checked but they just kind of described that differently or do you just present it as is which is present it as is yeah and then I forget I haven't used Survey Monkey in a while but can we guarantee that people can't take the survey twice you can okay I've never done that really bored and then um Can ASB a connect with our strategic planning committee or Consultants because I know they have they reached you know a group of 200 people um I'd like for those to ensure those stakeholders are engaged just because we know how to reach all those people um that would be great that's a good group of people that we have connected with they've done some real deep thinking on a lot of issues already I would recommend that someone from the district do that because you all are going to have more pull with your community than we are if you want us to we will but I I would recommend that you know you identify someone they would share the survey monthly linked with them basically yeah yeah take me yet but we can make that happen right like they get sure that that list of people they're taking notes on all our demands I can see it is this the survey that would get mailed out you can distribute it however you'd like so you can send it out electronically and encourage people to fill it out that way or you can print it and you can have it available however you'd like it or you can mail something out use QR code put that on there um I mean this is a big document to have to put in the mail probably cost you a lot yeah do that but you could or you could have printed copies at your school sites district office okay you know other places where members of your community gather so perhaps in our Dr Lewis you could provide us with an email of saying where the district plans to include it so that if if we're missing something the board will at least know who we're hitting who we're missing do we have in our schools um like in the front offices is there a computer in the front office that parents use that's available yeah like I was just saying like we we have yeah like we have a laptop and all of our front offices so parents if they need to register on parent view do we have that in our school offices in Creighton not precisely in the front office but in every Outreach specialist room they have an iPad or on a device that is available for parents so we could do something maybe in the front office have some kind of poster that says we would love for you to complete our superintendent survey please visit this room like let the front office know that you'd like to okay because I think that is a huge Pete like this would be very cumbersome on a phone QR codes are great but I would be like oh my goodness and where are my readers um so I think that would be good if we can make sure that parents are aware there isn't a computer here where you can sit and do this do we have any other questions or discussions on this survey no okay so I move the governing board um approve and the on online superintendent leadership qualities Community survey as a component of the superintendent superintendent search process with the edits yes 30 seconds um although it's in favor aye right that brings us to our next item where we will be discussing and approving community group focused meetings facilitated by asba to gain input on the leadership profile so right off the bat I did see that we saw um that we have and turn that in as well and our folks who are facilitating um Devin Del Palacio and Heidi Vega both are Spanish speakers as well um so that is really helpful in settings like that any other questions or discussion so um now that we've discussed this this is where we make the decision of how many Community forums we want uh I think really the the format that you want do you want those Community sessions to be open to anyone or do you uh want to do one as a focus group well what a focus group and a local group would be more like Invitation Only um and I will tell you some districts do that others have concerns about who's being included and who's being excluded when when you do a smaller focus on the districts that you have that you have experience with focus groups what what their what was their reasoning or who was invited um we've had Business Leaders we've had group of Faith leaders we've had another group called Community Partners that have been a mix of those we've had others that have been staff leaders from Individual School sites you know it it really can be um anything that you desire there's a particular group that you want input from of course all those people are also welcome at the community forums themselves so if you wanted a particular group or type of partner to be there you could definitely extend special invitation to them dear business partners please come to our community Forum on February 27th right your voice is valued you know I feel like that would be for us I would feel like we're excluding people if we made one very exclusive people have a hard enough time like we did a morning you know like I think just giving two different options would give our community a better yeah chance and getting there so keep them open but if we and to like we could additionally extend into specific invitations to make sure certain groups come that we know typically don't come to community council or typically don't like go out of our way but yeah I would keep it open I would feel nervous about out the unintended consequences of focusing too much and as far as like casting as wide and that is possible depending on how attendance looks the reason why I brought up that's what the kind of the reason why I brought up the like kind of the breakout thing sometimes folks feel more comfortable in a smaller setting or with people who feel like they're of a like group like I am a teacher or I'm a certified and a classified staff and we're together talking about our interests um in which you know there might be parents who might not feel like they're in the place to speak up even though they did come to the Forum so I'm just trying to think of ways we can accommodate folks all sharing and feeling like they're heard even if we have two forms that are like just open to everyone is why I brought up like the breakout kind of thing so that there's kind of smaller facilitated conversations kind of a model of community council yeah big but yeah how can we make sure there's opportunity and how are we how do we make sure that those structures are in place so that you're not pit y'all aren't pivoting on a dime and one other thing that I I've been trying to find the right place for it um I think that there are plenty of our middle school students who are competent and capable to participate in this process and I'd really like to see yeah maybe get some students from kids Congress or some something be play a role in this process