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you could always put it back in but you know these are the difficult decisions yeah the the priority of adjustment around time and efforts to be able to support students however is not off the table and we will be bringing that to the um uh curriculum committee as well to be able to share we may not have these resources to be able to enact this plan but we'll have another plan in place you have a plan B for everything to be able to work through and the work that you and your team have been able to do have helped to be able to um and I think you said as well realize the opportunities that are in front of us right now to be able to keep building for the future so we're not standing Pat Erica with where we have them because that's not a spot that we can be fruit what do you think I would just everyone reiterate you know knowing that the constraints that we're all working in and everyone trying to make the right decision with what we have you know I know there are a few things that grew and I've been looking at but I think I'm pretty excited about some of the stuff that's still in this I'm very excited about the surprise program and thinking about what impact I could have even on other pieces that we haven't even talked about our Academy program and kind of the repercussions there and like them too you know we're talking about the math intervention this is a middle school in high school will absolutely benefit from that so um just knowing with what we're working in but there's you know there's a couple good pieces on the table that have been hold on to so many business thank you Jim I would ask you in the world if I could but um no so again we have these uh grammars that we have to abide by and um I appreciate the things that did add in the budget for this year for athletics so thank you for uh presenting that and proposing that to the board of Finance are there any final comments on your side um only that I'm incredibly grateful uh to the this board and the board of Finance for being receptive the idea of the addition of this of the Thrive program in this District I think is going to do wonderful thing thanks for our children thank you I'd love to say that the 7.9 budget would survive but it's not most likely and then one percent equals 290 000.
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let me say you're 333 300 000. so it'll be up to this board and what I would uh leave this board with tonight is for you to just consider everything you've heard tonight and then on the 14th I'd like to take up a deeper dive on this you can um you can formulate your questions to come back to the superintendent about um you can formulate where you think this budget should be um and and I'm ready to Advocate and fight for whatever this board thinks we need to be at and if it's 7.9 at 7.9 but um I'm also realistic on having worked with the board of Finance over a number of years um they're going to need a little bit more information in order to be able to uh maintain this so um I would ask everybody online just to come back with your questions come back to where you think we should be based on your experiences and what you think is reasonable I've often told the superintendent I said your job is to come in here and tell us what we need to be thriving to be growing uh and to be moving forward and then it's our job to go off and make that happen so I think Kevin I just want to compliment you with Donna and the whole team on what you've done and what you've put together because you've you've been fiscally responsible um it's great to see that you're not demoralized that you're it just really makes me feel good that you're thankful and grateful for what you have and where you're going with this and see the smiles so I think we appreciate that as a board of education and you inspire us to go out there and fight for what you need so thank you for all that work John and then to mention YouTube so um any questions anything that's on your mind tonight I just feel obligated to say Jeff I'm disappointed that you're standing request didn't make the cut because I think they could make a um a significant difference for you hopefully the year after okay and I appreciate your support board members online anything that you would like to say mention question are you good um I just to Echo what Joe was saying I too was thinking that the schedule change was going to be something that would end up there as well for Middle School okay any other any other questions comments education yeah thanks for listening and for your questions emotional adjourn how's she doing here today thank you Russell all those in favor let's call it unanimous okay we're insurance
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Good afternoon and welcome to the Senate Committee on Education. Today is Wednesday, February 8th at 3:00 p.m. We are in hearing room 229. This meeting, including the audio and video of remote participants, is being streamed live on YouTube. You will find links to viewing options for all Senate meetings on the live and on demand video page of the legislaturator's website. This Zoom meeting and YouTube live stream event will include the 3:00 and 3:05 p.m. agenda for the committee on education. In the unlikely event that we must abruptly end this hearing due to major technical difficulties, the committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on Friday, February 10, 2023 at 3:00 p.m. in this room 229. And a public notice will be posted on the legislaturator's website. I'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that due to time con restrictions on our hearings, we will be limiting testimony to one minute per testifier per bill.
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okay our next item is the call for public comments and I don't have any of the paperwork for it so I'm assuming there are no public comments so we will go on to informational items starting with the governing board of current events anybody on the board have anything to report okay next one is the superintendent's report of current events Mr Hopkins I just want to give a brief update to make a long story short I just wanted to talk real briefly about the aggregate expenditure limit that's been on everyone's uh everyone's radar so I wanted this to give a brief history background and just share some information with uh the board and everyone in attendance um just a brief history this is from castings or Finance expert director with Arizona Association of school business officials 1980 Arizona Constitution Amendments were approved by the voters uh for the aggregate expenditure total spending on all districts that involves maintenance and operations Capital Broadway uh to go into a little more detail from the Arizona School administrators the aggregate expenditure amendment is a Statewide cap on School District spending so I provided this for each of you to just have a little background uh for this school year Statewide spending by school districts is estimated to be 1.3 billion over the expenditure limit now the definition of the aggregate expenditure limit is a cap on spending that being said at the legislature does not override the expanded treatment by March 1st required to cut their budgets by the budget cuts in effect by April 1st a little bit more background just talks about um requiring schools to cut 1.3 billion out of the school Year's spending we'll have a devastating Statewide economic impact especially um a large impact on the rule Unified School District's community and so that being said in the 2022 legislative sessions the legislature invested a historic amount of money in K-12 including increasing special education funding and establishing a poverty way so the expenditure limit doesn't account for any of these changes so that's just a little bit of the background of that today we did some more research just to get the update um the Arizona house voted yesterday to let the aggregate expenditure limit a step toward avoiding massive budget cuts to Arizona Public Schools the House of Representatives loaded 4614 in favor of lifting the cap a resolution on it is needed by March 1st to avoid nearly 1.4 billion in budget cuts so yesterday the information was the Arizona Senate also has to vote to lift the cap um two-thirds majority of the vote in each chamber would mean that there's no need for governor Hobbs to sign the resolution now once again the AEL the aggregate expenditure limit which limits how much money Arizona K-12 school districts can spend every year was approved by voters in 1980 the Constitutional Amendments just an example NASA Public Schools the state's most largest District would have to cut 88 million from its budget so how does that translate I've talked with a number of people uh here in the room and also in our district almost carry forward fiscal year 22 is in our fiscal year 23 budget over 800 000.
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foreign good evening I would like to call this meeting to order Dr Foley do you have roll call for US vice president Anderson members of the board please let the record show that four members are present all right Mr Schultz may join us if she's able to get here but she's not able to start the meeting with us today thank you we're going to begin with a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance all right I would like to move to approve the agenda seconded all those in favor I okay motion carries four to zero and now we'll move on with the superintendent's report Dr Foley good evening tonight we start with one of our favorite things which is points of Pride and so tonight I am lucky that we have Mrs Harris and I think Mrs Zaba was she with this too yes who are here to honor our Gateway Gators [Applause] all right guys thank you so much for having us and thank you guys so much for welcoming us we love this night we wish we could do it more often um the first one I'm going to start with is our classified staff member Miss Ashley diet if you would like to come forward my love come on up [Applause] all right if you've ever had the opportunity to chat with Miss Ashley you would know within a minute that she is the most loving and caring person she gives her whole heart to our community when a challenge is presented to her both professionally and personally she takes it on with Grace and determination each year our staff fights over who is the lucky one to have Ashley on their team if we could clone her we would do it in a second and thank you for making this world a better place we love you [Applause] and also would you like to recognize I know you brought some people with you I'm Emily um they're my kids and my mom and my sister [Applause] oh after oh we're gonna do we changed it up okay I'm not used to this all right so next we get to recognize our volunteer and Miss agbula if you could please come forward [Applause] all right so we cannot say enough about Mrs Don agboola she is hands down the most amazing and helpful volunteer I think we've ever had at Gateway whether she is putting up bulletin boards getting a student a nice pack or copying books for teachers she always has a smile on her face and asks what she can do next I think we've tried to offer her a full-time job every day she still hasn't said yes so I'm still working on her okay gonna convince you next thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the countless hours you put in at Gateway and to make it the best place for students we love you [Applause] and then if you want to recognize who you brought oh sure oh sure I brought my family I have my nephew Isaiah my daughter Sophia and Grace my husband Steve and my son Sam who's still at Gateway [Applause] all right I'm going to start by recognizing our student who is Shams Shams come on up thank you [Applause] Shams is an Innovative and creative individual and an inspiration to students at Gateway she looks for ways to help her peers and encourages everyone to do their best every morning shams's outside greeting students and giving high fives wishing everyone a great day when someone is new to our campus Shams volunteers to show them around she is always asking and looking for ways to help teachers and her peers and is the type of student adults can ask to be a mentor she is focused on setting good examples academically and socially she is a gem to have as a Gateway Gator we love you [Applause] yes who did you bring uh I brought my brother and my dad today [Applause] all right and our final recognition is Miss Vanessa celaya come on up [Applause] although it's Vanessa's second year at Gateway it is her first year as a full-time teacher and she's doing the most incredible job with some of the most wonderful and sometimes squirrely kindergartners she's calm and patient dedicated and reflective resilient and kind she's willing to try new things and then willing to try even more new things if her first attempt didn't work her kids have fallen in love with her and she's an extraordinary addition to our staff at Gateway we couldn't be more pleased to witness all the amazing things she's teaching in her classroom and are excited to see her continue to shine we love you and who did you bring tonight I brought my mom and my dad back there [Applause] we're gonna we're gonna squish for a picture version one two three okay [Applause] all right Gateway Gators thank you now we're going to celebrate our hva Mr Dolan come on over [Applause] Dr Foley board members cabinet that is here thank you guys very much for having us uh this is our second year and it's it's amazing of the growth we've had and I just love the fact that we get to uh celebrate some kids and some staff members so let's start with Bennett Foley come on up here buddy [Applause] so Bennett who's here with you so um I'm here with my dad and and with my grandpa [Applause] so Bennett this is his second year and why I chose Bennett is just because of the academic and social growth for this young man first time I really remember seeing Bennett as last year when we did our cornhole tournament um and every time I see him since then I just see a a different kid somebody who's just more uh social with his classmates seems to really really enjoy school he works really really hard I know I talked to Grandpa about the amount of time they spend on it so Bennett we appreciate you and we thank you for how hard you work so thank you [Applause] Ashlynn Gower come on up here thank you [Applause] why don't you tell us who's here with you my mom my dad and my three brothers Chase Ethan and Cole [Applause] so Kohl's online Ethan's online Chase was online and now in college and you are online and you are doing phenomenal and that's why I picked you uh I don't know if you remember the time you came out of your car and you said hey do you guys have an honor roll and I thought no I don't but I'm going to and then I went back and I started looking at grades and looking at all the wonderful things you did and I just think you should be recognized for how awesome you are and the things you do when you're in the classroom so congratulations [Applause] so teachers I chose a teacher that's online with k6 and a teacher that's online with 712 so Nicole why don't you come on up here foreign because last year we had a second grade teacher and she didn't work out so then I taught second grade and uh Angie said why don't you call Nicole maybe she'll come and so she did and then as that year ended we said hey Nicole do you mind maybe teaching I don't know sixth grade and would you mind being our interventionist as well and she said Okay so the flexibility she's an amazing teacher we just so appreciate you so thank you [Applause] and last but certainly not least El Anita Timmins [Applause] we have 27 teachers that are online uh all but two also teaching our district at their home site and so they balance their home duties which are the most important and their online duties and what I mean by that is they still give back to their kids they still give them feedback Etc but Anita just kind of goes the extra mile I'll call her and I'll just say hey what do you think about this and she just gives me honest feedback about how things are set up in our programs or what maybe we could change and um to be honest most of it is really really good and I usually take so I just really appreciate you and thank you [Applause] we'll take a picture with these wonderful points of pride all right over here one two three thank you [Applause] okay I'm gonna invite our associate superintendent Miss Sherry Richards because now we're going to celebrate our a-rated schools and we're going to celebrate with our administrators we have some banners so Mrs Richards I will be I will be your Vanna Banner girl and you do the introductions thank you Dr Foley vice president Anderson members of the board this is a special evening as we get to highlight several of our schools as you all know every one of the schools in Higley is amazing I've never worked in a place where the parents the students the teachers and the administrators work so hard so tonight we get to highlight our a rated schools by the Department of Education in the state of Arizona so we're going to start alphabetical order you will come up and we'll take your picture we're going to get everybody up here at once and we'll see how it works so beginning with Bridges Elementary principal Jeff Bickel [Applause] foreign Todd Berg congratulations [Applause] and as I want to say something about your hard work dedication in The Bridges Community you you hit the nail on the head Mrs Richards with uh just highlighting all the amazing stakeholders we have at our campus between the students the staff the kids or the parents as well um I can't it's been a tough few years right and uh I can't thank our people enough for the hard work and dedication they put in through the adversity through all the changes and uh to still be an a we're related for that so thank you thank you next school oh I should take all right our next school with an a rating is Centennial Elementary [Applause] we have principal Rachel Broadley assistant principal Matt burville what an amazing campus and I know Miss broadly has a few words to say she loves bragging on her staff and her kids and maybe your AP I'm not sure sometimes no just kidding um I guess just thank you to everybody that supports our kids all the way from our bus drivers they're amazing to get our kids here in school it's a whole effort across the district for everybody um to miss Carla our crossing guard who everybody knows and loves on ranch house to our registrar for taking attendance everybody um just everybody so it's not just the teachers it's not just the students not the parents it's a whole team that's here to support our students and our school so thank you guys thank you [Laughter] Curtis that's a superintendent I don't know [Applause] all right next step is Chaparral Elementary School [Applause] we have principal Christine Hansen an assistant principal Terry pepper the they are the sharks they talk about it all the time so I'm going to give you another opportunity Christine to brag okay okay all right yes proud principle of the Shark Tank um and as Mr bicalad said it has certainly been a challenging couple of years I have never been more proud to work alongside the the teachers the staff the parents of our community as we taught and persevered through a pandemic you know now we're teaching out of this crisis of the pandemic and just learning and growing together so uh couldn't be prouder to be alongside these these folks as well as my amazing assistant principal so thank you and congratulations sharks go sharks [Applause] foreign [Applause] all right it's HTA you're up next [Applause] now we have principal Karen bacon assistant principal Amanda day and they are very proud of this Banner right Miss Bacon we went through a few years you know that thing called covet it kind of knocked us off but where are you going to hang this I don't know yet we'll have to let our teacher team that's here to support us this evening help us decide HTA why don't you go ahead and stand up in the back there foreign I think one of the things that I'm most proud of with what we've built at our school is just a sense of community and family we show up for each other every single day through the good times and through the tough times we have had a lot of both and we're very proud of what we've learned through all of it everything is an opportunity to improve so I want to thank Amanda day our teachers that are here and those who are not able to be here for just every thing that we put into loving our kids and supporting them through and teaching them along the way our support staff and in the district office staff as well we couldn't do what we do without being able to call you and and get the support that we need right when we need it and you're always there so thank you for that and our governing board thank you um so proud to be an HTA Hawk [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right next step is Power Ranch Elementary [Applause] home of the Panthers so assistant principal Michelle cutas here Mr reuter couldn't be here I take it okay so she represents well and now she gets to talk about what a wonderful school power is I didn't know there was a speech section Mr reuter our wonderful principal is off at science camp with our sixth graders so that's why he can't be here he's off building relationships with teachers and students and having a good time I'm sure um like everyone else has said it's been a tough couple of years that we've gone through we're extremely proud of our students our staff our community for stepping behind us and helping us through all of that and we're just proud to be Power Ranch Panthers all right foreign [Applause] all right what what uh what okay what would a celebration be like without scorpions in the room let's go Santan we have principal Ray Mercado assistant principal Lindsey Reeves and I have to set a timer before I give him the microphone I just want to say thank you to all of you out here tonight for supporting Higley first of all then down to all stakeholders from kids to transportation to board members to I.T to everyone that supports what we do it's hard but you have dedicated Higley staff that love what they do they love what they do at SanTan we've worked really hard to ensure that everyone feels welcome loved and just really focus on that whole student to make sure that they feel it's a safe place to learn and to fail but we want to make sure we provide them that safety net to grow because we all want to see our kids grow we want to see our system grow so thank you everyone thank you Mrs Reeves for being my right hand my left hand and everyone else that has been part of this a because it takes a village so thank you thank you thank you foreign all right we need secondary schools up here so let's start with Higley High School [Applause] we have principal Allen Fields here he is the proud principal of this secondary campus who's done amazing things and I know he's got a lot to say but do you need a time or two [Laughter] so I'm very proud to be at Higley High it's