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um it was sponsored by representative cook he's a very strong Advocate very vocal on behalf of asdb but um unfortunately the bill did not receive a Committee hearing in the education committee um however we're not completely out of the game uh Governor Hobbs did actually propose our funding requests in the amount of one-time funding for education for next year's state budget so what the plan is right now is for me to continue to Advocate on behalf of the funding and go to individual members of the legislature talk to them about the importance of this funding request and that it is important that it not just be funded one time that we receive ongoing funding because we know the need for buses is not going to go away we know the need for building repairs is not going to go away so I what I will be doing is handing everybody information packets and asking each individual member of the of the legislature to please place this on their list of budget priorities when it comes time in May and June to start negotiating the state budget so we will see how that goes the next bill that I would like to brief you on is House Bill 2456 this is our continuation Bill colloquially it's known as our as our Sunrise bill and I actually have updates to offer even since I gave this abstract to Leticia last week so the bill did pass out of the house unanimously it was transmitted to the Senate that having been said it did receive a first read on Monday and it was assigned to a committee um however it was not assigned where we expected it to go we had anticipated that it was going to go to the Senate education committee instead it was assigned to the Senate government committee um it appears that asdb is the only agency who received an assignment to the government committee so this is a little bit unusual and I am trying to run down some additional information as to why it was placed in government instead of Senate education so we are but we are prepared to continue to advocate so that asdb can um have their uh their statute renewed for another eight years so um at this time does anybody have any questions for me about those two bills um yes Maria I my question is the same for both of them um what can the board do what can the community do to support you in these efforts at this time so thank you board member can I feel that's that's an excellent question so what I would always recommend is sending letters and making phone calls or even requesting meetings with your local legislators so find your state senator find your state representatives and continue to advocate for this funding issue and for asdb's continuation so um we you can find your legislator online at www.azledge.gov if you need the specific link please feel free to contact me and I'm happy to figure out who your local legislator is and and just get in there and and Advocate and um when the continuation Bill comes before the committee for a hearing we would love to see a really robust turnout in favor of a clean bill meaning to pass it as it's written as it's written not with not with any amendments okay and you will keep us up to date on that I commit to keeping you all up to date because the um the updates happen sometimes on a not just a day by day basis but it happens on a minute by minute basis so there there have been updates just between yesterday and today and I just received an update here in my chair about an hour ago and are these updates also posted on the website on the ascb website or on the AC ledge website on the asdb website I am not no we are not currently posting it on the asdb website we do have to be a little bit careful about the use of um State resources and state time to engage in advocacy activities at this time I am the designated public lobbyist for asdb and then Annette as the superintendent of asdb also has the ability to Advocate but um if parents the community students and staff would like to Advocate on behalf of this funding issue and on behalf of bills then it is something that they would need to make sure that they are doing on their own time and using their own resources so of course we encourage everybody to participate in the legislative process everybody has a voice but in particular for our staff we do have to be mindful that we're not expect sending public resources on advocacy activities thank you for that clarification does anyone else have any questions for her on those two yes yes I have a question about azleg dot gov um is I believe you have to register to comment in person to help the capital is that still true some folks have wanted to they thought it was easy to register to speak online but rather you have to go down to the Capitol and they have a kiosk or some sort of system that you have to register to and then after that you can then register to speak from your computer so that is something to keep in mind for our community especially when we're talking about the I get confused sunset sunrise whatever that one is called the sunrise Bill rather that you were just talking about the education committee has historically always been the committee for us but now being transferred to this government Community government committee rather I'm very interested in knowing why because we've been renewed for several different um iterations and yet now we're being moved over I'm very interested into finding out why what information have you been able to gather so um I I was able to speak to our Prime sponsors assistant earlier this afternoon and uh when I asked as to why we were told that the government committee and the education committee are both large committees and because asdb is a state agency and there was agency language in the bill that it could be assigned over to the government committee um what I find interesting about that is that there are other state agencies boards and commissions that um that are also going through the continuation process this legislative session and none of those agencies thus far have been assigned to the government committee uh so so that is unusual to me and um it is somewhat concerning to me so I am going to continue to keep a very close eye on the situation and I am in touch with um Senate staff I'm in touch with Senators themselves to try and figure out what exactly is going on so that we can come up with an effective strategy um when the bill comes up for a hearing are we likely to get more support from the education committee or the government committee um like you said this is odd and you have concerns are we less likely to get support from one of the other I don't have a pulse on that myself um I I cannot speak specifically to the government committee but I can speak to the education committee because I I know everybody on the education committee and I've met with them and worked with them um you know off and on for years and I do feel confident that we would have had a um a warm reception at the education committee I I am not as certain with the government Committee just because I have not had the opportunity to interact with them as frequently so it's a little bit difficult to predict okay I want to make sure that we don't get any surprises like 1402.
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all right do I have a second hold second all right that's good yeah I need it and that's what everybody in favor aye all right that's approved closed session continuation we do not need that this evening closing items we'll sign the documents do I have a motion for adjournment we need to get out here before nine all in favor all right all right you guys all have a nice evening thanks for coming this is democracy at its best thank you here foreign
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yes and that was a bomb that was dropped on us yes and and how can we be prepared yes and and that is my concern as well which is part of the reason why I am um encouraging the community um students anybody who would be interested in taking part in the legislative process to please participate and you can participate by sending emails making phone calls coming down to the Capitol to be heard at at a committee meeting so you did ask about having to go down to the Capitol and signing into kiosks and um board member both what you're referring to is something called the request to speak system so the very first time that you want to log into the request to speak system that is something where you have to create that account at the kiosk at the Capitol once you have created that account at the Capitol then any member of the public has the ability to go ahead and file what's called a position of opposing supporting or neutral on any particular Bill and you can also include comments in that as well if you believe that you would like to actually come down and speak in in front of the committee you would have the ability to request that as well using the online system the request to speak system thank you for the clarification any other questions regarding those two uh Mike I have a quick question go ahead Mike hi Maria hi Mike hi I have a question just there's a certain level of ambiguity around 1402 when it came to public comments typically when it was at that cause I know that as it seemingly as an official position ASAP was neutral and and uh uh I think I don't think I saw other people who were in support or are certainly who are against the bill and I think from my position I didn't quite know how to respond if it was a board position or an AFE position as a centrality as and maybe you mentioned this before maybe it was and apologize if it's can you explain that a little bit to me please yes definitely it's an excellent question um as Annette previously mentioned we had no idea that this strike everything amendment was coming we found out about it at five o'clock on a Monday afternoon for a two o'clock Wednesday hearing and we were in a mad scramble to try to first get in with the Bill's sponsor to try to figure out what was her intention in introducing this language and then trying to tease out some of the potential consequences of this bill because everything happened so quickly I as the government relations director really do not have the authority to take an official position about an asdb Bill until the asdb board tells me what I what I can and cannot do so when I went up there on Wednesday to testify what I did was I explained that we filed neutral simply because the asdb board has not given me the authority to go ahead and file a support or opposed position having said that I did note that there were a lot of potential unintended consequences of this bill and even now two weeks later we are still teasing out consequences that we had not even thought of from two weeks ago and what I can tell you and what and what I feel confident in telling the board is that we know that the blind Community nfb is opposed to this we know that the deaf community in terms of Azad and NAD is opposed to this my counterparts in the um in the general special education Community have serious concerns the Arizona Department of Education has some serious concerns and then even as recently as day before yesterday we found out that the University of Arizona has concerns because this could potentially affect some of their students who are trying to get certificated through the intern certificate program so there's a lot of people who are extremely concerned and I have been trying to work with legislators on an individual basis to say guys this this bill is not quite ready for prime time we you know this this bill needs a lot of additional work if it even passes and um I I did also reach out to Senator wadsack and say senator wadsack we're willing to talk to you we want to continue to have these discussions with you because um I agree with Senator wadsack that funding of special education in this state is abysmal it's underfunded um and and I agree that we need to be doing more for special education students in the state of Arizona where we differ with great respect is whether this bill is the vehicle to go about addressing her concerns I personally do not believe that this is the appropriate vehicle to address her concerns but until you asdb board give superintendent reichman and myself the authority to go say no we were opposed um I have to work um a little bit more behind the scenes in a one-on-one does that answer your question yeah oh it certainly answers my question a follow-up okay um sure go ahead year to implement at the very least and even then would be very difficult but nonetheless what is current right now though um didn't something come out today around another hearing next week that that I don't know if the bill is is going to individual senators or you know I'm not really privy to this kind of uh process but is there something that's particularly current right now that was different than um than what occurred at the uh at the the hope to education hearing and then uh the one on the following Wednesday so I I am not aware of any other bill that has come up I hope there's no bill that's come up right now otherwise I'm gonna have to go and and take a look but um 1402 I'm associated with it I'm sorry I'm talking over you go ahead oh okay um so Senate Bill 1402 did pass out of the rules committee last week as being considered constitutional and in proper form and typically the next step for a bill like that after it is passed out of committee and after it is passed out of rules is for it to be placed on the consent calendar um if it is pulled off of the consent calendar it would go to something called Committee of the whole and Committee of the whole is basically where the entire floor the the entire Senate would debate the merits and drawbacks of the bill I have been watching the Senate agendas the committee of the whole agendas like a hawk since um since it passed out of rules the committee of the whole has not placed 1402 on its calendar they have adjourned for the rest of the week so now the earliest that it would be able to come back and be considered on the calendar would be this Monday before you um Brittany had her hand up as well oh yeah sorry let me process for one second um obviously Maria we are concerned about 1402.
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How concerned should we be about 24 56 and how concerned should the community be about 24.56 I'm concerned about 24 about about 24 56. um I I am I do not want to panic as of yet because there's just still a lot of unknowns is there anything that you can clarify since we do have a lot of the public here that has already spoken about 1402 is there anything you can share about 2456 with maybe the public to make the um so that maybe they can understand why you and we would be highly concerned about something as benign seeming as our sunrise sunset bill um well the reason that I would be highly concerned is because if the Senate does not pass this bill or if they do not hear the bill in committee then the bill will not pass it will not go to the governor's office and then technically asdb would Sunset meaning that we would roll up the sidewalks and all go home it would be the end of asdb in its current form um there but it's very premature I don't want to cause a panic but I do want the community the board and everybody to be aware that this is happening and we need to be watching and we need to be highly involved with the legislature so that they understand the importance of the work that asdb does and that it is absolutely critical that are that our Charter essentially be renewed for another eight years thank you Marianne you're welcome Linda this is Linda I have a question for Ade speaking of again 1402 I am curious because when we're looking at children with disabilities other than deafness blindness visual impairment Etc are there existing programs organizations schools that provide services and meet the needs of children with other disabilities under Ade and just this is more for informational purposes so the community is aware yes um there are other private schools specifically for other disabilities call it those are how how many roughly sorry Lynn how many roughly would you say programs schools 50 100 like what are we looking at Statewide you know I don't have that information but I could 96.
