so it it's done obviously so you don't have one student who could skew an entire data set but I think when you look at this we have a lot of kids that are growing really really high and I think that in some of that it limits what we are when we're reporting out on that growth data for smarter balance so that's for we only have this data for our current Sixth and our current fourth meters have obviously so those are the four graphs from SBA that was just I know that was a question exposed by the board when ever yep there I'm struck by the number of Zeroes racing low growth but what's up with you you know yeah 20 15 7. yeah and I think I think some of that's where we really tried to take a look at our our work in Summit and we've really said um how can we make sure that as a group there we're really focusing on delivering as much looking not only through our typical process of intervention um for students that might need support but also looking and really dedicating that um that main intervention block really focusing specifically on math so we've got students in Summit who are getting their typical math block instruction but they're also getting that that support in math in that Wind Block right across through the week so I think we see that and that's some of what we had concerned in terms of overall the trend that we've been seeing in fifth and six and so we're really trying to address that specifically in terms of our instruction and we're looking to be able to push that yeah this is last year's fifth grade correct last year's fifth grade which we know that fifth grade an opportunity so this slide just presents for us the next steps what we're doing right now currently as a staff to move forward with all of this academic data we're using our win time and Summit to address math intervention needs with all the classroom teachers recognizing that we do need more of that in that math time and we see that zero percent growth there's a need to move forward we're also aligning srbi process for behavior and academics we're reviewing instruction and curriculum to the end of the year based on i-Ready data trends differentiated PD so we have that based on staff feedback and steering subcommittee work we're identifying students with multiple points of concern whether it's low academic or flagged Behavior or attendance concerns and review how to support them and their specific needs mindfully working with students to both emphasize the importance of our spring assessments without putting undue pressure on them and hoping to develop intrinsic motivation and personal value we often see a lot of growth mid-year and then we get a little nervous for end of year because there is a lot of testing that occurs at that time and by the time we get through all of it there's a lot of exhaustion and almost a sense of senior right if I need to do it to get it done we want to kind of be their cheerleaders to say oh we're not just going to get it done you're going to really shine and show what you have learned this year an increased focus on the iavs which are the interim assessment blocks that teachers use in the classroom they model the questions that are presented on the sfax kids need that familiarity with the language that's used and the vocabulary that's used asking the questions so having those opportunities to see them in advance really does help them to move forward in the actual assessment and then finally a focus on academic vocabulary to build a better understanding yeah and then long term in terms of our next steps we're looking at reviewing the summit together to consider how we can better support math instruction and increase instruction we've already got that process both for this year and really trying to think about what that looks like for next year and Beyond um we're putting a strong focus on the science of reading uh there's a lot of both old somewhat old and directly current research on reading that says this is exactly how a student should be taught how to read how they do locally and we're really taking the focus with our staff we've had presentations by Dr Alcock on the brain science around it we've had staff who are going and getting outside professional learning on that and we're having outside experts as well coming in and supporting us now so we're really trying to focus on that and as administrators as well right we need to have our knowledge increased and built so that we can be better supporting staff and making sure that we're all running um and then we're having an ongoing curriculum development focusing both on account unfortunately and those engaging projects so um I think the key in this as well as I hear a cat talking about things we have data from what we see in terms of behavior or attendance or how a student might be feeling and how they're reporting to us social emotionally right and that creates a whole picture of a child and so we can't just look at a i-Ready score and go oh we're just going to like fix that growth on their Iran export you've got to think about what we can do to support that whole child so if they're coming to that assessment with all the knowledge and the learning and the confidence and built as as a full whole child to be as successful as possible in every single moment and so all of these data points really give us a chance to be able to look at every aspect of the brand support every aspect of the child and build them to be successful in each of those ways um so that's all of the info that we've got is there any other questions that you all have for us um I mean we know that we've had a little bit of a struggle in fifth grade math obviously Complicated by the pandemic and that showing the aspect Source from last spring but I was struck by your winter event scores in the fifth grade it wasn't about five it's a distribution looked pretty similar pretty much they're different assessments so I'm wondering if you think that that those reflect progress that would be made there and we'll do an apple comparison we'll have to wait for the sfx course product we made there or do you think it's too early to make that I think if you hold my feet to the fire I can't I I wouldn't I wouldn't say on the stand your honor um definitively but I think that it's good I think that it's good data I think it shows that the work that we're doing to really try and focus in on that Summit work around the map of having it is paying dividends towards them typically we've seen even in i-Ready we had seen some of that drop off in 56 and I think we're countering that um I would actually argue that the challenge that we saw around smarter balance for in terms of impact of the pandemic we saw it not in our spring of 22 but in the spring of 21.
families and our people through our Tech program are people empowering people that was a classic English Spanish and in Portuguese each one of those were families that graduated or people who graduated will work in teams now I'm your community project and so I was going to ask Grace to just say a couple words about our community projects need the time limit because I could talk yeah okay no um it's amazing that our our class is given an opportunity to choose a topic that's important to have something they're passionate about and we narrow those down to five different topics and so we have a group that is working to feed the Homeless and Danbury from this community we have another group who would like to partner with the school lunch Department here to learn more about nutrition and educate families on proper nutrition for their children we have another group that would like to provide service or activities for families on those school closures and how um so seeing that need and wanting to think of that we also have another group who would like to run a series of workshops on financial literacy for families in all languages from basic financial planning to homeowning to credit monitoring which is really great so and we have so many others as they begin to meet and have alumni meetings in the next few months other ideas and projects they'd like to bring but those are the ones we're going to in the next few months thank you so in addition to the folks that are on the screen right now taking the Spanish pep class we have 21 adults some husband and wife's enrolled in our parents supporting educational Excellency right now so we're really excited about that class as well back in December many of you attended our family University and thank you to the board for having a table there I think it was a great feedback table for you to be able to dialogue with our families and to get feedback from our families so they had their second Saturday this past Saturday they came back to the center we targeted right this for this first time we targeted our families who took the math Workshop so what we're looking at and what we're working towards is a very different model of working with our families and finding what's going to work best with our families to up their engagement with their students to increase their score so we've worked with Melissa Nadu who has been wonderful to work with and so I just want to read a couple comments that families gave when they came back on Saturday morning and then I'll give you some of the good data these sessions make me feel welcome to ask more questions when talking to my son's teacher awesome behavioral change for a family that they feel comfortable speaking with their teachers I realize now how I can understand my what my child is learning with the report and graphs I'm worried my daughter wouldn't impress but I'm seeing them in the report she is next one we see math all the time now around us we name shapes in there count the size he made a square into two triangles the other day without me showing him and then lastly I learned many strategies that I use at home all the time I started to use a ruler to measure and compare things around the house I see my younger son getting involved and he's able to answer those questions and so that type of behavior changes exactly what we want to see so the families receive the I ready report in December that also received a new eye grading report when they came back this past Saturday and so time wise what parents have locked in and to show us is they went from two minutes a week on their child's homework to at least 13 minutes a week supporting and working actively with their children and math I know that doesn't seem like a block but when families start off with zero amount of time working with their students an extra 13 minutes is huge okay we're going to build and increase that things that we've seen other behavioral changes and count objects with my child pray before they actually were at the workshop they took a survey we saw 46 post 77 that's a 31 chance uh change that families now are showing other things that we saw ask about number order with my child what number comes before 9 15 increase I compare numbers with my child 15 I add and subtract with my child to 15 and lastly I name ships with my child such as the street sign is a tribe so that that for us is a small data pool it's small numbers but it's showing that families want to change their uh engagement with their students and so we're going to look at how we can expand this model with them enough on that that source of accomplishment parent square is one of our biggest accomplishments and parent square is the new uh bi-directional communication they replaced our robocalls I'm sure you're all getting them because every every one of our board members are on the list as well as our cabinet members if you want to get it shut off just call Grace she can help you with that but we really feel that it's something that's really really happening to date and the these stats are from June 24th of last year we've sent out 23 000 32 direct messages to our families smart alerts 443 and we've had Parents use the interface to book calendar events fill out forms share photos secure documents that go off their families volunteer requests for families say I'll come in and volunteer take polls and permission forms we have um 5609 parent interactions with their students and so part of what we found with parent Square was that once a child's in a class the teacher sets up a class and the parent can interface with that teacher and that's where that 5609 figure comes from a parent interacting from their with their teachers so that for that across that's huge lastly for accomplishments our new promise program at Grace's tape and the lead on we've reached over 900 families and that now is part of the registration process when you come to Danbury schools it used to be optional now they register online they bring their paperwork in if their child needs to be ESL tested they do the testing and they go right over to our new person called Our Community Connector and she signs them up for their class we found such value in the programs and the feedback that we received from all the parents that we thought we just absolutely had to make that program in the mandatory program last thing up there you'll see that we have about 55 parents right now enrolled in our birthday play groups both at Cottage Street and at work Street throughout Family Resource everywhere and so lastly coming up we have coffee with Kevin um our parent one will be on the 25th as we said before we're expanding that to include dates for teachers paraprofessionals our secretaries custodial kitchen nurse and other staff in our schools uh Mr Walston feels that it's super important that we have that dialogue and create that create that space for that open dialogue uh pep is already going next Monday night we have that workshop on storytellings and that will be both virtual and in person at the black box we are supporting the work of Dr casimiro and her team with the academies and helping get that word out for Community informational meetings we have a new family University uh Family University coming up on March 25th and unlike our first one that was just our pre-k through um second grade this one will be pre-k through our senior year at high school and then lastly we have our preschool and summer Community Fair on March 6 at Rogers Park and the March 25th is also so that's it our office is busy all the time it's great to see the families come in share their concerns look for resources um things like that and we're really happy with your way and thank you for all of your support um here at the community Endeavors that we take on thank you thank you very much and I I want to thank you for the graduation ceremony that we had last week it was an amazing event my board chair was able to go with a great evening it's I mean it was like we had so many people here like people opening up to school then 87.
It is more transparent if you do it electronically. It prevents fraud and collusion and it prevents parceling. It's very easily to parcel when you have uh just need to go to three coats. They feel that it might be easier to do three codes rather than to do an electronic repair. So, we're proposing that this bill not be passed. Thank you. Um Bonnie, what is the yearly average number of bids per solicitation for those posted on the Hawaii Eco? It's in the hundreds. Uh currently, there is 179 bids out today. I I don't know the exact number all the departments all all the executive departments that use hypro and all the departments use hypro all the executive departments has used hypro we actually require it for our executive departments for 15,000 to less than 100 and for construction up to 250 so it's basically small purchase in fact the DOE also uses hypro for some of their goods and services some but not No, I'm not I'm not sure which ones they use for it and which ones they don't.
annual grounds has been decreased approximately uh sixty thousand from last year and major projects this one again I have a detailed slide on this but this is decreased from last year 5.7 million moving on to the second half of the Budget Transportation this budget has three main components all these all three of these are relatively flat in terms of there's no change from prior year as you can see it's not a high dollar amount there all the school budgets we've maintained those and and maintained those um in terms of they're not decreasing this year financial services this is the print shop and warehouse is flat but the carry forward has a big change in it in this number this is a carry forward that we're budgeting for for next fiscal year and two million dollars that's a change of 7.8 million from this current year the large majority of this budget is funded from that carryover that we've been utilizing from prior years and the reality is uh with no additional Capital funding this is the funding source we have to use moving forward to continue to move the district forward and not halt any maintenance projects that could further cause additional expenditures to the district if we don't continue to maintain these and then lastly down there is the formula in which we get to our total capital budget of 17.5 million for next fiscal year starting at top you'll see the District budget transfer of mno to Capital so in order to get this to the 17.5 million dollar budget we are transferring proposing transferring 6.7 million from mnl to Capital the district's budget capacity for fiscal 2324 this is the state allocated amount it's a 6.8 million and from this current Year's budget we anticipate having a budget balance carry forward of 4 million that will be rolled into the fiscal 24 budget to get us to that 17.5 million dollar total all in budget um so that was all the first come the second column if we go back here as adjacent ways uh that is we're anticipating that ending about 500 000 this year we have we've had several adjacent ways projects and we still have some to come with the phase two of Higgly high and their traffic flow adjustment the um what's different from previous years as well is we previously had a bond column that has been fully exhausted and so these are only two main funding Capital funding sources uh going into next fiscal year all right diving into the detail so as I mentioned the district-wide um budget has 66 000.