an amazing School obviously we have amazing feeders that help contribute to our success but hopefully we're taking kids to the next level um hopefully we'll be back here early next month because we had an A-Plus accreditation visit so I believe we're going to receive that award and we'll be back here to be recognized again sounds like a deal [Applause] all right there's a school that talks about dominating over and over and over and I think that's Williams Field High School [Applause] we have principal Dan Fox with us this evening he's going to say a few words what it means to be a Blackhawk yeah I guess the first word that comes to mind is um dominates right now um but seriously we we do have I mean that isn't woven into our core Fabric and uh the success we've shown over the last couple years with me being a part of that campus and but but it all starts with our teachers it starts with our families starts with our students I people always ask me you know why is Williams Field so awesome why do you guys dominate so much and um I I say it's because of our families it's because of our students it's because of our teachers the hard work and the dedication uh dominates uh stands each one of those an acronym for our campus but we have four core values that we pick out from that selflessness Integrity uh dedication and mental toughness and um you know it's our teachers show that all the time and that's the reason we have that and our students show that and so that's why we are number 12 for uh our traditional high schools in the state of Arizona when it comes to this a rating thing here so we're very happy to be number 12 in the entire state so thank you governing board for all your support thank you Dr Foley members of the cabinet [Music] all right it's picture time with your governing board who makes all of this possible all right we're going to line him up and Curtis can you guide and direct this we need to go back to alphabetical order yeah I'm not worried about Africa alphabetical order I'm just worried about Maybe do you want him thank you [Music] well it's destroy Williams Field on the background oh yeah [Music] [Applause] okay you can go ready one two three okay [Applause] Steve Harvey take a sleeve we'll get you to sleep never mind thank you oh wait oh it doesn't matter families we are grateful you came tonight but we also know you have school tomorrow so if you would just like to leave now that is fine or you're more than welcome to stay all right thanks very much [Laughter] I love it you said that oh I need a glass system so I'm seeing blurry foreign [Music] vice president Anderson members of the board we've also pulled up as part of the superintendent's report tonight just an example of some of the upcoming events as you know with your busy calendar says by no means is not all of them these are just some highlights of things that are happening in our community or evening events that are occurring over the next couple weeks and that concludes this evening's superintendent's report thank you Dr Foley and congratulations to all the staff and students and support staff and Volunteers in the schools for the ratings what a wonderful evening that we're having so far appreciate everybody being here and celebrating with us well we're going to move next to the request to speak we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize District Personnel policy Keb provides a process for complaints about Personnel speakers should be aware that false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-431.01 H action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your remarks to three minutes we do have a request to speak this evening it is Mr John Mason foreign good afternoon I'm very pleased to be here and I just wanted to bring something to your attention we do have a serious financial problems in this district and we need to look at everything to see where we can save money so that way we are a strong District in the event that we have a severe Financial downturn we have to be strong so what immediately comes to my mind is private placement of our students last time I was there I saw that we had an expenditure of one million dollars on private placements for just a very limited number of students and I'm not even sure if that included all of the costs associated with that so the question is is is you know is how can we bring that down and what are we really achieving by sending them to private placement um I I would like to paraphrase with the director of special education teachers said from the last board meeting and this is just a paraphrase but I think I got the essence down correct quote private Day School students have needs that we are unable to meet in the public school she continues quote the students have extensive needs that the staff are not capable of meeting okay I got that part now this is where the problem comes in and this is based on my observation as as Decades of of teaching as a vision teacher who worked with students in public schools and in private placements and uh so so this this is just an example of my concern and this is where I asked my friend he said that he's a private he teaches at a private Day School where he sends students six of them he said that that the school provides no specialized training for teachers the school hires teachers with no prior experience or training in education in fact one of the teachers was 18 years old when he was hired now I'm pretty confident about that about that information I have a very high level of confidence that these teachers do not have special education do not even have education training and they come in there with no experience and yet they're teaching the I'm they said that the 18 year old boy was indeed a teacher so I inclined to believe that he was so this is my my question and and I really want an answer to the question because it's such a huge budgetary expense and so I'm asking so how are you not able to meet the needs of students when untrained teachers can meet the needs of the students you must feel that otherwise you wouldn't be sending them to that school so I really think that we need to consider you know how we're spending our money here thank you okay we are going to move to the consent agenda items and I move that we approve the agenda as uh presented um are there any questions about the agenda or anything we want to bring forward at this time okay all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero okay we will now move on to the information items um the first item is the first review of the 2023 2024 capital outlay budget and Mr Moore will you be presenting sure yeah I just want to mention that um the community is now able to see those questions that we've asked beforehand so if you want to know what they are you can find them online with the agenda thank you thank you that's right thank you good evening vice president Anderson members of the board excuse me I'm still getting over a cold so uh bear with me as I uh present tonight before I dive into the presentation I do want to highlight today the Senate did pass an exemption to the aggregate expenditure limit for this current fiscal year so that does enable the district 2 spend down its full budget capacity and we are not subject to the potential cuts that would have taken place at March 1st so good news we do have an exemption this year the on the flip side we will face the same situation next year as there wasn't a permanent fix to the Agri expansion limit so more on that on the next presentation regarding mno so let's talk some capital budget first I wanted to notate I added a presentation acronym slide it was brought up with community members as well as governing board members and our staff I'm guilty of it I do use a lot of acronyms that's just the nature of school finance and so I've combed through this presentation and provided an acronym kind of syllabus per se I'm not going to go through all these but this is a reference point for anybody who wants to watch this back they can navigate to this page and know exactly which acronyms that we are talking about in the presentation uh diving into the presentation um I wanted to address to what is capital budget and why this is different than our mno and operations budget the district is allocated by the state two two main budgets uh per the the school funding formula we've talked about mno we had a first review of that the last boarding meeting tonight we're talking about District additional Assistance or what we'll refer to as capital the main difference of what a capital slash equipment criteria is is the three bullet points there so one Capital items that we purchased with this budget typically have a useful life of at least one year they're typically repaired rather than replaced when worn or damaged and they're an independent unit that retains its original shape appearance character which also includes constructing renovating remodeling buildings so I did provide some examples of each of those but I just wanted to state that this capital budget while we do have the preview of transferring MMO dollars from this fund specifically we are limited to what we can expense these sellers on yeah all right looking at the highlights for the fiscal 2024 capital budget the main highlight here is um first the daa or capital budget is going on its second year of being fully restored by the state um that full restoration was back to the 2008-2009 funding levels as there's been no inflation adjustments up until this last year so that full budget of approximately 6.8 million this is the second year of the district's being able to use that full capacity uh second the state is providing um in the K-12 budget bill that was passed last year there's a small inflation adjustment over the next three years this is year two of three that inflation and adjustment is 20 million dollars uh for for all districts and so we'll see a small increase in that adjustment but not enough to support um ongoing expenses permanently from this fund second there's an emphasis on major maintenance projects um most of the funding from these um from this emphasis is going to be transferred from the maintenance and operations budget to fund these projects I'll highlight those on on Slide 11.
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foreign very similar types of things we had excess success with choir and Orchestra at the mountain Point High School solo and Ensemble Festival they're getting ready for their state it's in the report I'm not going to read through every individual but we did receive very positive uh comments from the judges about how kids and how well they did they are getting ready to audition for the region choir and the region Orchestra in the upcoming weeks that we'll also move on to States drama same kind of uh situation performing at the Eastern Arizona Festival theater again a significant number of rankings 18 rankings of superior I'm again getting ready for some additional competitions in the spring FBLA had students Emma Ricks and Quentin Kendall play second third in photography photographic knowledge uh man Quentin also got first in journalistic knowledge again it's another CT program I know John Scroggins going to have a little bit of presentation on our CT e programs and our Student Government I don't think this is all that Miss Lofts is talking about but they did also receive the aascs Platinum award for community service and charitable contributions there are lots of different ways that our kids are are doing outstanding things uh in our district so um just want to make you aware of that uh you can see on the upcoming um calendar uh the 20th we do have no school on that Monday because of President's Day and then we are moving our March 1st board meeting has moved to March 1st from what will be March 8th that's a Wednesday still I think I had a typo but I fixed it but that is because of spring break so we don't have a we don't have a a board meeting during spring break so just note that it'll be March 1st and then we want to take a little bit of time for just a quick special recognition so if Laura could Ridge could come up for a second [Applause] we just want to take a moment to recognize Mr Dave Willoughby if you don't know who Dave is I'll let Laura talk in a second but I'll let me I'll do a little one and Dave's a security guard at CMS and we had a recent security incident CMS and we just want to recognize uh what Dave did to go above and beyond I'm going to let Laura explain it all but again when we talk about kids we also talk about staff and we are a people business and we have amazing kids and we have amazing staff and we just want to make sure that we always recognize them solar I'll turn it over to you from Colorado Springs and then we're here tonight um but I wouldn't miss this moment for anything to recognize one of my staff members Dave Willoughby he is our new security guard at Combs Middle School this year um he replaced a security guard that we had for quite um some time so when he came in it was quite a transition um but he won the kids over very quickly with his kindness and it doesn't hurt that he carries candy in his pocket and he'll work with children and reward them for like being on class to time being to class on time um funny how this little piece of candy can get somebody to get to class on time um Dave said he came to us um just when he needed us the most and I told him the same thing um his just kind spirit and how much he genuinely cares for the kids you can't buy that type of thing you just get lucky and we got lucky with Dave um just a a few a little bit ago we had an Uninvited Guest on our campus and Dave was doing what he was supposed to be doing and he was where he was supposed to be at the time that we had an Uninvited Guest on our campus and Dave um came into an interaction with the um uninvited guests and just um I don't go in too many details but um just through himself to try to Aid the officers that were in pursuit of uh of a person who wasn't invited on our campus and so um he didn't think twice we were able to see it on video and um the kids were able to see part of it too and when I tell you that he has been a hero on our campus um I can't even tell you the amount of kids that have come up to him during lunch or they made them posters and cards and gifts and candy and just some kind of things you don't really expect from middle school kids they have done all of that and so I just want to say thank you to Dave because you didn't think twice to make sure that our kids were safe and again um you can't buy that type of loyalty or you hope that people are at school that care for your kids that much and Dave is at our school and he cares for our kids that much so Dave will you please come up and let me present you with this blue Apple [Applause] you want to say anything oh that got me off guard um into Gomes middle school because I retired in July it lasted two weeks being around the house drove me crazy and I do love kids I did 20 years in the jail in Pinal County and uh it's kind of like a little mini prison but I I can interact with them on a positive note and I've had a lot of success working with the kids and I've enjoyed it when our little intrigger came in I actually knew him from the jail um although I don't think he recognized me in civilian clothes so I tried to do what I could for the kids he said some naughty words to me and I think I said a naughty word to him bad and I said not my kids and not my staff so there we go thank you thank you we also take this time to recognize other employees a lot of times when we do this employee recognition uh we have I'm sorry oh sorry I'm sure could I just go back to one thing from your report before we get to the next part of the agenda um the hashtag forward uh evening presentation it was at Ranch yes do you know how many parents attended because I'm curious to see because I'd like to get more and more parents involved yeah I don't think the numbers were as high as they wanted I haven't had a chance to check with Sue on the specifics I know uh Miss Pascal did one over at um uh Simonton I think in December and the numbers are a little bit bigger and so we're continuing to work on ways to to get our parents involved I was part of uh and we sent a team over to a program called School connect over at GCU a couple of weeks ago that that it's built upon School connections with Community Partners be it parents and or business people and so it's just a way that we're looking to maybe do something different to increase the number of interactions we have in a positive way with our community so not as great as they wanted to but I think the one they had I wanted to say last year was was very well attended so County Ebbs and flows depending on what's going on in people's lives thank you so we do do employee recognitions and it's based on uh there's any time where it's a month that recognizes as an employee group or a day or a week and we are not always able to bring every single one of the individuals forward because we have a number of them in our district so we try to get representatives from around the district from each of the schools if it's a school-based thing to recognize and well this week is national school counselors week across this country and so we've gotten some representative counselors from around the district but they do represent all counselors in the district I would call the names and have them come up and then we'll just read a little short statement of appreciation so at Ranch Elementary Latoya Bernard [Applause] Combs Center for Success Julia Godin CTA Latasha hagert [Applause] jorian joints from Ellsworth [Applause] Natasha Miller at Harmon [Applause] Jolene Peterson from the high school [Applause] Madison rankson I may have mispronounced it so I apologize from CMS [Applause] and Christina Ramsey from Simington and and I just want to take a moment to to when we talk about school counselors those are another one of the unsung heroes that work with your children on a daily basis on lots of different things it could be a career planning situation it could be some conversations about things that are not going well on campus or their interactions with other students that are not going well with the pandemic there's any number of different issues that children are facing on a daily basis coming out of the pandemic and in many cases where they're going to go for some initial help is going to be with a school counselor they have worked with our teachers in order to make sure that we are helping kids in every way possible and it's that quiet job that's done every single day that maybe people don't recognize and see but truly they are those individuals that have heart of gold that make sure that they go the extra mile for our kids and so during National Counselor week we did want to take them I want to thank them so very much for everything to do for all of our kids in our district so thank you very much way to represent ladies [Applause] he is it's February is also CT month but I know Mr Scrabble Scroggins going to do a presentation as part of the high school here in just a second so I'll just let him do that and go from there so it's it's now the School portion cool volunteer uh yeah school and staff recognition hello uh Madam president and governing board members and Dr Wyman I'm Tony Loftus I'm the principal over at Combs High School and I am super excited to be here to recognize some distinguished leaders that we have on our campus that have worked dedicatedly for about two years to achieve this honor that has been bestowed upon them by the national student council and I would like to invite them up to please come join me in the front as I speak a little bit of all you guys have done so come on up you're going to see a whole bunch of them okay rise well that's like our whole audience [Applause] as I did some research to find out what it means to become a distinguished leader from the national student council I was in awe as to what all of these young people have done over the past two years to earn this achievement it comprises of 10 categories and within those 10 categories there's anywhere from eight to four subsets in each category of skills and artifacts that they have to show and produce and or write to learn about in regards to leadership specifically anywhere from leadership styles goal setting goal setting time management problem solving inclusiveness how to build an inclusive culture within their own student council and then delineate that into our own campus slide and I'm very excited about the students that have achieved this honor and I'm going to start by recognizing our seniors the seniors have built a culture that is going to perpetuate for many years and I want to thank you for doing that over this past two years our seniors are Brooklyn Bernal she's our treasurer [Applause] Julie Marr our historian [Applause] Kayla Bowen our vice president [Applause] Catherine Nevarez I I was you looked so like very reclusive cat you were like oh just honor me you're the president other seniors who have earned this Accolade are Hunter Claire Glenn Jones Macy Boyle we were uh Sadie Udall have I gotten all the seniors did I miss sunny you missed a couple I'll be honest we keep getting notification after notification day after day of another student in our student council who has earned this achievement up until what time did you get your last notifications this week or this morning 10 30 today we were still getting notifications from the national student council of our students who have earned this achievement and when I talk about two years worth of work that two years worth of work has been done within the student council class and worked collaboratively amongst themselves and led by Dr Nelson so we have to be sure and honor Dr Nelson and all of that he's achieved in getting students to to accomplish this achievement and if you ever have the time and you're just bored and you want to look at the national student council and what it means to be as distinguished leader it really is it's like three pages on a website of all the things that they have to do I was my job reading experience into to what I saw that they've had to be doing over the last two years um and I'm super excited about our now I'm not gonna say underclassmen because it's almost it's also 11th graders but our 11 tens and nines that have achieved this honor because they're going to continue to perpetuate this in our student council in our campus as well this is a huge accomplishment Dr weinman mentioned service leaders this is completely service leadership which is the type of leaders that we want and role models we want on our campus to show how you can lead and guide people to give more to their Community more to their campus and build greater capacity and these young people are doing that for us in regards to our 11th grader Savannah apostle 11th grader Ashlyn Tucker 11th grader Charlotte O'Brien [Applause] 10th grader Jade Rodriguez [Applause] 10th grader Ty Howard ninth grader Merrick Boyle [Applause] 9th grader Judith Onaway [Applause] 9th grader Riley Peak [Applause] did she come in like very last that was the 10 30 point