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oh there's 99 96. 96. 96. the differences they're private yes they're well they're also PL I'm sorry all of them are private they are um children are placed by their IEP team in the private school and the school district's pay yeah and the school districts pay for that placement correct okay okay and I just want to make that make sure that we're all clear on that that there are other programs that are meeting that need and um to co-opt asdb to provide those Services just doesn't make sense to me when they're already being provided and so now that you have confirmed for us that there are multiple programs um like Lynn said that districts are supporting um there are services available and it would be wonderful if we could be left alone to focus on serving deaf hard of hearing blind visually impaired deafblind students as a top priority in our school system um are quote sensory impaired children and that is what we do here thank you for that information Colette you're welcome Lynn did you have anything you wanted it okay um what do you need from us now I would absolutely love it if somebody would make a motion to allow me to file an official position I got you I would love to have the honor of moving that the board opposed Bill 1402 and direct the school to do is the same I second that all in favor say aye aye opposed I hearing none motion carries thank you here's my okay okay this is Mike did I ask Maria one more question of course you may um Maria is is it possible for Senator watsek to include 1402 into 2456.
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yes it is good amend 24 um theoretically it is possible and um that is that is a concern I think that's what I was referring to before this is board member both can you can you explain a little bit more of how that could happen give us an example I'm I'm seeing and hearing some chatter out in the audience as well so what are what are we saying that that could look like Maria um so that we know what to keep an eye out for so theoretically it is possible for a senator to file an amendment to amend 2456. and theoretically it is possible that it could include the language of 1402.
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so yes it theoretically it it is possible and that is a concern Maria um as part of your discussion for 2456 with the legislators can um is it your is it asdb's position that that passed cleanly without Amendment I would like to take that position yes especially since the board has already taken the position that we would be opposed to the language in 1402 then I think it would be a logical extension to say that we would be opposed to any amending and that it would be our preference our strong preference to see a clean bill clean being unamended passed as it's being presented and then with 1402 that it is not supported and not passed correct go ahead Brittany um so to kind of just so I can recap really quick what you're saying currently is even though we oppose 1402 um the senator can choose to add 1402 to our Sunrise bill and hinge the longevity of our school on if we will include 1402 is that correct that is correct and we are um but we don't know that that's going to happen true very true but we are concerned but we are concerned and I am actively investigating other avenues to make sure that our Sunrise bill passes cleanly so you would need us as the board to do a motion to support 2456 in its original form is that correct I am actually not certain if that it because you have already approved 2456 at the January board meeting in that form so I don't so I don't know if we would need a second motion for that I just really want to ensure that 2456 stays in its original form and that is our position and and you authorized me to take a position on that and you authorized me to do that in January and so my position is that the board authorized me to take a four position and the board's position on the language of that bill has not changed okay fantastic thank you that's how I interpret it so any other questions comments for Maria we're going to move on to 7.04 the discussion and possible action request to state legislator to adjust Group B weights for students with disabilities I'm going to guess Maria that that has something also to do with you actually um former board member Nigro requested that this item originally be placed on the agenda but um it actually dovetails very nicely with the discussion that we've already been having um you have the the abstract before you and you also received a copy of the Ade cost study that was commissioned last year and in conclusion with that cost study um we're seeing that current special education funding it's just not sufficient to to address the actual student needs so special education students on average are underfunded by about five thousand six hundred dollars per child per year so um what what uh what board member Nigro wanted to do was to just highlight that for the asdb board to say this is this is not just an issue for you know deafblind low vision hard of hearing children this is an issue Statewide and and again this dovetails with what I think um Senator wadsack is with the point that she's trying to get across is that special education funding is is not adequate and um and that more needs to be done for special education students in the state of Arizona so we that that's something that we can agree on so that and that is why um former board president Nigro wanted this brought to the attention of the of the asdb board at this time is there any action you need us to take on that as a board an Eiffel uh simply because of the fact that there's not an active bill out there right now that is specifically addressing the group b funding but if there is a bill that starts moving through the legislature that specifically addresses Group B funding um for instance like the budget bills or something of that nature then it would be good if we could just go ahead and file a position because we should be filing a position to support our counterparts in school districts and charters because they support us so we should be supporting them I'm not sure if that answered my question would I mean I part of me feels like if we would motion to allow you to take a position in support of increasing or adjusting Group B weights for students with disabilities Statewide that would give you the latitude if you should see a budget bill or something to that effect surface yes it would it would give me latitude and it would give me authority to to take a position and I informally take positions when people ask me but if you want me to actually file an official position testify at a Committee hearing or something like that it it would be better if I had the the boards Authority I so move that do I have a second I'll second all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed hearing none one opposition um motion still carries moving on to I believe we are now on to 7.05 foreign introduction and possible discussion of policies Abe A to Z so um board members you have before you the policies which are being brought up for uh introduction and possible discussion what I can tell you is that these policies are being brought forth in response to the um the report from the auditor general the recommendations were made in regards to our complaint policies that we needed to have timelines associated with those policies so that we were responding in a relatively timely manner and that is essentially what these what these policies are doing these are our complaint policies and the the change that is being made is is we are adding on a timeline to respond by Maria in in regards to the comments we heard um for example on jiin I believe it was Keb um is it possible to add language to make sure that parents are parents and or Guardians are kept in into that communication Loop absolutely if that's if that is the sense of the board then certainly I'm happy to do that yes please um move in that direction okay thank you moving on to 7.06 um which was pulled from the consent agenda I would like to take this policy by policy and vote on them separately starting with policy BCB which is the conflict of interest policy I did not print it but I did submit um some recommendations for amendment to this policy to include the board members are supposed to be signing a conflict of interest statement upon their appointment but I think that it should be reviewed on an annual basis to make sure that it's current as well as moving out go ahead if I could oh I'm sorry I don't mean to interrupt you I'm in support though of what you just said because I serve on other school boards and I have to sign that contract on an annual basis to make sure that you're doing that self-reflection to make sure that there is no conflict the second part of that is I would like to see the language about spouses serving on the board mirror the dependent language and that because we again this is a very small community that we serve and we are for lack of a better word cutting off our nose despite our face by eliminating any potential good board candidates so I would like to see that language altered so that we can consider that with Governor appointment and board approval my only concern with that is that board member would have to abstain from a lot of the voting that had to do with staff and that we would not have a full board vote on some of the the items that come up and historically we have had folks abstain from those types of things and I but I still feel it's better if we can have a full board vote rather than yeah two or three people can't vote on any staff right this is board member I yes I I understand your opinion but like um Dr Harvey goodstein had mentioned um and also PV and I have seen for my own self um the people from the deaf Community who are qualified to serve on the board are often the same people who have worked at the schools um we know best where to draw the line we are professionals and we've become accustomed to drawing those lines for example like Dr goodstein said he taught math at gallaudet University while his wife was working within another department of the university and today we see all these PhD doctor and doctor spousals but they're working at the same University because the community is quite small but we value those people with expertise in this field so I think with that conflict of interest on an annual basis being required we simply don't have the plethora of candidates like a hearing board would have when it comes to the governor's office or appointments for other boards or even running for your local school board there's a lot of different candidates that people can choose from but when it comes to representation from our community we shouldn't limit ourselves and so that's why I would like to see that language changed so that instead of prohibiting any sort of working relationships that we maintain professional boundaries I'm a member of the community but it's not that I can't represent the community while I'm here on the board I am a representative of the community and in that I have to be a member of the community in order to gain their ideas so we have a lot of mature and smart people who can know where those boundaries lie and know how to cross them if necessary or when not to so that's why I would like that language changed you can always recuse yourself you can always recuse yep yep you can always recuse or abstain so in regards to BCB are there any further comments or questions BCB this is Mike yes Mike uh I I think you know particularly I I mean I understand in the blind Community it's important to to have the most qualified people in position but this is more than just people working together in a university or at an agency this is a in a governing role in making decisions at times that can affect um their you know their spouses and or family members I'm not opposed to to a change on this I just heard the word recuse it's a a lot more than abstaining to what happened to automatically recuse himself to be in any discussion or decision making particularly when it comes to uh to salaries or or authority issues so it's a lot more than involved than just profession and and I do understand the necessity that people small the the labor labor horses change but I also want to recognize not just a casual thing that uh that you know that you can you can just you know have good reasoning and Mike this is UK I I agree with you which is why my Amendment included that it would not only be by Governor appointment but it would have to come in front of the board for final approval before they were accepted knowing that conflict because even though the governor's office may be aware of that conflict they may not understand it in the context of being on this board thank you any Marie so Maria um I I would just also um like to a member of the audience just point it out to me that um the language in the policy regarding uh spouses that is something that does apply the the that language is pinned on Arizona revised Statute that is for school districts we are a state agency who also happens to be a local educational agency so there is no statutory impediment that would prevent us from taking this out so um but I but I I do understand the conversation that the board is having on making sure that the board is setting the appropriate guard rails so Maria could all right so I'm going to do it this way I'd like to move that policy BCB be um revised and brought before the board again with potential changes and don't just you know you guys all send in your comments as well for Maria to make sure that she's getting the essence of what needs to be in place as far as governing that so let me go back and say I move that we um not pass BCB as it currently is written and have it revised and brought back to the board for evaluation after the amendment is made or the language has changed to make sure that we are within the statutory do I have a second I'll second all those in favor say aye aye opposed hearing none BCB is not past um moving on to gbeaa I did not pull this one so I'm going to ask Linda to bring her cons start maybe with her concerns yes this is board member both I did want to pull this um like you mentioned suke I would like to go through each of them um baa is one that I wanted to address um it's hang on it's not there it was actually on um it was on the agenda two meetings ago no um baa is one that I wanted to address it was on a previous agenda and let's just let me give you a little bit of background this policy was established a while back and it states bored hold on please Linda my can I interrupt you really quickly if if it is not one of the policies that are on the agenda we need to agendize it and be able to talk about it at the next meeting so right now we're looking at gbeaa but remind me at the end to do to add baa for the agenda for discussion gbeaa okay so any we can go on sorry okay are there any concerns or questions about g b e a a okay is hearing none I move that we approve gbeaa as um as currently written do I have a second second all those in favor say I I opposed hearing none it's okay yeah hold please Linda wasn't looking when we called the vote this is um board member Vogue You said g b e a a and that's related to I'm sorry I wrote notes here and I'm trying to see is that the conflict of interest for staff no no that was BCB no it is conflict of interest but it is okay uh right this is for staff yes for staff okay okay right oh goodness okay Maria can you give us some background about gbeaa please how did how was that differ from BCB so uh the the policies differ in that the b c b policy is specifically for board members whereas gbeaa is specifically for staff members so the employees of the agency okay is that okay go ahead please answer no no you go uh so basically it's it's just saying that no employee um no person employed by asdb can be directly or indirectly supervised by a close relative unless it's by consent of the asdb board um a dependent of an asdb board member cannot be hired by asdb except by consent of the asdb board spouse of a board member cannot be employed except by consent of the asdb board and then it also goes into business relations and vendor relations so they're what we're talking about is if you have a relative who has a substantial interest in any business that asdb is carrying out then you need to refrain from participating in that decision um and then it is also adding language ensuring that we are training um on an annual I believe it's yes on an annual basis and that we are getting the form on file to acknowledge that the staff has been trained and that they know what they need to do in case of a potential conflict of interest okay thank you for that Maria