I'll tell you something really um neat that the Phoenix Elementary District did last year when we did their search was they invited a group of students to come to the finalists forum and and sort of have a private audience with the finalists before the rest of the public came in to get to ask some questions or hear from them so it's great to have you know how would that work into this it would be the final round so it would be something that we need to add in for the final round yeah that they they did that for the finalists but I mean you could certainly make a special invitation to students as well but two Brands oh sorry go ahead for the community input sessions but kind of to Branch off of what you said is when we have this community Forum so we invite everybody right but in community councils we have tables spread out we could do like if you're a staff member sit over here if you're a student come over here if you're a parent sit over here yeah so while the big conversations going they could have smaller conversations within that table and then just bring it over so I think that's something that we can work within the community so youth especially are probably not going to want to speak up in a huge room of adults and and that was one of my things but I hadn't mentioned anything because I watched Phoenix else and I saw how they did that and that's something that I was going to bring up when we talked about the finalists that I thought that was a really neat idea that they got um kids to have that one-on-one with them three and the kids ask the questions to the superintendents and they brought some epiphanies to board members are like oh crap I didn't think of that because the kids are thinking of it so that's a really good idea okay [Music] um so we're kind of finalizing right now like we want to we want them to be open no focused groups and I think I want to plan for allowing small group yeah so how would we do this as an action item yes no she's not sure I think you could motion to have your community involvement be two open Community input sessions and a um a community finalist Forum okay yeah so I moved the governing board approve doing two to community um facilitated meetings with asva and having a finalist community focused forum with the finalists all those in favor aye aye okay that brings us down to the discussion of approving the position announcement to be published on the asba website um and this announcement will include the district profile Community profile position profile position salary range District financial information and timeline and process I'm excited to tell you that you don't have to hear from me anymore but Dr Clement will take you through this process okay thank you Tracy thank you so in developing this we did some due diligence and um got your staff involved thank you so much um held uh and uh what we presented to you uh is as current information as possible um 20 years ago the to be quite honest the profile was more important than it is today um candidates are going to do their own due diligence but it's important to um give them a start and so this information provides that big picture overview um for many of the applicants they've already done their due diligence um and so any questions that you have regarding the profile and again we did do due diligence looking at um information about the district with the qualifications you want your net to be as wider than that as you can get um so the more required qualifications if the narrower the net is the the pool um when you get to screening the board will be provided that I will develop a rubric to guide you through the screening and that rubric will take this profile it'll take your input from the survey it will take the input from the discovery interviews it will take the input from the Community Focus uh sure I get my language right the community groups and that will then drive this rubric that will help guide your your screening so um all of that information and again the alignment if um if we get something a theme that comes up that will be put in that rubric I know this is a preferred requirement but I guess I don't know who could answer this anybody really that has the knowledge as far as if we're doing a nationwide search what are what are barriers we'd run into in terms of reciprocity or somebody's ability to quickly get an Arizona superintendent certificate so that's a great question um as you know the the law doesn't require the superintendent to have certification um I've yet to do a search and I've done 20. one of the largest districts Tucson unified and one of the smaller District Bowie um every board has required the certification um what you can do when you get to that negotiations you can provide a timeline for the superintendent to become certified and um in the reciprocity to this um to this point has it changes all the time so um there's a good chance that there's going to be reciprocity but if there isn't you can say you've got one year okay to get certified um I know the universities will have a like for example in Northern Arizona University has a way to get certified for a superintendent without having to go through a doctoral program and you can get it in a year thank you yeah great question it's not required by law right so yeah so I think it's great that we have it just as preferred because it doesn't eliminate the money yeah yeah I just didn't know if anybody would see it and think feel discouraged or especially from there another state they may not know that it's not required right yeah they might not just be thinking about it and they're part of the reason it's not required is because part of the superintendent could we change the wording instead of saying current Arizona superintendent and certificate just put current or can obtain one just so people don't automatically say crap I can't apply if I don't have but it's preferred experience it's not required experience yeah I know I'm just I think I'm just more so thinking about how especially none I don't know what term to use non-traditional candidates look at things and think that they're not qualified and then just don't bother if they see something yeah and you think that that's required yeah well I'm part of getting the superintendent like you can have an administrator certification but you also have to part of getting the superintendent cert is being able to intern with a superintendent which is not always an easy opportunity yeah so it can take time okay I'm on the same page as you guys I mean I I am I like the idea of having it open to non-traditional candidates so if but I figured having the word prefer there it does that but you let you what do you think I mean well um we can add language that says um or apply we've got language okay like I like current or able to obtain in Arizona could be and