Janie Conley if we don't have a certificate for you we'll get it for you but I I really I am so enamored by what you have accomplished and I Combs High Schools thanks you for the capacity that you're building thank you so much good job congratulations so bad I want to do that so bad can I photo bomber [Applause] thank you Dr Nelson tonight I also wanted to recognize the classified staff who without debt a doubt is serving the Combs High School I would like to invite Miss Kim top to the podium or the stand Miss tobb has worked this year in the science Town Department as a parapro and in her service to the department as a parapro not only is she serving special education students she's also serving general education students she doesn't care who she's assisting or she who she's helping and in that capacity she also doesn't care if she's helping a student or a teacher in this past year she has had to support a new teacher onto our campus she's had to support a first-year teacher into the the realm of Education as well as support a long-term sub she's done this in the realm of biology she's done this the in the realm of Earth space science as well as Integrated Science I always want to call it physical science Integrated Science so she's wearing a lot of hats and anytime that I talk to Miss top it always revolves around the student how can I best assist the student she even went to the point of going and getting her long-term sub certificate so if we had to utilize her as a long-term sub we could do that but her first question was in regards to how am I going to serve my students how am I going to serve my students who are in special education I have to be able to serve my students in special education always being her Focus point that I want to make sure that I'm able to serve my students so I want to honor you in the service that you give to Combs High School because without a doubt you are a model employee on our campus and it's all about kids and we thank you so much for that [Applause] thank you just as we want to honor a classified person we need to honor a certified staff member and I have invited Miss Bowen to come up and speak in regards to Dr Nelson and the service that he has service and Leadership that he provides to student council okay hi I'm Kayla Bowen and to start this off Nelly is our advisor for student council I'm the vice president and um student council holds a lot of responsibility and stress even though it's very fun and without Dr Nelson we definitely wouldn't be where we are um Nelly has dedicated 22 years of service towards student council here at Combs and he recently won an award at our ASE State conference and it was towards that and not only that our whole entire student council also won three of the highest level Awards we won an outstanding Council of Distinction two Platinum levels one for the service project award and one for the charitable contribution award and with that saying um I can undoubtedly say that Dr Nelson or as we call him D Nelly he has always made one thing a parent he loves student council and he loves his drive he loves to drive towards leadership and being the best for his students so they can bring out the best personalities with them themselves student council and myself would love to thank Dr Nelson for all of his commitment wisdom and inspiration that Roars through his character and it prevails through each easy and hard day your belief in US truly makes school life and ourselves better and you deserve this and thank you [Applause] thank you Dr Nelson [Applause] say I would want to thank Dr Nelson in regards to his service to me as a first time first time principal first year principal and then also new to the Combs Unified School District as well as new to Combs High School he has been a great resource for me personally and I thank him greatly for what he has done to help guide me as well thank you Dr Nelson and I appreciate your time and being able to honor Combs High School and thank you so much [Applause] okay Madam president members of the board Dr Wyman and members of our audience tonight thank you for the opportunity to address you all um February is a special month in our world at the high school and even at the middle school um it is CTE month across the country and if you're not familiar with CTE it stands for Career and Technical education it's an opportunity for students to get involved in their future at the high school level and so I'm going to share with you just a few things and then I'm going to turn it over to a couple of our our programs because really they can tell you that the story that's going on um you know how I am with this I'm just clicking away every time I come up here just keep pushing buttons just keep pushing nope is now okay I apologize I really okay so um a little bit about what we do in uh Career and Technical education uh first and foremost we do teach technical skills so we have 13 programs at the high school ranging from digital photography to agric science to some medical profession uh programs and so in those programs our students are taught skills that will help them enter into the workforce immediately following high school and for some of them even before they finish High School uh in addition to that we offer Hands-On instructions so our our students are experiencing what a person in the industry would experience they're using industry level equipment there's industry level standards that they're required to follow so it's really an experience that students get that again is is more than just your typical elective and I don't even like to call them an elective class it's a program of study but our students get that opportunity to to really see what it's like to be in the professional workplace we help them develop professional skills that's one of the largest concerns that employers have today is that we have employee employees that don't come to work with skills just the simple skills of how to communicate how to work with others and so forth and so part of Career and Technical education allows us to work with our students in developing those important skills they're able to take some micro credentials and I'll talk about those here in just a little bit and one of the things we have coming up here at the the beginning of March is mock interviews so they'll sit down with an industry leader in our community and they'll actually sit through an interview and have that practice we practice leadership skills so we have what's called student organizations it is not a club it is a student organization that is run by our students they attend leadership camps and Leadership conferences and they develop those skills that are necessary to be a leader when they leave high school and enter the workforce we as part of their program of work they are supposed to do community service and that looks differently for each of our 13 programs but it could be anything from offering a health fair for our community to volunteering to do some work at a local hospital and so forth and so on we also support academic standards as part of our requirement so our CT teachers are required to integrate math Ela and science standards into their curriculum and make it relatable to their CTE content and then of course we do a lot of career exploration and development so they have a chance to look and see what the industry is all about to see if it's really something you want to do see what the job market is like what the Outlook is like over the next 10 years and so forth so a lot is going on in our CTE programs uh we've kind of adapt adopted the model that if it's important to or for our students it's important to us so sometimes we know that as teachers we we think we know it all and hats off to my teachers because I think they know a lot um but what we don't always know is what what students need and so we have to pay very close attention to that and so if we know that students want or need leadership skills then we need to make sure that we're doing that in the classroom if they want or need an industry certification we need to make sure that we're offering that in our programs so we're we're trying to pay attention to what the students really do want and need just something about Career and Technical education and this is some national stats and it's something for us to realize is that current technical education is not the vocational Ed of old vocational Ed of old of 20 years ago oftentimes it was for those students and and you know what I'm talking about oftentimes counselors would put them in a vocational Ed program because they just weren't College Bound and that's not what CTE is today CTE is for anybody and everybody in fact we've had our valedictorian from a couple years ago take a CTE class or senior year and he wished that he'd take it taken it sooner and got more involved so it really is for everybody but here's some statistics that are interesting 95 percent of CT students graduate high school that's 10 percent higher than the national average um lifetime earnings so oftentimes we think well if you go to college you're going to make more money in a lot of cases that's true but there's another side to that that oftentimes our students can go straight to work right out of high school with a certification start earning an income not have student debt and over a lifetime oftentimes their earnings are more than those who might have a post-secondary degree when they do go to post-secondary you'll see 78 of CTE graduates enroll in post-secondary education full-time so again it's not those students that aren't College Bound many of our students are in fact going to college and then what's really huge is the Dropout prevention and this has to do with um in in my opinion students have a purpose to go to school so if they're involved in a program one they like one that they can see that's going to benefit them after graduation they're more likely to go to school they're more likely to take School more seriously so some very interesting statistics about out CTE programming so at Combs High School I wanted to highlight two specific programs and I I threw our our two of our newest teachers um in the fire we have two fantastic teachers one is Krista Claypool Krista is our nursing assistant program instructor great story about her she was a district nurse we didn't have a teacher with some cooperation collaboration with Dr Dukes in her Department we were able to NAB her for half a day and she does a fantastic job and I'm going to let her share a little bit about that what she does and then following Mrs Claypool then we're going to turn the time over to some of our agri-science program students who are also members of FFA their instructor also wonderful teacher she's this is their second year with us she is taking a test right now and that would be Mrs Robinson so she couldn't be here today so I'll turn the time over now to Ms Claypool [Applause] foreign I'm vertically challenged so Madam president Dr Wyman board Community I am very excited and feel very honored that I was asked to come and speak um I am very new at this whole teaching ordeal I am a nurse by trade is passion of mine and a CTE is also a passion of mine um because I am a product of CTE so many moons ago what did you call it the Vocational School of old something like that yeah so um I was part of that 20 plus years ago thanks John and um I actually started out as I went through a CTE program at a district um here in Arizona and I was a cosmetologist I did cosmetology for 19 years I ran my own business a successful business all the while putting myself through school to be a nurse so it funded me for both my degrees actually and I actually made more as a 19 year cosmetologist as I than I did as a brand new nurse coming out of school so that was that was interesting but um I've always had a passion for nursing in the healthcare field so I knew I wanted to go that direction and that's what got me there so not only do I stand here as a product of that so I can speak of how it can transform your life um I'm just very passionate about um what I do and the fact that I get to now teach future Healthcare Providers is just it's awesome so this is what I get to do every day look at this place it's amazing so I was at another Facility Who will not be named and I will say that our facility is like wow compared to what I saw we have one of the best facilities that I have seen we have nine medical beds and this was a big facility that paid that students pay a lot of money to go to um and we have like high-tech equipment a lot of our equipment and things come from Grants um which John plays a big part in getting us a lot of different grants so that we can get the equipment get the high-tech software that we use um we get donations from different community members we have a regional advisor committee that helps us out in telling us like what are the new things that are out in the industry they're actually coming and visiting us on the 22nd to see our facility and they can give us feedback so they're very helpful but um yes we have amazing equipment we have I mean literally we could probably take care of patients in there if we had oxygen and air set up okay pretty awesome all right here's some interesting facts about our program so as a new nursing assistant coming out of the program they actually end up they're CPR certified and they get six college credits because it's dual enrollment and they can make anywhere from 29 and this is Arizona stats okay so anywhere from 29 the average is 32 but anywhere from like 29 to 36.
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foreign I love you test test I'd like to welcome everyone to our letter jacket award program I know there'll be a few people that'll still be coming in as as we're speaking we usually have our award in the fall um unfortunately the storage place that houses all of our jackets burnt um so they had to reorder them redo the entire thing so that's why it was delayed and that's why we're having it in the winter time I would like to first start with congratulating all 67 of our award winners for their dedication and commitment to their activity please give all of them behind me big round of applause thank you I would like to also thank all of our coaches teachers staff and administrators for their support of our extracurricular activities I want to take just a moment to explain how to earn a letter jacket and how we get them you must first earn a varsity letter in your sport or extracurricular activity on or after your sophomore year with that being said every sport is different whether it be you had to play so many quarters in a contest or if you're just on a roster so every sport is different and how you earn a varsity letter after earning your varsity letter you get size for a jacket at no cost to the student then the fall of your junior or senior year you'll receive your jacket we have been very fortunate to have First Federal banks sponsor our letter jackets and pay for them through their generosity our students have had the opportunity to proudly wear their jackets with no cost to them or their family please give a round of applause to First Federal Bank [Applause] with that being said I want to now turn the program over to our sponsor Jim Saylor who is the president of First Federal Savings and Loan thanks Jim thank you and good morning as Stacy mentioned I'm Jim Saylor from the class of 1976.
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of tomorrow we'll begin as we always do with the Pledge of Allegiance you please rise that's weird um okay uh so with first item on our agenda is our PTO report uh could you stand please so people can since we have so many people here thank you [Music] Phillies highly recommend even if you don't have something going on keep in mind also this week uh Friday is our chance um right now we currently are running a fundraiser that goes to the end of Friday um you purchase um and uh the best part about this official now um the best part is that once we reach 25 pairs the company gives us socks to donate to a local organization so what we decided to do with that is we also decided to extend that into a toiletry Drive so for the month of February we're hosting a toiletry Drive each it's a competition among the grades each grade has been assigned a specific toiletry item to donate their boxes outside the office in the lobby and the grade that commit that collects the most toiletries wins a prize of an extra recess and that recess is going to be monitored by Mr retail and the snapman so that the teachers of those grades get a little break for themselves as well we also included the staff if they want to wish if they wish to donate an item there's a specific item for them to donate as well we also have a spirit week coming up when it starts February 27th that has a Dr Seuss theme to that and um we're looking to get a Lego Club up and going that should be coming up in a few weeks and um planning has started going underway for our Spring Fling event which is which last year was hugely popular so we're looking forward to having another great event like that wonderful thank you and thank you for everything you do for the school uh we now have a presentation achievement by the BTS yes you're in committee my bet to be projected upon you are I shall depart foreign [Music] foreign [Music] uh I can I can just kind of start as we go and we're coming up so uh every fall uh we get our Smarter Balance results coming in uh and that data is presented out to the board I think it's really important data we want to be able to take a look at that longitudinally it gives us a good snapshot of our students achievement in their scores uh today we're here after our winter Benchmark uh window taking a look at several other aspects of data and it's being presented by our steering committee who is amazing as part of our work with this we're not only presenting for four wheels to presented out to the staff and as I let them know I'm always really appreciative as I am typically put on stage and kind of in this space but I know it's not always everyone's Forte so I really appreciate their hard work their effort and their willingness to join the part of this presentation um the reason we're doing this is because smarter balance is just one aspect of what our school does and what our students are doing so um we want to be able to tell the entire story of what we're seeing for our students what our teachers are able to accomplish with their instruction um and it really gives us a chance to be able to give a whole picture of the school and a whole picture of children uh we're going to be including discussions around attendance and discipline data our Odessa and social emotional learning our climate survey results and then additionally our iready reading and math scores and along the way we'll also be talking about not only what the data is which is important but I think what's really important is thinking about not only what it is but what we're doing with that so uh without further Ado I'm going to turn it over to working first um [Music] so we're going to talk about attendance and behavior data first so last year just in comparison um our chronic absenteeism rate was at 6.9 which is 25 students that means that there were 25 students with 18 or more days out of school this is well below the state average which last year was 23.7 in the state of Connecticut so this year um below these are our numbers for this year so right now as of January 26th we have 38 students that have five days or more absent and then we have 119 between 6 and 10 days which is 30 of our population and then that bottom one is where we really like to focus in on those kids that have more than 10 days out so we have 36 kids right now um which is nine percent these numbers are slightly higher than where we were last year and we can attribute this to many things one masks are off this year we've had a number of illnesses running through our school Lou RSV I'm sure you all know or have heard about it um stomach bug things like that so and students are not coming into school when they're sick which is what we want um but making sure we're having open communication with them and understanding of why they're not in the building Behavior referrals we are at 91 this year that is below where we were last year um what beings those are a positive recognitions from teachers to students we're at 543 which is up from last year so um we are up with positive recognitions and um lower with our Behavior referrals which is our process is uh positive reinforcement so we have pause that we hand out um PBIS award which is monthly each class has a PBIS award that is given during our community meeting and then there are supports in place for those students with five or more behavioral yeah the absenteeism do you keep records of what how many absences you believe to be due to illness yeah versus School avoidance or other yeah because as you said we want kids to stay home when they're ill right whereas we want to know if there are other behavioral reasons yeah I meet with um our school nurse uh Caitlin also every other month just to check in and see which students that she is aware of that were sick or had so just some next steps um at the end of this month we're going to be sending those attendance letters out again for students that have 10 or more absences just to communication with families and then conference with families of children uh with more than 14 000 yeah backslide behavioral at 91 kids how many of those that is something that we talk we have a monthly uh a weekly Behavior meeting so we are constantly talking about those students that have prefix referrals and any students with five or more have some type of con we're in the consultation process where they're we have a plan for them how many have required six or seven what is a caught being so a quad being is something that teachers can use as a positive recognition for students um so they might be caught being kind or caught um being a good friend and Mr Reed's whale will read the clock beings every morning on our morning news broadcast to recognize those students so that's a positive that's a positive yeah and it's at home yeah 543 is good yeah because that sounds like we'd be very concerned if it wasn't yeah caught being good okay so on the behavior side of things our next steps on the climate committee last year created a behavior Matrix with different behaviors and staff responses we're continuing to revise that behavioral referral process and the BCS staff is going to lead professional learning this year on tier one Behavior interventions and I want to make sure people appreciate enough to know if I'm mistaken about this I know it's apparent that if you're keeping home your kid because they're sick and then you get letters saying your kids got 10 options it's kind of annoying so I just want to tell me yeah I think that's a law that 10 days regardless of the reasons yeah it's not a judgment on the part of the school right has flexibility about even if they know that the kids know and there's that correct that is correct and there's certain um reasons why we can put in an excused absence after 10.