I remember 51 825 18 cents and that's coming from what budget Bond money okay um so if I remember right I don't know if I do or not um we had cabling put in a while back and it was with Pinal County the Pinal County did a bunch of stuff now I don't remember if that was before you came and it was with Dr um Blanchard but we I know we had cabling put in to upgrade so that we could be consistent with all of Pinal County so I don't know if that was internet is that different from internet and this the stuff we've done since I've been here has really been Internet it's been an extension of uh basically we had a degree of redundancy by having a second system for our our white area network that was countywide as well as the network that we currently use so the stuff that I'm aware of was more network based than not related to this this is truly the cabling for the cameras within on their property and then the the upgraded cameras will be able to interface with software which would obviously go through our wide area networks yeah I think accurate it was probably network based okay thank you all right take a motion I moved to approve the cabling upgrades for the new camera system as presented a second all in favor hi hi I'm motion carries five to zero all right um 8.6 discussion and consideration of a new course approval CMS music theory and appreciation and career Explorations correct you got it good evening Madam president members of the board Dr William and Mr Costa we've got a couple of CIA agenda items on here this evening uh the first one being the Middle School additions should have a couple of slides for those I can't click them yet Euler so there's two new courses proposed for the Middle School course guide we're bringing to you tonight and get caught up here you tell jokes like I did at the spelling bee they weren't very good but but I tried are they dad jokes well they were absolutely I mean 100 percent all right there we go so as part of our desire to continue to have a curriculum that is modern and supporting our students needs it should be rigorous and aligned to standards we have a couple of new courses we're proposing for the Middle School the first one is the career exploration course this course is being designed and brought in to support students trajectory and Pathways towards the high school so we've been doing a lot of work with our CTE team in terms of where we want our students to be at the high school level we know that one of the big things for CTE is having students get those completer courses and part of what we see happening is that students go into those High School CTE courses and it sort of becomes that trial for them because they haven't been exposed to it they go maybe that one's not for them they switch to another course and they don't get that second year in so part of this is really trying to align that from the Middle School level and give them an opportunity to get exposure to a variety of different college or career Pathways so they can get a sense of what they might want to pursue down the road so how would that look in the classroom like they just go through different right so part determined by the curriculum and we're going to kind of double whammy that here okay so part of that would be based on the curriculum but think of it like um a lot of times you hear about like the wheel mentality so it's sort of like that and they would go through a variety of different opportunities and get it get to learn about a different sets of skills and so on um that'll be one of our next pieces of the slide and part of this is that we would seek a curriculum for this um John has already done the work with CTE funding to secure a grant for that curriculum so if you approve the course we would also ask permission to begin the process for the curriculum adoption and we would begin moving forward with that so in term in terms of the curriculum will there be any um testing going on to assess personal skills to see where you may fit into it right so this this aligns with that major Clarity piece in terms of being kind of that Avenue for students to get that aptitude test and those those experiences and then they would get to be exposed to a variety of different contents and skills and careers to learn what might be of interest to them I think we had a great illustration tonight of some kids who maybe didn't know they were going to be an FFA or nursing and they spiked an interest in a way you go so and then a little bit more of that the intention would be that this would be a course that we would put all of our seventh graders through so this would become a standard course in the seventh grade year for so if you approve the course then we would also ask you to approve the option to go out and do the RFP so that we can get working on the curriculum piece following the same procedures as we normally would in terms of adopting that curriculum obviously it's a little bit easier because the quantity of options out there is a little smaller than math and Ela and all of that and then the second course is the music theory and appreciation and a similar vein just trying to our Music Teacher wanted to bring something new to the table just trying to change with the times a little bit and really look at student interests so getting into some things about you know music recording and some of those elements of what might be different and and that might engage students in music appreciation so kind of getting into some of those elements and so with approval of that we would put that on the books as a possible course for students as is always the case the course guide and the course approvals are always dependent upon student interest so we may or may not have students who are interested in that but if they did it would they would at least have that option so those are the two new courses um would that be would that be offered to 7th or eighth grade just like would vote seventh and 8th or just eighth trying to remember what we talked about I thought it was both but okay I mean you can see that we kind of have some purpose pieces in here it's aligned to the standards there we've got the basic course set up and what that looks like in there I don't mean to go too quickly no I know you I know you want to keep moving so questions on those two I'm good with it I don't have any do anybody have any questions and just so you know once we get the curriculum we'd bring that curriculum back to you for approval so you'll see you'll know what the quick and Liz we'll bring it in for approval perfect all right no questions I'll take a motion um I moved to approve the Combs Middle School New course offerings of Music Theory and appreciation and career Explorations for the 2023-2024 school year as presented a second all in favor bye aye motion carries five to zero okay so then we have um oh holy moly um well every time I click on it it like makes it down discussion 8.7 um discussion and consideration of approval of fee schedules for the 23-24.
we saw a dip in that 21 but we really recouped back to and are starting to exceed where we were pre-pandemic in that and getting back on track whereas a lot of folks in the state are still lagging eight to ten percentage points below where they were pre-pandemic we've already gotten to that recoup and I think that what we're in right now which I'm really proud of is that we're really looking to get further back on a track of growth overall as opposed to recouping where we were pre-pandemic and I think ultimately that's you know without question due to the dedication and the hard work of everybody that you're seeing here in the school thinking about kids not only academically but everything that supports them to be successful thank you everyone [Music] thank you all this particularly nice to see the whole group here presenting and it's also nice to see all of the data in the past years I think was primarily an academic data and to have you know the behavioral data and Survey data is it's a nice comprehensive absolutely [Music] okay [Music] we move on to our first opportunity for visitors public comment um we have a large group here it's great to see so many people coming out I'll ask if anyone wants to address the board at this time and if so I'll review uh the rmometers [Music] okay so we have at least one so let me review the parameter so so uh folks are welcome to address the board on anything about board policy um and what's going on in the school um we'll I'll ask you to uh come to the podium state your name and uh Street in Bethany and I'll ask you to limit your comments to three minutes if there are extensive comments I reserve the right to limit comments on any particular topic to 15 minutes in the interests of moving forward though that's rarely has needed to be enforced um this is uh as I said an opportunity to address the board about anything relevant to board policy and the running of the school however it's not an appropriate Forum to make comments about individuals whether students staff or community members for reasons of confidentiality and fairness any such comments are better addressed in a private uh setting with the administration or whoever else the appropriate person might be uh so with that Preamble please good evening everyone 55 old Amity Road here in Bethany I'm the parent of a former UCS Student who I consider to be one of the BCS success stories a few years ago I'm here tonight because I took advantage of the um wonderful thing we have now in our community and that's the ability to watch our public meetings online um because people like me who work multiple jobs you want to come to the meetings you want to be involvement Community but you can't you know always make the meetings you have you know things to do like to feed your pets or say hello to your husband you know those kind of important things so I'm here tonight because of something I saw at the last meeting I'm very concerned about the nominee that you have for the absent word position now this is a role that's been essentially empty because of the person who had that role when I looked at the meeting at the meeting minutes from the past it didn't come even though he was elected for that position and like I said before I appreciate a busy life but somebody was elected for that position and they didn't make very many if any of those meetings so suddenly we're looking to fulfill that role even though it's been empty for all this time and I think it's interesting that the person that you have to fill out this role is essentially somebody who's very well affiliated with a particular political party and one of the things I respect about this board is that there are moderate members on this board and they're members that really truly remember to keep the kids first to keep our children first and politics is in the background so tonight not when you vote I want you to remember that you also people who know me know that I'm very passionate and one of the things I'm very passionate about are elections in our town I spend a lot of my personal time making sure that our elections happen fairly honestly and with a great deal of integrity and I take a particular umbrage when individuals one of whom is supposed to is potentially going to serve on the sport attack our poll workers attack the Integrity of our elections particularly if it's a factual basis I'm all for it go to the state make that complaint I'll be the first one behind you but when there's no basis for it when you have to say to somebody repeatedly our tag leaders are not connected to the internet see our type leaders are not connected to the internet and this is an experience I've had with this particular individual on multiple occasions I don't think somebody like that should serve our board because somebody like that to me says that they don't believe in democracy they don't believe in the fairness of our process right I have to remind you that this is not a foreign and my suggestion is that you leave that spot empty I'll tell you the Republicans or whoever can find somebody who's actually qualified for that board and that's somebody who's being voted simply on a long party line basis and again I respect this board this is thankless work you guys do a great job our teachers in this community do a wonderful job and I support them 100 it's it's tough to be in those classrooms it's tough to deal with all the individual needs of all the children in our community I'm hoping that my my step grandson will actually come move to Bethany and attend the schools here I mean I'm doing everything I can to make that happen so again I I don't come here to criticize the board I respect the board but I think the board has more options than maybe what they realize with regard to filling a vacant Spain on that board thank you for sharing your abuse thank you others would like to address the board [Music] please I thank you for hearing me uh Katie Erickson Catherine Erickson excuse me 91 Sperry road I did submit a comment through the system I don't know if I should still speak here or not like I didn't know what you recommended okay well um thank you it actually um my question or comment was based on the curriculum for the K to two and specifically with the regard to the meeting minutes I saw about submitting a waiver against the legislation for um selecting a new curriculum and I do have children in the school system and I'm familiar with the the queuing methods of the curriculum that you guys have been using for for a while you know and I'm just recently learning about the science of it I know Mr reedswell did say that you guys are going to have a strong focus on the science of reading but I was just curious if you could um elaborate what your approach is on that are you planning to move away from the teachers College View of queuing the three cues for reading and what is the plan there I mean it's been scientifically sort of debunked and I'm just wondering if you're continuing you're doing submitting a waiver to continue with the balanced approach what is your plan if you're really committed to the focus on the science of reading I guess that's the misalignment I see so this isn't the right Forum to give a thoughtful response to the question but the questions noted um I'll ask Mrs Kiesel to whatever extent you can to respond tonight but but in your report but perhaps we can get back to you later with a maybe an update on the waiver that would be how like that would be helpful that's if that's possible tonight okay thank you [Music] others here who wish to address the board here at the beginning [Music] my name is Robert G white Jr I have been a resident of this town my whole life I've had two kids graduate from this school I just want to offer a comment in response to the first comment that the voters elect the board members here and I agree that this board I think is great in not being political but I was here years ago on a different subject and made a comment that the board is elected ideally by a diverse group of people from an electorate putting a diverse group of people in here to challenge ideas and ideas and I would just ask that you know as into consideration and then I don't know if it's possible but if there is any concerns please reach out to public to any nominee that maybe people have worked with them and you can take those opinions and if you don't personally have experience thank you [Music] anyone else James Bruni 62 humiston Drive couple observations from our presentation that I think are worth noting number one I want to commend the Educators who are part of that because I know the work that goes into these committees with minimal minimal compensation so kudos to them for all the time effort and energy that they put in to be the voice of what's actually happening in school that's number one number two I don't think it goes without noting we have devoted a fair amount of instructional time to social emotional learning with our school nobody's going to argue that that's not appropriate however 30 minutes of instructional time a day has to you have to give someone so um you know what I encourage the board to look into again we've been using i-Ready for for years now so some of the questions that were asked I was kind of taken aback because it's not a new assessment assessment that we've been using that we're pretty schooled in in terms of ins and out of the assessment so it was a little taken aback by some of the questions for uh clarification on that the other thing is to look at instructional time devote to mathematics in grades five and six in grades K through two if we were to look at a longitudinal study of instructional time devoted to mathematics you'd see that there's more time devoted to math in those earlier grades it's no coincidence that the scores indicate more need in the higher Gates especially when you're looking at 30 minutes of instructional