many of the applicants from experience will indicate that they have started the application process uh under this under there this is going to be crazy just to remove that line it's your posting um I I would recommend that even in with that caveat and um they're they're good at looking at the preferred versus the required um and also the rubric is going to reflect that um and you're going to get a spreadsheet that will indicate all of your applicants and the preferred and the required to give you a kind of a big picture so with the required and I know you said cast a wide net is the minimum of three years teaching experience the typical because three years is not very long of teaching experience it well ranges well I didn't mean to interact oh no sorry no it usually ranges from three to five so some searches um they'll have five some they'll have three it's like in some districts it's required that you have five years teaching experience to be an instructional coach so to say three years I was wondering about like even being is there anything about being a principal there is yeah sorry yeah principal building level Ministry I actually have a problem with this being under the requirement position requirements because I do think that eliminates non-traditional candidates completely we're saying for requiring this person to be a teacher at some point in their career I feel like I mean just personally I feel like you should be a teacher first and learn from there I mean how how are you going to govern over teachers when you've never even been in that field I I know those teachers feel very strongly about this um I I think it eliminates a lot of potential candidates that we might want to not shut the door to category um not in my experience yeah yeah I heard you saying what are your thoughts Tony I've seen non-traditional candidates who have chief executive officer um High business level skills be very effective um and it has an ebb and flow to the needs of the district so it's certainly possible I've seen it effective I'm kind of quiet because I'm toying with the same idea um I don't believe in super traditional roles I feel like a lot of people have the ability to do some but I I get where you're coming from on on that teacher aspect but it doesn't mean that somebody doesn't have the other attributes so um I don't know I think if we just said we want to cast a wide net um you know you're going to take these things into consideration very strongly I think um as board members but these we're saying these are required so it means if someone applies and they don't have that we cannot consider them right because it's unfair to the other possible candidates we shut out I mean I feel like pretty much all of these bullets with the exception of a master's degree apply to somebody working in education um to answer your question that would be you would put yourself at risk if you um named a finalist that did not meet your minimum your required qualifications given all that and given that these are not oars these are all ands and that there is minimum three years of working in an elementary school setting I would feel comfortable moving the teaching experience to the preferred so I feel like it's still casting that but you have somebody with relative experience within something in the school setting correct and not even like a school setting but in elementary right right I I'm okay with that too so she's saying moving the minimum of three years teaching experience in a public school system as a preferred and leaving the minimum of three years of experience working in elementary school setting as a requirement right yeah so I guess because these are all ands not ours yeah but if you're going to this is just a lot like aside from the teacher non-teacher argument um if it's a requirement to have been a principal or building level administrator but it's not a requirement to have teaching years you can't be a principal without having teaching but it's also building level administrator which doesn't include right which includes your assistant principal building level administrator okay does that also include District level administrator then would we need to specify that as well I guess I'm thinking there's all kinds of Administrators in a district not just at a school level that could be all over that so that allows that flexibility it does give it some parameters but um does give the definition of building level allows use some flexibility when you come to the screening is this what you normally use for yeah this has characteristics of every surge has some of these characteristics do in the the minimum and over time the minimums or the required have been shortened to cast The Wider net um you look at a search 20 years ago versus a search today the the required qualifications there are fewer bullets yeah I think I think she made a good point too I forgot about that principal building level administrator I don't know that I would become like that's what I'm saying like most of these bullets and things like somebody who's been teaching at some point like I don't know it doesn't it doesn't actually I mean he's saying building level administrator gives gives better flexibility that doesn't yeah so we could move the minimum of three years to the preferred and then take out principal and just leave building level administrator you can leave principal slash building levels yeah okay then that works this building level to me sounds like a School site not District he said it it's it's lexical okay yeah that's how we want to interpret it and so if we want to take District then that's fine we'll we'll help as you do the screening to make sure that we follow the law yeah and um provide you the oh so when you get to that kind of consensus about who you're going to move forward that we do kind of a check to make sure that they have the required and how we can defend that you're comfortable with that wording okay so here you were you uh want to move the first bullet to Preferred yes yes okay you can do that um one of the things that preferred characteristics I would like something in here put in um are candidate to have some kind of community engagement I don't even know how you would wear that but somebody who's actually well I guess demonstrate a strong commitment to building no that's different someone that actually has proven facts of working with like Community organizations and building the school better instead of just focusing on the school district on itself I don't even know how you would word that track record of building District Partnerships or District Partnerships yeah somebody that that actually has some community base and they're not just saying like oh yeah we're in the community and somebody that actually has some kind of experience in working with the community or non-profits