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right all right let's call the meetings order at uh 701 thank you pose in arms pledge allegiance [Music] to the Republic for which it stands one nation [Music] foreign ER arms post s right face forward March foreign here Bridget here Julie here Brad Russell absent and Luisa here so recognition is tonight spotlighting School West Side Middle School Academy okay all right hello everyone thank you for having us tonight my name is Michael Flynn I am the on-prem assistant principal at Westside Middle School Academy Mrs blue our principal and leader I wanted to be here tonight but unfortunately due to circumstances Beyond her control she cannot be here but I know she really wanted to be here tonight We Have Allison Tran behind me Maya Johnson E.J Mathis for part of the National Junior Honor Society and Mrs Barlow our magnet coach at Westside Middle School to live behind me the two students will be speaking towards the end uh so tonight is our Spotlight on West Side Middle School Academy and the first thing I would like to point out and uh the screen up there is our original School logo the West Side Warrior Crest and mascot which was created by our by our resident artist and art teacher Mr DG of diazepi as we started the year Mrs blue and I focus on a simple model for the staff and students of simple safe and successful so SQ we wanted to keep things straightforward and simple a lot of things have gone on uh during the summer we stress school safety the first few months and wanted everyone to feel successful with their hard work this stands for the significant loss of our commute of our school community that experience during the summer along with the fall and from the school's founding principle Mrs blue and I wanted to highlight this model to the change lost and uncertainty many were experiencing with the change going on at West Side um so we it was really critical for us to start the school year in a positive tone and with the help of Mr autop a seventh grade teacher at a school uh we here's a sample of a video that he created uh the first week of school in order to set a positive tone the first week of school year [Music] not spending time with my friends I talk to people about my issues trying to have a good attitude that usually just call my friend go to someone that you rely on to talk about how how you feel so they can try to make it make you feel better hey you don't make it bad take a sad day and make it better remember to love into your heart then you can start to make it better so you can catch the entire video on our school website uh Mr Alta took the song from day two to hey you about the differences everyone can make in their own lives and reflecting on the school year ahead of them um Mrs blue and I along with the staff have also set strong academic tone by reviewing data with the staff and taking deeper analytic Dives in order to be aware of student strengths and weaknesses so I'm sure that's kind of hard to see up there I'm looking at my glasses but I think you'll get the main point along with taking deeper Dives with this task we included to students and a lot of analyzing their own performances I think you find that a lot of kids are really curious about how they did instead of taking a lot of these assessments tests or whatever and then they moving on not knowing exactly what happened they really do want to know what happened and they do want to be part of the process and what I do like about the i-Ready assessment that you've heard a lot about instead of a pass fail assessment where they get 70 or 80 percent it doesn't really work that way it gives them a point where they start and it's a win as long as they show growth so they get attainable successes that they can reach and when you meet with them you can give them those expectations for the next time so we included a lot of the kids and discussions whether it's their counseling advisory classes or wherever we could uh so they can be part of this process and take more ownership over their own education which I think is a big big important thing for kids to be able to do especially and to Middle School onward uh we push for double digit games and we were very happy to see that in January and the end in the January i-Ready test West Side students showed a total growth of 122 percent in reading and 67 uh growth in math so maybe it's hard to see there but what you want to see across each grade level is the fall test and you want to see big growth in the January tests and the green increases showing a lot of growth and more importantly those red ones decrease showing less kids being in that category uh Mrs blue and I have also focused on school climate and culture yes we want to keep it simple safe and successful but we want it to have a positive work environment where people simply are comfort that they're comfortable in a good work environment and they get along we focus on recognition collaboration appreciation design and teamwork and uh it's hard to see maybe there but on the top left hand corner you can see a teacher recognizing teacher bulletin board where teachers write remarks spotlighting another colleague uh and for the last meeting of the year we had a team building competition where the staff built gingerbread houses and through this event you saw creativity competitiveness but more importantly bonding take place and finally Mrs blue and I wanted to make ourselves accessible this year and approachable so we can listen to all concerns on time and encourage an environment the teachers can teach and students can learn from there you can also see samples of the gingerbread houses that the teachers built and competed with we also have been Relentless with improving student culture as well you will hear Mrs blue along with many staff members constantly referred to Sr squared which it basically means be safe be responsible and I mean be safe be respectful and be responsible the beginning of the year we saw a lot of major referrals especially in October and on the top left there it kind of shows the referrals by month and there were 115 in October 52 in November 44 in December going down and there was a little uptick in January to 91 but the main difference was that more of them for minor referrals as opposed to many of the major referrals that did happen in October um we use also West Side Awards let me get a sample of those here kind of like the little reward system used at West Side West Side awards are given for positive behavior right here and positive actions and which is a system where they can cash in five of these Awards and then they receive a coin I don't know where my uh West Side coin is but they get a coin and for every four coins they can trade it in for a West Side duck and then they can trade three West Side Dutch and receive some West Side swag so it's a way to get them involved and reward them for their positive behaviors along for every single one of these West Side awards given their names are also entered in a wheel of names and for every entry so they've received six entries in a month their names are put in six times in that month and uh we all get together and during advisory classes which at West Side they're kind of like counseling classes or SEL classes social emotional learning classes uh we all watch the will spin and six winners are chosen one for every grade and Academy and they can win small gift cards for Panera Dunkin Donuts Amazon and more and the kids get very excited at that time um and we also use restorative justice with involving a lot of the kids in peer mediations where they hear problems and try to come to resolutions after hearing both arguments of all parties involved yeah this one right here I think I went ahead and there's a sign of the be respectful be be safe be respectful be responsible and on the top right you see the referrals on the bottom uh excuse me left you see the West Side awards given in each grade so we've kind of strive for a five to one ratio five awards for every referral and when I mentioned uh that poster or that trade-in this is listed all over the school and it kind of gives you an idea of what kids trade in for their five tickets to Four Points to three ducks and then they can receive their swag at the end so you'll see these posted throughout the school uh as far as clubs activities and special events at West Side that we have musical theater and this year we're going to be doing a performance of The Lion King so I'm very excited they've been practicing I've been hearing the singing in the background from my office so I can't wait to see that also it says blue would kill me if I didn't mention these three-time award-winning literary and art magazines from West Side Warriors Middle School Magazine it says two years ago so I can pass this on so you guys can take a glance they kind of cover short stories poems and artworks from this uh from the kids and Mrs blue meets with the kids on Mondays and they have this award-winning Middle School Magazine which is a big pride and joy for her we have a yearbook like many of the other schools and girls who code and you can see them right there in the median center after one of their meetings uh we have the student council the National Junior Honor Society peer mediators and the exploration competitions and those are some samples of the competitions we've had we have days where they compete judges come in parents come in they look at the exhibits kids give presentations uh their judge under presentations and their project the hypothesis are either trying to prove or the history events that they're discussing about and they're not your common events um but finally uh I have two several Junior Honor Society students I have Allison Tran with us here today so she can come up or because she's going to speak a couple words about West Side along with the Maya Johnson and EJ Mathis so I'll give him the microphone right now hello we are um three of the officers at our school's National Junior Honor Society I'm the president Allison Alex Tran um to my left is Maya Johnson who is the vice president and to my right is EJ Mathis who is the secretary and so we were asked you today to talk about some things that we love about our school and I think that three of us um would definitely agree that it is about the community for various reasons personally I really love and admire the amount of diversity that is in our community as well as the strong bonds that I have formed and maintained during my time at last time um for me all my life and faced racial discrimination of any kind and I was especially worried about returning to middle school after Covenant hit because um I'm sure you guys know such a situations but at West Side I've been there for two years one year being deducted for covid and I've never really faced any major racial um concerns and I'm also a peer mediator at our school and I've only been called down once for a situation and so it wasn't really a safe place where we didn't have to worry about any problems that could go on with our day with loving staff who are very kind and appealing to our academic strengths and needs and our friends who are there for us to support us emotionally and academically and I feel it's been one of the greatest times in my life where I've been able to grow movies [Applause] so as you can see those are three exceptional students that we probably could expect big things in the future to come they impress every day and they're part of the leadership at west side and I'm very proud of them finally Mrs blue really wanted to celebrate cultures at West Side this year and she used a grant that allowed us to have five different cultural nights those are the tickets sent out for invitations for the parents her along with Mrs Cabrera are apparently liaison and a strong force in making these nights happen invited many of our parent population to the West Side to celebrate cultures it allowed many parents to come to the school who had never been we received many parents who mentioned how welcome they felt in our community and school and thus hopefully encourage many of them to be active participants in their children's school life because they are truly welcomed and neighboring so I'll finish up with a sample of these nights inviting you to have a glimpse of our cultural celebrations where we had Teachers Community leaders and some state representatives attended tonight is the spotlight on the west side but really a spotlight on Danbury schools since we all meet plan and strive for the same goals across the district here's a glimpse of that same district goal seen through West Side Middle School's eyes [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] so thank you for having us tonight and like many of the uh values from Danbury public schools the community cultures and one Community strong thank you for having us tonight [Applause] Mr Flynn when there's an event like that and I see some food over there send send invites to the board as well absolutely middle school and successful one of the only thing is representing your school in his district very well and really appreciate you coming out tonight and I really have a lot of proud parents in the audience so thank you for coming out and joining the journey thank you thank you very much so next is uh public participation the four welcomes mode participation and asset speakers please limit their comments to three minutes speakers may offer objective comments our school operations and programs that concern that the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints with inflammatory comments about the Board of Education personnel and students nor has any person connected with the Danbury school system first person for our soon solar saw sorry good evening first of all I'd like to start by saying that I am terrible public speaker I hate being in front of people so I apologize in advance if I get emotional skip around a little bit um it's a little bit ironic that I'm following that I did not know that was happening this evening but I'm here to express some concerns that I have and that I just wanted to share with all of you um my son is a student at West Side let's go a sixth grader um and we've been having a lot of issues I've got a lot of meetings with the school Personnel Mr Flynn and I spoke many times um I have copied you in many of the emails uh Mr Watson um and so my son's complaint is that he has not been being challenged hi um I understand the my background is in education I know a lot of teachers in the Danbury public school system personally from multiple schools in the district um so in diving into some of his issues I've noticed they're pretty much district-wide the students that are being reached right now that the focus is on is the students that are not performing where they need to be performing unfortunately we've worked very hard with my son to get him where he is and he wants to learn he's eager to learn and it sounds as though and I've been many meetings with the school that all that is going on in the classroom is a lot of i-Ready and my path in Computer Learning Khan Academy videos and very little teacher LED or teacher driven lessons um he is doing very well academically but that's not engaging him he's not the child that comes home and sits on the computer and is engaged that way at home playing games he likes he does it in short sense not for entire class periods not for a six hour school day or whatever it is um I was told that he spent the first three months of school relearning the fifth grade curriculum in math I was told by his math teacher and Rachel Saunders that that is because only 13 kids were ready for the sixth grade level to begin that he tested above it but what about those 13 kids for three months they had to sit there and do fifth grade work and he would come home with packets with a hundred problems saying you know I mean if you know 25 you know 100.
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For people participating remotely, please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify. When I call your name, unmute yourself and your time will begin. After your minute is completed, staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient manner. Thank you. Thank you members for being here. And let us start with Senate Bill 1518 relating to the Department of Education provides procurement exemptions for the Department of Education for certain goods, services, and construction. Sunsets 6:30 2026 to testify. Superintendent Heayashi, please. Aloha Chair Kanani, Vice Chair Kim, members of the committee, Keith Aayashi, Superintendent testifying on behalf of the Department of Education. This measure would provide the department with the flexibility to procure educational materials most beneficial to students, educators, and schools in a more timely and less cumbersome manner. The department supports this measure with one recommended change that that uh page eight, line 18 of the bill be amended to replace the $100,000 figure with $100,000 for goods and services and $250,000 for construction.
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I was portion to cover this if the legislature does not pass would have been eight hundred and six thousand dollars so that that hits us pretty hard for for our budget um this is also from Arizona School administrators Arizona Association of school business officials to make a long story short but we just got notified uh Dr shaboks and I this afternoon at 2 46 PM Mr Hopkins also just signed up before coming into the meeting um this is from Arizona School administrators great news today the Arizona Senate approved house uh concurrent resolution 2001 a joint resolution already passed by the house to override the aggregate expenditure limit um no aggregate expenditure limit reductions will be required for the school year that pretty much means that aho does not have to worry like all the other districts in the state to have a hit on our m o which means that's 806 000 that stays with us going into the next year and so um but all the other districts also benefit from this as well so uh long story short is great news so that it's good to have a lot of our parents and teachers and families in the audience this is a tremendous cost for Ajo Unified School District but also other districts as well 50 60 70 million throughout the valley and in Tucson um we're not going to have to have 806 thousand dollars as well taken away because of the aggregate expenditure limit the Senate approved it and so um but you knew Mr Hopkins before I read this the great news and so did Angelina and Dr chabose and everyone else here so it's not a surprise and but also for our families and staff in the audience to is really great news and so this is a big benefit and I just wanted to share that with that with of you and that's my report uh Mr Hopkins and members of the board will keep it simple keep it brief and eight hundred and six thousand dollars that stays in our budget is always great news the letter no matter where you are great news indeed thank you the next item is Awards and recognition yes Mr President member of the board um this is something very special that we're starting today and we just want to uh we want to show that as a collaboration between students teachers and family recognize our students for academic excellence and growth but also for uh model behavior following the three R's respect respectful responsible ready to learn we want to get um every a grade before the end of the year so we're starting with uh three teachers today we wanted to try and have a combination of of Elementary primary to senior so that we can have a little bit of both at each meeting I just wanted to thank families Dr shabolism I want to thank all the families that are here for being supportive and thank you to our teachers the three teachers that are here I asked them if they could uh have a student in mind they told me they had a lot of students so it was really hard to you know all their students do a great job but they really wanted to pick an exceptional student and so I also want to thank Miss Angelina for their certificate design so what what I'll do is is we're just going to start with uh uh with Miss Cote I'll just kind of read real fast we have the certificates at the podium I'm just going to regroup briefly what they say but each teacher is going to give their personal touch uh and they're going to present their student and families and then uh the board would like to we would love to take a picture with all the recognition of all the students and families and staff we'll do it one at a time after all three I'll make the presentation so uh Mr Hopkins if I can go real fast and just anyone share what the certificate says and their school today will be first so it just it says here this is first being selected as superintendent student of the month uh from your from your classroom teacher says you are being selected by your teacher for your outstanding academic achievement based on excellence and growth in your classroom you have modeled great behavior that follows the Ajo Unified School District Red Raider expectations of being responsible respectful and ready to learn thank you for serving as an exceptional student leader in Auckland Unified School District that being said your teachers are going to talk a little bit more about you one at a time and then they're going to call you up and you're welcome to say anything students or parents also want to use this time to also say what you'd like to say this is your student and you as families your time to shine and Mrs Cote you got it sir a pleasant evening to our esteemed board members Dr soltero Dr Cheval some teachers parents students and gay I am very proud and excited to present the very first superintendent student of the month now this little young lady um she has very good leadership quality um when things needs to get done she gets it done and get it done correctly she also demonstrated kindness compassion and Grace she's very fun and enjoyable to be around so for preschool the superintendent student of the Monaco students camera Cruiser [Applause] foreign teacher so the one that I chose is Jordan Lopez Jordan is confident positive and a great role model for his classmates he is frequently among the first to help and Mentor other classmates Jordan is interested in his own learning listens attentively and makes a solid effort to avoid distractions that could interrupt the learning process he is a great example of a student who loves to go to school so for kindergarten we have Jordan Lopez [Applause] okay [Applause] next we have for our high school singer I believe uh hello everybody it's my pleasure to talk about Mr Zachary Miller now I have Zach twice as a senior ahead of him as an English student and also in a fitness class I got some good news and I got some great news uh the good news is that Zac has committed himself to just overall life Improvement mentally physically educationally and what else could you ask for but that's that's what school's all about right so Zach you've done it the right way you try hard every day I'm going to be more proud of you on your efforts riding and lifting weights and running reading across the board that's the good news uh with Zach the great news is there is not a more pleasant young man that walks our Halls um what could be more important than just having a young man that is so pleasant to walk in every single day and it's just a pleasure I'm I wish I had you three times a day that's right so we could uh rattle across me [Applause] oh yes I guess congratulations [Applause] I just wanted to give up at any members of the Lord who would like to share anything with any of our students who are recognize their families just wanted to see if there's any board members at this time we would like to say anything to our students families or staff well congratulations I mean this is a great honor I think to have this student of the month and I'm hoping this continues every month a brand new attribute for every month and have a new set of kids in here every single month congratulations yeah board members board meetings are always nicer when we have students here to give some input and it's just a great to see inspiring students and to recognize their work foreign in great school districts [Laughter] so did you want to do the photos now or wait until let's do about any parents with any parents want to say anything you're more than welcome to speak for more you're sitting or uh from the podium um your accounts also if you would like to recognize and say something about your superintendent student of the month thank you any comments coach koozer I know you're not shy yeah well I what they did is want to thank our teachers you know what you guys put up with a lot a lot uh and uh you know grateful that we have a safe environment that they can go to and learn and obviously Kendra loves going to school so it feels good being able to drop off you know that she's in good hands thank you so much for all your hard work any other parent what we can do here Laura Smith is on the record at what time uh 5 45 5 45.
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third there's a phase security upgrade so in our 22 bond proposal we had several security initiatives in there should I keep going there okay in the face security upgrades we had several security initiatives in there we are working on phasing those ins facing those security upgrades in with the budget capacity that we have available to us I do want to highlight too um some of the emphasis on major maintenance is outlined in this picture here this is a recent assessment taking at Chaparral Elementary The Leaky wall hydrant these are throughout the campus and they're causing severe stucco fracturing um one of the major projects is a Chaparral weatherization project to fix this particular issue looking at the detailed budget this is a process that we started a couple years ago outlining pretty much every single line item of our capital budget um going through this I'm just to briefly talk about the differences from prior year as I have slides detail slides going into each one of these areas so starting at top uh the district-wide capital budget this is for various softwares for various departments such as assessment or excuse me public relations special education the superintendent's office there's not large enough to have their own light on them which is why they're in that category there unallocated uh this is two we're starting to have 250 000 which is down 250 000 from last year we've reduced this uh for unforeseen circumstances in terms of um any Capital items that were to take place in which we were not budgeting for moving down the list building leases you'll notice this mountain is is reduced from what we've previously been budgeting for um we've previously been budgeting 4.4 million uh we are now realizing a new lease payment and I'm going to cover this in Greater detail on the 22nd but that's that's a decrease of 700 000 which greatly helps reallocate those funds to other areas in the capital budget Educational Services they have three main budgets two are being funded this year the first one the research and assessment Department had a slight increase of 135 000.