time for math content and we know that math content grade five and six it's best and it's also a necessary foundation for moving forward if we want our kids to excel so I'd ask the board to look into the instructional time dedicated to that throwing it in win time for an extra 20 minutes if you're lucky I don't know is the best approach uh so you know it again observations that are not necessarily evident in the presentation let's look at our instructional time and see if it's giving us the bank for a buck 30 minutes of instructional time to sel should be giving us results according to two assessment pieces of evidence up there and that was not noted thank you [Music] anyone else going once going towards all right there will be a second opportunity for public comment at the end of our agenda this evening oh I'm sorry I should uh it's also possible uh to submit public comment um online do we have any other comments beyond the one that was noted okay thank you all right we move on to uh the review and approval of the minutes from our January meeting which are in your packet I'll entertain a motion to approve those minutes I see nimita and John Paul II thank you uh I trust people have had an opportunity to review any corrections or concerns before we move on to the vote okay hearing that I'll call for the vote all those in favor of approving the minute to please indicate by saying aye any opposed any abstentions motion passes the minutes are approved and will appear on our website we move on to our committee reports beginning with Aces EJ anything from Aces to share um they're really heavily working on probably something similar what you can call your Australian committee here and I really re-evaluating intensely the work they do what works what doesn't trying to make sure they achieve some efficiency one of the things they've identified and they're working through is a little high so there's been some conversation about how to reassign people in those administrative roles into places where they can still be useful or the sunset those positions entirely some of usually Associated but they're also looking at their methodology they're over a regional organization that serves you know a number of towns they want to make sure they continue online product that are you in so they're just really trying to and they have a pretty sizes [Music] great thank you any questions for EJ before we move on hearing then we'll move on to our curriculum committee report everything is what we discussed today um we met last Wednesday we had this presentation given to us um and then miss Kiesel provided us with an update of the professional development which she'll talk about in her report Miss keys will also talk to us about the work that she continues to do with the BCS staff on the completion of the waiver or the K2 re-reading which you'll also present in her update and I think the only new thing to add is basically that we will get an update on in April as to how Spanish is going here with our curriculum okay great thank you any questions for namita about the curriculum report and of course we'll hear more feasel's report okay uh facilities [Music] it's a funny Monday morning something to look forward to okay March March okay great uh Finance so you'll see the uh operating uh budget summary for January in your um packet and I'll review that before calling for a vote uh there are a few changes from our December report um one is in under general education there's a slight increase uh fifteen thousand dollar increase in the balance in our favor under salaries and general education and that's because of a couple salary changes um specifically the PE and music teacher when those new individuals came in their salary adjustments also because of accounting for some maternity leaves and the sub coverages for those leaves and so those when you put all of that together it comes up with a slight increase in the balance in our favor in that account there continues to be a large but unchanged balance in our favor in the general education benefits line item and that's because uh we had more people than we had anticipated during budgeting did not take the family too many negatives in that statement but uh but people didn't didn't take the full benefits and so that left more money in that account that is unchanged from earlier in the year uh the rest of the line items under general education are basically on budget although uh then those will come into better into Focus later in the year um but there have been no no significant changes uh relative to budgeted amounts and any of those other line items under general education uh leaving the overall balance in our favor under general education all of which comes from salaries and benefits at 138 595 dollars um under special education we have an increase balance in our favor under salaries uh and that is because of why is that okay that is also because the maternity lives under special education and accounting for the coverage for those um there is also a balance in our favor that is unchanged under benefits in the special education light item that's for exactly the same reason as under general education um and the other items under special education are unchanged from the previous month leaving us with a balance in our favor of eighty nine thousand one hundred eighty nine dollars in special education under operations and overhead we have a small increase in the balance in our favor under benefits uh that is uh because of um workers comp monies that were encumbered but have been released because we don't currently have any active workers comp so those uh release there's still some money in that account against the possibility of workers comp later in the year uh Small Change in very small change in the ballot in the deficit and the services line item under electricity there's a new uh deficit uh fifteen thousand dollars and that's well we all know what that's because um and there's a new small balance of sixteen hundred dollars in our favor and the other line item um which is because of some small stuff um I believe there's a uh equipment that that was budgeted didn't we go so uh overall the operations and overhead balance in our favorites 4 239 you put it all together because of the the uh Savings in um both salaries and benefits in both general education and special education we have a rather large balance in our favor of 232 thousand twenty three dollars this puts us in a robust position to manage any unexpected expenses over the course of the spring and um finance committee discussed it's a bit early to discuss but had an initial discussion of what happens if as we would expect we end the year with a surplus our uh rainy day fund which we've been advised to go to five percent is pretty close to five percent so we top that off to five percent but then the rest of the balance would be considered to go back to the town um so we're in good position if unexpected that things come up and it's likely that we'll end the year with a circle that's the report any questions okay so I will make a motion to accept the report as presented for the January finances thank you John Paul any questions or discussion before we move on to a vote on accepting this report okay hearing that I'll call for about all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion passes uh the rest of the finance committee meeting was brief and we'll hear about it in in case report we heard about our passer funds there are no major changes we heard about uh the budget which will return to under old business later in our agenda and we heard about something else that also wasn't added under our best anyway so uh we'll be getting an update on that uh later under case report questions before we move on from the finance okay hearing then we move on to policy committee okay Transportation committee no okay and that completes the uh committee reports for this evening so we now come on to our unfinished business uh and uh the review of the proposed 2023-2024 budget uh so to remind and Orient to everyone we heard a presentation in January from K for the pre for the budget uh proposed budget for the 2023 to 2024 school year that she and her staff have put together with input from the board um and uh she went through it in some detail and we had a discussion on on some points on that budget uh K and I then presented that budget to the board of Finance on January 20th because of when that meeting was scheduled which was earlier in the year than it has been prior to last year uh that was presented as the superintendent's proposed budget rather than the board of education budget and that was made clear to the board of Finance um so that we made that presentation we had some questions and discussion um but overall seemed well received we'd have not received any feedback from them as of yet um to the best of my knowledge we haven't gotten any feedback from members in this board of members of this board on things that they'd like to see uh changed remanded in the budget Escape presented so I've asked her to just very briefly present a couple slides to remind us as well as the attendees of where we are with the proposed budget and we'll then go on to any further discussion and a vote to adopt this budget either exactly as presented or with amendments as our board of education budget we'll then communicate that action to the board of Finance so they know that either what we presented or something slightly different from what we presented is now the board's budget and the process will move forward over the course of the spring so that's where we are okay I just shared this slide at the beginning of the presentation to remind everybody of what our commitments are to our children to our staff and to our community as it reflects our mission statement and the things that we have committed to in our strategic School plan we started our budget as we always do looking at those non-negotiable contract increases which gave us a starting point of 4.49 then we considered proposals requests from departments we looked at Grant offsets and insurance adjustments I made one proposal to the board uh which was to add one additional teacher due to enrollment and the need for an additional section of sixth grade there are no Capital Improvements being proposed for the 23-24 school year so when all was said and done uh the presented increase to the budget was 3.58 percent and that 3.58 is actually two hundred sixty thousand dollars 260 to 90 902 dollars I've got to go to your math classes we'll get uh this is just for some additional context of people were asking what the percentages looked like uh over the years and so these are the percent increases or decreases that we've experienced in our budget over the last 10 years and then I also provided this slide again as a summary to give some additional context of what the current rate of inflation is it's at 6.5 it was 7.1 when I presented last last month and just for some other information with regard to budgets in our area The Amity budget was presented at 2.93 the Woodbridge budget is an increase of over four percent Orange has not yet presented their information and among the small District superintendents I had a meeting with them in Hartford yesterday and the range is from 2.62 to 11 and that is small districts that's not encompassing any of our larger Urban centers or Alliance districts it's not the Hamptons or the meridians it's places like Colchester tiny little places like us that are either one school districts or even smaller in some cases you know Scotland has a school that's half the size of equity of Americans I hesitate to tell you who the 11th person is because they are not getting their proposals to their board until later on in this week so but the Casbah which is the Connecticut Association of schools business officials sent out a survey to all the districts in the state of Connecticut so as boards are as superintendents are presenting to their boards they're adding those numbers into the spreadsheet and some of them added them in but they're presenting either tonight or tomorrow so that 11 person has already presented uh at six o'clock should we read about religion so yeah and again this is what we're seeing in districts that look like Bethany because I know sometimes it's hard for people to conceptualize but it's not really apples to you know what we present is very different than you hate very different revenues or don't get as many revenues just to give you some additional audience where do we stand with our utilities gave versus the budget is that good enough to cover it town getting our rates set and all of those kinds of things were in a good shape for next year and actually the school's oil for heating is not in our town case um sorry in oil right now so turn off the lights when you leave the building great thank you for that recap um [Music] so I'll ask the members of the board any discussion uh questions for Kay or anything about the uh budget as presented which is identical to what was presented in January or any point that you want to be reminded of in more detail before we move to a vote what exactly is in our fund balance by fund balance you mean the account with the town no our rainy day account yeah so that's an account that's held by the town that is uh it's 4.6 put a dollar amount on it well yes one person one percent's about seventy thousand dollars we just had under 400 000 I would think it should five percent should be through 350.
so I just want to thank you for um all the organization and complaining that it's tough to pull that off so I just want to thank you both thank you I like the second that uh you guys did a great great job um you know just just I say this every time the passion that ain't got to show and it was people born like jet like extremely happy going through it and you just see you know the the connections so we really happy to be there thank you thank you and last but not least for superintendent updates first I would like to just kind of rewind the reward I don't know if everyone is aware doing is it around this time two years ago March 2020 the district was planning a trip with that time Dr Sal at that time made a mark trip to Nashville for a study of the national the academies in Nashville part of the opportunity and part of the rationale for the visit at that time was to visit in see the schools see the district and be in a room with other districts and Civic leaders talk about some of the benefits of a collaborative partnership with folks in the business community and really just kind of see the merits of this program unfortunately that did not happen it was actually scheduled just before the pandemic and they ended up canceling the trip you've heard Dr casimiro and Kelly shoes actually report out on a trip to Nebraska I believe it was two months ago and they had a wonderful visit there but this visit it was a new visit now in March March 6th through the 8th it's if you can we will actually prepare or provide a website link for the board in our community to also see foreign booked like there's a wait list because there are districts around the entire country who are trying to get to Nashville to learn about the academies so we are registered through the work of this office uh currently I'll be ready we are currently scheduled to go from Monday to 6 March 6 to the 8th the mayor has agreed to join us mayor Esposito councilman Perkins has agreed to also attend and there is another person for the mayor's office who is planning to attend Dr casimiro Brent Dean and I will also be in attendance and again it's planned for district and Civic leaders other districts like ours will also The Independents were anticipating they will be led by an organization that works with the academies at Nashville and kind of walk us through again the Arts of the program so we're hoping introducing the model to the mayor and someone from the council that this will really help to excite them about the prospects of moving forward with this plan and really looking forward to coming back and Reporting out to the board and providing even more updates about not only what it means academically but then civically in the from the business perspective what this potentially would mean so with that it's from the sixth to the eighth I learned about two weeks ago that the agenda called for us to stay until 2 30 which means we cannot get a flight any earlier than 2 30 because we have to be at for the degree minutes of 2 30.
I do know that they they do use another electronic procurement system called HEPS and I believe they use that mostly for their construction. So, what is the yearly number of solicitations that receive no bids on Metro? I would have to get back with you. I just know that right now we require all our departments, all executive departments to use it for small purchases over 15,000.