you're welcome okay I'm okay there's a motion and a second on the table for GBE AAA to pass as is do I have we've I've got all the eyes do I have any opposition you've got my eye Okay g b e a a passes as is moving on to gcfc gcfc is the fingerprinting requirement and the change that is being made here is that it is not only staff members who need to be fingerprinted as a condition of employment but contractors subcontractors or vendors also needs to be fingerprinted as well this is something to ensure the safety of the students any questions or concern for Maria on okay I move that we accept gcfc as as written all in favor oh second thank you second all in favor say aye aye aye opposed hearing none gcfc passes moving on to Iha I only had a quick question on this one um could you just give us a reason why the health and safety piece was taken out of that um that is a good question and I presume that it is because this is what the Arizona school boards Association uh requested so it must have some kind of a statutory thing that's that's related to some recent legislation yeah does this preclude us from providing health and safety education to students and are we providing health and safety education to students it does not preclude us um I believe that we are providing health and safety education assistant superintendent Martin is that correct a knowledge we are okay thank you any questions or comments or concerns related to Iha I'm just not sure what to do here I'll call for a motion in a minute I just want to make sure that anybody who wanted to ask a question or had a comment would could put it in here I guess I I have a comment this is for remembering um we heard from the people in the community about how this one lists uh the uh recognized Ace yes if we wanted the other days that maybe that specific Community member asked for what does that look like um so uh board member Buchanan um the only ones that we are required to observe under Arizona revised Statute are 9 11 education day and Sandra Day O'Connor Civic celebration um this bill was actually I believe initially introduced I I can't I I think it was introduced in in January um and uh former board member Jance requested an observation of disability awareness week and an observation of a Helen Keller Celebration Day so I went and I looked to see when disability education awareness week is and um and I looked at Helen Keller's birthday and so I selected the dates that were closest and I added that in in response to to the board member's request so we could do the same thing if we wanted to so we um again the what the legislation requires that's the floor but we can always go above and beyond or or I should say the the board can always choose to go above and beyond so and that's what we would be doing with disability awareness week and Helen Keller Celebration Day thank you I do know that the campuses um do activities for like deaf awareness week as well as for white cane day I know that we've had students participate um I and maybe someone else on the board could speak to this I I know that it's a specific week but is white cane day the same day every year that that I do not know and unfortunately um Ms yankarelli is not here to answer that and she would be the oh this is Gordon this is I can answer that it's it's October 15th every year could we could we then table Iha to also include deaf awareness week and um white cane day yes I'd like to do that and excuse me Su Kay this is board member both I'd like to clarify something else um September is typically considered death Awareness Month nationally so um some schools do activities throughout throughout the month or pick one week Etc um but they're just like we just celebrated Black History Month and now we're in women's History Month Etc so deaf awareness does have the month of September um is that something that we can include should include I know that the deaf Community um does like a big weekend in September where they have activities and lectures and and some fun things some educational things with families and and students they engage with the school and that activity um so is that sort of related to what we're talking about here do we need to put it in policy should we put it in policy um is that necessary I guess I'm looking for some clarification that that's a really good question um if we start looking at for instance like deaf awareness month or um when we start going longer than a week if you look at the language of the policy it states that you're going to be observing a portion of the school day um educating on this so if we would be looking at for instance like deaf Awareness Month are we spending every school day of that month doing uh you know educating on deaf awareness so um the one thing that I would probably tell the board um just to to think about when you want to make those types of decisions is are these potential activities while they're very appropriate for a deaf and a blind School are they potentially also taking away from the other educational activities that are going on during the school day so so maybe there there may be other ways to commemorate I just our teachers are already under so much pressure as it is that I I hate to throw one more thing on them and as president neifle said um I I would say table it and let's let's um look at it next time the um Maria the only thing I would say is even within the month of deaf awareness month they have an A recognized week There's an international deaf week and a deaf Awareness Week within the um month and I think this speaks to a lot of um what it is at the heart of the school we need to make sure that kids feel like they have things that they can accomplish beyond beyond here absolutely and I think um you know highlighting within the you know within their school day um deaf and blind people who have made contributions not just to their own Community but to the World At Large would be an appropriate use of that type of time and I think if we could add that language I would like to see that table to include at least those two pieces okay well um Let me let me see what what I can do to massage that language and bring it back in in May thank you you're welcome do you need a motion that that does not pass since it was part of the consent agenda I think so yeah okay I move that we table Iha to include deaf awareness week and um white cane day um revisions and we will review it upon um those revisions a second all those in favor I opposed I sorry Mike opposed hearing none motion carries ihbf Maria can you just um explain to me what the addition the intent of the addition was this just something recommended through asba no actually this was not something recommended through asba this was actually requested by our own staff basically as as I recollect the reason why is because there may be certain instances with homebound Services where the campus-based programs would not be considered the least restrictive environment we asdb in general does not provide homebound Services except for the the um you know the Early Learning Program where we do uh where we have services in the um in the homes with parents and infants and toddlers Maria since we're an Lea now does that change the look of that wouldn't the brick and mortar schools be responsible since they are registered students unless you go through IEP process and change of lre that is something that I would want to discuss with our director of with Melissa DeVries our director of programming on that because I do know that she was the one who actually made um made this request for change I would check into it um yes I agree on that Lynn yeah I am you are hearing it loud and clear I motion to table uh ihbf second all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion carries ikf I feel like I have to that sounds credits I I have some additional clarification on the previous policy I'm so sorry I just found the additional clarification is it too late to go back go ahead um so the so the reason that this was requested is the homebound provision under Arizona revised statutes it only applies to funding under ADM so we do not receive ADM and and that is why we're requesting the change so this this does not apply to us because we don't receive that funding so if you want to I apologize I'm sorry was not um quick enough on the draw to look that up so we would need a motion to approve that even though we've or just put it back on just put it back on next time we'll just put it back on next time my apologies that's okay no worries and then ikf the graduation requirements as much it's the civics I I'm going to assume this is because of Statute yeah um it is because of Statute and this is um in regards to the Civics portion of the of the test um that is part of graduation requirements for the State of Arizona and at the time board member um Jance was concerned about ensuring that we were providing accommodations to ensure accessibility for the test for those students that were um that were going to be taking the Civics examination and yes so I I added language to specify that we would do what we needed to do to ensure that we were providing accommodations to make the test accessible and those accommodations all have to be in the IEP prior to taking the test because they understand that they can't just oh we're going to give them the accommodations because this test is hard it has to be in the IEP film thank you so do I have a motion to pass ik f as is I so motion I'll second all those in favor say aye aye opposed hearing none ikf passes and then lb I asked you um I ask to remove I would like to table this and have further discussion about the additional language um I think this is where we need to start looking at where that line is between the Board responsibility and the operations that the superintendent should have um I'm open to hearing anybody's comments or concerns though board member Beau from the last few meetings I have recognized that the board is taking on more and more responsibility as far as decision making that actually belongs to superintendent reichmann and we are taking the responsibility that rightfully belongs to her for ourselves I don't want the board to be a micromanaging board which has been what's happening recently as a board member it makes me feel uncomfortable taking away responsibility after responsibility as far as when contracts are renewed we have to get permission when we review or change contracts she has to ask permission I want to give her all of this ability to make these decisions she's got the experience she has the experience from DC at the federal level from those Department of Education days and I'm quite comfortable with letting her make the decisions that she needs to make in order to run the agency because she does have the larger picture of what the agency looks like while we as board members have a quite microscopic view we don't we're not in the day-to-day trenches we know one or two functions but like she mentioned earlier tonight I would strongly disagree with this language in this policy I mean so what do we do how do we get rid of this so Linda part of the reason why I pulled this is because asdb is a state agency they have to follow State procurement laws and so any contract um that they enter into has to be with a state approved vendor um they it they have to follow the state procurement laws and so in my mind this is taking away um the day-to-day operation responsibility of the superintendent when they are already heavily governed by the state procurement office and those checks and balances that are in place within the payment unit and things like that um I mean there's a system for Grants there's a system for contracts they have to use a state approved vendor there if they buy off contract they have to go through a bidding process all of that is already in State Statute and so to my knowledge and and superintendent Cooper please let me know if I am if I am wrong in this um we've not violated a Spoke contract or any spell law that we State procurement office statute that you are aware of that is correct and we are also as I mentioned last board meeting looking to receive an exception um being that we operate as an educational environment so although we are our estate agency we want to be able to have some exceptions to the state procurement roles and so we are still waiting to receive feedback from SPO on whether or not we can do that but to answer your question that is correct so I would like to propose we table this and have this language look closer to its original I do I would like to see um for lack of a better word more information in regards to those contracts I don't know that it's that is something that we need to approve though I I mean I would like to make sure that we are aware of that um but I I would like to allow the executive team to run the day-to-day of the agency so I move that we table lb and have it revised to more accurately reflect the responsibility of the board and the agency that that Line in the Sand so to speak um getting back closer to its original language I'll second all those in favor say aye aye opposed hearing none that motion to table lb carries okay moving on I think that's that's the last one on 7.06 moving on to 8.01 call to the public for non-agenda items we have a list um so this is for non-agenda items the first uh request we have is Lester I'm sorry I don't want to butcher your last name knife hurt thank you good evening uh respected board members I'm Lester nipert I'm a distance itinerant teacher for the deaf and hard of hearing so I'd like to thank you for allowing me this time to come forward and voice my concerns on a matter that was brought to the distance itinerant staff's attention which is the possible dismantling of the distance program and being placed under separate regions by allowing the distance itinerant program to be dissolved from its current status and placed under the separate regions and regional directors is a disservice to our students and teachers that we serve relationships have been built fellow students as well as staff many of our students have multiple disabilities so change is not good but rather having continuity is by allowing us to be placed under the separate regions brings up many questions such as will the teachers continue with their current caseload or would that be adjusted according to the region second how is the data gathered to determine that placing the distance program under the regions would be a good idea and lastly why were none of the distance itinerant staff questioned as to the program being successful or non-successful why it was being managed by Mr Johnson or as its own entity it is understandable that doing what is best for the agency is important but when a program has been making positive progress why dismantle it why make changes without communicating with your staff the ones uh accomplishing the mission I understand that there is a lack of communication within the agency especially the at the two upper levels but again to make a decision without communicating with your staff is unprofessional communication seems to be an issue at all levels case in point I've addressed issues with leadership in a letter to the board dated January 19 2023 and received not one reply in the world that I come from we don't discuss issues with leadership in an open forum so I at least wanted to provide that respect ultimately we need to put our students and teachers first not as an afterthought or no thought at all if this is the way that asdb conducts business and will continue to conduct business then I will need to question the acceptance of the contract for next school year thank you for your time thank you the next I have um is bonal amen amen thank you president knifel for allowing me the opportunity to comment I'm so happy and relieved that you have voted to oppose 1402. my name is benell Amman I've worked here for 40 plus years my husband and I love this school we love asdb and we have been worried but we wanted to share in the successes of our former students who have graduated or who are alumni from this school and I'm happy to send you some names there are probably some board members who simply don't know about the successes of our former students and I'm proud to say and to name just a few names that I can remember I'm probably missing many from asdb Larry The Interpreter missed the last name f it perovich graduated and is now a professor at RIT Juliana upfell is now a PE teacher at gallaudet Julia knapfel is a PE teacher at a school for the deaf I honestly can't remember where Steven Smith is a managing chef at a restaurant on 4th Avenue in Tucson Colin Denny most recently gave a great performance of America the Beautiful at the Super Bowl he performed the just this year in 2023.