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um that's that's a an 18 year old coming out you know of um of high school that gets licensed um and it's rising because our need we have a very very strong need for um Healthcare professionals uh in the field right now there's a severe shortage so sometimes they can even negotiate for a lot more than this um so they're getting the six college credits they're getting you know that much money and it's also requirement of most of the schools around here now to have a CNA licensure as a prerequisite to get into some of the nursing programs so these students that are coming to do this program costs less than three hundred dollars um outside of the program so I say 83 percent but I actually found out today from a not to be named institution that they are paying about 4 000 for their adult students to come um and uh that's what they would have to pay if they did this outside of this high school so this is like amazing opportunity for these kids um where can they get jobs Hospital long-term care facilities Home Health Federal Agencies public school health we have CNAs that work in our health Offices here in this District being a district nurse I cover four of the schools that are here sorry we're skipping ahead and um and some of them are CNAs some of them are Mas we also have an m a program um so a lot of good opportunities come out of this this is not just an elective like he said this is a career um some of the things we do here's our technical skills lab they do everything about 51 or more has to be Hands-On that's required by the state so they are getting in there they're getting their hands dirty they go to clinicals they actually go into facility take care of patients and we prepare them for that um by everything that they do in our awesome lab um they get to go around and do like blood pressures Vital Signs we're recruiting people for shaving anybody need their face shaved okay Thursday the 16th um see me but um so we actually get to do these uh skills and they they love it we have fun doing it we try to think of creative ways um for them to learn they learn a lot of leadership skills so HOSA is our Professional Organization and that's where some of our other students are coming in from HOSA is also integrated into our program it is it is not something extra it's not a club we are required to do it and it's so valuable um they have got to go to competitions which we actually just got back from one today and um we had two competing teams from my program and they both got third place so they did qualify to go to state um they never done this before and they jumped right in and I think we all just winged it together because I hadn't either honestly and they did amazing I'm very proud of them we also had our Sports Med team that went as well and they got second so very proud of them as well along with what FFA will share they have a lot of awards and accomplishments as well but they learn things so right down at the bottom you see we went to a Leadership Camp so we had our officers go they got to learn how to network how to run meetings how to formulate fundraising committees how to do um community service and brainstorming and how to formulate subcommittees and things like that they do public speaking like you talked about they do mock interviews um so they learn a lot of different skills that are going to be helpful in the real world and that's what we hear from our regional advisory committee is that when these kids come out like my goal is I want them to say I want those I want those Combs kids you know I want those J.O Combs kids like that's the reputation I want because right now they said what they're getting is it's kids that don't show up don't have the communication skills don't you know just don't have any of those leadership skills and so that's what they're looking for you can teach a lot of people how to do things right but to teach them how to actually function in a working environment is also very very important and we also leverage a lot of technology and employability skills by using some of the highest Tech platforms actually three of these the Pearson mylab EHR go and the top middle which is called body interact are three new ones that we were able to advocate for to get just this year eh our go being our documentation they didn't have anything before where they got to learn documentation with everything going into technology they needed to learn how to do that and be able to chart not everything is paper anymore as far as body interact that's all simulation they have software they can go in they can do real-time simulations on the patients collaboratively and do their interventions and it shows them what could we have done better what could we have done different how was our time things like that the Pearson my lab that should be a course in itself okay my students can vouch for that it is their medical terminology portion and they learn all their medical terminology from there that was one of the things that we had scored low on before on our TSA and so utilizing that I feel like is really going to increase their medical terminology so they can understand the questions and the things that they have to um attest to and then major Clarity major Clarity has been amazing for us as far as a lot of them got into my program because they did major Clarity assessments and it told them you would be a great nurse okay so um that they may have got to me that way but it also offers like scholarships we get different opportunities for Scholarships in there they write their resumes all kinds of things so we really use a lot of um modern technology for them um so I'm sure the person you really want to hear from is an actual student that is going through the fire and I'm very very very proud of her and she is one of the ones that got third place today and she was a solo entry and she doesn't know it yet so I'm going to embarrass her in public but she also qualified for state in our state online testing and I waited until tonight to tell her because I'm so proud so now she's qualified in two areas for state so I'll let her come and share her experience hi thank you guys so much I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be able to be up here and talk first off I want to start by like my own experience never when I came to Combs it was my junior year and I right in the middle of high school moving to a different school was really hard I didn't talk to anyone I kept my head down I didn't really know where my place was and when Miss Claypool came halfway through my junior year I was like okay we're gonna we're gonna actually get to do this like we're gonna have so many opportunities because we got to Adventure out and do things that we didn't get to do at the beginning of the year like HOSA like we nominated at the end of our junior year for HOSA which has brought me so many opportunities like she mentioned we went to Regionals today and I did job seeking skills and I got third place along with our mental health promotion from our other students and we've done many camps and stuff just never in a million years did I think I'd be able to like set up here and talk to you guys the soft skills that I've learned all throughout these programs she has pushed me to go into other programs for instance our link leader crew that Combs has right now we are able to like help the eighth graders and upcoming freshmen give them advice help them tour just help them out with the information that we might not have had coming into high school and she gave me that little nudge and I'm so glad that I did it because it gave me so many skills that I didn't think that I would have before being an officer in HOSA I definitely leadership skills speaking in front of people I didn't have that before and now I I take charge of opportunities and I never thought that I would be able to do that um After High School I've decided that I want to go to Pima Medical Institute and pursue a career in respiratory therapist and that has been an amazing opportunity that I've been given before me I never thought that I would go into that but once you get like you're in here and you're working with the patients and that's all you want to do you just want to help people and change things and you want to do what's best for the people and for you another thing that I've done is the change project um it came a lot a lady came in and she spoke with us from uh for the CTE program and I wasn't sure what it was at first and I thought to myself why not take the opportunity see what it is inside there we got to learn interviewing skills we got to learn about our strengths which I think my strengths were achiever deliberative restorative learner I'm not sure what the other one is but which is good to know like I got to utilize my strengths to my own advantage and I got to learn what I could do with those strengths and all of this I couldn't have done it without Miss Claypool here helping me giving me that little nudge that I need we've learned so much in our program and it's just open opportunities she's always there handing us another thing and she's like here take this opportunity do this like she's doing it all for us and I couldn't be more happy to have someone in my life that'll be able to advocate for us and do these things for us so I want to say thank you and thank you for the moment to speak congratulations [Applause] and Kaylee I heard that you landed a job or an internship recently nice fantastic yeah good job [Applause] you can see why I love my job right right um so our second group is from our agroscience program and we have our FFA president Kaden and vice president Connor correct I get those right and they're just going to share a little bit about what they're doing in FFA all right so I'm Connor Morgan I am our vice president for our Combs FFA chapter I am a second year member and I'm here today to talk about of some of the things that we go and do and compete in one of the main things that all most of our students like to compete in are things called cdes cdes are anywhere from uh floor culture to livestock evaluation we have a huge variety of different things students can compete in which lead into careers um so we just had District our second round of district for floor culture and our students um won I believe third place for floor culture there I'm not sure about the other Awards oh my bad Florida culture got first and we had an individual Place third and another one placed first this is our first round of District where we had um food science aquaculture AG mechanics and livestock evaluation we had three teams Place top three in that District competition um the slide before this was State last year um so these students will be moving on to State this year um we just took all of our tests to see if we go into State this year um and we will find that out the 13th and we will be competing the 24th and 25th in our agriculture science program we have a land lab on the property the land lab is an outside classroom where students can utilize tools show livestock as I am in one of the pictures we make decorations we Garden we have chickens greenhouses all kinds of things out there we do a little bit of welding a little bit of a demo class if you want to get more into that you can move into the evit program um we also so the AG science program is attached to FFA like I said and I would like to share one of my favorite memories out of FFA it just happened recently at our Peoria mini camp leadership program um we went up and stayed at Peoria High School overnight in their gym very uncomfortable but it was a fun experience you get to mingle with other chapters across the state uh and there's little workshops that everybody can go into and I was assigned a workshop and our leader was the Arizona State FFA president Kaden Zimmerman and we were walking into our last leadership Workshop and he pulls me aside I know Kaden a little well and he normally doesn't pull kids aside I was like what did I do like I know the dance was a little wild but let's see what I did so he pulled me aside and he said Connor I have nominated you to get in front of 500 people and say Opening Ceremonies wow so I would at first told him you're crazy no never and he's like are you sure this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I said you know what Kayden let's do it and he said all right I'll have you ready at 2 30.
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I'll do a little math for you on that uh I was a freshman exactly 50 years ago in 73 when this building was brand new I'm the president of First Federal Savings of Greensburg we thank superintendent Tom Hunter principal Mr Grant Peters and athletic director Stacy Meyer for letting us sponsor the letter jacket program again this year First Federal is celebrating its 140th year of being in business since 1883 we're the last of the almost 100 percent locally owned financial institutions in Greensburg we are governed by a five-member board of directors four of us are Greensburg high school graduates director Ross Davis superintendent Tom Hunter and myself our ghs classmates we all feel as though we owe a lot of thanks to our coaches teachers family and friends for encouraging us along the way we are all big Believers in the power of an encouraging word when I was in junior high I participated in football basketball baseball and ran track I was one of the lucky ones that got to play most of the games thinking back over the years I conclude that I had average size and capabilities but in my mind I believe I had above average discipline and work ethic back in the 70s I came from a big family seven sisters and a brother and at our household our dad was boss of the household when you were told to do something it was not a suggestion you just did it seemed like when we got started in sports the coaches liked that particular character trade by the time I got out of high school I had dropped Sports participation except for tennis and CYO basketball ever since I was old enough to mow grass shovel snow bail hay I've been working a long list of part-time jobs I was on tennis scholarship in college in addition to that I taught tennis lessons drove a wheelchair taxi delivered Furniture mowed grass and other various part-time jobs during the school year during the Summers I worked 58 hours a week at a factory and in my spare time I taught tennis lessons for a little extra money I believe that I benefited greatly by having teacher coaches they were college educated experienced athletes and positive role models our teacher coaches were not whiners or complainers we learned to rely on their experienced instruction and advice we learned that they stood with us no matter how well or poorly we played win or lose we learned the power of their encouraging word we learned honesty and fair play we learned accountability we learn to focus on the positive rather than the negative we learn confidence to compete with others from other communities we learn to do our best work hard and leave it all on the field or the court when I was growing up my grandparents were located in Batesville and annexburg since both sides of my family had big families all through it at Family get-togethers we had a lot of sports competition amongst ourselves one of my oldest Sports memories that I want to share with you this morning was at my grandpa's farm in inexburg playing kickball in the grass down by the bathroom outhouse near the entrance to the apple orchard one of my aunts was a young Saint Francis nun wearing her full black nuns outfit on a hot summer day including her hat since that was her home that she grew up in she was comfortable joining in with a competitive kickball game with us kids and she played barefoot and by the time the game was over we were all hot and sweaty including her and you could see some of her hair sticking out from her veil and I remember being concerned that we had broken some kind of rules and that God was going to be unhappy with us for getting his nun all sweaty as the years went by I got to attend my aunt's sister Helen's retirement after she had worked for a principal for years at her 60-year work anniversary Jubilee at Oldenburg she made some profound candid comments to me that day from one generation to the other and a few years later one of my cousins Kathy who was a Batesville school teacher and I were sitting with sister Helen near the end of Helen's life at the hospital Helen had her eyes closed while Kathy and I visited that August at the start of the school year and I said to Kathy I bet your job is getting more difficult now that there's not as much difficult discipline in the schools as when we came through my aunt sister Helen opened her eyes wide and pulled Kathy and I down close and whispered we all do better with discipline one of the little Side Story of that same era when I was growing up and one of my earliest Sports memories when I was in grade school we were playing sports on the playground and for whatever reason it was City kids versus the country kids and one day two big guys about four years older than me came up to me on the playground and each of them picked me up by my arms in front of my friends and said the principle sister Conrad wants to see you [Music] as it turns out I mean I was just a kid playing sports out on the playground but as it turns out even if no one gets in a fight when you play aggressively and you have student body pileups and a lot of competition amongst the young boys you end up with a lot of face injuries a lot of black eyes and fat lips and busted noses and that's a little hard for the principal to explain that to some of the parents because it looks like she doesn't have control of things well I remember when uh sister Conrad finished reprimanded me that day the last thing she said to me was if I don't get it under control she'll have to call my dad I understood and that was the end of that now some 50 years later as a grown-up when I go to the graveyard at Oldenburg to visit my aunt sister Helen right behind the academy Field House I glance over a few rows and I see my former principal sister Conrad the grave also and you might be surprised but I actually thank both of them for highlighting the importance of discipline and the importance of living your life by the Golden Rule it all seems like yesterday my opinion based on my experiences along the way is competitive Sports participation creates good times and lifelong memories one more time we want to thank the school administration for letting us be a part of the program and we certainly thank June rigney for all of the detailed administration of the program and without further delay we turn the program back over to Mr Grant Peters thank you [Applause] thanks for being here this morning and thanks for those tuning in online once again I'd like to say congratulations to the 67 letter jacket winners this morning now I'm going to read the names one by one I'm going to try to do it with the right pace for pictures for getting this done and all other needs out there you ready you ready all right you guys gonna shake hands okay they'll walk they'll walk behind me okay all right Shelby Abel Kerrigan Acton Carly Adams Justin Adkins Isaiah Anderson Mackenzie Austin Addison Barnes Pettit Justin badle Eva Bauer Robert Browning Wilson Bullard Macy boltman Morgan Kane Angela Cates Wyatt Clifford Blake Collins Janae cummer Alexis Condon Cheyenne cordray Lily Correa Emily coy Hannah crowl Robert eisert Olivia Evans Emma Flynn Shelby forkert Ali Foster Thomas Gorman Gabriel Gregory Jesse Hadler Braylon Hahn Jacob Hawkins Peyton Howard Jacob Howell Emery Jackson Braden Kelso Bryson Kelso Oakley keppel Kayla Kramer Milana Kramer Molly lips Adriana litmer Bradley Lutz Granger Maxwell Carson McCord Bryce McQueen Owen Meadows Preston Merritt Claire knobby Gavin Owens Parker Phillips Annie Pumphrey Justin Ramer Caitlyn Roselle Cameron Schwartz Macy Simmons Hunter springmeyer Owen Stevens Lexi swango Jake Taylor Adam Underhill Elliot Weber Cooper Williams Ava Wilmer and Leland Workman congratulations to the 67 letter jacket winners [Applause] these student athletes continue the long tradition of athletic success determination character and grit at Greensburg Community High School this type of event and acknowledgment is a shining example of the great effort and potential of our students here great job to all 67 recipients one more round of applause for all of them please I would also like to shine a light on First Federal Savings and Loan the generous contribution that these jackets are given to our students is amazing and it's also I don't believe it's it happens in every school district and I don't think that Jim gets enough credit for that so thank you Jim Saylor thanks John thanks also I'd like to say thank you to our staff our coaches our parents and also all other stakeholders of gchs Athletics and the school in general without us working all together an event like this wouldn't be possible so thank you to all of you this concludes today's ceremony thank you for joining us I would like to ask the letter jacket recipients to head to the gym just for a photo opportunity
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um one being the main one doctor's notes um God forbidden death in the family or you have to go to a funeral that's another one um but we have we want to communicate that to family so they're aware after 10 absences these are the only reasons for state law that we can accept as an excuse absence and it's really just a communication piece so that parents understand parents have we have the correct records and parents have the correct records of absences I'm Laura Stokes most people I don't know me it's my first year here at DCS I teach k-3 Design Lab and I teach four to six Eureka which is our talented gifted program um I'm even talking about the our Universal emotional social emotional screener that we have um there are two we have the Dessa which is administered K to six and we have the DECA which is the preschool screener so our implementation progress today um year one was last year and last year um it was administered three times it's generally administered three times so fall winter and spring this year is year two what you'll see new for year two is the Pre-K version that I mentioned so this year was administered Pre-K for the first time and we have the fall Administration complete February is currently happening now so our winter is happening now and then it will be administered again in the spring in May so if we look at um some data regarding this so for on the left we have K to six we can compare fall last year to fall this year um the red is the need for instruction blue is typical and green would be that the students um have a strength in any of those areas um so you'll notice that the green got larger the blue the larger would be in the red got smaller which is exactly what we'd like to see pre-kb unfortunately only have the fall because it's new this year but it was administered to pre-k students and same thing the red the blue and the green as far as the readings so I'm Marjorie Newsom I'm one of the school psychologists and so for any of the students that in the screener it turns out that they score a certain level of score um and there are about 20 of them they're identified as needing more information so about 20 students we did a full dosa and gained more information about their social emotional competencies so for about those 20 students areas of instruction were were identified and it identifies those different social emotional competencies see the self-awareness self-management so social awareness relationship skills Etc and for this group of students goal directed Behavior social awareness and personal responsibility were the areas that were most identified in need of instruction for the preschool students they use different competencies based on different developmental research on preschool students and self-regulation is the one that came up highest area of need which I think if you ask the preschool student teacher she would be in full agreement with mm-hmm so what do we do with this information um so during data teams and case reviews we consider this child's social emotional competency along with that academic and behavior and attendance data to really think of our children in a comprehensive way as a whole child um and so paralling that model of academics we you know have a behavior support team and we provide consultation to teachers on how to address some of these areas of need and in some cases students need additional supplemental support and that might be a small group or that might be some kind of individual individualized instruction or a specific plan and we also use the information to kind of again um to inform whole school initiatives so things that we do in our community meeting or whole school lessons that we send out we've also identified some or created some resources uh some website resources for teachers for parents um where we can get more information on how to support those needs um so our next steps are we're going to continue to refine this this system of tiered support and and further Implement social emotional learning throughout the day back you see us uh these are climate surveys so the climate Committee created climate surveys in the fall and something that's really important that we do in the fall is we use the spring survey from last year and we identified questions or areas that we want to show as an area of growth for this year so we asked very specific questions that we know our growth areas for them so they're much shorter but they're much more focused um so we the first one up was we have the climate survey so we split it up into growth areas of glow areas