again this is to support our public relations team and various District departments Jason waste fund uh 500 000. we are researching a potential adjacent ways Levy and by Levy I mean the district has authority to um on the budget cycle propose a tax um to Levy for adjacent waste funds as you know these funds can only be used for public right-of-ways and they're very restricted um but we do we're still researching that but at some point whether it be fiscal 24 or 25 we will have to Levy for additional funds to support our ongoing public right-of-ways projects and so forth and I believe Mysteries if you remember the district held on to a number of a large but of adjacent ways for many years but with the resolution of the consent judgment with the lease and the state department freeing up that money to be used and not held um I guess for Appropriations from the um misuse of public funds from Dr Birdwell we have spent that on projects that needed to be funded from adjacent way so unallocated as I mentioned 250 000 this is down about half from from last year this is set aside for unforeseen circumstances [Music] the Middle School lease this is our new lease obligation based on the cops deal uh we are funding this from the transfer from mnl I will have a full detailed breakdown of the former payments obligations from the previous lease and the new lease on the next um budget meeting on February 22nd because this is just a huge win for the district um freeing up 600 700 000 in funds uh goes a long way in helping us reallocate those to other needs in the district so thank you all right assessment student information as I mentioned um we've increased this budget more or less to align certain expenditures to this department where it's better better Suited uh the 600 000 supports various softwares and other assessments such as canvas Synergy illuminate also supports Higley virtual's Academy software formerly called Florida virtual flexpoint now bought them out so um that is that budget instructional materials this funds traditional curriculum for HDA and also various supplemental materials and renewals such as for our DLI programs and additional programs that we that specific schools have that are above the regular general education curriculum the third item here textbook adoption again you'll see a zero dollar there is no adoption for next fiscal year our next adoption is scheduled for fiscal 2025 that subject has been identified as social studies the district does maintain a five to seven year uh textbook adoption cycle and so uh Ms Richards has just updated that and so we do know our next subject and so we'll work to appropriate budget for that and start that process if you remember the the science adoption that we just went through there's a long drawn out process for that um and so um the board and public will be where aware when we go through that process to provide input on that subject and criteria information technology these are four initiatives in this capital budget these are similar to what we've done in previous years again with some reductions in dollar amounts the classroom technology one to one budget is to maintain our one-to-one student to device ratio as to refresh devices that are up and recycle much like the textbook adoption cycle we do have a five to seven year plan uh to continue to refresh outdated devices to keep these up to date current and so the two schools actually say four schools but the two main schools bidding refreshed or Cooley and Sossaman with Higley High and Williams Field receiving partial refreshes District wide refresh this is a budget allocated for ongoing teacher laptops Replacements and various Network upgrades if you heard in the news Tucson unified was just hit by a cyber security scam and so this budget not only refreshes teacher laptops but it also maintains our Network and ensures that we are safe from any cyber attacks such as what happened in Tucson unified we did talk to Our IT director at C2 yep Mr pasig's here tonight um if that same attack were happened to us with our current software in place we would have been protected so it's reassuring um and especially reassuring when we're continuing to make these Investments to ensure our schools can operate ongoing the teacher laptop schools being refreshed in fiscal 24-hour Bridges San Tan Coronado and Chaparral district-wide software this is an annual software budget for renewals such as Microsoft Visions which is our financial software Frontline or HR software and several more this budget it's reviewed annually and typically this is increasing because of software renewals and the price of inflation we've been able to maintain this relatively flat going for this year but anticipate this budget continuing to increase what the cost of product and software going up with inflation Safety and Security again I mentioned this budget has increased drastically which is our district initiative to go and start to phase in some of these security upgrades that we identified in the bond proposal these phase replacement plans would be this budget would support replacement plan for video cameras at all Sites this is on a smaller scale this is not a comprehensive replacement but we would focus on high traffic areas such as all entrances and stuff like that so Mr Walker is working on those with Mr basic and the schools on identifying the areas in which our most need this budget also supports an ongoing replacement schedule for school intercom systems all right maintenance and construction the annual maintenance budget of 1.3 million this has been reduced Again by 230 000 going into this fiscal year this supports General HVAC Replacements custodial equipment electrical lighting infrastructures and other various Capital replacements a question was asked whether we can use S refunds to re to you to replace HVAC custodial equipment in which we have if you look at our sr3 plan and our expenditures we do have a large HVAC budget that was um approximately a million dollars um that budget has has been exhausted and the remainder of those Esser funds are allocated for summer school and our counselors to continue to support them for another fiscal year so we have exhausted Esther funds for hvc and custodial equipment but ongoing uh those we anticipate those coming back into our capital budget [Music] the annual grounds budget of 50 000 this has been reduced um 50 000 is really just going to get us to replace equipment um we're not going to be able to do much with capital grounds improvements and other various replacements capital projects for schools this is a budget set aside for schools to submit capital projects up to the district office these are projects that are in excess of what the schools can support from their Capital budgets we prioritize these needs and allocate those funds appropriately all right the major maintenance project so what we're able to identify as as high needs going into fiscal 24 are these items here the four main items um we're also in the the bond proposal but again scaling this down to what we're able to do budgetarily we are able to prioritize exterior weatherization at Chaparral Coulee middle school and Sossaman Middle School you'll note those are highlighted when we closed out that lease deal we did have excess Capital funds that they were holding on to as part of the lease deal they were supposed to provide Capital um we're supposed to be maintaining our buildings um we can argue whether they did or not but we did get those funds and I did get that check the other day uh it's 1.1 million that will that will pretty much almost support these three initiatives if not we do have budget to support those so um flooring Replacements we're continuing our Trek to continue to replace original carpet there's still some original carpets from our buildings um as well as uh identify a standardization with some of our flooring to ensure consistency across sites as well as to help our custodial staff in terms of maintaining these um the floors for our district and to ensure that we are stretching out the useful life to its fullest capacity so power ranch is scheduled for this summer the board approved that the last board meeting these two schools going into next fiscal year or Cortina in Higley High with the partial the roofing replacement Cooley Middle School again we're utilizing those Capital funds that were released from the lease deal to support a roof replacement and then we have others so we have identified the athletic field and track and placement Williamsville high school that is the original field in track when that school is built the eight years is typically a useful life for that and we're at that that useful life we've had people out to analyze the field and if we extend it past this year it does become a safety concern in which there there is concern that they will not let us utilize the filter for AAA games if it is not replaced so the track is in similar condition there's several areas in which the track has separated and concrete is exposed and so it creates a safety concern and so we're budgeting to replace that potentially in the summer of 2024 I know we'll work to work with Mr Fox in their Administration to make sure that has the least impact on Athletics as you know there's a full season so everybody uses the field and or track at some point so worked out the least impact on that school sports when doing that replacement did you have a question Mr Anderson okay no I I do have a question I'm sorry where did you say the 1.1 million was from the 1.1 million was from the capital repairs fund that was in that was being held with J meth Higley in the lease we discussed that a few times and I'm Sorry Miss van hope because that was priorities sitting on the board but um a part of that lease structure and I'll I'll explain that in the February 22nd when I show you the the former and the current payment schedule but they own the buildings and so the expectation was that they maintained the building so the district paid into a capital repairs fund for them to maintain the buildings they did some not saying nicely um but they held on to the majority of the funds as as you can see they they still had 1.1 million sitting there um we submitted these projects multiple times that were denied by that group so um again we're going to utilize this those funds right back into those two schools where it should have been put thank you so the last two items there um are playground Replacements Centennial and Chaparral both have significant rust and are considered these are safety concerns in terms of keeping these operational and keeping our kids safe the hcba which was also outlined in the bond has several infrastructure issues we're looking at addressing some of those with both the little theater and the main theater all right I'm out of breath all right Transportation this budget is largely not changed from last fiscal year they have an annual Transportation capital budget 50 000 for various engine Replacements in-house or bus or equipment and parts and then we have an ongoing white maintenance vehicle replacement much like our textbook adoption everything is on a cycle to ensure that we are getting hit with one big year in which we have to replace everything um so the warehouse truck is the next vehicle in which it's past its useful life and it's more cost effective for the district to replace that rather to continue to maintain that on an ongoing basis um so that is those are approximately 120 000.
so just a couple of minor changes to the fee schedule you'll see them listed here so one of them is a format change to split the fees out for yearbook and The English Department dual enrollment fee no change in the actual cost is just different in how they're processed and the second one a proposed change is to increase the parking fee by ten dollars um like a lot of things some costs have gone up associated with that though so it's 50 right now so it goes to 16 to 60.
yeah yeah five percent of our budget would be 350. where's I have no problem with that [Laughter] is [Music] means for any educational expense yeah so if we had to add a teacher because of a sudden surge in students at the last minute we could tap into that fund rather than going back to the town if we had a sudden large unexpected a special ed expense [Laughter] [Music] exactly that problem it's easier to take out of a rainy day fund which is exactly that then having to go back to the towels and uh yeah in November trying to grab uh you know 150 000 from the teacher position yep and then that's and we can put up the two and two percent of our budget from the shortfall correct no you have to cap it back you actually buy but you can put so my understanding is my understanding is you can put up to two percent of your total budget into that fund every year and there actually isn't a statutory cap to that fund that's my understanding the five percent is what we've been advised by our Auditors as a reasonable amount so we decided a couple years ago when we were you know we were built we built that fund up we had an opportunity to build it up again and we asked ourselves the question we're not going to build it up forever what's a reasonable goal and our Auditors advised us that a reasonable goal was five percent and so we but that's an internal thing that we've set as our sense of what's reasonable it's not statutory but I haven't heard any argument to change it so that's what we'll do but it's not statutory [Music] ask I'm struck as I'm sure others are by the savings this year in benefits and so I'm wondering about the the assumptions that and I'm aware that the reason for those savings is you have to make assumptions 10 months in advance about what what the vet staff's going to look like and what the benefits they're going to take are and it's prudent to make those assumptions on the conservative side right and then that opens up the possibility of so I'm just adding are those do you think that this this year is a bit of a fluke in the assumptions that you're making are reasonable I do think they're reasonable assumptions and again you're right we have to benefit as though any new teacher in any new position that we have we benefit for full family benefits for that staff person they may come in they may not take insurance at all they may take you know a single person's benefits and then that's when we actualize those things um we did a account for staff that we know based on their sharing with us there are a lot of stuff that we have that are on the younger side that are going to reach the age of maturity and can no longer be on their parents insurance so even though they've been here all along 26 you've got to come off the parents insurance so we know we have a few staff people that we had to account for next year now we know that they're not going to need family benefits but based on right now but what if they get married over the summer but if something else happens and they're left in a different way you know we have to prepare for that now how do we budget for our staff I mean historically I hate to say this but we lose a tremendous amount of staff here every year how do you budget for that we historically we lose about 10 people a year so when you do your budget with payroll do you Budget on who's currently here or do we add a little bit either way to that we don't add a little bit either way to that so the figures that are in the budget are based on the contractual amounts that we have to pay for currently in that position okay so if someone leaves it a year and they're an 80 000 employee I know it's really high number I just made it up I guess we don't use that number right so if somebody's making fifty thousand dollars a year and then we bring somebody else in and they have um less experience in terms of they've never worked in the district this is their first teaching job or they don't have a master's degree or they do have a master's degree maybe they come to the doctorate degree after all that is based on what's in the teacher's contract they go the other way what do we do you have some bring someone able to match the green and all that they move up I believe they call them steps here how does that put you down with those savings and salaries and benefits right so if we budgeted for 10 people to have family plans and only five take those family plans when that person that's maybe a little bit higher on the step comes in that's where that money gets adjusted and that salaries and benefits but but if a new teacher came in at a higher step than the person who left and therefore it's higher salary then that would be a balance against us on that particular line in the budget and we hope it all comes out in the wash right that's why I'm trying to figure we add extra money no we budget we Budget on the baby good enough for what we have yeah that's also the purpose yes we're not panicking but this is also the same process that's been done for years these questions have been answered over and over well but it's new board members come on we can answer them again but yeah but yeah and now I will say so one of the challenges we have with staff and this was discussed at some length during public comment at our January meeting ER my my recollection from the last time I dug into the contract in great detail at our last negotiations is that our starting salaries for our teachers are fairly competitive um but it takes a long time for teachers to move up we have a lot of steps which means the gap between the steps are narrow so it takes a long time to people move up which means that when teachers leave it's often some of our more seasoned teachers who have an opportunity to get substantially more money at another District if that's the reason that a teacher is living which of course it isn't always but when that's the reason which means that the replacement is often at a lower so the replacement it's often a more senior teacher leaving is often replaced by a more Junior teacher in part because of the nature of of Bethany as a district but in part because of the structure of our contract and that's why we have this year and last year and the year before Savings in the salary line at him because the salaries were budgeted for the staff in place and then when teachers leave and are replaced they are usually replaced by someone coming in at a lower level because of the nature of our district in the finance report in the purchase yeah my and our daughter I mean we seem to be every year running pretty substantial surpluses to our favor that's why I was just wondering how we get there because we're running 160 hundred eighty thousand dollars surpluses that's a quarter you know to half a mil on a taxpayer we have a lot of taxpayers in town if you truly are hurting that's why I'm asking him to figure how we get all our numbers that these are important questions yeah to do things we're having to go to the town and this year we're in the fortunate position the fact that they take care of water Capital expenses or facilities and that's we talked about this last night about giving back the budget whatever we have is a surplus we hit the five percent and everything else goes back in town well that's kind of where I'm going yeah I think that's it better in April we have a better end yeah we'll have clear clean numbers in April and we'll make these decisions but yeah [Music] to some extent and yes we're talking about potentially giving it back to the town but to you know kind of address what you said about you know taxpayers are you know things are tight right now us coming back to the town doesn't necessarily mean the town gives it back to the taxpayer that's up to the town to decide that's their yeah that's right but the idea we talked about it last night that will have a better handle on this and enable and at that point we'll make a formal recommendation to the the board as a whole and I'll give you that answers whatever we have up over it all goes back one of the other shows you're going to see towards the end of the season two that we have every year is that a big very dutifully try to budget in what they expect our grant you know to come in at but they're always funded at 20 this year 45 the next year so they'll they'll guess that well let's hope it's at 50 that's what we'll budget for which is conservative and then if by some you know Miracle they come in at 65 now that's extra 15.
much to my surprise that's Wednesday and so I was planning to leave Wednesday morning and be back for the board meeting this is my long way of requesting if we can move the board meetings to March 9th we did take the Liberty to also reach out to Kate to see if that board Workshop can be provided on on March 9th as well and Nick is also available that day so I just want to one share that we have this exciting opportunity to join the mayor's office and someone from the council in Nashville for those three days it's a action-packed agenda I mean they from 6 30 in the morning until seven eight o'clock at night I mean we're like in meetings and workshops and visits all day and then even the last day they're keeping us for the improvements at 2 30 in the afternoon and then most of us I think everyone is leaving I think I found like a six o'clock fight coming back home but then the second part is a request which I know it's uncharacteristic just so you know um there is a city council meeting that Tuesday the mayor is going to miss they already moving accounts meetings that Thursday of that there just so you know that they will make house payments instead of 10.
Members, any questions? Question Bonnie. So, is there any department that has any exemption or is everybody still under the same um procurement? Currently the law says 25,000 or more that all departments, all agencies, all juris jurisdictions use in electronic procurement system. U no one is I don't know anybody that's asked for an exemption from that and we've actually made it stricter on our staff. Does uh also have that? Yes, it's statuto. Okay. Thank you. Further questions members? The only reason why for me um the question would be that why wouldn't you feel or think that this should be necessary for DOE? I understand you're saying everybody should be shame excuse me same across the line but when it comes to I'm not going to talk good services but mostly on construction. Yeah. um especially with repairs or anything that we do with the DOE. It's 1882 by the time we get to them and it's like you know we try to find I'm not saying that they should be exempt for a lot of stuff but when it come to certain things for the DOE um we let them yesterday and construction costs um all kinds of cost just rises when it comes to you know because they think the state and the DOE get deep pockets.