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and he is a professional photographer as well Brian bilyu is a track driver Nathaniel Amman who happens to be my grandson is a corporate lawyer with Watkins and Layman law firm in California from the Phoenix area Jennifer Ann cook is a coordinator and promoter for California school for the deaf in Fremont and just accepted a job on the east coast and has been called to be the emcee at many national conferences every year Jody Amman is a professor of deaf studies at California State University Northridge Randy Noriega is an Intel innovator at Intel Michael delveio is a radiologist at a hospital near my home Robert hatch is an administrator here in Mesa Katie florich is a manager at Chase Bank Steven de Silva is a teacher at gallaudet University and his brother Kevin De Silva is a real estate agent he's a broker here in Phoenix Megan tellefson teaches here she's here somewhere in the audience the reason I share that and why I'm so glad that you have decided to oppose SB 1402 is because the potential ramifications of that bill being passed is that I don't know that we could be able to make more success students like I've shared let's celebrate together and oppose SB 1402 together oh gosh Harvey just reminded me I forgot one of the most important ones Troy Troy kotzer I'm sure you all know who he is our very famous American actor Troy who just won the Oscar last year he was a student here at PTSD believe it or not so thank you so much next I have Addison Castro okay hello my name is Addison Castro thank you for calling my name why I submitted my paper to speak is because I want to stand up against what has happened to my best friend Kaden he was oppressed by a teacher I'm from a different school now but I went to third and fourth grade here and I decided to transfer to a different School instead of PTSD I go to a Pembroke Elementary School now and it's a mainstream school but I decided to do that and then I heard what happened at PTSD and I decided to get involved and find out what was going on because pdsd is my old school and this school is very valuable to me it's an important part of my life this is a very important part of my life and I don't want to see this happen I heard what happened with that teacher and it really made me very mad it made me cry I was crying that night and I was not happy I want this situation to stop and I wanted to tell the board that this system that this is not a game that we are not playing around this is not play time we as deaf people members of the deaf Community we are a family and we are not easy to be tricked by hearing people some hearing people are fine and they aren't bad but some hearing people do want to oppress deaf people and we do not accept that when a hearing person oppresses a deaf person in a deaf School we do not want to allow that kind of thing to happen we do not want to be oppressed in this environment I am not happy about what happened here and there are a lot of people who are not and I'm very sad for my friends um my friend Kaden that goes here still I don't want to lose him I don't want anything bad to happen to him and I don't know what's going to happen if he's going to transfer to a different school that his mom said that he wants to um I just don't I don't want him to go but it might be better for him this system is not okay we are not okay with this happening here Carrie gamer should not be allowed to be in the cafeteria and around the students she doesn't seem to care she is violating these um boundaries and she's going around these students that she's not supposed to be around and being around them for more than 30 minutes when she's been told not to and that is not acceptable I support this school but I want to speak out against what has happened here on behalf of my deaf family and I don't want things like this to happen to my friends this school is a very important and treasure part of my life I'm really nervous but I wanted to be brave because I want to help these students stand up against what happened here laughs I don't want this to lose this school and I don't want hearing people to take over it this is a school for the deaf remember again this is a school that is very important and valuable to me and to my community and we do not want to lose it it is my old school I don't want to lose it a lot of my friends are still here I know these teachers I know that these teachers that have had a positive impact on my life I want to help them protest I want to help them speak out against this hearing people or taking over the school and turning it into a hearing school and that is not acceptable I don't want people to lose their jobs but I heard that some people are are leaving they're going to different schools we don't want to see that what happened to the teacher who's oppressing students who did that to Kaden that is not acceptable you called my friend a wild animal I do not accept that I am angry it's infuriating that Carrie didn't listen to the other teacher and continue to call Caden a wild animal and told him that he shouldn't be in this school my friends have special needs he and he's deaf he can't hear himself making noises is very very frustrating and um really upsetting for everyone involved and he tries to stop um but he's still my friend and we shouldn't allow people to hurt our friends thank you I just don't want people to to hurt each other thank you thank you thank you for allowing me to speak [Applause] uh next up to speak is Amy Young my son would like to say something first I'm going to share my time with him if that's okay I'm just really worried because my friend Kaden is really depressed because of the way that Carrie treated him yelling him at him in front of this class for like half an hour and you called him she called him a wild zoo animal said she was going to call 9-1-1 on him that's not kind it's really rude and Caden didn't know what to do and he's like I can't control it and I know that and the other teacher tried to tell her tell her to stop it she just kept going she just kept yelling at him and we've been worried this has been a problem every day it just feels I'm just really worried like Carrie Carrie's just not the best teacher for this place um I just wanted to make a comment about Annette reichmann saying that George Martin was at fault for what happened on November 4th uh the other parents and I did reach out to Annette reichmann the board and Jill and George all in an email and the only response that we got from Annette reichmann was to please refer to Jill that Jill the principal would answer our questions which then Jill every time we had a meeting with her said no uh there's this is all I can do it goes above and beyond me never once were we told to speak with George Martin so I think that it's very sad and unfortunate that they're cutting off his contract and not renewing his contract for next year since he was not we were we never were in contact with him we were never told to contact him and also I have no idea why Carrie gammer's contract is being renewed as you've heard from the students themselves they do not feel safe there they we have three injunctions against harassments to this teacher and you guys still continue to allow her to be at this school we as parents and as the students we're not we're in the staff members we're not going to accept this my son Brody as he just spoke today he will be pulled out for next year because it's an unfortunate event so thank you next to speak I have Keon Abbott can you see me clearly okay hello everyone my name is Kian Abbott and I am a former employee of bdsd and I wanted to speak because as you know there is a teacher here um as a teacher we don't leave our work on campus we we take things home with us we hear things the situation happened with Carrie gamer that everyone's aware of now and it and it made waves in the deaf community and what was unfortunate to me well several things really we're holding the wrong person accountable um we're holding George Martin accountable for this but Annette is the one who should be held accountable that situation that happened with Carrie um this was not the first time there was a long history of this and everybody knows it like there is a long history of her behavior and nothing had happened so when Annette was here the whole time George is knew he still was learning the system he wasn't even given a chance the deaf Community obviously responded um and made their comments about not understanding why his contract was not renewed but wow you chose not to listen to the community you chose not to listen to the students you chose not to listen to anyone here and Linda both who's representing the community that's this is really disappointing what I would like to see is that you revisit this decision of non-renewal for George's contract that needs to be Revisited you need to listen to the community listen to these people first listen to the staff that actually work here first without the community without the staff you don't have asdb you don't have PTSD thank you [Applause] next to speak I have Elizabeth iberra foreign make sure that I'm visible okay should I move over is this good okay hello everyone my name is Elizabeth I graduated from PTSD I'm an alumni in from 2014.