and growth areas anything you see as a glow is something that was 80 or above positive positively responded to anything as a grow area is 79 or below so as far as staff support some of our glows are the staff leaves their academic expectations are high staff are provided with opportunities to serve on committees and contribute to school and or District decisions our areas of growth are really around professional development so stat BCS are given opportunities for individualized professional development and then professional development is aligned to our school or District goals so what we are going to do as the next steps is we receive feedback on that survey about what staff would like to see as their professional development and we've already made changes for this year to tailor it to what staff would like and then staff is also going to be included on that planning for next for administration a glow is that Administration is responsive to questions and concerns to areas of growth are around one is around discipline so handle student discipline issues and Equitable consistent and timely fashion and the other one is in the area of feedback so administrators are receiving professional development to provide teachers with timely and effective feedback and then the climate committee continues to revise and refine our Behavior process while receiving feedback from and administration is a part of the climate committee foreign we have lots of blows this year so students and staff respect each other's differences staff feels that there's a support supports a climate of collaboration between professionals BCS creates a safe environment for all students and staff the last two are areas of growth from last year that move to Glow areas so classroom and staff areas are clean and then the technology needs and responsiveness are a glow area some areas of growth for us the cleanliness of student bathrooms facility responsiveness and then Behavior policies and expectations um as far as like the cleanliness and the facility responsiveness something that can be um that can be attributed attributed to that would be um the supply chain issues that we've been experiencing so when we need equipment or we need different things like we needed a urinal from the bathroom it took I think a month for it to come in so just things that are probably affecting you also affecting us here some next steps um thinking about future survey questions to identify specific facility needs Implement a ticket system to address facilities and Technology needs and then student bathroom issues are addressed immediately by our facilities team but again we're waiting for some equipment to come in sometimes and then thinking about developing focus groups to discuss and get more information about behaviors in the classroom I'm Becca Graham I'm one of the kindergarten teachers here at BCS and I did a little Deep dive into the student climate survey so like Jackie said anything that came up as 80 or above we considered a glow and anything that was below 80 we considered a growth area um I dove into the K-2 data because we have two distinctly different ways of giving the surveys whether the kids are in K to two or three to six um so some glows for Kata 2 is that students really feel like they can ask their teachers for help so they have those trusted adults here at BCS um students in K2 feel like they have friends in school and they are proud of how they do in school um areas of growth for us the students didn't necessarily feel like they treat each other with respect and then um there was one question on there where students had to say how safe they felt in different areas around school so whether in the hallways or the classroom or the bus um the place where students in Cater 2 felt least safe was at recess um and so next steps for that last year we had some really good whole school lessons pushed out about bus safety because that was a spot where kids said they did not feel safe so the whole school did a lesson on bus safety and that really pushed our scores up in that area so we're developing some more lessons around respect for each other as students and then as well as safety at recess and one caveat I do want to say as someone who administered the K-2 survey you get some interesting answers as to why they don't necessarily feel safe because we wanted to ask some probing questions you know kindergartner says to you I don't feel safe at recess I don't check that off and say moving on I then say to them okay tell me more about that why don't you feel safe at recess and while some of them gave some you know very clear answers that we need to address there were others like there might be a bear so there is and we we got that more than once and someone said they didn't feel safe on the bus because the power lines might fall on the bus so you have to take some of it with a little bit of grain of salt while we take everything that they say very seriously and we want to respect their feelings we do have to read into that just a little bit um and similarly to the um kindergarten intergrade data we're using a lot of our data to look at how the climate Community can create you better support our students and utilize every morning meeting when meeting with our students daily um this while you can see our data shows that students 95 of students were able to look our goal here at PCS is that every student continues so our focus is really on that cousin adult lesson and creating lessons particularly I can start to welcome new staff into our building making sure students are aware of this in the building and we're hopeful that that also benefits the other grow areas that we have with students feeling like adults in their school care about them and also students feeling comfortable going through adult and Hospital so our focus is really creating those lessons sharing them out whole class so that last one family so we did our family climate survey this fall this is not something that we did last fall but again we use the spring survey questions to Target some areas of growth overall we had a lot of growth in our family survey um so families feel as though there's clear communication from Administration and teachers BCS involves families in their child's education they feel so high behave there are high behavioral standards students treat each other with respect and there's opportunities to volunteer a growth area for us is that families actually volunteer at BCS um so something we think we would like to do is just ask parents what opportunities would you like providing lots of different things for parents to volunteer here at BCS so I know that there were 149 responses so I didn't you know we don't collect emails and who responded more than once um but there was 149 responses so Irene is our Diagnostics as well um students are administered this Benchmark three times a year beginning middle and end of the year for ELA assessment students are measured in their understanding of chronological awareness Concepts phonics high frequency words vocabulary General comprehension and the math assessment students are measured in their understanding of number and operations measurement and data and geometry a student has been given the overall performance for after taking all of those different measures so this first slide represents the overall growth for all of our students grades kindergarten through six and both math and Ela students reporting in the green range or what I ready designates as tier one has significantly increased from the fall and then turn we see the significant decrease in whatever terms tier two or tier 3 at risk um we should also note that not only did Super performance improve from Fall 22 to Winter 23 but there's an overall growth in performance from Fall of last year or excuse me winter of last year to this year a bigger increase as well yeah are the benchmarks that go into determining these static for the yearly different so is the large does the bar move up in the winter relative to the fall yeah so there's certain um scores standard scores that students are supposed to follow it in for each part of the year so if there are more kids doing better that doesn't just mean they're growing is expected that means they're growing more than the crack as a group you can say that yeah so the next slide here this is our five level placement chart on the slides to segregate that that through level of that that triangle model um so we're looking at the darker green is mid or above grade level the lighter green is on on an early grade level yellow is um below grade level red is um the lighter red is um excuse me yellow is yellow is one grade level below the lighter red is two gray levels below and then the darker are just three so for um Ela at the beginning of the year we had 183 students performing in that green level band so that's both the dark and the light and now the winter Benchmark we have 278 students performing within this grade level band of this green level band and math we had 200 we have 234 students Now with an overall performance score falling in the green and green Range band as compared to 126 students in the beginning of the year the next two slides will represent a student performance by grade level so across grades we can compare to last year that the student performance is either maintained or improved for both El for ELA and in math we see overall performance increases in grades four through six so this just shows an example of an individual student report um so the bar on the left hand side is their meeting is your score in the bar on the right hand side it's their middle of the Year score um and when a student takes the I ready it comes to both goals for them it's a typical growth goal which is um grows the Thursday and then the stretch growth pool which is in the story level uh so the following types to show progress to that the slide shows are medium growth as the sake of comparison last year bla was at 74 percent this is our current growth so this is our growth for EMA and by the safety for the signature comparison last year the mid or block was at 59 percent trouble with that says that says one grid level below was 75 two grades below was at 70 percent three or more breakables this is showing our growth in math we identified for the sake of comparison mid or about last year was 37 percent early on was 48 one grade level below was 62 two grade levels below is 78 the inferior more credible below was 115 sorry I'm trying to understand this so this means that a kid who was scored at two grade levels below at a growth goal and 100 of those gifts and all of this this is already educated right and this is a computerized computer administrative assessment or this is a teacher is successful thank you because it's it's also it's twofold so when we look at it it's split up by Queen piles it's both the median score so 109 so if we go in two grade levels below 109 is when we take all the students from the lowest percentage of growth to the highest percentage growth the median is 109 and then the percentage would met their full typical growth is that kind of thing right so 53 of the kids in that two grade level met their goals have already met their goal and the median school for that right now thank you I just tested was spontaneously or they put more so when you're saying spontaneously we we don't um teach to a particular assessment but we mindfully make sure that we're setting aside time in our day we go and also recognize that like we don't want to just test a child until they get to a fatigue so we go and we take a particular time typically in the morning and administer part of the assessment let them know that they can stop come back the next day work a little bit further typically come back the next day and finish it up it's a very purposeful process that's something where we just have them come and go today we're going to be giving the iron we really try and prepare them so that they're that they're in the best place for success they're only given it three times but that was the questions in other words are they prep for the test [Music] and then we're administering our curriculum and we have a mid-year Diagnostic and they're given more instruction and we're giving to the end of the year the iready is also based off of like s back it's same type of questions similar um curriculum base the questions are tailored to each student so they're random it's not something we can prepare for like you're going we know exactly what questions the students are going to get we don't know it's random and it depends on what they answer for one question what they're going to get next so it's not like an interim assessment that we can administer or practice with as an aspect we would do that so we practice IEPs they're called through grade three through six to get ready for the S back to get ready to recognize before mine looks like all the questions might be posed some of the questions that are asked on already are similar to those questions so the short answer is to a point they are prepared but they are wrong familiar with it yeah you're made familiar with the process yes and they also they also participate in um I read lessons so there are assigned lessons through their through this diagnostic the tests were placed them where they need to be so if they're missing certain skills they'll have lessons to complete in those areas and then we should see that growth as they're moving through it so they have access to everybody the entire year yeah so how has that growth done you said it's tailored to them how are they doing that on a computer is it something that teachers so they put in their name and it comes up and then the lesson is structured specifically for them yes and teachers can also add in lessons so if something becomes more challenging the teachers can scale it back if something is is too so it's really teacher observation through their you know small group instruction and then also the program itself is recognizing toothpaste so now you can go on and physically see what they're doing you have access to that see are they struggling with phonics and what are the skills that I need to focus on is it vowel teams is it Bland in comprehension what are they struggling with is it literature or is it information if it's information is IT Tech structure if it's literature is it character development so we can form our small groups right off of that so it's very Interactive so when I first looked at the slide I was struck by the excellent growth now when I'm looking at again I'm noticing the rather low numbers they're both suggesting that we're doing a great job by this metric we're doing a great job of providing the support that directly but perhaps we're not providing as much supported enrichment and then comments on that or is that observation correct so we can respond to that we kind of wrap it out I know that you're going to talk about the next slide with us back and stuff but we'll look at like our high growth High performing and we base our instruction off of that as well as well so it is something that you know we are aware of and working towards and I think we have SIMPLE sorry we had similar similar um similar scores last year the same kind of felt the same way curious I can see you're getting performance data from the kids based on their answers do you get um curricular data back can you are you able to identify sort of the methodology you're teaching and then see what's working what's not like are you just seeing their answer are you seeing their operations that they're using to arrive at an answer to that this operation is now you know or something so we don't see how they're how they're thinking of it I know that some teachers will just say most teachers give give paper and they collect it afterwards but um it's a safer math um it's not numbered they're using it as you know to decipher it but what we do notice sometimes is that we haven't gotten to that part of the curriculum yet and the questions may be posed that way so it's just good for us to note that we're not there yet it'll help you identify if there is a particular standard that the student destroyed on not why they're struggling on it but at least identifying that some reason there's a group of students that are clearly not beating this so that would make you look at your curriculum and go okay or your instruction and say something's off because we have an excessive number that haven't hit the standard not the why but at least identifying that there is something wrong that's going to give your target for small group so the classroom teacher can pull that back and say you know they can dial it down that way and because it is computer-based that's what kind of missing that human interactions with that sort of teacher comes in more authentic okay well let's Fade Out no by like a topic for a class yeah or my grade level yes and that's that's part of the work that we're that teachers engage in during their data teams so we can get information from this it says hey we should be focusing in this particular area and then they can look at what is our instruction around that how can we give some some classroom-based assessments and then from that they can really look deeply in and say all right here are the exact types of mistakes that they were making here's the instructions we try to deliver what was working what wasn't how can we improve on that and that's really great robust conversations that we have around instruction that we Target because of the data all right so um this is not I ready data but it was a question that was asked previously when I presented the smarter balance data um I did try and do similar uh quintile um extrapolations for our smarter balance and it just was not giving me information in something that was really um user-friendly this is equally not as user friendly but it I think it it kind of shows some of what we were talking about in terms of when we look there's a split if you look at the x-axis you're talking performance and then the y-axis is looking at a percentage of Target cheap and so what you get is in that top right box is your hydropy achievement um and then you've got your high growth uh sorry your high achievement lower growth and then your high growth lower achievements so these are students who might still have lower scores but they've been growing a lot and then these are low growth low achievement and so when we look at each individual colored shape is a particular student and one of the things you'll notice and this is kind of we talked about this previously around Smarter Balance data is that when we look at our growth the challenge is that there that the ceiling is capped so when you look at this graph or this one you can see across the top we've got a ton of students who are just pinned right here at the top and ultimately their growth is much higher than that but SBA limits it to 110 percent so they may have grown two three times what their expected growth should be um but they just get capped at 110.
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um you know 30 seconds left I'm sorry all right so why are we creating positions we're setting our teachers up for failure all right we're creating all these Chief positions all these six figure salary administrative positions why do we put some paraprofessionals in every classroom to help the teachers you're giving teachers 25 students at 25 different levels to teach how can they do that you're setting them up for failure you have college educated professionals teach your principals have advanced degrees and you need babysitters for them I think that's something that you guys need to discuss and look into you know there's a way to do this you know I have my kids I have an older son also who had an IEP you and I have met and spoke on many occasions because his needs aren't being met when my younger son was in third grade for three months they went without an SLP and I was fortunate that my son was able to verbalize that to me and to tell me but no the school didn't notify anyone my son made up his sessions because I advocated for him but what about those kids who aren't being advocated for you have a lot of children being left behind and Danbury not just below kids the High kids every child deserves an education and every child should be challenged and engaged sitting in a classroom on a computer without dialogue debate conversation discussion that's where kids learn most seeing that there's different ways to solve problems to have a discussion back and forth those are the skills that are going to get them far and left not sitting on a computer thank you that's that's your time thanks up is um Aguero Butler all right good evening everybody my son um Kate Butler he's a student at Danbury High School so I just wanted to come here because I have some concerns um my concern is my son's safety at the University High School there's um a lot going on it's a lot of kids I don't I feel like there's not enough staff in protection in the game you can't so you know just a little back story is that my son has been targeted and bullied since we got here six years ago from New York he's never had a problem business education in New York he was loved we got here and as soon as we got here there was a problem um he's he's getting suspended for fight for fighting or taking up for herself when he's hit he hits back and that's what we taught him to do we used to protect himself at all costs he has a Divine he had to move right to protect himself so he's being suspended when he fights back so my concern is his future I've met with a probation office sir in Bridgeport Connecticut I asked for a mediation through and I have not heard back from their office I've left two messages so I assume he's overall um and in Danbury High School like I my son of course we taught he gives me insight into what's going on there day to day and it's a lot going on here day to day like kids are bringing 100 bottles of History to school kids are vaping in the bathrooms there's fights almost daily and then my poor son is being targeted he's not a bad kid he has had great grades throughout his history he had great grades starting out this year until he got suspended for taking up for himself so I'll keep it short that's my concern thank you can I just add one real quick 22 minutes sure I just want to kick back on what my wife was saying sir of safety in school well you say just say your name put it into the record my name is William so my wife want to express herself about the concerns of safety you have over over 3 700 kids at that High School and it's not enough staff to secure all these students in the school so what can we do what are we going to do are we really concerned about our kids getting their education or them getting in trouble and ended up getting sent to uh Juvenile Court that's not helping the kids down the pipeline that's not showing the kids how to do things and hinder themselves and conduct themselves a lot better so we need a a strategy a class or something that could teach these kids on how to behave yourself because it's not they don't just come from home it takes a village to raise a child you know so at the end of the day is the the amount of stabbing on the standard there's not a lot of people that want to apply for jobs these days if it didn't change but the safety of our kids these parents putting the kids to school each and every day and the parents will feel comfortable having their kids in the school system without worrying about them getting shot stabbed or killed or worrying about drugs somebody's selling them drugs or seeing alcohol bottles in the back I was a custodian with the Danbury school I said it myself I've seen kids and I smelled the cigarettes and the marijuana in the school so I'm bringing it to your attention today and I'm hoping that you guys could um really look into that and handle that situation as soon as possible thank you very much for yourself thank you all right is anyone else in the audience that did not sign up that wants to say something effects just before we get into the consent calendar I wanted to do one quick housekeeping note of two things one um can we make sure everybody speaks into the mic when we're communicating we've heard some feedback from the YouTube streaming and some other places that people aren't hearing um what we're saying and also are you saying speaking from the mic please and also um in with the respect to everyone here at the at the table when just don't shout out if you have a question let's just wait until we're called on and please don't talk over another member now I'm guilty of I'll make a disclaimer I'm guilty of having done that before many times that sometimes as you know I don't think what I'm going to say it comes right out but I I apologize but if we can do that and also let's we could try to keep the side conversations to just a little a little housekeeping tip okay so you can set calendar or can you make a motion that the Board of Education approved the items on the content calendar exhibits 23-26 through 23-29 as recommended attention by Lauren second by Bridget is there any discussion um [Music] and intersections so educational Representatives [Music] that was part of the first you have to read yeah yeah okay so uh student Representatives anyone here from from DHS posted um hi I'm Jennifer Souza I am a treasurer of the board at hi I'm Daniel alone I am the vice president and today we're going to be speaking about what has been going on for the month of January and February at Taylor high school so in January 25th we started the second semester we've also started using link that which is a digital Hall Pass system and it's broken so that students don't have to carry passes through the bathroom and have a digital who