I have a quick question about the transportation now the with the buses that are being loaned to Florence and to Queen Creek and the money that comes in from that will that be utilized for some of this certainly yeah it's not enough to replace a full bus but we can certainly use it to offset operational costs or service costs that we would otherwise incur so those funds are being accumulated in a Mr Crosby's it's an Enterprise fund per the usfr and so we'll utilize those to offset any costs we may be incurred throughout the year in terms of parts supplies thank you okay looking at our school's budgets we did not change these at all in terms of Valley per student dollar amounts schools have four Capital budgets that we've identified three years ago I would say feedback from schools having dollars available to use on their site has been has been great I mean schools feel um empowered to to put these Monies to use um oftentimes at the district level we do not have the time of day to overview every single or to have them submit Capital products to us and to overview those every single day so um we do overview every single expenditure but allowing schools to have a fixed Furniture fixture and Equipment budget a 45 per student allows schools to address those small site-based Capital needs and has been well received the schools also have a library books and resource fund this is designated at five dollars a student it's designated to replace library books and enhance Library spaces and then there's also an athletic equipment budget this is mainly at the high school middle school as those have designated AAA Sports um and they're required not required but they do have teams um and those teams do have needs in terms of providing athletic equipment and uniforms and then we have an instrument replacement schedule this was designated fund to replenish enhancement instrument inventory this was a 10-year comprehensive plan that was built out by Mr Edgar and several individuals in that music field seems like Dr Philly wants to elaborate on this old letter I just want to elaborate on this because I think board member Reese will remember with me in 2019 we did not have funding going toward this and there had not really been a comprehensive monitoring of the musical instruments we have huge programs beautiful programs kids involved in lots of things one of the things we're known for is our music programs that we were watching Williams Field warm up in the parking lot to get ready to perform at the Higley Invitational band thing we watched a tuba literally fall apart in someone's hands bless their hearts and that wasn't the first time because as we went to their other events that was happening and they came to us and said we have a problem and they really did so one of the things they did was we brought in it was a good question that one of the board members had about how do we know whether or not I mean we have instruments the whole district-wide we used a rubric that was intended for not just inventory and yes you have this item yes it's worth this much but it looks at each item down to the wear and tear of the pads of the different instruments to determine what can be repaired what can be placed and we realize the extent of the need and hence put together again there was no way to take care of it all at once but a comprehensive plan that allows us to track it share it because some years you need more tubas here than you need there but if you know what you have in the condition we share it so we've come a long way and this is thanks to our music educators who helped us see the condition of what we had so had to share the story because it was such a profound moment for all of us when we literally watched it fall apart in the child's hang on before they go compete so had to share so that sums up the schools designated Capital budgets the last two items uh Financial Services we have the warehouse and Print Shop budget of 60 000 this is to replace an aging industrial copy machine that's used in The district-wide Print Shop a question was asked whether we have researched leasing or the cost benefit of purchasing versus leasing uh we we've looked into it um the when you're talking the industrial copy machine though the those are largely not least because they are industrial incense um I know Mr pasik has looked district-wide we have district-wide copiers and analyzed um leasing those and the cost benefit of that and that's an ongoing conversation year after year but this particular machine is an industrial machine it's not traditionally leased and so it's do up to be replaced again as these machines age there's a there's a fine line between repairing constantly repairing and spending the money to invest in a new one um and so again we I think I've alluded to that several times in this budget this is an ongoing review of every single one of these areas to make sure that we're putting money to its best use the last item there is our budget balance carry forward that we're anticipating carrying forward to fiscal year 25.
still still cheaper than many of our neighboring districts oh yeah um like anything with all of our course fees if there's any hardship we always have the ability to support those families so yeah okay any questions just quick reminder the motion has to be read the way it's written so that we're in compliance with the state law got that Bob got it all right I've got it right here I moved to approve the 2023-24 fee schedules and authorize the principles to waive the assessments of all or part of the fee assessed If it creates an economic hardship a second okay Jen is the second all in favor aye aye motion carries five to zero eight point eight discussion and consideration of approval for the extension of science textbooks what and ancillary material adoption or is it auxiliary I don't know I think it's it's ancillary yeah associated with I've never okay wow there you go all right 8.8 let's do it we're getting there I'll make it quick um so this was mentioned at a previous board meeting that we were looking at some options as it relates to our curriculum adoptions um this one specifically speaks to our science adoption and the desire to keep a modern curriculum in place um that science adoption was new to us this year so this is the year one of the adoption it does align to our standards and sets our relevant learning experiences this is where the existing adoptions are at as of today so the science adoption took place in 2022 that means it started in the 23s starting in 23 and then you can see that in most of our other areas we're kind of all over the place so we're working on cleaning that up a little bit in terms of how old some of our adoptions are as I shared with you at a previous meeting my goal is to put us on a little bit longer of a cycle an eight year cycle so that we can hit our core areas every other year so this would help to support that in part um this would be the proposed schedule as we move forward but I'll explain that more on actually the next one so here's where we're at with the science adoption our initial cost was 456 572 and 87 cents um that was what was initially approved we were able to make some adjustments to that we negotiated with the vendor because as you know our enrollment was down a little bit and our initial estimate included the the overall student body at the high school not all of our high school students take four years of science so we had overestimated the number of licenses that we needed so we were able to negotiate with them and get a 65 000 return based on the excess licenses so that brought then our total down to 390 000 we worked with them on an extension of two years um truly it's a whale of a deal you can see that it the average price I think is about 65 000 a year for the adoption um we've been able to negotiate a two-year extension for 39 000 for both of those two years um so in terms of the overall cost that's pretty substantial to us in terms of savings and it would give us this adoption for a full eight years so this is kind of the breakdown for that it comes out of the 100-day Grant and you can see the the 390 000 initial adoption price the proposed to your extension we would use some of the existing money or leftover money for some additional leveled readers um those leveled readers support our students in the Elementary classrooms um we found out we needed some additional ones because the Arizona alignment's a little bit different so we need to purchase some additional ones to move those readers around to all grade levels we already purchased out of that at the tune of about fifteen thousand dollars some additional materials the high school requested to supplement the curriculum some of those materials that they would use on their daily practice and then the balance of those funds we would Target towards some of our science kits for our K-8 classes to get some of those Hands-On pieces as part of the curriculum and Dr Fountain doesn't even know this because I just got we just got the information this afternoon that where Our intention is taking a hundred day Grant the 100 day Grant was grant that Governor Ducey put in place that not necessarily everybody at every level who may be of a different party believed was the appropriate use of the money and so there was two grants that he administered we only received money out of the 100-day grant we are getting notification that we will get a letter um that indicates that that money cannot be used anymore after whatever has been spent as of January 1st so there's been somebody that's already been spent on this and it's not in jeopardy but it's the remaining money um and so the governor Hobbs is looking to see how districts can be held harmless on this situation we have the funding for this but I just want to tell you that in the case of some of these Grant monies as we've changed Administration on several different levels we got a lot of weird and funky stuff going on and so all of a sudden things get pulled back um Julie and I met quickly this afternoon like I said you haven't even had a chance to talk to Dr Fountain about it and we're okay with the money and we have the funding sources available uh even if it comes out of the essers and so you're talking about different pots and money this hundred day Grant and the other program was out of money allocated to the governor through the federal funding not the esser's money which is allocated to us through Ade so it's a different bucket but it's creating some issues because of the way he destroyed he decided to distribute it and the Biden Administration doesn't believe that the distribution was correct and accurate and so there's some there's some pullback of dollars so just in terms of full transparency know that we have the money and we're working on it but some of these I didn't want you to think that this was definitely coming out of Hyundai Grant because based on the email this afternoon that may get changed and we'll work our way through it we're not concerned about be able to get the money but we just know that it may have to come out of a different funding source all right questions um in terms of funding does this put in Jeopardy our plan to try to have a million dollar carryover in uh our mno from year to year Well if you can hold on to that we will talk about what we want to do subs and then I'll just broaden the conversation quite a bit okay I will take a motion gotta get there um I moved to approve the extension of the McGraw-Hill District K-12 science curriculum adoption for two additional years at a cost of 39 257.77 as presented a second favor aye aye motion carries five to zero um okay so now that was so our 8.9 discussion and consideration or approval of the extension of ela textbook and ancillary material adoption all right so I'm going to skip through these first handful of slides because they're the same as the previous one um but here's where we're at with Ela so if you take a look at our existing adoptions Ela was adopted in 2017 at the time we were using a six-year adoption cycle that means 2023 which is where we are at now becomes the expiration of the ELA curriculum and given that we've shifted into more modern uses it's wonderful that we don't cut down so many trees but it also means when we get to the end they push a little button and it turns off and a lot of those resources go away so we're in a situation where we need to address that to make sure that we can maintain the curriculum that's associated with our Ela adoption our proposal is to extend that by a period of two years so that we can get that further down the road and go through a full adoption process to really go through that so our initial cost of the six year adoption back in 2017 was 617 000.
yeah so these are these are the this is why we so often have a surplus because it would be foolish to budget assuming you're gonna get a really you know High Grant level so you budget conservatively and then you have that but that's I mean that is this is exactly what's behind my question about benefits I want us to be responsible take care of our our school and our teachers and be covered against you know eventualities and I want to do no more than that you know try to do it is so that that's exactly what was behind my question about the budget how we budget our event s looking it's looking good yeah Charlie all right any other any further questions about any of the items in the budget or anything else for Kay and her staff before we move to a vote okay hearing none I'll entertain a vote to accept the superintendent's proposed spending plan for 2023 to 2024 as presented thank you John Paul in a second namita thank you any further questions or discussion hearing none I'll call for a vote all those in favor please indicate by saying aye any opposed any abstentions motion passes the budget is adopted so this is now the board of Ed's proposed budget identical to the superintendent's proposed budget it is available on our website and will communicate to the board of finance that this has been approved in identical form to what they saw on January 20th all right [Music] thank you uh okay we come on to uh the topic that was brought up in January and mentioned in public comment which is the filling of a vacant seat created by the stepping down of Angel irigoyan which we uh accept whose resignation we accepted at our last meeting um so I actually need to make one correction something I said last meeting last meeting I said that um it is our uh practice that an empty seat is filled by a member of the same party as the person who departed which is true but I said last week that that was our practice but was not statutory after doing a little bit of research I've been corrected it is statutory that the replacement for a vacant seat is nominated by the part same party as the person who uh who uh left so it's not not just practice um and uh so the process is that the uh Republican since the the individual who stepped down was elected as a republican that the Republican Town committee nominate an individual of their choosing and we have the opportunity to briefly uh meet with that individual uh because normally when a seat is filled the election is the process by which we and the town get to know the person since this is a nomination this is their opportunity for us in the town to get to know the the nominee that can be done either in Open session or in closed executive session at the discretion of the nominee um and so that's what we're going to do next so I will ask uh if there's a representative of the of the Republican Town committee who wishes to convey a nomination to fill this empty seat [Music] okay in case other in case the uh recorded the microphones couldn't pick that up Robert White who is the chair of the Republican Town committee has nominated Susan Bradford uh Miss Bradford you're here do you accept the nomination all right so I'll invite you to come up and I don't know let's figure out a chair or something and we'll we'll just ask you a couple questions uh about um your your candidacy do you want to stand or sit totally up to you what okay so I I realize nobody knows okay so I made uh I wrote up a little intro perfect if that's okay with you I'll just uh go through that okay so my name is Susan Bradford my home address is 825 Amity Road in Bethany my husband and I bought our house in 1996.