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I have three children I have children in preschool here I have a child in second grade I have a kindergartner and my baby my son is in preschool so I have three children and for kindergarten and preschool we have had a significant struggle with my son um he was left alone he needed to go to the bathroom and he he was left on his own and he did something happen with the metal lock and he was left on his own I think outside because there was some problem with the door getting locked accidentally and with my daughter my one of the staff members grabbed her and she fell and hit her head and was bleeding so I had to come to the school take her to the ER um she had to get four Staples in her head and with my baby he was running and he ran up to a gate and the gate hit him and he was bleeding from the head and there was blood all down his shirt so we've had three very concerning incidents and the teachers didn't communicate well about what was going on the doctor said that this you know didn't really make sense the nurse called my mother not me um twice called my the children's grandmother not me their mother and I did talk to the nurse and say that is not she's not the point of contact these are my children you call me you tell me what's going on my mom has a job she's she's busy that's not her job to worry about my kids the preschool I feel like at this point we're talking about teachers abusing children this looks like abuse the safety of our children it should be priority when my when I come to get my kids or when my kids come home I'm not getting communication as to what's going on um I got a kiddo in preschool who's still not signing fluently and I don't know what's going on with that I'm very frustrated and I hope that as we move forward this school will prioritize the safety of all of our students especially our preschoolers with the nurse calling me um on on FaceTime she explained that my little one had hurt his head and was bleeding um and I you know needed I had to tell her at that point don't call my mother about my children call me so that's what I wanted to say [Music] uh next I have PV Jance foreign and assistant superintendent Martin assistant superintendent Cooper and superintendent reichmann I'd like to touch on a few things that are non-agendized and I would like for the board to consider first this may be a policy Edition but any board member who is appointed to the board who is not familiar with Deaf culture or not familiar with the blind or VI Community should be mandated to take training on Deaf culture awareness Etc and the same goes with VI essentially those training experiences that are offered where they expose individuals to what it feels like to be blind or visually impaired that I think would help to educate board members and make sure that they are well aware of the impact of the decisions they're making on these students I also suggest that you consider a policy that would have a student government be involved with the board students should have a voice in their school the board is making all of these decisions for them where's their voice where's their involvement they should be part of this process any action item that the board is voting on that directly impacts the students the students have a right to contribute their Viewpoint their experience their perspective whether they support it or don't not just parents they're not the only experts here these kids are on this campus every day let them be engaged let them be involved teach them what it's like to Advocate from a young age teach them what teach them what the Civic process is from a young age because it's important for them to engage in that so that they continue to do so when they grow up and they can be successful adults and Advocate push for Change and Improvement in their own community I also suggest suggest drafting a policy um specifically about a dual role training I again staff have conflict of interest what happens when a staff is bullying a student what happens when you have a staff member involved protecting their child on campus for inappropriate reasons there should be a policy drafted to provide guidance on how to address those kinds of situations because we have a pattern of abuse we're taking advantage of the lack of policy where we need to document what appropriate procedure is in those situations my son is an example of these issues another student came to him and said you know he's he was a perfect example of this as well last but I would say most important there needs to be a policy establishing help with formal ASL instruction we don't have that for our little guys for our young kids where is their formal instruction in ASL where how are they learning it how are they improving their reading skills how are they learning to appropriately Express themselves reflect on their own feelings and opinions how yes they're they're learning but um the only formal language that instruction that they're receiving is in English and that's not a bilingual educational model we need to be following a bilingual approach and philosophy of education which values equally both cultures and languages thank you for your time next I have Jose Ramirez hello my name is Jose I graduated from PTSD I'm an alumni in May will be my 10-year reunion I grew up here this is my home A.G Bell as an organization how long has asdb partnered with A.G Bell I didn't realize that most of our students get hearing aids and we had teachers who would use microphones and primarily instruct us using their voices ASL wasn't a priority how did that impact our language development teachers carry gamer specifically to decide to renew her contract means that you're supporting an abuser it's quite obvious I remember when I was small Carrie's room was the place to go when you fail the test she would line up the students force them to study while she would be joking and making fun of us on the sidelines and to see that this is still going on today it's time to stop this has to stop this is hurting your students I'm glad that you've decided to oppose 1402 but we need more action thank you and last to speak I have Marcy Brandenburg Eric also had something to add so I'm going to share my time so you're going to let Kerry keep working here next year why don't you care about students our students should be safe here but Carrie bullies us students don't feel safe our teachers don't feel safe other staff members don't feel safe the school doesn't feel safe Carrie is so mean to everybody every day and year after year I have a lot to say and I'm I know I'm going to run out of time first it it really sucks to hear George Martin being used as a scapegoat to see the bus railroaded right over him and Annette not to take any responsibility for what has been going on he has been here since the summer this has been going on for decades that is a completely unfair position to take for him on this account as far as policies we have a ton of policies I'm a hospital worker I'm a nurse policies at my work are like the flipping law here they're like we follow them when we want to if it's a little bit convenient we follow it if not we don't follow it and that's unacceptable in my opinion I have been told that there's a lot of red tape and that the adoa is involved but the policy says that Annette could have taken action on this it specifically says it would have been left up to the superintendent for discipline I have started nearly memorizing these policies because it has become important for my child's safety this is my child's safety what do we know about School shooters in this day and age this school is raising them by allowing abusers on campus God forbid any of these kids ever feel the need to take such an action because this campus allows abuse on it you guys welcome the abuse and you actually ask for it to continue by extending these contracts you are negligent towards these children these are our kids they are important members of this community and you show them absolutely no regard by allowing her to continue to work here people should not have injunctions against harassments on teachers for their behavior on campus that is absolutely unacceptable for you guys to completely ignore what these kids have told you to ignore what the community has spoken out about to ignore your own policies and procedures to not compel adoa or whoever would be stopping you from getting her off of this campus that's unacceptable you guys are bystanders in this and you are allowing it to continue in addition I want to talk about the jii that PV mentioned earlier it does state that these complaints should be handled within two weeks and in fact it does say that students who submitted complaints and discussed should have the conclusions discussed with them and actions be taken as a result so that they know what came of it I filed one of these Annette failed to let us know so did Jill that it was completed we didn't get to know what was found that wasn't shared with us again failure to follow policy um where the Ombudsman is concerned I did submit a request I did ask for help I asked for policy explanation she told me we understood the situation better than she did I asked for additional help I told her when I submitted the jii complaint never heard from her again we did start going to lawyers and they just told us to take that off the plate because she wasn't helping us and she didn't think that that was going to get us anywhere it's very unfortunate that parents have to spend a lot of money on lawyers to get consultations to figure out which directions to go OCR is now investigating this school because we were able to find that as a contact option because the school didn't take any appropriate action towards Carrie they didn't communicate with us Annette has refused to meet with us as a group of parents that's unacceptable the board did not feel compelled to meet with us and I made those requests I don't know if that will change now that the president has changed but these actions are completely unacceptable from this board and from this Administration leadership is failing students my son deserves a safe education all of these kids deserve to be safe at school stop protecting the abusers [Applause] um eight points thank you 8.02 discussion and possible action items agenda items for the next regular board meeting that's scheduled for May 11th in Phoenix we'll need to put on the agenda um the election of a new president okay Leticia are you um taking these down awesome thank you um I would like to have Maria um maybe send out for review policy b a a perlinda's request um and I have two things specifically I would like to um and I don't know if I need to have this it wouldn't be for the next meeting I would like to call a special meeting before the next regular board meeting possibly over Zoom very quickly to really be informed on the legislative update and what we as a board can do to take action um and then the other thing I'd like to maybe have the I.T Services talk to us about a little bit is website access I know that videos are done descriptively and I'm hoping that things are at least closed captioned but as mentioned today I would really like to see that there's full access in ASL to any any of that web content including the policy um and and if there's an employee handbook separate from the policy I think that also needs to be done in ASL those are my um things that I'd like to see is there anything else this is board member both I've got a couple three things one is to change the policy regarding uh establishing a new committee currently it's my understanding that the only standing committee is the finance committee and I would like to change that language in the existing policy because it says only I'd like that removed and I'd like the policy to reflect that committees um can be established where three or more board members serve um and particularly I'd like to see a policy committee so that we can really thoroughly go through all of these trying to do it at the board meeting it's difficult to ask questions discuss understand and fully um prior to the board approving them and voting on them I would also like to add baa evaluation of the school board our self evaluation as a board I'd like to talk about how we do that how do we do that self-evaluation as board members what does that procedure look like following ethical practices and responsibilities the the power and authority of the board are we in compliance with the way that we should be operating so I'd like to look all that there may I do believe that there are things in policy regarding ethics and self-evaluation but we are not currently following them so those are the things that I would like on the agenda anything else oh it's okay one more I'm sorry I would like to have an agendized item regarding hang on talking about rfps and the contract with desert voices for example I would like to um go back to that conversation and potentially retract the changes to that policy I would like to have that conversation at the next board meeting in some depth how can we go back and potentially retract what we agreed to at previous board meetings because I believe with rfps there's something to that I'm not a lot sure if we're allowed to do that or if um the ascb does that but I would like to have more information about that okay hearing nothing else um 9.01 I move we adjourn this meeting seconded can I make a comment before we adjourn absolutely this is where member of a Canon I just want to recognize all the young people that stood up and spoke for us to us today and just shared like it makes me I'm a mom it makes me so proud to see young children just standing up and advocating not only advocating for themselves advocating for their families their friend and their Community you guys are amazing and thank you so so much for being brave even if it was really scary to stand up and do that you guys are amazing you guys are going to be changing the world and I'm so proud to see you guys do this thank you so much we are adjourned thank you foreign
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under God indivisible I believe we have none to informational items first information [Music] Mr President members of the board um the administration is requesting board approval for the issuance of contracts to the listed teachers do you want me to read their names I don't believe that's something I don't believe you need to I think we can read them okay and um uh there's no board action necessary this is an informational item only um okay next item certified employment 233 teacher Maria Vasquez Mr President members of the board were very excited about uh this next part of the agenda um Maria Vasquez Olivas has been interviewed for the position of classroom teacher for the 2023-24 Academic Year reference checks are in progress and a certified contract will be issued one satisfactory references are required I just want to state that um she comes to us with really impressive credentials um a ba in Spanish Literature from 2011 to 2015 Masters in Education 2019-2021 uh six years teaching secondary literature Mexico so uh this will be I think a great opportunity to create a new uh connection with other teachers uh teaching 10th grade right now experience teaching uh and reading A Brave New World Shakespeare Cooperative learning groups and so uh low board action necessary but I just wanted to share um Rebecca very impressive yes um uh Mr President members of the board of Mark quickill has been interviewed for the position of classroom teacher for 2023-2024 Academic Year reference checks are in progress certified contract will be she wants satisfactory references are required uh Mr Quick politically impressive um 2006 to 2007 first second fifth sixth grade math computer teacher 2007 to 2013 experience in grades one two and four as a Lead Teacher 2014 the president grades two three and four background was The Bachelors in the elementary education or the math focus and the master's degree in educational psychology next item is the certified employment 23-24 teacher Mr Hopkins has been interviewed for the position of classroom teacher for the 2023-2024 Academic Year reference checks are in progress any certified contract will be issued once satisfactory references are required Miss Mandingo equally impressive background and high school math 10 plus years teaching an algebra algebra 2 and geometry and so uh snowboard action necessary this is an information item is classified employment maintenance let's talk to the members of the board Andrew gold has been interviewed for the position of Maintenance custodian Mr Groves has his DPS issued fingerprint card no board action necessary this is an informational item only and the maintenance team is very excited about this uh new uh maintenance team member approval of employment of teachers for the spring intercession Mr Hopkins members of the board the following certified staff are being recommended to teach spring break intercession from March 20 to 23 2023 you have your names right there um there's no board action necessary this is an informational item only okay the next item is extra paying position employment Mr Huck as members of the board the foreign employees have expressed the desire to perform the designated extra pay positions for the 2023-24 school year Kayla Leon volleyball head coach Gracie Nunez volleyball assistant coach