describe to Seattle Washington school or if they're trying to get them on the blocks um Key Club is selling creations with Valentine's Day and all the funds practice to be going to Heart Attack um February funplexes have been designed by DHS prepared leadership students and mostly our Valentine's Day related themes such as teachers meetings teacher work group was redone and is now completed with the course for change project Grant and wallet repainted a new Financial response our winter sports are now moving into our Championship season with our girls cheerleading team actually building their scx we also had a very successful Memorial where we raised money for cancer research we also are continuing to push seniors include their FAFSA with a few years ago waiting for their college decisions coming out we have a daughter that happened at the month with everyone's working with their pasta and they can do an airplane Pros our principal practice this month is going to be digital our Cap City projects this semester happens which has been encouraging students to be more engaged with their Community with one project um of having a drive for your governance hygiene products and they've been able to donate that applicants shelters and rehearsal is underway for our new school play which is Once Upon a mattress [Music] that our club fair is coming up in March was when we invite all the incoming freshmen for next year and we have all of our clubs set up in the cafeteria and we have them talk about the different ways that we can do the DHS community we also have the Strategic primary Cafe which is our real pageant that we haven't done in a while which is being hosted by energy NHS and the fundraised money for platform constructive certificate but the only thing that's been going on so far thank you so much thank you thank you anyone here from Ace yes [Music] foreign [Music] because it was true you're working on a collaborative project censoring around employment movement and reduce those children spread the board so the broader than the cereal by the struggle for civil rights in America and we'll come and be your question will says Daniella Esposito's creative writing children's literature flies as a lot of Liberty with this Constance is a very great class at Mossberg uh just collaborations to provide a clear creators with their reading buddy students to be with them an opportunities [Music] and recognize the employment role they can have as a mentor last semester in my local news stories which I refrigerated and coming to our meeting in January to help it students foreign [Music] projects [Music] are welcome the nine English students we began on January 26th as well as the sisters who are visiting the answer you and the next week on the other side for two organized after school program for students investors they addressed in cosmetology Collision Repair culinary arts age of manufacturing the society students participating in the program by myself included every Monday and Wednesday three to five after school this opportunity last but not least the best parents made of this world is from Monday February 13th from five to seven it's an opportunity for new families coming into the tour of the building on this new students and also become the new procedures [Music] what which trade are you participating in bring it it was awesome thank you for allowing me to share what's been going on Facebook with his family and yes be strong thank you thank you Ezekiel did I just ask the question the date for the uh parents tonight [Music] okay hey kids could you solve the fact that yeah I just want to say thank you for coming out representative Ace it's not easy uh sitting in front of people that you don't know it's going to get better and better and I just want to say thank you don't be afraid we're here to support you okay when is it gonna get easier what's it going to get easier I'm still having trouble okay so action items Richard can you read uh action item a policy five one one eight two point one only students motion that the Board of Education except your second reading is adoption policy 5118 foreign discussion all those in favor aye opposed motion Terrace can you read me [Music] 5144-14 physical exercise and assessment of students move that a board of education except the second reading and Adoption of positive 5144.4 physical exercise and this amendment a student that's recommended by the policy so many in accordance with 23-31 Continental any discussion all those in favor May opposed and the interceptions motion campus Luisa can you read sick that the Board of Education except for second reading and adoption policy 5144 right two use of exclusionary timeout as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 23-32 said motion made by Teresa second mattress Cooper any discussion all those in favor um [Music] superintendents 2023-24 fiscal year budget motion that the board of education has got the superintendent's 2023-24 fiscal year budget and the amount of 150 million dollars as presented for submission to the mayor as required by City Charter in accordance with 23-33 second one mostly made by Teresa seconded by Miss Cooper any discussion I know Kate medicine okay yep thank you Mr Karen um I just wanted to say that I support this budget I think the the finance committee voted to support his budget um if it was up to me I think we would ask for more money I my sense is that we are doing what we think is a reasonable ask from the city we are finding ways to save the district money when I analyze the dollars that we take in for our total budget across 35 of all of these Services have been provided for students how come from grant money and that's pretty amazing concerning we do not have a dedicated grant writer so I'm just uh hope that we will all support this budget both here and with the council members who will eventually be voted toward in on this and Advocate with the mayor who also will be putting forward our budget and uh just encourage everybody to to support and control and again I would support and even higher budget than this thanks so much okay any other discussion so just a quick comment I I certainly uh support uh superintendent budget uh that's our role as a board members whether it be lack of this lacking we should we should our leader win between a budget to us opposite on this award 31 huge and I have never known about one incident where we had half report that was not support the superintendent budget and I think it tells something about us as individuals because it's not about the superintendo whoever it's about what we need to make sure that the children need to make sure that our district is ranked and what we ask for most of the time is just minimum to get back each year each year this year and I surely uh agree with okay if we could get more we will ask for more what we can ask for more but we we know what the reality is and I have that support her comments all the way thank you any other discussion okay all those in front of the national energy [Music] roll call I didn't hear everybody the first time around so we can roll call you know Teresa yes Michelle yes Kate yes Gladys yes Lauren yes Bridget yes Julie yes Ralph yes Louisa yes any opposed any obstacles all right so no presentation superintendence report yes sir so a couple of items on the secretino report I'm going to ask Dr casimero to speak to the school calendar first it's closed calendar available for adoption at our next meeting but I've asked Dr Kessler to try to speak to some of the highlights in the calendar first and Dr B can you go to the accident that I'm going to give my update list thank you um so compared to I've sort of review a couple of maybe comparisons from last year to this year I've been to maybe highlight some of the changes so you'll see that in this current our current calendar we had four professional development days up front and starting to be professional development of days up front in this particular calendar with feedback that we've received from principals and staff we've added we've went with two professional development days in August to start the year and then move that Thursday into into May so that we have another full day before the year wraps up to work with our to work with our staff so we did get some feedback on that so you'll see that it's a little bit of a change from what we normally do when we start the school year in addition to that you'll note that the this year's current calendar has six early dismissal days the current version of 2324 that you've seen part of you has one additional early this way in there so there is one additional day it's from a particular no we'll take a look at the April the placement of the April vacation this particular school year that we're in now April vacation included Good Friday and um and and float into the second week of April and the calendar that you have in front of you we have a publication placed in the third week and that was based on sort of a regional analysis of what other districts were also doing um other than that it's a fairly standard calendar at the end with the exception of the additional early dismissal day and the positioning of our larger professional development days the reason why the traditional yeah so we're heading into we actually had more at one point and went back to a more convinced model because we did add we didn't stack some of our professional learning in the front of the school year but we're heading into in the reading program implementation that we're going to be heading into there's rollouts of Assessments that are still kind of ongoing staff needs in time for collaboration we've got ahead and focus on on data this year in particular we've been working on that but more so now than ever our teachers need to understand diagnostically how to plan for their students instructionally and what them having conversations around on our curriculum for sure we've increased it's really only by one extra day but certainly is needed in many different departments and groups that are kind of vying for some time to work in those different content areas oh my school uh did we have input from the teachers unit and saying uh and looking at the cabinet yes we did this group okay teachers and they were in favor yes yes it was impressive thank you are there any other questions on the calendar the goal is to have two years of calendars out we used to do that on a regular basis and cobit we got away from producing for producing two years I think it's all for families um so if if the board is comfortable with this calendar the way that it is and once this gets approved or should it get approved we'll produce another calendar for for a further year out that looks similar so we can get that moving a little bit more quickly get back on cycle thank you so the next item superintendo's goal update goal five meaningful collaboration share some quick updates relative to the strategy plan and we are ready for you I thank you everyone for tonight this is a really exciting night so Grace Molina is my assistant director and she's actually minor chain okay the class that we just started tonight with our Spanish cat group so as she is sitting in the back we're just making sure the class is going okay and everyone is totally online so you can forward in here so as our typical setup for all of our PowerPoints is our vision and our mission we just want to remind you of that in our equity and diversity policy our six priorities you see that the work that we do work is underneath the meaningful collaboration part of the Strategic plan so let's jump right into it I know that we've had a long night and so we want to we want to talk about this quickly so we have certain things that are ongoing for our families so we have 18 full time school-based Liaisons that are creating that bridge between families and school they're also undergoing PD on our normal half day Tuesdays that care just referenced and we are working towards the nasty family engagement core competencies that is the National Standard here in the United States so I'm always willing to share that piece of work with you and the work that our Liaisons are doing but great successes that we're seeing in the schools we saw a great demonstration of it tonight with the different nights that west side has had they talked about the family is on there she's done a great job really promoting that and supporting the school and all the families there to be part of that as well as a community other things that are Liaisons do in schools is reach out for services for families and we have some that are doing actually home visits with families too for voting grant that Mrs trucius is running next one is Our Family University programs and so all of our parent training is under a family University concept and so you can go to our website at any point and look at all the different workshops that's going on we aim for at least a workshop every other week if not every week coming up next Monday night will be storytelling and advocacy go hand in hand this is part of a series that we've been offering to help educate our parents about how to advocate for the budget and so they will be very happy families will be in the community that the budget has passed and it's ready to go on to the mayor's office because they too have input into the budget certainly the budget addresses some of the needs that they felt that they needed ongoing services that we do on a daily basis or a weekly basis is the Connecticut Food Truck comes to elsewhere school and that Services several of our schools and our families and community members as well as the Stop and Shop program that we now have four pantries that are set up in our schools for family to receive Food and we are just about ready to sign a contract with a group that is going to provide weekend backpacks for those other schools so more on that once that's set in stoked we continue to work with the ritual VNA Health through a private grant that they've received to service our families who do not have insurance to be able to get physicals quickly to get their students in our schools and so anywhere there on a monthly basis we see 10 to 15 families to get the students in school and then we do a vaccination catch up to not be the idea overall our resources and referrals and that's just families that come looking for services we're about just over a thousand families that have come to the center since the beginning part of the school year and so because we're a trusted place for trusted entity in Danbury the word of mouth spreads very quickly go see what they used to call me missing and now they call me something different but go see Miss Anna she has the resources that you need and families come out and look for food they look for medical insurance and things like that so um they reach out for you know preschool all kinds of stuff and then probably our big highlight that we do um every month or morning and afternoon session is our coffee with Kevin we've reached over 250 families with that since we started that a year ago and we're going live um now we're going to get away from zoom and so it will be held on a Saturday morning the 20th and 25th of this month at the center so please feel free to come out for coffee with Kevin it's going to be so nice to have the families actually there in person all right accomplishments that we've had we're really really proud of these um I know that you were all um invited and thank you for those folks that came last Friday night we graduated 55.
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Thank you for the opportunity to testify. Thank you. Let's hear from the procurement officer Bonnie. Good afternoon, chair, vice chair, members of the committee. Bonnie Kahaku, acting administrator, state procurement office. We stand on our written testimony in opposition to this bill and available for questions. Thank you. Can you tell us why you're opposed, please? Yes. There's a couple of things. One thing is that we think that the code should be applied uniformly to all departments and not and not carve out a special exception for the DOE. Uh it also would if you leave the bill as is with 25,000 or not give the exemption. It's we believe that all vendors should be given an equal opportunity to compete for government uh contracts with just three quotes. We believe that it's possible for the vendors or I'm sorry for the schools to call the same three vendors over and over again or maybe just pick one vendor over and over again.
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what we can do here uh Mr President members of the board if we can get a good picture of one student at a time one fact like we can have uh our Pre-K student with her family and teacher and all of us up here uh we have our our professional photographer there Dr Conley so let's go with uh with our pre-kate right up in here are you right across yeah how do you want to do it here we go yeah put these in our yearbook yeah and uh two hands ready there we go now we're at the same height [Music] okay hold on hold on one more here hold on got it okay one more okay happy birthday you're the one that needs a chair shorty oh my God I'm doing this I'm Gonna Get Right There sideways okay we want to really recognize uh Mr uh Hopkins members of the board you guys are the inaugural uh students and you can staff and parents through the Pioneers for what we hope there's something very special that we want to continue here are not working Unified School District for our Red Raiders and before we finish it's someone's birthday today yes Mrs Cote so if you would I saw Jordan singer happy birthday please [Laughter] happy birthday to you [Applause] uh Mr President that concludes the um our inaugural Awards and recognition for super students very proud of you and um and uh we're very proud of you and we just want to say you're more than welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting or if you want to you can get an early start on dinner and we'll see you all first thing in the morning so uh we'll give you time if you want to uh if you wanted to go get an early start for dinner or you're welcome to stay the whole time and listen to the rest of our congratulations thank you okay then the next item on the agenda is approval of the consent agenda um and I'll just give a reminder because I don't know that the two board members are aware that you are we are allowed to pull anything out of the consent agenda and vote on it individually if a board member chooses to but um right now I'm asking for a motion to approve the consent agenda okay Mr Hopkins hi Ms Rodriguez aye Mr Guthrie aye thank you very much okay next item of business is the classified resignation of maintenance worker uh Mr President members of the board Benjamin aguiati maintenance worker at ahu schools submitted his resignation to the maintenance director on 130 2023 affected immediately I recommend the approval of the resignation of Benjamin aguiat as of 130 2024 okay I'll make the motion okay all right next item on the agenda is the classified employment of the maintenance worker Jorge Chavez Mr President members of the board holiday Chavez has been interviewed for the position of maintenance worker Mr Chavez is in the process of getting his IDP fingerprint card and will not start his first day of work until his card is received recommendation is the approval of the employment of Jorge cabez as a maintenance worker for awful schools okay may I have a motion I'll make a motion no seconded aye Mr Rodriguez aye um okay next item is the extra pay position employment the president members of the board the individuals Below have expressed an interest in coaching and for the 2023 spring Sports season Doug saying head softball coach Lonnie Alvarez assistant softball coach Eleanor Guthrie volunteer softball coach Angelina Valenzuela volunteer softball coach and Charles buddy koozer the head football coach okay now our recommendation is the approval of the above individuals with the corresponding extra paid positions okay may I have a motion I'll make a motion I'll second it hi okay next item is the approval of employment of teachers for after school tutoring president members of the board the following certified staff are being recommended to provide tutoring Monday Tuesday and Thursday beginning February 13th to early may stay tutoring Grant application depending but Ade recommends tutoring can start before approval for Miss Queenie De La Roma April Caballero Donette Williams artemio manningo Abu Casey Anthony delara Mercy araguanas tutor coordinator and Title One Roger pavunag Mary Grace Robles Richard riverdon Ria Fernandez I recommend the approval of the above individuals as after school tutoring okay may I have a motion I'll make a motion a second Mr Hopkins um okay next item is the approval of teachers for Saturday professional development training for the m-class intervention of members of the board um our elementary and special education teachers will need to attend training to learn how to use the m-class intervention that we just purchased teachers only two four hour training or one eight hour training training cannot happen on a weekday because of a lack of substitutes and the number of teachers that will need it thus the best option will be on a Saturday and to do this apple schools will need to pay teachers you know there's a list of teachers that will need this training Jamie vagares Amanda yariad Angela incha irelia Mary Grace Roble Fernandez Roger Anthony delara 12 teachers times eight hours to 25 dollars per hour comes out to twenty four hundred dollars from title two I recommend the approval of the above individuals to attend a Saturday PD training for m-class intervention to be set at a later date okay may I have a motion I'll make a motion okay okay Mrs Olson all right okay next item is business item approval of a grad Solutions Hub site at the Yahoo schools campus president members of a grad Solutions Hub on the Yahoo schools campus the site Alternative High School is to be named Ajo Academy the purpose of the Alternative High School would be 22 credit requirement will help secondary students successfully graduate from high school who may be in Jeopardy of not graduating this has to be done again for 2023 as required by Ade last year Ade changed the submittal dates and ours was one of many that the state didn't process Dr shabok's any uh any um anything else we need to know or everything good everything's good okay my recommendation is the approval of a grab solution site on the Yahoo schools camp okay we have a motion to move I'll make a motion I'll check into it okay the next item is the approval and second reading of the governing board policies for policy advisory number 739-743 Mr President members of the board uh governing boards May review and adopt policy advisory number 741 consistent with a policy adoption process and policy vgb first meeting the proposal shall be presented for review second meeting the proposal shall be presented for discussion and action regulations and Exhibits are optional the governing board should be aware of these regulations and Exhibits but board action is not necessary to utilize them policy advisory number 739 new exhibit i-h-a-m-b-e-a Family Life Education new exhibit IH ambed Family Life Education policy advisement number 740 new exhibit ijle Library materials selection and adoption policy advisory number 741 policy jfabda admission of students in foster care regulation jfabda admission of students and Foster Care policy advisory number 742 exhibit jhd EB exclusions and exemptions from School attendance policy advisory number 743 new exhibit kbec parental involvement and education and uh just a reference to the first reading we had Monday uh it's all the same information and so uh I recommend the approval of the above policies exhibits and regulations above on the second reading okay and may I have a motion again I'll make a motion on the second one hi okay next item is the possible new agenda item for the next meeting and I know we have one for March from Miss Olson for uh regarding uniforms and dress code is anybody else can we add um I guess second gold cardboard for example that we did okay there are no further uh suggestions for future agenda at the point where I ask for a motion to adjourn I'll make a motion a second all right yesterday all right and it happens forward here at six o'clock nice
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the majority of that increases just moving reprioritizing budget to that specific Department which makes sense because there's assessment software that was being bought from the instructional materials budget and so we're just aligning those to the proper Department uh we are not having a textbook adoption this fiscal year I'll go into more detail when we anticipate our next adoption instructional materials um this is Miss Richard's budget in which we help support some of our extracurricular schools that have specific curriculum such as equally traditional rdoi program this is down from last year um approximately 100 or 130 000. going into it I.T budget we have four main categories the first one being one-to-one technology the one-to-one technology budget of 1.3 million is relatively flat from prior year the district-wide network refresh that is a decrease from prior year of 350 000. district-wide software that is relative that is flat from prior year again that I'll go into more detail on that the presentation Safety and Security this is an increase again I've talked about the phased approach to try to meet some of our bond initiatives that did not pass this is an increase of 275 000 to this area Support Services the maintenance annual maintenance budget of 1.3 million has been decreased from last year by 275 000.