um so the so the mayor and the other council person can't be there so just thought I'd also share that information question how big is how big is Nebraska and National disease I don't remember okay so Nebraska and Nashville is very lucky it's very similar yeah so we went to we went to Nebraska yeah it mirrored sort of what we have here and one of the reasons we still went to the school in terms of diversity yes and National is very diverse as well I think Teresa's question was about the size the terms of student population yeah 3 500 approximately and they had two campuses that were operated very similarly to our plans where you're part of one Comprehensive High School with two locations and they were in the hospital building a third location as well [Music] in Nashville how big is the school system uh it's a very large school system there's many many high schools and they're all very large down there as well um they're different they're all a little bit different and I can certainly share this study study visit link um on the Academy national Hub site for you and you can explore all the different schools that are down there they're very very large it's National National Library it's bigger than any District we have to say because it's pretty large we're often mean in Russian that's what I was going to ask can we get a motion to change this meeting um no no we do all the group but I don't think anymore okay is everybody okay with changing it to a Thursday November probably uh March 19th yeah we'll post it as a special movie it's not one of the regularly scheduled all right everybody good okay great nothing else okay I'm sorry I was just like to say um to um our superintendent and care and I know she did our Lord package and she put us all the information on the package I I like the idea of the superintendent grows what place and we all can determen our minds and and our mission statement because we sort of got away from that at one point not even having Clinic so looking at it on your front pages and then when we get to the superintendent evaluation when we sort of know what we're looking at you know what those goals are you might have to go back and forth trying to understand them a little bit and and certainly think that everything Carol does and my last year um I was listening to the news and if I don't have this right smile equipment there's a 15 million dollar security Grant after listening to what's going on and things and in our schools there's a 15 million dollar uh uh Grant that's coming to Connecticut and uh all schools came through 12 countifying and I think the deadline for the application is March 31st as for a K-12 schools as for our children centers and preschool so I'm not sure the superintendo knows anything about that Grant I received an email Monday or Tuesday about you know History channel has come to the state of the net thank you Lord for sharing that yes so interestingly enough I think I received about three or four messages that the minute it was made available um Dr Siegler and Rich Torres director of security are on it to make sure that we have a submission in time for you to meet that March 31st for sure thank you so much thank you okay so a board chairperson's report I have a couple of things um first public participation I know we don't return any questions or engage with the person participating uh I'd like to get when someone comes in front of the board as public participation you know Express concerns obviously we get concerned I'd like a follow-up I know you guys follow up but once they come in front of us I'd like to know what happens after that and I think the board would be interested in seeing what you know you have two concerned parents obviously upset uh you know whether he's saying they reached out to the school stuff like that I'm not concerned about that I'm concerned about what happens from here so I like to get out of I saw you ran out there camera and stuff like that so I'd like to get an update just I know you guys are on it but we need to know that you guys are on it so if you can just give us a report I mean I know there are some safety concerns um so that might be in Mike's Department Rich starred as the part of the week we like to get an update on some stuff that that when they bring more just um what's what's uh what comes up that's okay okay along with that I'd like to know what happened to that field trip Eis field trip uh came to us was a couple months ago thank you sorry is that nature center I'm not making natural stops from a parent came in from area that they we couldn't they couldn't do it but they thought um I think you did explain that at one of the meetings yeah they just didn't have any teacher participation uh to do it so they can't do it yes so there's no other alternative to getting them there is no other options yeah the the school look for Alternatives or alternative trips and experiences for students the Nature's Classroom the way the school and public schools have experienced in the past no there's not another way to do what we've done in the past at the school along with the principal along with the staff now imagine soon parents as well work together to try to find other Alternatives in terms of alternative experiences because the Nature's Classroom which means our staff has to stay overnight and provide that supervision and that is not an option so next I just want to I know I was not here I don't think so I just want to thank everyone the finance committee and everyone Sue Wilson and John everybody who participated in that that process I know it's not a fun thing and I think you guys really went into a deep uh deeper than before uh years past that that I want to thank everybody for for doing that um he also thought and tasks so we appreciate the work you guys do mind you know that so my last thing is workshops so we had a workshop today um and I think so it was an hour workshop with the 59 minute presentation so it's a little difficult to get questions in and really drill down on some of the concerns and I think that's what the workshop I'd like to see the workshop model like we did with the Finance Workshop and stuff where we can really get into um you know the deeper questions and have some time because you get a presentation and um in a board meeting and it's 15 it's 20 minutes and we're all interested in time we're doing 10 different other things sometimes it's full of information that he can understand on purpose but who knows so I asked Kevin to talk to Kevin and maybe some different options some workshops to really answer some of the questions that we have so he's going to look into it I don't know subset that might be a king question down the line if we substitute something for something else and really spend the time on an issue because I know people especially with the Academy I mean I had some other questions and I think some other people have some other questions and we just couldn't get all the information that wants out believe me I'm not looking to have more meetings that's really not what we're looking at doing really here so I'm trying to get a happy medium in between you know if you know if everyone's receptive to it I think I think we we that extra information instead of just a presentation we'll see you next time I'm having a hard time with that sure so I proposed to Ralph recently on the island given this conversation closer up recently the idea of adding one board meeting per month and then one Workshop the board meeting would require action and we would keep it so it's action only evening second meeting could be a workshop where we could engage in discussion our presentations would be in that evening maybe more than 60 minutes but it would also be now our award meeting is go very fast you know unless we have a lot of people as part of public publication my work in districts where this has been effective doesn't mean it's perfect it has been effective most more importantly it allows for opportunities throughout just gave an example allows for opportunities for the board to dig in Ebro on questions and provide for an opportunity for open dialogue no different than we had last night in the finance meeting or previous meetings in committee meetings so just wanted to share that we have had the conversation about you know are we required to have two board meetings a month I'm confident that to know and ask him I think we're just required to have one per month and for those of you one District most recently that I was interested in water various years ago but it's a very effective model for them I don't want to look at their tapes at any time is actually it functions very well but the workshop piece it allows us to do what we do and that is make sure we have the open dialogue and get to the bottom of some of the very questions that is also probably very beneficial for our families it might be coming to watch and be a part that's it I just want to say that that's a very thoughtful approach and very interested in trying the new model very well to all of us and we're really facilitate about communication between more and more interesting so thank you both for you yeah we're floating it out now just to supply but I want to bring it out to everybody it's just you know to be out there with you we don't like it can we go back twice a month Boe meeting I mean it's not going to be set or start right format otherwise so on the other side of the board table with the lights are on during the school day we're known for having pilots in this District and so we're going to be we would welcome the idea of having a pilot and make the grass of the remaining of this year the board is interested and if it goes well so we can be brief at the end of the school year if it goes well we can continue next year it does it we brought back to our old ways all right so to be continued and that's all I really have on board chair versus report any report committee committees or you know communication or sort of anything PTO meetings um Cara sent out today the information on the asapc I grew up a couple board members asked about it she sent it out earlier in the year but she just kind of resent it out today just making sure everybody got that and then the other Cara and I are working on a new date for curriculum we are holding off of the 16th care is just waiting for confirmation from AEP with the presenters or the people that will be answering questions from us and we'll get back to everyone of the day so it is not going to be next Thursday but we'll get back to you with that information and then Michelle and I are continuing to do other school visits do you want to talk about it this time uh yes it's been great we were just over at uh King Street by Mary so we've actually hit I think about six or seven schools by now um everybody seems to be really excited with the I ready program and the principals they've shown us a lot of their achievement already their scene which is great they're excited about it a lot of them won't be my path Mary but it's really good that we've been able to be able to discuss these sites and maintenance and some certain areas that might need to be addressed that just become it's just becoming were familiar and he you know again the connections that we're making this great and just each school has their own identity and it's just great to see how they make it work which whatever you know special circumstance that they might be addressing at that school so it's really just going to be a pleasure I think it's wonderful you're doing this um so I think it's wonderful that you're going to the schools I think reporting back is fantastic I'm just uh I'm interested in what the protocol is to say Terry and I would like to visit these uh this year I don't want to overwhelm the schools with the amount of time that they spend more of that members so is there a protocol for how to do this so that we can also visit some schools command or Supply but not move well in the schools right so my suggestion would be more than two people at a time don't do it try to go you know pair up or one person but when you call Cara or email Karen to set up the appointment with with the school to go so you know you just don't show them because so they have the time and and the attention so you schedule everything through Canada make the appointments to the school you know through the school and um you know you just go from there follow-up question for you so if I were to email Karen's I'm interested in the other school is it okay to send it out to the rest of the board to see if I would like to accompany me and how many people can they take a time I know that there's some concerns about having too many of us if that becomes a meeting but what is what is including about your voice I wouldn't know more than two people oh Mr Williams we've had some experience with it together um how does the district feel about the board members going you know together to the schools I mean I don't want to be disruptive to what their job and what they're doing so I want to be respectful to them and you know when is the best time of the year to visit when is when is better for them if we wanted to short answer is it doesn't matter no I mean it's no I mean yeah that's a great question um I love Kara wants to answer but or Kevin wants to answer but it's so I I do think it's important to just just go back to something that Bridget said about overwhelming in principles um in the report out maybe his Cara can keep track for us like how many what schools have been visited and so Dan can see Michelle and Lauren been seeing four more board members and visit different parts of the school it may not matter um but if three different board member groups are going to see I think they would love to have you sure but he could also be overwhelmed to Bridges point about you know I just this is my third tour with board members in the last couple months so maybe I can just say Sarah Peter to sing a tally for us in the meantime so that we're not overwhelming the whole subscribing one school in particular just make sure that we're spread out and I'm assuming we're not good every single school and every board member is going to see every single school so maybe I could just ask therapy to just kind of say these in schools that have been visited these ones that still have not been and then I could just help spread myself without you'll eventually get to all of them I think it's overwhelming for more than two people to go I think the protocol has been you want to attend a school and it did happen one time two individuals they decided they were going to go to the school and they have an alarm that particular day and foreign if you want to go to the school call and set up the appointment with Carol and let her have the conversation with your principal and get back to you and give that you know beautiful because it did happen and they didn't know that the two board members were against it so you know we have to just can't look at I'm going to get in my car and go today I don't see anything wrong with it I just don't think that to go there unexpected this other thing and you don't want to be in a conversation um and I don't want to be there but you don't want to get into a conversation about you know what you're doing as a Boardman what the leadership is doing what the teacher knew is doing if there's a new problem that you're interested in that particular school I don't see anything wrong on this so you can understand that program more so when it comes to the board you can say okay now I know what they're talking about foreign I just want to say every school that Michelle and I have gone into the principal has said thank you for coming um you know the exception of coven well because of code they haven't seen board members and they have encouraged us to reach out to the rest of you for you to come into their schools and yes it's time out of their day yes it's an interruption but they are encouraging board members to come to their schools we like Michelle said we've been to six or seven schools and they every single principal has said tell them to come visit me yeah or just come whenever you want right around just come so right so welcome the fact that we are engaged there but go through camera and you know it's Kevin's Kevin's call and everything but they want us there so don't not try to visit if you want to reach out and I mean Michelle and I are going on Mondays and Thursdays that's our that's our deal that's what we do um but they want us in their schools they want us they want to show off their schools they want us to see classrooms and their teachers and the teacher space is light up when you walk in their classrooms and it's it's they want us there yeah just oh my go on camera and setting up the right setting up the game anything else from anyone oh sorry that's okay that's not how it is so every month that we come in here's new car the driver wants attention to how fantastic our students our program is within the different public schools and the fantastic amazing works that shut up on a monthly basis here it's overwhelming the amount of talent that our students have and I just want to say thank you to all the schools that are participatory and bringing this these beautiful Works to work to Boardman follow us towards and I would love to know who and which school right so if we could get a script up that maybe we can you know the talent that's it was just amazing you know anything else it's Teresa I just want to point out uh a couple months ago we gathered down and two steps and did the mosaics now we filled it in those are up on the building in case uh folks haven't seen them I was expecting a little bit more blacks and I don't know if there's going to be more blacks but I recognize the one I did so I just wanted to point that out that they're up on that building on White Street corner of the laundromat there across from ice cream and intersection of White Street and I wasn't going to believe so and you want to stop me stop I'll never stop because I'm a little concerned that we as a group attend William at some point we don't sort of support one another as a group and I was I I don't want to say this because I was never heard when we offer of care person that just left to represent a district between union and we presented her with flowers and no one let me know and I know I had a conversation with you that it was done at the last minute but the phone calls that I got after that that people were watching of what was going on why is it that everybody inside the door wasn't even actually not interested all I could say is that I was not asked to donate and we're about to donate it why we didn't take pictures without going to jail person [Music] whatever it is and I felt a little not comfortable because I was not a part of the communication even though it was last minute I would have still gave my money to help basketball and I just want to say just sitting here doing I just felt like we as a group was not working as a group and sharing things together I haven't been on this board because I'm a Democrat I think people have supported me for 31 years and if I lived to see November it'll be 32 years because I tried my best to do the right things not all of it has been right to support children and I believe all children can move I believe we have a great educational system here being there and we have young people older teachers and everyone's trying to work together to make sure that our students are A1 students when you vote for me vote for me because and I hope that someone