the report Action necessary at this time this is an informational item only the next item is discussion of electric payroll system um I believe it's about extra page but we got there yeah okay next one is the reassignment of extra pay positions okay Mr Hopkins members of the board um joseon and Eddie Vega who were approved at the as the head and assistant baseball coaches at the February board meeting are requesting a reassignment of positions making Eddie Vega the baseball head coach and I'll say you own the assistant baseball coach but the reassignment of position comes the reassignment of supplemental pay from 3060 to 2190 and vice versa there is no board action necessary this is an informational item only okay next course next item there's the approval of proposition three or one additional certified salary script yes sir Mr Hopkins and members of the board I just wanted to share with you uh process involved here Administration and consultation with the 22-23 working conditions team made additions to the bottom of a certified salary schedule concerning prop 301 performance pay the administration and the working conditions team are requesting um ratification of a tax certified salary schedule areas in green have been added changed so just for a clarification we met last Wednesday the principal advisory committee of Dr rakami Coach Q miss yaryan Mr meningo Mr Casey Dr Chipotle and I and we reviewed uh about having the prop 301 pay directly below the certified salary schedule just so that you can have it for potential recruits as we see we have several potential teachers tonight so they can see what additional compensation performance fake which is what Dr shavolts and the principal advisory committee worked on in the fall along with Miss Smith and myself in our legal department about the performance plan so up to 5614 dollars can be earned through performance pay and a retention bonus starting after uh been here one year going to the second year here of up to fifty six hundred and fourteen dollars and so this was shared with the principal advisory committee that um the total compensation separate from the salary schedule for this coming year can range from 84 21 to 14 035 eligibility depends on certification and very critical also this is what other districts put also as well on the salary schedule pertaining to 301 pay all amounts are contingent upon funding from the state amen that's all one question I had how long we hire somebody that's not certified how long does it generally take for them to get certain protection if they're like What's well it's something I know it depends on how much they're doing towards it and how quickly well I'm going to give my response and I'll open it up also for Dr Cheval Smith Angelina because Miss Angelina deals a lot with Ade okay would like for them to get that done as soon as possible one thing that we are doing this year is that um and this is what other districts have also been doing just in talking with other districts like Sunnyside unified in Tucson is our Administration has been meeting with the teachers that have to update and get their certification updated as soon as possible or following up with the communication within calling it an action plan where they share with us what specifically they have to get done that we Administration and teachers are on the same page so that's what we've been doing from our perspective that other districts are also doing but Angelina Idol can also share some insight on her part so it depends on on where the teacher is coming from so if we get a teacher from from California or New Mexico or or Texas it's really easy to get a certificate of reciprocity if they have the equal certificate in that state they can apply right away to um to Ade and get for one year it's called provisional to get a one-year certificate to work as if it's equal to the the certificate that they're that they're working on um if they're coming internationally that's a little difficult just because they have to wait for their social security card they have to wait for the things that they have to wait for an evaluated transcripts because Ade doesn't take foreign transcripts so they have to get evaluated by a third company and say this is the equivalent to a ba and secondary you know whatever so all of those steps have to be taken normally if the teacher is really on it and they and they really are working towards getting where they need to be that they're usually certified by December for the first year yeah okay and in that case that a teacher in that situation would qualify for the for the second half of the year right did that change for um reciprocal states because um when I got my certification here I got my certification but then there was like a little asteroid that I had to take the Arizona Constitution within three years I think I had right to get that done so it was that that reciprocal that reciprocal only lasts for like a year or two years they might have changed it for three years but they they give you that right away because it's the equivalent of but then you have to have to do everything Arizona requires you to do subject knowledge Professional Knowledge um sometimes they they they need you to have a language um a language test a language exam like an Esau if you're if you're a foreign teacher sometimes they ask those of the foreign teachers especially if they're teaching English as a second language or the microphone went off I'm sorry um it's still recording though um if you're if you're coming through um from a foreign um if you're a foreign teacher and you're teaching English as a second language or English language arts you have to get that extra um the test uh just to to check your your single subject English or does that include the primary grades no that's just single subject people interested okay yeah just like if you're a history teacher and you're coming from another state you have to get the US Constitution and Arizona Constitution before your three years are up yeah so yeah so there's different things but usually if um if a teacher is on it they'll get their certification by by November or December you can always tell who's actually working towards it because that though could they come in excited with their certificate and then the other ones get the the national emails from me every couple of months saying I know it's my monthly thing I'm bugging you that I haven't gotten your you know blah blah blah yet um we wanted to have a more of an action plan this year like he and I have met with every teacher that needs to get it updated as soon as possible and then I'll follow up with an email he's copied that we were on the same page but also uh talking with Miss Angelina I shared with her to just start emailing the first week in February everybody who needs to get it done as soon as possible that way you're getting reminders from her we're meeting with them just to just to stress that urgency at the same time and talking with other superintendents around Southern Arizona there's a teacher crisis there's a there's a teacher shortage so we want to do everything we can initial support that we're trusting them but at the same time the reality is they have to get the certification updated as soon as possible but there's still a teacher shortage so we're just trying to all work together in collaboration oh yeah is there any more discussion on that there's a discussion about dress code uniforms Mr President members of the board of board board members have requested a report discussion on dress code uniforms the attack survey results were taken from 7 to 12th grade students uh just a little bit of brief context on March 1st we had a community council meeting and the student council uh we're about 20 by 20 to 25 um High School Middle School students I attended the meeting and just uh we shared with them as far as the topic of dress code uniforms we wanted to get a student input first just to get their feedback you know we figured uh I'm talking about this on a call on Dr shabolz Mr Casey and I let's hear from the students let's hear what they have to say learn to our student leadership and uh just pretty much I listened for the most part for about 15-20 minutes and they just gave their input very very articulate you know why they like uniforms why they don't like uniforms and they uh they come up with the leadership on their own the class presidents of of sending a survey out to students as you can see they have about 100 students seven to 12th graders you have the pie chart that shows uh the feedback and so uh there is no board action necessary this is an informational discussion discussion item only but that's just for some of the uh the context behind the where we're at so far so I'm totally not singling you out when I say this okay just say that so the reason that I wanted to put this on here is because my daughter was dress coded I'm not angry or upset why she was dressed when I understand why she was dress coded but she wore a short short to school that hadn't done on it I understand why she was just sort of like that same day that she was dress coded I saw children with marijuana leaves on their shirts marijuana socks crop tops this that guns are just as illegal for children as they as marijuana is for children so why are why are you see what I mean yeah yes so that is my biggest thing if we're gonna do one kid we need to do all the kids yeah yeah I agree it is yeah you have a dress code it needs to be uniform yeah personally I would as a parent I would I would prefer dress a unicorn personally it's cheaper all the way around regular polo shirt for about seven dollars versus knee pain anywhere from 10 to 15 for a shirt unless you can use our disappearance gonna be buying non-uniform clothing for their students as well they sure already have no you don't need to you don't need to get a whole closet full you'll really only need a week a week's worth yeah you really only need a week's worth of clothes yeah I did a lot of research on it since you had suggested it and that was one thing that seemed some districts familiar it saves US money but then most a lot of them said well it doesn't because my the student is still wearing their regular clothes after school so we're having to find a uniform just for school and then afterwards some of the arguments I know makes sense I'm not sure um from what I was reading from what they were saying I'm not sure if it applies to our district or not so they don't know if I I do not have the experience to know if you have students getting bullied by other students for what they are wearing or stuff like that well I'm sure we do it I guarantee that every district has that um but I remember we did have uniforms for a while I can't remember what years it was though I don't think that we had uniforms I remember my platform and and junior year it came up twice to the board and I remember we went with Mr Schumacher the student council officers went with Mrs Schumacher to different schools like sophomore year so nine five-ish 96.
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you're all Fuller here Jenny hagstrom here Terry pavisich here Joanna Vazquez Drexler here Nancy kupka here Luca plauskas here and Caitlin Vincent here thank you we have cuerma stand for the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all oh perspectives we're going to invite our South students up today but to introduce them or our North students up let's introduce them as ours is that our uh South High principal principal lip is here because well our their principal is busy at the super sectionals and uh just a reminder hopefully we'll get through the board meeting in a timely fashion so we can all get home to watch them the game is on television on wciu so which is what is now 26 26 26.
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foreign I called to order the Oswego Community Unit School District Board of Education meeting for today March 6 2023 can I have a roll call please present all right can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so I get to welcome you all and thank you for being here tonight I know that our schedules are full and there are plenty of other things that you could be doing and I'm glad that you decided that this was one of the important things that for you to do tonight so an important aspect of the board's role is to connect with our community and open forums are a way to accomplish that through conversations dialogue deliberations and Collective thinking the purpose of these conversations is to allow the board to hear and understand your educational aspirations and desires for your District the board then takes those desires with the district's direction as reflected in our statements of vision mission core values beliefs Etc so we want to thank you tonight for coming out we're going to have a robust conversation around our mission and we just want to make sure you understand that we value your voice and we thank you for being here tonight thank you thanks again for coming my name is Faith dalquist I'm the associate superintendent and I am standing in for Dr sparlin tonight he is at Illinois State he is cheering on our OE basketball team has made super sectional so yay um so we are dividing in and conquering some of the responsibilities uh this evening so once again thank you for coming to The Forum we really want tonight to be about open conversation and a dialogue but with a little bit of structure so you will see that there are questions at your table that will want you to go through uh and answer we want you to start out by introducing everybody at the table so that you know uh everyone there and then we'll give you about a five minute notice when we get toward the end and you'll need to select someone from your table could be the school board member to summarize and to share out so you know about the conversations that were held and then we'll have public comment at the end so start off with introductions and then work through those questions thanks thank you foreign thank you foreign is everybody ready to wrap up can I okay can I give you can I give you three more minutes okay I'm gonna give you three more minutes to wrap up and once you wrap up then what we'll do is we don't have to anyone can speak from the table we don't have to go um question by question if there's something that jumped out at you during the conversation and you want to express it feel free to do that more than one person can report out at the table it doesn't have to be just one person so I'll give you three more minutes and then we'll get started thank you five four three two one we're gonna start over here at table four so feel free to share out whatever you like you don't have to go question by question anyone at the table can speak up I'm going to bring you the microphone who wants to talk first out okay I mean we had lots of conversations um and we actually okay um yeah I was just saying we had lots of conversations and uh so I think everybody said what they want to say we actually talked about how to summarize this huh people in the live stream okay all right so first question was Thrive along their unique in uh educational journey and we just really stress flexibility uh tailoring to individual students student needs and connections um does anybody else want to add anything no we of course went into more depth um the two uh was what are this our district strengths and empowering supporting and motivating all students the skills of our teachers um we talked about student ambassador and student voice and choice um and then wait yeah that was about it for number three we talked about improving transportation and communication um teaching or self-advocating and social emotional learning um improving White Noise Communications IEP resources and what's important um was building a relationship with some adult you know like uh making sure the adults are available to our students and so and we do a good job we just can improve how can we work together to improve the overall theme on that was assuming positive intent we all want our students to succeed regardless of of their position we want to make sure that the you know that the curriculum is evidence-based and reviewed by the teachers and um was oh work together on transitioning our students from example for example from uh Elementary to Junior High to high school was there anything else that I kind of miss in the summary they said I did a good job I don't know yeah all right where am I going now all right so so first of all I'm going to ask that everybody give my table a round of applause because they definitely had some courageous conversations over here yes yes yes awesome thank you um our journey started at question number one we believe we sort of got around to discussing aspects of the other three questions um we talked about growth being individualized we talked about genius in all kids um a student who is defiant um has uh and how to how to change that mindset uh tapping into students genius um each student having something unique um one story uh not being the whole story right so we all have and I love this piece too right so each of us has a story here in 308 and and it's important like it's an important story right I mean they're actually that's like one of the things that's fun about this whole gig right I get to hear all these different stories but together they're kind of like their chorus right and and we