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so I went and practiced and practiced and we're getting ready to run through a second practice and I went out on stage to get ready and the advisor said psych they're all here I peeked around the corner and I was like holy cow there are 500 people and I have to stand in front of all of them talk so I was like you know what it's going to be fine I'm gonna do great I went out there and rocked it and that is one of my favorite memories through the FFA because it took me from a shy kid freshman year to where I am now and now I'm competing in livestock evaluation and public speaking um public speaking is coming up fast we have to have our speeches ready by March 2nd so they're five pages five minutes long I believe and we have to have it all memorized but I would like to introduce oh Connor I want to ask you something oh yeah yeah I do let's go um so how many um how many projects animal projects are at the land lab right now right now in the landlab on the premises is just my pig and my chickens we have other students that have property that can keep their animals there Haley's not keeping it there anymore she moved hers okay um so I believe we have three pigs that are competing in the Pinal County Fair we have a few Lambs some goats and I don't believe oh we have some Holstein caps um so those will all be competing at Fair March 12th through the 18th um but those students get to deal with livestock and even though they can be a pain sometimes we get through it and you create a bond with those animals and even though it's sad to let them go you still get the monies you get the money yes you get the money and you help that animal accomplish its goal and you just get to represent your chapter at different fares so one more thing to tell you I graduated from Peoria High oh you did yeah it was fun campus huh yeah very big campus all right I would like to introduce the future of agriculture oh great it's me all right let's get this over with so I have to talk more so I'm probably just going to forget about this and just set it here um hello my name is Kaden Vandergrift I am a senior here at Combs High School I've been in the AG class for four years now and active in FFA for the past two since the our great teacher Miss Robinson showed up and kicked Hill out you know oh no we only got to do a lot of fun things with him anyways um [Music] um let's see all right I guess I do need this um when I first signed up for this class freshman year I had no idea that I would be here stand in front of all of you doing everything that I have going down the path that I am but now that I'm here I couldn't see myself anywhere else when I signed up all I read was one word in the description of that CTE course welding and I was like oh my gosh this is awesome I'm in so I saw that word signed up got what I asked for for about two years and when I was going on take my third they said hey we're switching up teachers on you and this one's actually going to teach instead of just taking you out to land lab you didn't hear that Miss Loftus Mr Hill's amazing he did this oh yeah he didn't do it before either um not for using hell um so back to the actual topic when I joined and actually got involved with FFA I had no idea where it would take me in life I just thought that's something I signed up for and I can't get out of it now might as well ride it out see where it takes me and I remember first time we ever did something was our very first chapter meeting which is where we will form an event for all of our members to come to once a month after school and it was so much fun and I was like okay this is awesome we need to do more I need to do more and I've continued going on last year I was vice president this year Well actually first I wasn't even on the team this year I'm be honest I wasn't on the team because I thought that I wanted to focus on other things other than just FFA but then we had some changes and they took me on as the lowest rank then a few more things happened we redid interviews and now I'm president and I'm so glad that it worked out the way it did because if I wasn't I wouldn't have been able to attend the August chapter leadership training which sent me on the career path that I'm going on as a future agricultural teacher and at that leadership yeah trip that's not nice um leadership trip I was sitting down with a room of about 500 to 700 people and there was a panel of three people one of them was the current state FFA advisor one of them was a past State officer one of them was a current High School AG teacher and the high school AG teacher said just a few words and it really stuck with me last year we have had such a shortage of AG teachers that three chapters have had to close down and I started thinking wait last year that's why my new teacher came in that easily could have been me that easily could have just sent me off to who knows where doing whatever and not down this path I want I want to be on the path that is made me who I am and so then there I realized hey I want to be an AG teacher so I told my teacher that she freaked out she was like are you sure it's really crappy it's horrible I'm sure a lot of the teachers out there understand she's like you're going to be poor you got to like beg for money on the side of the road I'm like yes this is what I want to do I want to teach kids I started coaching on the Trap Team bit and I realized this is what I like to do and so from there I started doing what anyone would start looking at colleges and where I wanted to go what I wanted to do and I looked at one college and it's the University of Arizona and I found out that they have the best agricultural program in the state and they actually have a whole separate College dedicated to it the Cals college or College of Agriculture and life science and when I saw that looked into it and saw that they had a dual degree for agricultural education and technology management and I was like oh hey that's a great idea if teaching doesn't work out I can go do Tech Management on a farm perfect so I applied there and waited one week goes by checking my emails every day trying to see if I get in I hadn't applied to any other colleges at this point because it is expensive to apply and so I'm checking my emails checking the website checking checking checking I go up to my teacher I'm like hey they haven't responded yet it's been like two weeks they said it was only going to take like a week I don't know what's going on she's like well I don't know just wait a little bit longer three minutes later I get an email it's from U of A horrified I open it big poster you're in I had never been more happy in my entire life I'd gotten into the college that I wanted to and on top of that they've given me the Wildcat recognition award for three thousand dollars towards my tuition when I saw that I freaked out even more actually I freaked out at home because I got it in a letter had to reread it about like 10 times make sure that it was my name my address everything they weren't like oh we're supposed to send that to a better guy no they didn't and from then I decided to get an internship with my teacher and I went from only having four classes in a day to a full schedule and even sing after school most days so now I have an internship helping teach and usually actually going up there and teaching the Freshman AG 1 class and let me tell you it is as bad as she told me it would be some of those kids man I just you guys know what I'm talking about but I would not want to change it for the world and that internship has made me realize this is my passion this is what I want to do this is where I want to go and that's just how FFA and AG has impacted me it set me on the life path I know I want it's made me do what I want to do and on top of that let's see told you I'd go back to this see oh yeah um I found out just a few days ago my teacher was going through the slideshow on here saying okay this is your part one over my part I looked at it read it and not really read more looked over said I read it but then she was like did you actually read that I was like no so I go back I read it and I read that last bullet point the J.R Coulson prospective teaching Award nominee I had no clue what that was so I'm like hey what's that she's like well I nominated you for one of the biggest awards that U of A offers to incoming College freshmen that want to become teachers and at the state leadership conference this June me and her have to go sit down with the nominating committee for a lunch and talk to them and get all that done and I am so honored to even be nominated for it's crazy I never thought in any amount of time that I'd be here where I am and I have that all to thank to my teachers AG FFA and kind of most importantly my freshman self who read that word welding thank you [Applause] so sometimes my soapbox comes in the form of students right so I again I appreciate all those who came tonight to to share with the public a little bit about what we do in our in our CTE programs thank you thank you [Applause] so now we have student of the month thank you not touching it there we go not touching it Madam president board members Dr Wyman thank you again for this opportunity as I always say it's the best part of my day Kaden by the way when you're looking for that job look me up somewhere and I'll help you find that job okay so look forward to that could I have Sierra DePaul come up from Combs Center for success could I have Ethan Ty Trebek from Combs High School [Applause] how's it going to see it right here okay hey Ethan known as Ty all Thai yeah Ty's been an exemplary student all school year long he stood out even more this semester and Ty is respectful hard-working and positive we think that Thai fits fairness very well but would be comfortable nominating him for any character trait Tai is one of the few students who we truly feel that he exemplifies the best of Combs High School congratulations Ty [Applause] could I have Jamarion Watson come up from Combs Middle School could I have Trinity hawks come up from Combs Traditional Academy [Applause] this is Trinity and Trinity is a great role model for all students in regards to fairness she makes sure to play by the rules and follows expectations both in and out of the classroom she does a great job working to make sure that everyone gets a fair and equal chance at things she always waits her turns listen and listens with others and helps them with anything that they need she is a great classmate as well congratulations Trinity [Applause] could I have Justice Lujan come up from Harman could I have Jamal Dawson from Ellsworth come up [Applause] Jamal shows integrity on a daily basis he's a hard worker and never fails to help anyone who has questions or needs he's always willing to help and puts a smile on everyone's face Jamal shows integrity by doing the right thing when no one else is watching which is a great sign of leadership at the moment Any teacher would be lucky to have Jamal in their class congratulations Jamal [Applause] could I have Jacob Combs come up from Ranch Elementary [Applause] Jacob was an easy choice for fairness good job an easy choice for fairness there you go Jacob keep that smile going Jacob joined the ranch family just about a year ago and came to our school with a lot of worldly experience as he's traveled and he's seen a quite a few places Jacob spit he fit in very well and students took a liking to his sweet and caring personality good job hey come back here I'll just give it here I was giving you a pat on the bag buddy okay keep turning around look at everybody no no come back here we chose Jacob for his fairness recognition and we believe that Jacob exuberates fairness in every way congratulations Jacob good job [Applause] telling you it's the best part of my day and can I get Antonio Guzman come up from Simonton there you are [Applause] this is Antonio in and out of the classroom Antonio treats everyone equally with kindness and respect his decisions regarding other students are made without playing favorites but shows a lot of heart in the way he cares for his classmates he takes advantage of no one but takes opportunities to help others and to be their friend congratulations Antonio [Applause] that concludes our student of the month presentation we'll now allow parents to take pictures and we'll also take a moment of a break thank you if you want to duck out here's your time out here thank you always be honest that's always rolling okay we're gonna go ahead and uh continue on with our little uh program here so do we have any public comments no we don't um okay so then we have uh any questions on the consent agenda if not I'll take a motion I moved to approve the consent agenda as presented second all in favor aye motion carries five to zero okay so we have 8.1 uh discussion and consideration of approval of changes to policy recommendations of the asba policy advisor 741 second reading so we had the first reading last time um that was our chance to ask questions so this is our second reading and so we actually have to make a motion on this so does anybody have any questions that they um would like to bring up just a question I know this has to do with with foster children does it affect any way that we have to do business with regards to that just procedurally I mean nothing nothing no no I didn't think so because I looked her through and all the strikeouts and stuff okay okay any other questions I will take a motion uh I moved to approve the recommended changes to the district policies as presented in asba policy advisory 741 as presented all in favor aye aye aye motion carries five to zero ready go Jen get up there all right um a point to discussion and consideration approval of the sfob preventative maintenance plan for the district schools this is very simple and Mr Anderson's here for any com uh questions you may have but you can see it's just a checklist that verifies with the uh sfob that we have maintained our facilities and done the things we need to do within our facilities uh you have to submit this annually and so it's just a check off it you'll see blank spots and those just because those are not systems we use and he might have stepped out for a second but the the roofing system so you see a flat roof system checked off not a tile wood shingle because all the roofs are flat roofs and so it's pretty straightforward in terms of each of the different sites and you guys approve it then we just put it into the state board so uh or the SFO so they can have it on hand as they move forward with any decisions for us when we go to them for for money to fix systems was it was that different from the end no it's sfb they they've made some changes and they put it under a different governmental agency so now it's the SFO B and I'm Donna blank on on the whole portion of it but but it's it's the same organization but there is some restructuring on what they're doing where they it's under the department of operations I think so okay they just like to add stuff does anybody have any questions on what on your checklist no come on he's got to have one question he has to answer right come on all right if no questions then I'll take a motion I moved to approve the sfob preventative maintenance plans for the jail Combs Unified School District as presented a second good job all in favor aye aye motion carries five to zero eight point three discussion consideration of approval of this of the Simonton Elementary School and the school school Improvement plan that's cool um just so the boards understands that any school that we have a letter grade system in this state any school that gets a d letter grade has to go through a school improvement process uh the the uh individuals within the School boundaries are notified of of the designation and then of the plan uh meeting was held with open to the school Community I don't think we had very many people show up but this was a report that was given to him so now we're going to give the board the report you have to approve it per state statute which would then move on to the 80 and to the school County school superintendent so miss Pasco present uh the Improvement plan good evening happy Wednesday night and um I am sharing part of what we shared on January 25th um at symington in a forum we had we had I think two families and a few children their children and several staff members District leadership and members of our governing board that were also there Bob and Shelly were there and I wanted to share our parts of that I don't know or do you click for me where did John go do you take the clicker with him Josh what what it was we gave a little background on our grades so our current letter grade is a d and each year the state issues a scoring system to label the schools a through F our current letter grade is based on the students from the previous school year from 2021 and 2022 and from our students in grades three through six aasa State tests we earned on that you can see the letter grade bands and we earned a 54.99 total points from the Arizona Department of Education the bulk of the points which is about 80 of them actually are assigned based on student achievement growth and proficiency areas so those two key areas other areas would include the azelo performance absenteeism and subgroup performance other subgroup performance also play a role so they look at student growth and when we look at that we're looking at by moving proficiency levels so when a student moves from proficient to highly proficient we would receive um positive growth and points that way growth points a student who maybe was highly proficient and then went to proficient would be negative growth and we would not receive any points on that even though they're testing proficient um there's actually a combination of many and I'm I'm pretty sure most of you are familiar with that but there's a combination of several measures that we look at So based on this receiving this deed grade um we have developed an action plan and I say based on that but I'll be honest with you we started looking every year we look at data to determine what we're going to do and last spring as a staff we had already started a commitment to a reading focus on our campus so we really started um developing our next steps with a focus in Reading when we did our comprehensive needs assessment and our action plans that we do each spring and we're in the midst of doing that right now for the following year um in this action plan you can see that we are aligned to our district vision and goals and we continue with our movement and focus with student-centered learning our professional learning and work with students is intentional and purposeful in planning instruction to best meet individual student needs we focused on elements of a hashtag forward and such as Vision codes Sops more importantly I would say looking at our roadmaps looking at standards that are broken down and um being very transparent with students about what they're learning and having them see where they're at and what their next steps will be we're using data from our formative assessments that teachers create um and we are also continuing to use our fast Bridge um screeners in k6 to give us foundational skills data as well as illuminate DNA benchmarks for grades three through six so we're looking at specific standards and their performance on those standards with their learning our intentional data Dives have also allowed us to find some additional opportunities to help our students with test taking strategies so working in more testing vocabulary and skill with manipulating and understanding how to answer more complex and rigorous questions another area we've been very purposeful in as I said was looking at are not only our tier one which is all students tier two the students that need a little bit more and tier three for those that need even that extra intervention our 40 minutes of reading intervention and 40 minutes of math intervention time has been intentional with the use of Lexia and ST Math which is all supported through the district and also small group lessons that focus on foundational skills or for grades three through six the um focused on particular standards our Title One Reading specialist also pushes in this year instead of pulling students out so that we can allow her to work with a few more students in that manner and we've also created our master's schedule so that our reading specialist is in the plc's each week so that those intentional data talks happen weekly instead of maybe monthly thank you the three goals that um that we have developed all aligned to a common goal which is to increase our student proficiency based on our state assessment for special education students as well as our general ed students and that is by this spring test which is in a few months our strategies for increasing that are part of our action plan that I just shared but it also includes the creation of those formative assessments so that we can gain understanding of students knowledge prior learning during their learning and after learning as well as using that information to differentiate the instruction and create standards-based lessons that focus on what students need and we're also focused on increasing parent involvement um and trying to get parents back on campus since covid they're just you know not as many people have been on campus so really being intentional with what we're doing to have families um get involved this is some of the information that we shared that night too which talked about ways for them to get involved as well as some of the resources that we have these have been shared by teachers but we have the opportunity coming up we're having student-led conferences um the 15th 16th and 17th and then we'll be sharing opportunities there where parents can volunteer another push for that as well as if they're not using Lexi or ST Math at home or paper making sure they have the information to be able to have that at home for students to use um I am very proud of my staff and the work they've put forth to just dive even further this year into our data and what steps we're taking to increase student achievement um we will be returning to share celebrations I'm sure next year we'll be having a lot to celebrate for the hard work that we're putting forth that our stallions will show the achievement that we're working hard to achieve and questions I do want to also say a special thank you to um Denise and Tim they have been very helpful in coming out and working with our staff and working with me so I appreciate the extra support from District Coulson so I didn't see on the planet all anything I probably is part of what you do but there is there are practice tests out there right yes that you can practice two three times before you even get to the test itself which helps the kids feel possibly more confident in navigating because you hate for a kid to not do well on a test because they don't have to navigate navigate the test right so certainly with a through that with with our um teachers it's test.naav or something like that may have test or something I and if you just go to the State website you can see it and they already have students spending some time on questions from that we also use our bank of questions with illuminate to be able to create because they also have practice where they have to go between different articles and answer and manipulate that so they're doing those also but getting them on the practice tests and I guess our practice is not just go take the test and let's see how you did on the practice test but using it for modeling and guiding and taking questions from students about why they thought about why would you select that why would you not when we are doing our data Dives we've also really looked at the types of questions that the students struggled the most with and and what why is that and then asking kids when you looked at this what were you thinking so really approaching it as to what do they see they need there's no other districts and schools that are taking quite a bit of time instructing what's scary or bad or whatever teach you the test whatever it is I mean the difference between a grade on your on your school and where you sit in a meeting like this right right so just the this year we're using those resources that yeah I mean even your parents can see it I mean if you only have two parents there to see a meeting but like they're not likely to get online to look at that test anyway but kids just need to have that it's a double-edged sword that gets so bored taking the test but they need to know the skills to take the test even if they have the knowledge if they don't know how to navigate the test they can't do well on it right is that is navigating through that because it's a little bit tricky the way you look at it it's a little tricky even how you put in answers can be tricky so you have to have an understanding of that and especially third graders who have never yep so did you were were you expecting your grade to be low or like did you know that it was this year was going to be a struggle or I didn't expect that the previous year we had an astonishing amount of growth and I would say after talking with Denise though maintaining that amount of growth is is hard at times I think but we had a lot of growth that year when they didn't um count it I think give us a grade right but that I want to say it was yeah so we did not show that and I think that was the biggest that's the biggest discrepancy between our previous data and this data but we've spoken to this before and and it's a reality too uh we did anticipate I know soon I talked a little bit about it a couple grade levels and and the turnover and staff and the the lack of a teacher in there and and the rolling of uh of uh people in sub-zan uh we have looked at any number of one of our schools that that raises a concern for us when we see a pattern at certain schools where we have not been able to fill and I know last year when we talked to can't remember it was fifth or sixth grade but one of the fifth last year was was a concern that we talked about because just by the nature of the Beast uh we just did not have we could not find a teacher and I don't think it's Unique to us I think there's lots of places that are struggling for that so meanwhile while you're doing all this other stuff you are at the mercy based on who does or doesn't come and whether you can or can't find someone and and again this Sue's not the only one that's had that we saw that same kind of pattern happen at some other grade levels their overall score may have been higher but at some grade levels we we saw some issues because of some of the issues with Staffing and so I tell you that only so you're aware that that is a factor it's not factored into how we get the letter grade but it is a factor and a reality that we eat in the principle to deal with on a daily basis and it continues I mean that's reality it continues this year do you have anything I think you did I I know Bob and I were there that evening I think you did a tremendous job I'm glad your staff was there they they had a lot to say I wish more of the families would have showed up it would have been um very enlightening but thank you for doing that thank you good job thank you okay so we have to vote on this so I will take a motion I moved to approve the Simonton Elementary School Improvement plan as presented all in favor aye aye motion carries five to zero 8.4 discussion and consideration of approval of changes to the 2023-24 district calendar this is just the minor change you remember back in February of 2020 we did a five-year calendar uh but we noted at that time we'd come back with minor changes so in this particular situation each year uh we have added the three extra days to the calendar uh with board approval for before the start of the school year for our teachers but it's all contingent upon Esther funds so we take a look to see there's there are some unique things that are happening to be quite Frank relative to some of the dollars that are available to us uh our change in administration at Ade is making some changes so that's why we wait to see what takes place as it stands right now for the essers dollars we will have the money available to pay the teachers and certified staff it's actually all certified staff to come in for the three days so the recommendation is to add those three days we'll add them to the calendar More for our staff so they can do their summer planning it has no impact to kids it has no impact to the community has no impact instructional minutes it's just so that our our staff is aware that we're planning on having those three days so I'd recommend approval as presented do you have any questions take a motion I'll move to approve the changes to the 2023-2024 district calendar as presented a second in favor I motion carries five to zero uh 8.5 discussion consideration approval of a change of order to the school camera upgrades so and Mr rutco will be available if you have questions that I can answer but basically back in may we talked about upgrading our cameras throughout the district as we all face supply chain issues not everything is coming as quick as we want what we found now that they've come in is that we're moving to digital cameras not analog cameras and so therefore one they did an analysis of some of our cabling at some of our elementary schools we need to do an upgrade for that this becomes critical when we start to talk we know we've had an issue at one of our schools here recently what we would hope with this upgrade of the cameras and the upgraded of the system is that we would be able to utilize software out there that would allow us to link with the law enforcement that may provide some security and some safety additional layer of security and safety for our schools so we believe this upgrade is critical so that we can take that Next Step obviously that next step will be brought forth before you and we're not going to do anything until we meet with bcso and have that conversation but the next the step before that step's taken is to upgrade this cabling so that we can interface with that software because we need to have digital throughout the entire District they're currently in the district right now doing work I believe the middle school was cameras were put in last week beginning of this week high school's being as we as we speak and then we'll uh if there's approved tonight we'll go ahead and make some of those adjustments with the cabling and then add the rest of the cameras here or hope to have it done no later than spring break just a point of clarification in the supporting information it talks about uh upgrading camera system for our schools at the May 2002 board meeting I think we went through yeah it's a typo okay I just want to be sure because I'm saying if we're going back 20 years something something's wrong so the total cost is what around 50 000.
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