that we can stop that it's not about the Democrats reporting that the Republican or republican Captain Bills so them can do what we have to do we should be working for all the educational goals about us and I'm just saying I truly respect the riches uh you know it was an accident a chair person and now she didn't want to go so when we do something like that we have to improve on and I think because I was really upset because I did not want anyone to feel that I did not hear that we go any bracelet that I wasn't asked so yeah I woke we had our conversation about it so I'm not going to comment on it what we talked about but a lot of people so if anybody else wants to make a comment I just want to point out I didn't know of it as well until I saw the flowers and I also offered to uh to pay my share and Route very graciously accepted the responsibility that's all I'm going to say because I didn't know as well thank you I will say um Ralph defense add me to no reason I mean to my understanding it came from the bottom of his heart to do it personally like a personal it was it was on behalf of the board the cards said the Board of Education next time uh when I'm when I leave please don't give me any flowers because any problems yeah I'm saying not my intention to upset anyone just I didn't send out a bulletin and I was going to that after half of the boards to give Rachel some club and I did offer if we can remember if we want to go back to the videotape I did offer anyone to make any comments to Rachel that's all I'm going to say and uh if that's all the comments on the flowers I like emotions sorry all right thank you so much thanks so much um I I just wanted I had a couple questions kind of two part of the first was I noticed that we're getting Communications directly across the mayor's office and I just wanted to understand the protocol there because in these past years we've typically receive Communications through our reporting secretary um from any outside obviously I I don't know what continually goes through camera I don't know what you can talk what we're talking about yeah we got yeah I got to communication from uh you know I appreciate getting that information again it's just for me it's a I want to make sure that this is being handled appropriately so um I just want to try and understand what the question Paul is maybe that's a kid question um you've always pushed all information through the reporting secretary so anything that gets distributed has always gone through her any conversations usually have to walk through youth as the chair would you say it okay you're saying there was an email directly from someone to the whole board yeah I think the monthly updates on uh [Music] yeah yeah but that's okay right okay is it just I I haven't seen it so I don't know what you're talking about I can show you oh it's are you talking about the calendar of events for the city council yeah oh yeah yeah I've seen that but some someone can can email the whole sure I mean all your emails are all public you know and sometimes you do get any numbers yes there isn't you know there isn't really a way to stop that it's just directly from okay I just I just love learning because obviously it's a it's like an organization um the other question I have seems about sort of what the procedure is for uh support participation in larger [Music] than that it's amazing things distributed into the community um I did see a press release that came out from the city which included in Board of Education like this and it was on something that um I don't recall we've been receiving any kind of communication about um and I just was uh trying to get a sense of like how that would work if there are you know mechanisms in place for us to communicate directly with the marriage office from the city council or the zoning commission or whoever um when something like that is happening that I I was surprised by it I did not know that was going on nobody contacted me about it or had any kind of conversation um so I was just surprised to see it okay so is the question what um what mode of informational you know that access that people have directly to the reward or I mean I guess if it's if it's related to more than stuff I would just assume that all uh the members of the Board of Education would be pretty too uh the information and I certainly didn't see anything before I saw that question do you know what Chris released it was yeah uh it was put out by the city and it was about a coalition of scope frontal City we were making a requested governor's office oh well that means Casino oh yeah that's the letter to get more money foreign [Music] call is here for for situations where um you know foreign [Music] identity exists there and people are not you know acting as individuals but rather as representatives of this group that we would all be privy to the information and conversation in advance of you know some kind of release like that happening we we've had that before and I think the rule has always been you know part of what you have to do on your own is parse through whether you're representing your own personal belief on something or if you remember speaking on behalf of the board you really can't or shouldn't individually speak on behalf of the board without going through the board chair I mean that's always been that's just a way to control kind of 11 different voices um and and but that's always been with the divided and I mean I think when you I don't know exactly what the content was but if it's something that's particularly controversial or or discussion worthy or engage in the whole Community I think what I have seen board chairs do in the past is just generally admonish that please you know make sure that you are clear that you are representing your own personal opinion about something as opposed to speaking up right it's like when a member goes to a city council meeting and brings up something um as a person but they happen to be on the board or a community event where someone gives information who might be attending their Community event um it is their personal opinion they do not speak uh on behalf of the full board so I think what that that's a clarification I think what Kate's talking about was was individuals part of a group some happen to be on the board some happen to be City officials some happen to me other other people um that were included in espresso really so lovely and thank you for putting that up and I think that's always a disclaimer when you know two board members go visit a school and they go here it's they're not they're they're there as Board of Education representatives and any conversations they have and it should be safe and taken in the context of that individual reward of what matters is so um yeah we only have three months and there's 14 years I just want to make sure that it is clear that every single government over here has that independent voice is that clear I mean regardless of what political party is right if I drink perfect thank you as long as it's like I said I just can't spray it up is that we are speaking from your own personal opinion but you happen to be on the board so any Board of communications that come as a board would come to the chair but obviously if you go to the graduation on Friday night and you're having a conversation it's it's just I think the clarification to Kim's point is that you know to make sure people know it's it's uh as the individual might happen to be a board member of therapy yeah and people can always have that comma board member at the end of your name with anything that you said even if you're very clear that you're an individual right I guess the reason I'm asking this question I apologize I know I'm not cutting it wrong the reason I'm asking this question is because um I did I did make the mistake when I uh was first on the board of speaking in front of the city council about the budget and I identified myself as a board of education member and did not explicitly say I am speaking as an individual and I was appropriately admonished for that because as Kim stated you know you have to you you have to offer that disclaimer so my question is on the press release where board members are identified by their Title First and their name and this is going out as a formal release from the city I'm trying to understand the Nuance of how we're having this conversation here and how that applies to something like that which just happened because if I if I'm you know advocating for the budget in front of city council as a board of education member I would feel that that is you know somewhat under the purview of my responsibility in the Board of Education member it is our job to advocate for the schools and advocate for the money and the resources available for our schools but it clearly was not appropriate and that you know so I'm just trying to understand the Nuance here and how this situation might be you know different from what I'm what my experience was previously so but not not to cut you off for the interests of time since we do that executive session I think if if Kim if Kate can reach out to you directly and try to find out um you know if you could answer any of her questions and then just uh you know let me know so if there's anything I have to let the whole board know that will be great is that okay Ken I want to cut you off when we have to get into executive session no I understand but that's okay with man I just want to make sure everybody's informed so who you know find out you know that there's some some information that needs to be coming to everybody I assume the camera really did that to you and people share with everybody so that's fine with me absolutely all right thank you Keith thank you can I get a motion to exit thank you probably session always okay second is Julie all in favor um so I have no motion to go into executive sessions
So when we delay certain things, it always takes a backseat. I'll give you an example when it came to um just bringing in and retrofitting the portables. You know, if if um sorry Heidi was Heidi Armstrong expediting certain things to get it done for Camel High School's 40 portables that we have, it it couldn't get done. So they always got to jump through all these hoops to do construction. So I mean I'm just saying about DOE. I'm not talking about anybody else. Why would you would you feel that it would be a benefit for DOE going into this direction? Actually I I think it would actually be easier for them to use an electronic procurement system. Again I'm not sure how they if it helps or if they want to use Hypro. We think Hypro is very user friendly. If you know how to fill in the boxes and you know the basics of procurement, it should be it should be easy.
this has been a drastic reduce in over previous years is approximately 30 of our annual budget which is good but um previously the district has been previewed to carrying over large sums of of capital carryover um unfortunately we do not have any additional Capital funds available to us the bond is fully exhausted and so um we are not for we have to start to spend these down and we're not fortunate enough to hold a large carry forward and so um you're going into the next fiscal year fiscal year 25 there will be some harder conversations when we go back and look at this budget but right now uh we can exhaust those into what we feel comfortable with going into fiscal 24 but conversations will be had we'll be getting tougher into 25.
and and 677 that's a yearly cost of 102 946 we have worked with them to get a bid for those two additional years they are giving us a discounted rate because we are already working with them of 74 722.85 a year so it's an additional 149 445 so in terms of a yearly cost it does decrease for us a little bit and gives us a little more time to get to that formal adoption process that curveballs that I think is coming out of answer dollars which is why we did it as a separate presentation um and that's what it would break down to in the overall cost that would then put our updated proposed schedule something like you see on the slide there where we would do math in 2023 that's what we're working on now Ela would then come back up to 2025 social studies in 2027 and science now would be in 2030 and we would start that every other year so you can see that we've built that we built a flex here in there so we've got some movement it doesn't have to be fine arts World languages and CTE necessarily in the order that it's in but that's at least a general thought that we do those big adoptions every other year and then we fill in those other materials in between as funds are available so that's good questions on that one no questions and I'll take a motion okay I moved to approve the extension of the ELA adoption for two years at a cost of 149 445 and 70 cents as presented in favor aye aye motion carries five to zero all right so we have some informational discussion items uh 9.1 discussion information on student achievement the February report you guys are like on fire on fire okay um a few months ago we gave you an overview of our college and crew Readiness platform called major Clarity you've heard that come up several times uh throughout the last several months and so we just wanted to report back and let you know how things are going to date um we hear some statistics that major Clarity pulled for us at the end of the first semester and you can see there that our students are doing well in the sense that they are activating accounts and they are returning to the platform to do several activities on a on an average with these types of platforms typically you see about a 25 activation rate and you can see we're well in the 90s and then more importantly is that second or that third to last column there where it says per percent of students returned so not only are they logging in and creating their accounts but now they're going back and they're actually doing some activities within the platform so by these statistics alone we've been awarded uh major Clarity power user for the second year in a row um what's behind those numbers is even more important in the fourth and fifth grade classrooms students are doing the career assessment through some engaging interest inventories they're discovering careers in a variety of job Industries focusing on the 16 career clusters and they meet residents these are fictional characters that reside in these regions and they explain a little bit about what that particular industry or job is about in the sixth and eighth grade sixth through eighth grade students they're doing diving in a little bit more to the career exploration pieces they do identify their personal goals create what's called a fit score based on their personality assessment and then they're able to discover careers aligned with interests and goals through career related activities video interviews and localized labor data so that's that piece uh Bob that you had asked about with the new them that we would like to adopt so this would still be a part of that and then we would just expound on that and then the high school students were still doing some career exploration there obviously but we really want to now start focusing on their academic plans so that they can plan out a four-year High School classes in advance based on the the experience that they had in the middle school so they have a better plan rather than a new experience every year when it comes to registration um they we are our students are earning micro credentials so major Clarity offers a variety of micro credentials and to date we have uh 482 micro credentials uh earned by our students many of those are in employability skills which is one of those important areas that we know our students all need to develop and then even more so for our seniors and even our Juniors major Clarity offers them an opportunity to compare schools they can go directly from major Clarity into a school website to get the demographics of that school they can also apply for scholarships and so forth so really a comprehensive program that is helping our students pretty much plan out their future so just briefly I just wanted to share with you some comments that were shared depending on on how the elementary school principal decided to uh roll out the program or I should say through who or who they decide to their counselor Library aide at CTA Cheryl top yes she's our library there she takes on the responsibility of working with all the students and she made this comment she says I've had a few tell me that they already had their heart set on a specific job in their future they then listened or or to or watched a few videos and it has changed their mind it's fun to hear their thoughts on a lot of the Snippets a lot of times we know that our students only know what their parents do right and so now they're getting exposed to more um jorianne joint she's a school counselor at Ellsworth this is just a picture that Mrs dunker sent us about them actually having those conversations in the classroom with students about the possibilities that are out there waiting for them and then Jolene Peterson our counselor she said when we went to the to CMS to do registration we asked students what kinds of careers have been suggested in major Clarity and many of them raise their hands to share we were very excited that the students not only had their post-secondary careers on their mind but that we were able to link many of those careers with classes offered at CHS it was amazing to see the light bulb come on as we talked about how their High School classes could help them in their future employment so really the point here is that the conversations are happening with adults and students now there's more confidence from the the adult side because now they have a resource that they can refer to and obviously the platform offers a variety of opportunities for our students to to explore really what's out there and start making those those important plans uh one final thing paper has acquired major Clarity so to our convenience um but there is definitely a partnership there with major Clarity uh paper uh common app which is an app that students can use to apply for for uh to colleges and then parchment which we currently also have uh is students are able to grab their transcripts so it all kind of works together it's a kind of a One-Stop shop for our students to be able to access all these or anything that they really want to any questions and just so you know we do have a scheduled meeting on March 1st between paper and major Clarity and and what we're trying to do with hashtag Ford uh they reached out to us because we happened to one of the few districts that purchased both of those two programs paper and major Clarity and because of what they're trying to do they would like to sit down and talk to us about how they can help us on lots of different levels as they make this acquisition so not sure what the meeting is going to look like but it's scheduled for March 1st we'll meet with our basically our steering committee on hashtag forward and start to talk about not only this stuff but also potential what they could help us with some learner profiles that would take a little bit more work off off the teacher's plate if if it works out the way we think it might be able to okay okay so if there's no no other questions Tim did you just want me to mention this so coming up uh we'll report back on uh modern teacher and obviously some student assessment it's thank you thank you thank you okay so we have 9.2 discussion