need to be cognizant be aware and listen to those whole stories and so that was really awesome I told you this group was was awesome but there's also that fear of sharing right and that kind of gets in the way at times we are whether we want to admit it or not there are times where we are afraid to share we're afraid ourselves to be vulnerable and yet at the same time I hope we are reflecting and realizing we're asking our students to do just that I hope we're asking ourselves hey how are we going to ask our students to do something if we can't do it that's tough that's tough came up too when we talked about rigor right talking to people in Dartmouth to help with seventh grade math right and raising we're raising what were our expectations and we don't realize it uh staff are in different places just our students are in different places hey guess what so is our staff so are we so probably is everybody right and and I think we're at a point where we need to allow ourselves some Grace in those in those instances in those places uh problem sharing versus problem solving or I'm sorry problem sharing yeah did I say that right I think so so in other words hey here's a problem I found it found the problem okay how you gonna solve it right like how do we get to that mode how do we get to the point of of problem solving and and we talked extensively about I went to three different Junior highs today we talked extensively about hey what do we see at the junior highs and hey we we thought about a system solution over here and everybody started nodding their heads when when we said the word Middle School model right but but we know some of the some of the things that come up in with with that uh and and then led us to introducing the house system at bed narcik so it's not like there aren't people out there thinking about this right we know some of the things that we have and and we're thinking about that safe space for kids in which they can Thrive instead of thinking about their deficit instead of thinking in a deficit lens it's easy for any of us I think if we're really self-reflecting it's easy for any of us to go out and think about what did I not do right today probably constantly feel like we're under a microscope am I going to say the wrong thing what am I going to do wrong right our kids do not feel any different and then the last piece skills based versus performative based and I think that's a huge huge conversation that needs to be had because I think there's some Miss um uh I think we're not necessarily digesting that piece fully as a community right we're asking for skills we're moving away from a performance piece and I think that's important too so did I miss anything group I probably missed a bunch I did all right all right it's a good group good group Alina or whoever who we got no okay Anthony you're doing this I guess so all right all right all right right right right yeah good to see you all right okay I'll try my best is that loud enough okay so for question one what does it mean to um what is the logo that we have mean um making sure resources they need to be successful in school not only on the academic level but on a social level and another aspect of that is I hope that that definition would also mean that we are trying to reach our students at whatever learning curve they may have and giving the staff and the students the resources they need to make that that trigger that they need to be successful um number two um some T some students allow I mean I'm sorry let's try again there some teachers allow students to have redos for um for assignments they may have not performed as well in I think that I I was a former teacher myself and I it was no mandate by my school but I would have students that I knew knew the material and so I would allow students to have retakes anybody who scored 60 and under so they would um basically failing failing under but they get that chance to retake and you'll notice you'll be surprised and it wouldn't necessarily be the exact same test but it gave them that confident support that made them feel like this teacher cares about My Success not just whether or not pass it the first time around because education is not about a test result it's about empowering education inside that student that they can carry on from that point forward so I thought that was a very important approach and that's what was my voluntary approach and I'd like to see us do more of that I know that Oswego East is doing that at some degree correct that's awesome here okay yes okay so um some students are allowed to yeah redo assignments in order to raise their scores some don't like the like um some don't lack the policy problems um oh okay I see what they're saying I'm sorry that was wrong okay there's a lack of I think that one of the things we we'd like to see more of us is more policy driven um structures to our educational system and policies can can range but that would probably be a very good um thing to to invest a little bit more energy into and that's one of the things we see them doing pretty well in some aspects students like to have their voice and their choice and topics that they are debating so for example inclusive inclusivity um is a big thing in our district and that's one of the things that I I've noticed as I went to the various schools I went to about four and they seem to post a lot of comforting inclusive inclusivity I can't speak the word now inclusive wording that whether you you believe it or not it does empower students to feel a little bit more confident to be themselves and be recognized accountability can be an issue in standards can be set by people who also need to feel appreciated valued and supported and supporting our students and some of our schools can do a great job with this somewhere so my schools do a really good job with this and there are other clubs and um groups that also help students and parents feel involved and and pulled into the process of learning um and um number three which I don't have the question here um the um the opportunity for improvement I would like to see um I come I came from Chicago and I went to see me on vocational I don't know if anyone have heard of that place but it's an awesome school it teaches a great amount of academics but also these vocational skills that I could have used to go on to um to trade schools something like that I think the district would get a great amount of um of feedback and positive uh growth in our students if we offer those applications at a higher level learning and Military recruitment some schools when I went to school in high schools there were a lot of recruiters that came in just to speak about the military and opportunities they give I think our students can benefit from that also and also a lot of I think another thing that we could improve in is um differentiating instruction and that is again going the idea that every student can learn every student can grow every student has their learning style that you have to reach and be good if we took a little bit more effort and a little bit more investment in finding those so that we have less less failures which is going to build in my in my estimation would build up the entire student body if we can build up the lowest score as possible um dual credits could be should be separated from from AP classes only my son is in AP classes he gets dual credits and um I think it'd be a great thing if that was expanded out throughout the school's student population number four more Community involvement much like this I think this is awesome we're getting together we're talking with the we're discussing our students best interest and our District's best Direction and that can only build us closer as opposed to have everyone being sort of in our Islands um and with that comes the idea that I think another great thing would be is to have we agree that would be great is to have District sanctioned uh events at various schools and those can be of any topic of any style just the idea that you're pulling multiple people to each one of the schools so they get not only they get to know the parents but they get to learn the educational structure of a school the environment the look The feel and I think again that builds up community structure a community Oneness that can only help our students and um and of course make a difference every day and that is what every one of us should strive to do and we should strive to empower our students to feel like they they can do that also thank you hi um I'm Jameson uh three things about myself and favorite color right is that right no sorry uh so question one uh what does it mean for students to travel along their unique educational Journey um we focused a lot on the students and on the teachers I'll start with resources that we talked about um ensuring that every student has what they need um and I like what you said every student's got their own unique learning style you know they need to be catered to in some ways some things work generally and broadly some things don't work at all I actually was a student K-12 and yes we go 308 district and I had a very unique educational track and there were a lot of things that could have been done needs that weren't met um not to fault the district at all but there's opportunity for growth sorry we haven't got there yet I guess um so uh we talked about equipping teachers making sure that they had resources some things that uh totally off track I guess um we we talked a lot about the teachers um how they can empower the students uh and the students oh my gosh so I'll move on to question two now um what are our district strengths in empowering supporting and motivating all students we talked about student voice so we talked about how there are two students on the board of directors or um on the education board and how that's really important making sure that the students have a voice with the grown-ups right because they're not just being dictated the rules they're actually having a say in the rules they get they get to participate in the rule making so to speak and they get to uh they get to know that they were involved that they had they had a hand in this and that I think that gives them meaning uh gives them purpose and it's important for them to be involved uh strengths teachers teachers were something that we brought up a lot something that came up a lot where this teachers as the students biggest strength um other things that uh we talked about were opportunities that the students have opportunities like honors and AP something that was a big deal for me other things like sports and music and clubs and all the different ways that students can get involved at the schools those are all great strengths that the district has uh for meeting their goals opportunities for improvement we had brought up safety for students as actually that wasn't sorry I'm getting lost a little bit um one of the opportunities for improvement is communication communication between students and teachers teachers and families the district and parents communication all around ensuring motivation among the students I know that's a hard thing to do but um that is a way this that uh something that would benefit the students an opportunity for improvement and that we we also continue to talk about student voice with that um listening to the students making sure that they continue to have a say and last how can we work to improve um a big thing that we talked about throughout the whole conversation was being vulnerable right that communication and that trust piece and something that came up just in this question was accountability making sure that we could hold each other accountable that there are lines you can't cross like you gotta you gotta have a standard uh of dialogue and communication of of behavior from everyone from this from the students to the teachers to the parents to the school board everybody needs to be held accountable and we have that vulnerability that honesty and that openness as well as that accountability that sort of standard that we're all able to meet there is trust trust flourishes an environment like that and that can only bring good things for the students right when the parents trust the school district and the teachers and the teachers in the school district trust the parents the students will only do better when those dialogues those Community lines of communication are opened up the students will only be benefited and with that one thing that came up as well was to stand with each other where we can right rather than pointing out the differences between us you know something that was brought up there were a lot of head nods around this relatively diverse table people that don't necessarily agree with each other on all kinds of things we agreed on a lot tonight and that shows right there um that we can stand with each other and where we can we have to fight to stand with one another for the sake of the students that's all I have to say thank you this is this is the result of our our teachings our experience his experience with us our our future is in really good hands right um okay so um okay an update I don't know if you all know that our Oswego High School East Oswego East boys High School boys basketball team is um playing right now in the is this the second Super sectionals and the score is 2015 and we are up at the end of the first quarter so and so before we adjourn the last item on our agenda is 5.0 board member comments do any of our board members have any comments that they'd like to make thank you for everybody that came um and I I hope that when these forums are done in the future we continue to have this kind of um outpouring and and participation and I want to say thank you to our staff that are here it's noticed your time put in cannot thank you enough so thank you I second that and just wanted to say you know we if you haven't noticed we have changed the structure of how we do our open forums and I think it's evident by the participation today that we are going in a direction that you all want um in the past it's been where we sat on the stage you sat here and you spoke to us about your concerns regarding the administration um and that's that was all finding good but by voting by your feet you told us that that wasn't where you wanted to go because the participation was was very low but I thank and I appreciate you all for being here tonight and if this is the direction we want to go we'll just keep going in this direction and I appreciate you all for being here because I know that there's a lot going on in our communities and for you all to be here tonight I very much appreciate it so and on behalf of the whole board we appreciate it very much okay and I need to adjourn right oh wait we just need to adjourn so all it do I need to do though can I have a motion to adjourn oh oh no there is no public comment there are no public comments okay motion to adjourn second all in favor any opposed we are adjourned
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uh to have this opportunity to continue in this path here in bcsc and thank Dr hack for also bringing me here six years ago this has been an incredible journey for our family UCS is an incredible School Corporation being in four other school corporations I can tell you this is a unique and beautiful School Corporation and so the blessing has been here for the last six years for me and my family has been wonderful and and decided for many years to come as well and the blessing that it will hold before I progress any further though um I do want to thank my staff and my family my students at Clifton Creek and there's a lot of them here today and uh my heart will always be with them they are incredible people and if you've never been in Clifton Creek it's an incredible building full of wonderful students and wonderful staff who love to be there and I will always have a special for hi Clifty and for those people and what I say to USA it's a Columbus East community I know I may be a bit unknown but I look forward to getting known very soon with all of you um I'm committed to relentlessly serving Columbus and school life I'm excited I'm joyful and I am ready my family is ready I'm excited and thankful that night you all made me an Olympian thank you and there's quite the fan club out there also great to see everybody great next on the agenda I believe we have recognitions for Columbus's State wrestling finalists yes we do and Mr Hughes the athletic director at Columbus East is coming forward good evening Dr Roberts board members and cabinet members again very special time for Columbus East to recognize just another outstanding individual I know that Dr Parson is leaving right now but if if he is to know what a true Olympian is and somebody that represents what we believe in and what we want Tommy Morrill is that person so I mean everything that that that I would love for for the community to know what we stand for stands before you and Tommy moral just to tell you what a little bit of a team player he is I can remember especially his sophomore year and even his junior year wrestling at 220 pounds is one of the toughest weight classes in the state and and you are truly meeting some very talented strong athletic individuals and for most of his career he wrestled light in terms of having to make whether it's chugging a jug of water before Wayans or whatever to get it to where he could wrestle at 220.