or something hand in hand building Community Partnerships and collaborating building and collaborating with Community Partnerships or get that in as a bullet uh any do you guys need to add anything else on those no um salary and contract the 140 that range that we have on this where is this number coming from so the um we did our due diligence look first looking at the salary survey um superintendent salary survey done by asba um and then we looked at your comps in current searches last year this year and then we added um 5000 because of the market right now so 5000 at the lower and five thousand at the higher um based on um become closest to this District okay um actually was Phoenix out I mean it's this is all public allies so um we we went five grand over there um in their their range uh this actual salary will be negotiated um with your finalist between eobu and your legal counsel that's where asba will step out of the picture so to speak and uh salary and benefits will be negotiated with that with the finalists um this is the range that um applicants will be looking at your range they may do their due diligence but part of their due diligence does not include a call to you pretty clear in the application if that happens you need to notice me let me know the other cautioned recommendation is that if you know of someone that would be a good applicant go through your asba and don't contact them direct because we don't want anyone thinking they have an edge or an advantage oh a board member called me um versus your search consultant our job is to recruit for you so come that they should not be contacting you regarding any part of the profile where the series and especially not salary and benefits to get somebody experience do they like take that into account like they do with like teachers or principles like is that something too yes so it could go beyond technically that's your usually do that negotiations you're not tied to this you're not locked into this this is um a range but it doesn't you don't have it in policy you don't have you know you want to use that as guidelines but if the board wants to go Beyond this range it's it's your call just to know people will know and yeah you know I have like a special request based on that when we get to that point if we do end up in a situation Jay would there be a way for you to provide at least some advisement on what what would be responsible considering our budget what would be feasible in terms of negotiations and like how far out of this range should we or should we not go kind of thing I might be in a position to desire to recuse myself okay to possibility there may be somebody in the district that could advice certainly well also in the past um like without the search but when we do contract renewal and we had salary negotiations we had the attorney come in to share with us like kind of the comps he was talking about and like we couldn't keep it yeah but we were able to look at it at the time that we were doing negotiations okay and there's a whole other part of this which is stipends which um obviously is not included in this number and and they'll just come in it's a back and forth negotiation yeah this is super nitpicky but on page one it says a Creighton eighth grader instead of eighth grader sorry [Laughter] and I did want to add just a couple of words to that preferred knowledge and or training at the very last bullet it says knowledge related to enhanced student services such as as ell Etc um I just thought we should add Outdoor Learning school garden the cafeteria and multi-age classrooms that's the um good multi-age was in there advice under the preferred yeah yeah knowledge and or training got it did you get all those hit me with it again yeah okay Outdoor Learning school garden to cafeteria and multi-age classrooms okay and and the only other thought I had you guys on um our profile um and and like you said they're probably going to do their due diligence themselves so this probably is doesn't really make that big of a deal but um all of our schools are designated Title One however I think Creighton is very unique in that it's a very diverse District as far as who we serve you know what I mean we have 10 million dollar homes at one end of the district and then we have you know um unhoused families kind of throughout but more towards the southern I don't know if that's something because that is a challenge that we face that I don't want someone coming in um line to that fact you know I think that they'll I think that that does go back to um maybe having somebody who has built those relationships already in communities because that ties into if they come in here and they see that if they already have the mentality of those connections I I feel like a candidate would you know somebody that's here in our district would be able to navigate that better if they're already coming in with the vision of Community First so I think that's why that was a great and that is right our we have a Biltmore area and then we have our southern district and it is two very different ways I mean those are questions where you get into really building in yeah and I do think I mean when I'm looking for teaching jobs I was I spent hours on District websites like it's not an easy process to apply so I feel like someone's going to do their due diligence um salary and contract do we have any other um questions or discussions oh okay so with those edits um I move the governing board approved the position announcement to be published on the asba website with um our edits that will include the district profile Community profile position profile position salary range District financial information and timeline and process all those in favor aye all right that brings us next to we will discuss and consider incorporating specific questions into the application process for the position of district superintendent can I ask that we maybe table this I I'm sorry it's like after 10 o'clock and some of us work really early like I'm we're I'm into my 16th hour that I've and I'm not trying to be rude I just feel like this this deserves a lot more attention than I can give right now um and I would like to discuss this fully I think this is the most important part of this and so I would like to maybe table it and come back and discuss it more fully are there um are maybe you can answer about y'all's availability on February 21st well this is for the application questions yeah we we I agree with you February 14 and seven days yeah that's right so we have to get it done I think we should okay correct okay maybe we can make it yeah to clarify uh these are questions that will be on the application they are not the questions for the interview um those uh questions aren't even developed yet because we're waiting we have to collect all the data and then