and information regarding possible pay increase for substitutes everybody um I'm going to go ahead and just kind of go through this once I get it up this will tie directly into your question Mr Delana about budget so so at the end of the day when we take a look at at this particular these particular numbers which I'm sure they'll call up but I'll start talking in the interest of time again based on the the last board meeting a request for information on discussion on um uh substitute pay so we want to end this particular meeting go ahead and talk about details on pay of surrounding districts that on absences this year Financial impacts for substitute pay and then receive some direction on from the board on the next steps the the financial impacts is where that conversation is going to take place and so when we look at currently our situation we have 50 Subs at the time last week when I was talking about this we have one more that's being onboarded but before everybody gets too excited we have nine that have not really worked per se with us at all this semester we've had to pull 12 out for long-term sub positions that number could grow based on some comments that are being made as we speak so we also have 15 Subs that work in multiple districts so they may or may not be available to us on a daily basis to be depending on what takes place so in essence we have about 14 Subs that are available district-wide on a daily basis okay those nine who have not worked substantial days is that because we don't like what they do or they don't want to work here what's the reason no I think it becomes I I won't go into names but what we know two of them very well and I think as they moved into retirement what they thought they would be doing which would be helping us out in subbing and the reality of grandkids and travel is such that that kind of took a priority and therefore they're much more happy traveling and it would Grant kids and other things and so what they thought was going to be and why they signed up with us just hasn't hasn't worked out in other cases there may be someone might not like us or something but but I think it's a it's there's not a one-size-fits-all for why someone decides not to do it this just gives you the numbers we can go into much more details besides these numbers but it gives you an idea not only of the neighboring school districts but also a couple of the charter schools the BF is Benjamin Franklin and so it kind of gives you a ballpark where in the ballpark with some a little bit lower than others um uh depending on the the district you're at we'll use this number just just for comparative uh situation you will see some uniqueness uh ala Gilbert and Higley where they pay more on a Friday a Monday and a Friday than they do on a Tuesday and a Thursday I'm not sure whether that's how effective that is but it is something creative they're trying this is the data to show you what's been happening throughout the year you will see in January that we had a little bit higher of a of a fill rate so we would hope that we would continue to have a little bit higher of a fill rate it may be dependent on any number of factors as to why the high the fill rate was a little bit higher but you can see that we're running in the mid 40s on a on an average fill rate and the number of sub days we have is is significant we've tried to go ahead and give you a breakout for why we have that many subs and what what they're doing you can see that sick Leaf makes up the second largest group the other piece that you need to understand when we look at our data the vacancy positions means in many cases those are the long-term Subs that we already have in place so it's not that those 1900 days are not filled they are filled but that means the 50 Subs that we had we had to take those 12 12 people out of those subs to cover that so that's a covered day but it impacts who's available for us to sub and then you can see some of the other reasons that people are are out yeah the the important news and I know for some people will just use this latest trip for ncdc business you know School business why why would you let people go at six percent of the days because the school business we're not pulling people out of school constantly I'm sure most people would think that number is a significantly higher and it's not it's the the sick leave personal days that end up uh chewing up as much as anything else so here's we'll start to talk money and then I'll go into a little more long longer conversation the reason I just give this to show you the numbers is because uh if you want fifteen dollars a day increase both on your daily rate and your long-term rate you would be in the ballpark of some of the neighboring districts so that's how we chose 15. when you look at it um uh in terms of dollars it's not a ton of money on a monthly basis you can probably get through because Marx is two weeks out of school if we I can't bring anything to you guys until the March board meeting for approval you've got two weeks of spring break so you're going to talk probably in the neighborhood of thirty thousand dollars okay but hey it's thirty thousand here it's 30 000 there you just asked the question of is it going to be a million dollar um carryover and the answer is I don't know because what we're getting at without getting too deep into it the pounding you know the the the the beatings will continue until morale improves the pounding on public education with the passage of AEL was significant um some of our legislative ladies slammed us the hardest and so when you get into a situation um that says what is going to be the increase on the budget we'll have to sit down and figure out are we going to go off of this year's numbers are we going to go off of last year's numbers so what's your your growth rate uh QC has growth rate in the neighborhood of 10 12 13 depending on Year we're set in plus or minus one so we're gonna go flat growth so if you go flat growth we're looking at potentially a two percent increase only so a two percent increase on our budget starts to have a heck of a an impact because oh by the way although we're having this discussion about substitutes we also lost another bus driver because they can go to QC and they made 24 bucks an hour so are we going to go ahead and give them 30 or 40 000 more to oh yeah that's right so far it seems like the going rate right now across the districts in the East Valley is somewhere between two and four percent pay increase so we're going to give our staff teachers a two to four percent pay increase not a problem if we do that if we're building a budget on zero growth that means we're not getting as much money in if we build it on some growth and that growth doesn't come now we've got a cut issue and so some of those districts are using some additional classroom site fund money we can do that the bottom line is we have been creative and worked hard to be competitive but we are still 15 percent less than any District to the west west of us because we don't have an override and so we can talk about whether you want to get in the sub pay you want to get into bus drivers you want to get into food service I wanted teachers you want to get administrators we're still fighting a 15 percent less money available in our pockets and so when we look at our options we could keep the pay situation the same as for up until 23 24 and make it as part of a budget proposal to you guys we could increase daily and half date rate we could do what Gilbert and and Higley are doing where we keep it where it's at on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday but we increase some Monday Friday we even looked out of state and we have a couple States Idaho and Utah that actually the longer you work for us we will give you a rate increase now we don't know what that looks like because it becomes complicated but in a couple districts that we looked in and this is Mark and and the and the HR staff not me um they went ahead and said if you work 40 days I'm making up numbers all sudden your rate's not 120 a day it becomes 140 a day right or you could just say we're going to give you a stipend so because it gets a little hard to try to track so we could do that or we could do any combination of those uh that we would like my recommendation but I'm asking for direction from the board but my recommendation is to put it into a holistic decision on what we're going to do with the budget the budget at a two percent increase is approximately Julie get me if I'm wrong is that the 600 000 or the 1.2 million if we get about a 22 increase I think it's six hundred thousand six hundred six hundred thousand and so so you go to two or three percent increase and and you keep the same number of Staff as you have this year you're going to wipe that out pretty doggone fast now having said that there is a lot of talk down in the legislature um that they want to throw a chunk of money at teachers Statewide we're going to give a ten thousand dollar raise we're gonna give a twelve thousand dollar raise there's been a couple drip bills that have been dropped but they don't have the the actual dollar amount in the bill they just say we want to give a raise that that'll be part of the negotiations if you say I'm going to give two percent plus 10 percent for or ten thousand dollars for every teacher then you got one problem if you say I'm only going to get two percent we're not going to do anything with teachers then you got another problem depending on where we go with our options it starts to eat in what's your carry forward it's nice to have a million dollar carry for it I am not going to suggest that we'll have a million dollar carry for next year because depending on what happens with some of these situations uh it may not be practical we may come back to you and say here are your five options one of them has a million dollar carryover but this is what it means we will get with leadership and with CCC to start talking about these options uh there's a very good chance we will be having a discussion about the state budget and it will be pushing the limit just like at the feds as to whether they can get this thing done by June 30th if they do not get it done by June 30th it will be as big a cluster as the AAL situation but there's a number of people that are going to play hardball and so we have to kind of see how some of those things play out now if you tell me that bring me some scenarios for March 1st that say increase the subs and we'll bring it to you because it's thirty thousand but I'd be remiss in my job if I didn't tell you that 30 000 here and thirty thousand there and it all starts that up and as soon as we start playing one now we got another group of people that are saying well why aren't we getting a raise and it's getting much more complicated because we're squeezing blood out of turnip and there's only so much to give so regarding the million carryover I wasn't suggesting that I want that or that I meet what I was just asking is how it would be affected uh personally I feel it's okay to not have a million dollar carryover I would rather use it for critical needs and if trying to get a substitute in the classroom is proving to be difficult and that's a critical need I would say I would like to spend the money now as opposed to waiting for a new budget and if getting a bus driver because we don't have enough bus drivers is a critical need I would say let's raise the bus driver right I'm looking to see not because it's not every we don't have the money to pay everything for everyone right but where are the critical needs that we need to keep the district running and running smoothly and effectively and not impacting the education so I'm okay go involve the million million right and uh personally I would like to see some proposal to address it at the next board meeting so a couple things though just as a reminder um uh we can make adjustments wherever we just gave all our classified employees a seven percent raise in January so that's on top of that remember we've had to cut a million dollars out of the budget relative to the number of kids that are lost so we'll have to look at the numbers I don't know that we we necessarily have to start taking care of everybody's issue if you ask me what's the most important positions I would say every position we took three months before we could fill a lead mechanic we had to go to SSC for custodians because we can't feel custodians we've had to go to situations where our office ladies and Food Service are working in the kitchens because we don't have people in the kitchens we have unfilled positions in every one of our teaching spots we have uh you know so so when I sit here and talk about what's a high need position but I can look out at this crowd and every one of them raise their hand that this is a high need how long did it take you Craig to go ahead and hire your your tax I mean it's it's across the board I don't I'll bring you options but you need to know that when you ask me what's the high need everything and so I don't have a system that says this is a higher need than that obviously with custodians it got so bad that it was a high enough need that we said we have to go to SS here coming to a company it ended up being SSC but we had to go to a company because we could not find the people to do the job and so I just just urge caution as we talk about that because once we commit those dollars and I and again it's only 30 000 for Subs that's not a problem but your commitment to Dollars this year means the lack of dollars next year because there's a commitment already to those dollars and and we have to be prepared unless this the legislature gives a specific dollar amount to teachers I'll just go on record right now that there's no way in Godfrey and Earth we're giving teachers seven percent like we gave classified the average across the state across the East valleys is like I say two to four percent depending on uh what you do now again if teachers are watching online if they turn around and give ten thousand dollars to every teacher then it's a different conversation my whole component of seven percent is irrelevant irrelevant because those dollars will be tagged specifically to certified staff so um not a problem bringing it but I just again I don't have a way to say who's the most important because right now we're having problems everywhere right um two additional questions one what we're doing with the custodial staff and kind of Outsourcing that is there any company that provides bus drivers in that way that the custodial companies do we there there may be I know when I was in Snowflake way back when yes we we outsourced to laid law I don't know if those busing companies still still out there it used to be b line was another one and I haven't seen them as much we haven't looked into it but we are looking at maintenance uh techs with an Outsourcing right now trying to get a pricing to see because of the same reason because we can't reply or find somewhere for there food service does it also we right now are are doing it internally but if we lose some more people quite frankly we may have to look at that but I wouldn't look at that one if at all possible until a split in the year you know I do it over the summer but we're going to be forced to because if we can't find the people okay and then one other question I don't remember the name of the program but there was a program where we were in a partnership about getting teachers from other countries and I don't recall what the name of it is but I'm wondering how is that going are we getting any teachers are they full-time teachers substitute so it's yes so um I heard we got these new microphones yeah so we did move forward with that company and uh we have a beta test going on of an employee that's in the system uh she came to the board on HR consent agenda I believe three months ago um it took us a while to get her onboarded simply because of her situation but but it's been successful from my point of view I would have to wait until evaluations are out to no a little bit more about that but we are looking forward to moving forward with that in that company and is that just for full-time employees or can it also be for substitutes uh only for teachers only for full-time teachers okay there becomes a certification issue relative to them being able to work with us okay all right thank you you can give me clarification what um do we have do we pay different for somebody that has their bachelor's no they're all the same whether you have your bachelor's or not you get the same pay right we pay we pay um for um long term versus short term and that could be part of an option if you're if the direction of the board is to come back with options we can look at though I mean I gave you a couple options but we've looked at I say we hr's looked at lots of different districts around lots of different areas and so you can get into all those scenarios are you going to do the stipend are you going to do for for bachelor's are you going to do Monday and and Friday are you so there's multiple different scenarios the overall dollar amount in the short term for the remaining time that we have left since I would bring this to you on March 1st is going to probably be give or take thirty thousand dollars so it's not as big an issue within the remaining time if we just focus on substitutes not anybody else over the Long Haul might be a little bit more depending on a number of issues if we have positions we can't fill next year and so our vacancy rates are higher and we now instead of having 12 long-term Subs we have 16 long-term subs and it's a different issue if we hire and you pop back down and so now you only got to fill five positions so all of that will move and so that number changes when you take a look at the rest of the year if you do 30 000 on basically two and a half months you can assume that you're probably in a hundred thousand over the course of a year now those are real rough numbers but just to give you perspective thirty thousand played out over the remainder of the year when you factor in holidays and stuff is probably going to put you in the 100 to 120 range so it's not chump change in the bigger picture if you're only getting six hundred thousand dollars that you're supposed to give everybody a raise with and you just went ahead and took a hundred thousand of that out that significantly impacts the rest of the people getting any money and so that becomes the real tough part on this is we're looking in the short term but we also have to look forward to the long term and what it means next year within our total budget and again if we get 400 kids more next year we got a whole different story if we stay flat or lose another 200 kids then we got a big different story too I personally think that the the Loyalty thing is a great option but that's just me I like that too okay so you so what I'm hearing since Bob said I haven't heard anybody say no I will go ahead and bring back some uh possible so a couple things I'll bring back some possible options of what we could do at the March board meeting just understand that because I bring back options the vote of the board is still you all may vote for one to not do them you may vote 5-0 to do them so the options are just giving you a chance and then we decide what we're going to do okay so I'll have those on the March board meeting um okay so any future agenda items anything needs burning the hole in your pocket no okay all right well I'll make a motion to adjourn at 8 21.