get themes um so these are um questions that will help you in the screening of your applications so and we're also doing the applicant the blank application which I thought was quite straightforward I assume everyone looked at that I'll just throw out my two thoughts on this uh sample application questions the ones provided I feel like I have heard the answers to those questions already um and those are you know those are superintendent questions that they can answer I I suggest two others just to throw crazy thing out there number one I think The Continuous Improvement um what what areas of continuous Improvement do you believe the Creighton's superintendent and board need to focus their efforts is a great question I would say how would you change your hiring practice to ensure we attract and retain a diverse Workforce of staff that reflects the demographics of our students and Community just for something different and then three how would you approach your first year on the job how would you address District culture Norms that need adjustment how would you improve parenting Community engagement with our within our district just to make them a little different than the standard describe your leadership style I think too can I see your paper I think two of those questions it could be more when we have those um when we have our finalists but I do really like your yeah where is it uh okay number two how would you change our hiring well not change our hiring practices but maybe what hiring practices do they know to ensure that we attract and retain diverse Workforce of staff that reflects the demographics of our students and Community I think that's a huge one it just think that we could pull people like out to us that we might I like that otherwise question I think these two could be more specific once we have like the three finalists and that could be more one one but this one for sure um on the superintendent sample application questions I think that's a really good question because it is an issue that we are facing and it is something that we're consistently talking in the district level of how do we retain more teachers or get more teachers that look like our students so that's a great sample question to start that conversation on the sample one yeah the first one I I like it but it would this be do we want to incorporate what we were talking about with Community Partnerships in the wording of that I I was just going to talk about rewarding that as well like do you know what I'm saying like be more specific not just with the commute like that and just because that's come up multiple times I don't know what the wording is so maybe so you're talking about number one on the on the sample okay yeah so what I was thinking was describe your experience engaging with our East Phoenix community and how that will enable you to strategically engage CSD stakeholders to ensure their input is included in District okay wait um so I think we need to so we're wanting to add because CSD stakeholders doesn't necessarily mean Community Partners yeah so could it be like describe your experience engaging with the community creating and collaborating like creating Community Partnerships developing or developing sustainable Community Partnerships I don't know something and how that will strategically enable you to yes did you get that no he was waiting until we go insert insert after community develop sustainable Community Partnerships and describe your experience engaging with our community and developing sustainable Community Partners they haven't they may not have been engaging with our community because this is a nationwide search right so we're asked on community yeah so yeah it's whatever Community you're from and in developing Community Partnerships I feel like we have another and me wants to edit that but it's a lot of your experience engaging with the community and developing sustainable Community Partnerships comma and how that will enable you to strategically engage that works yes could you email me the questions yeah Tracy's coming up to save us yes are you getting it are you word smithing for it describe your experiencing developing sustainable Community Partnerships to support strategic organizational priorities if you're looking for non-traditional candidates they might be different priorities or whatever other kind of organization okay okay is that thank you Tracy as a replacement for this or in a as an additional question I mean it's almost the same question yeah okay it's kind of a rewrite of that yeah okay cool all right any further um discussion on sapple sorry are we doing that one question yes okay and we're replacing it we're adding this adding it as a fourth yes okay that's okay fourth of adding a fourth okay we can um I'll just email that to Hilda yeah okay all right all right and one of the uh you're you're looking at the content but you're also this is an opportunity to see their ability to write um that's why it's important that you have your questions but um this is uh this is really the only part of the process where you get to see a writing sample um that is truly probably theirs not saying that resumes and letters but um a unique question promotes the ability to see a writing scene and I think even some of the yes some of the questions are generic but I think that writing can be very indicative of did you just spew out buzzwords when you wrote this or did you really like it does your voice come through because that's very different too yeah I mean no more discussion no okay so now I will move the governing board to um approve incorporating specific questions into the application process for the position of district superintendent with our edits all those in favor aye it's okay and I believe that that's done we're done with that I really appreciate you guys for that um I know it's a lengthy bracelet process but I I really appreciate all the back and forth and you guys actually making us feel like this is in our ball game so thank you I mean it is but it's nice to know that you guys acknowledge that too um future agenda items do we have any future agenda items yeah so um I would like a continuation or um re-examination of the special ed audit discussion and then a second one is um uh when I was at Cube um a suggestion that they had had in a presentation was that board members um the exit interviews or the letter that teachers or staff submit when when they're resigning so um perhaps an executive session with the attorney on how we can make that happen I don't know if that's an attorney question or um okay okay so executive session on exit interviews any other future agenda items all right I don't have any others so I motion we adjourn second all those in favor aye aye thank you guys have a great night there was one left I didn't take yeah it was on the top