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blood all right so I'll testing one two one two testing one two and then you said someone would be standing over here ish probably to to testing one two one two testing one two that'd probably be good does this have to be on report for that to be no no just sending the feed so you can stop it now image then we should be able to play it back
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[Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] school committee meeting for Monday March 6 2023 to order if you stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please thank you if you have any cell phones pagers beepers electronic devices if you would put them on silent please I would appreciate it roll call please miss Gunther John Nunes yep Mary wait yes Kathleen Amaral yes Shannon Jenkins yeah Chris Oliver here thank you okay so at this point we've allotted uh 10 minutes on the count on the agenda for public comment if anyone has any public comment we ask you to please keep it to three minutes to give as many of your colleagues as an opportunity to speak because I will hold it to the 10 minutes hi good evening I am carried to Jesus English language education teacher at Demello and Potter schools thank you for the opportunity to share our concerns many of our colleagues have come before you to speak about important issues regarding money tonight we are here to speak about the important issue of time specifically the time between 8 45 start for elementary teachers and the 905 start for students when I began teaching in Dartmouth 21 years ago students went to the playground starting at 8 45 until nine o'clock at nine o'clock the first bell rang students lined up outside their classrooms teachers let them in in school began at 905.
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[Music] thank you [Music] having a problem with my calendar not being synced uh live stream test123 live stream yes information did anybody have any thoughts about that yeah [Music] get up [Music] again [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] get up [Music] babe [Applause] [Music] on top of the time [Music] [Applause] [Music] summertime [Music] thank you [Music] steps [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] the Anaheim Union High School District Board of Trustees meeting uh March 7th 2023 is called to order at 3 15 p.m the following members are present Jessica Guerrero Anna L Percy Catherine H Smith Ann Marie Randall Trejo and Brian O'Neill staff has requested the following amendments to the agenda page two of the agenda poll closed session item 4.5 and 4.8 page 16 of the agenda items 1017 replace page to reflect change in funding source from Grant funds to general fund slash lcff funds everybody for that okay exhibit SS replace page two to reflect the correct residential school name to Logan River Academy from Logan Ridge to Logan River and exhibit TT replace page three to reflex correct School Magnolia High School that was TT do I have a motion to adopt the amen agenda second motion a second all in favor say aye aye aye opposed that's five zero public comments anybody wishing to speak seeing none the board will now hold closed session to discuss items 4.1 through 4.10 of the agenda
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I could have sworn when Sammy was still in school so late 2000s was there a year I could have sworn about khaki pants and black polos I don't remember all right uh I don't think so I know it came up when I was going to high school here and we and it was not found by the board um and I don't remember I I wasn't involved in the school in 2000s so I have no idea but I don't think so in one of their articles I was reading there were a couple districts they had a uniform but it wasn't a you need that shirt and he does it was this color right and that's interesting it's jeans with no holes um and polo shirts well this one even said it was that some of the districts I didn't even specify polo shirts but it said solid color shirts of a select couple and I was like well who did that now it would be white black or red in the awful colors foreign and also would be I'd be curious to know to get the opinions of parents on this one I would like to I wonder why we just chose 7th through 12th graders did we call staff members well we just can we start with students oh no this is a we wanted to take our time with us yes we want to rush through it so we got student input first but we can absolutely we can um we can have a survey for parents and just ask us I think all stakeholders right I mean reach out to parents I think what's good about this is the students kind of set to talk they just very simple of you know you want surveys I'm very colorful in their comments oh yeah yeah so but you know I mean I even see this as a great writing writing for our primary kids sure you know it's a great writing assignment for our parents and staff okay you come up with something but I'll show that to miss Olson's original point and do you think we have the dress code you need to have this needs to be applied fairly and uniformly um sure and I'm not sure you know I know one one concern I've got about that about a dress code everywhere I have more to the house one is who is enforcing it because to me it's not appropriate for a male teacher to approach a female student about what they're dressing just because of the Optics of that and what it opens up so then it becomes a matter of how do we keep a uniform because we have 20 different teachers doing it they all have a slightly different subjective lands you know and if we had one or two people do it again it would keep the lens the same but at the same time that might those same one or two people have other jobs than doing it sure could overrun the way I'm looking at this overwhelming like I'm sure we all thought students were not like this yeah you know what put it on them you don't want uniforms you're going to follow the dress code because if we're going to keep getting repeat offenders more violations nobody just just ignoring it because the students aren't following yeah we I tell you right now if we did that and students kept repeat pilers early I'll be more than happy to say yes we're going to uniforms because there needs to be some consistency in some control yeah and especially if you know with the Agents of students we've interviewed they know is what they're putting on it doesn't you know conform to the dress code it's got you know when it's got you know probably it was you know start getting sent home customers or anything else that they know and they put that shirt up no that's not you know this isn't to stop anybody's expressiveness or creativity because there's quite a few comments students are concerned about that's fine I understand that sure but they're still [Music] a few people in town to talk to me about it and I can't speak for them but there were concerns that it doesn't um doesn't really hide the economic inequalities between students but some students would only be able to look forward to uniforms you know from their coming to school nothing that we can afford to wash every night because he was still looking ninja in their classrooms well and this isn't anything about my personal hygiene and I understand the whole economics yeah yeah purchasing uniforms but um that will be another Avenue we can try to figure out from those families and that was interesting when one of the people commented at the school if we do it the school should buy them in the school should launder them well we don't have the facilities that dryer ain't working right now we wanted to share with you all of the feedbacks to text just gave and this helps us going forward and that's why we wanted to do this these stakeholders first get their feedback okay now let's go to the next set of statements sure absolutely so we have a student that's not following the dress code right now whoever knows what I say teacher staffs from the office they go home someone else will bring them close correct um that one I will yeah I know I've for one of my kids like oh hey so I can't wear school all right I'll bring some clothes down you know you start making it where parents got to start coming picking up their kids he doesn't work right here to start policing that at home better sure and I understand things can be really hectic in the morning but sure you know just don't want to drop the hammer and go nuclear on the whole thing you know I would use as like a progressive thing here we have T-shirts old football t-shirts within itself at some point or something it'll cost Frozen and the nurses off the soap at the top and we do have those that they put on and they return it at the end of the day so that's been helpful yeah and obviously winter is always helpful because everybody's injected their sweatshirts wearing hoodies every day [Music] Caroline as a teacher how have you have you worked at a school with uniforms no but my daughter was in this that required me the first when she was in grade school I went to a high school that we had to wear uniforms and going so half of my high school we wore uniforms and I switched to a different high school that did not wear uniforms and I noticed a huge difference in the way children acted wearing uniforms versus children acting not wear uniforms and I just didn't know if you saw that I haven't experienced it as a teacher as a parent I loved it because there was no drama in the morning yes about what she was going to wear to school it was the same thing and so it helped make our mornings run a lot smoother but that was that's my view as a parent good job so then we'll get some more input comparison sure parents teachers yeah maybe even some of the younger grades you know I'd love to hear what their thumbs are yeah they because they're just they're just this is how it is how I see it yeah okay how low should we go Miss Rodriguez you know I I recently had a very nice discussion with some of the kindergartners here and they they are very intelligent and they have an opinion and I'd love to hear their opinion just want to make sure everything stops they don't miss words you know explaining what that one it means a great conversation for them to you know have and think about and share their thoughts on sure somebody said nobody would look good in them anyways well one article I read was about a school in China and they had one point down if they had formal uniforms and then in the 80s they all went to like track shoots and the person was like I loved it nobody looks good in the tracksuit it was equal I said so is there any other discussion no I'm good oh and next item then is discussion of electric payroll assist uh Mr President members of the board uh board members have requested a report discussion on the district moving to an electronic payroll system so I'm just going to share with you uh some information that I was able to uh obtain and and will still continue to get more information after today's meeting okay so um uh spoke with the altar Valley School District superintendent Dr David Dulan a phone conference they had 86 employees Frontline certified absence and substitute management is 6 900 for a year Time Clock Plus for classified attendance check-in log into any computer on on campus on site to start the check-in process for classified as cost in his district 2300 per year he shared accountability for absence reports for certified and classified very efficient cost is based on employees um Bowie Bowie Unified School District in Cochise County employees Mr Dan Erickson superintendent we had an in-person meeting to share with me they have Time Clock Plus administrative oversight and accountability for example he said your principal your site Administration can do random checks any time of the day to make sure that it's being done correctly so there's the accountability part um he also shared shared with me payroll becomes more efficient more time on other critical duties like mandatory state county and federal reports Nogales Unified School District 670 employees spoke with Mrs Midas Unica their Human Resources Director of phone conference they have Frontline certified absence management and substitute management cost him twenty seven thousand seven hundred well they have because they have a much bigger employee base so Kronos for a time management system is based upon a number of sites Nogales unified has 12 sites so it cost them fifteen thousand dollars both systems interface with school Erp Pro formerly Visions formerly known as Visions Tyler Cost is based on employees Sahuarita Unified School District Dr Manuel Valenzuela superintendent will have a meeting with him and his HR person they use Time Clock Plus for classified employees Sunnyside Unified School District Mr Jose to Salem superintendent who will meet with his contact person they have Frontline absence management and substitute management for their certified uh Frontline is used by Alter Valley Nogales unified and Sunnyside unified to serve for the certified absence and substitute management Time Clock Plus is used by Alter Valley classified automated check-in um it's just a comment for me that if Bowie Unified School District was 20 employees can have an automated system so can also Unified School District I believe it's possible from talking to the different administrators from five different districts and Three Counties it's more efficient um examples of all other districts throughout Southern Arizona and several counties pimlicochi Santa Cruz and what was shared with me by every every uh administrator in each district that it's positive change and it helped them move forward but very critical it's also it's something that's overdue at each district came about and when they started doing it it just more efficiency better accountability reports that can be generated at any given moment to check on you and almost sounds like to me that the cost would be offset by the Personnel hours we already have but then putting towards the paper payroll and such that we have that's going to cut down the amount of time so that's kind of almost offset whatever the cost might be so um like I said uh I'm going to meet with Sahuarita Unified School District to talk about their time clock and I want them to go over with me in person so I can see it in person and the same thing with Sunnyside as well and Nogales to see their front line and and that the interface from what I understand the front line system certified interfaces with visuals that's another critical piece and so uh want to have as much information as possible before we make the most informed decision but it sounds like accountability and efficiency and also what came what was shared with me by by several of the administrators is is professional if it's a level of professionalism to where um it's just what other districts are doing how many students does we have and how much do they pay Bowie has enough students teachers they have 20 employees and 100 students okay he does not have that for me yet but um our number of teachers absolutely um for the ones that are based on site number of sites the recount as one side or to be count as one side for elementary one so for middle and one second that's a good question I'd say at the most two sites but probably one if it's all of our we're all on one campus when Nogales comes to mind because I was in Nogales 12 sites is correct they have a 10 School sites the administration building and the support services building so those are [Music] simplifies and makes things more efficient any further discussion tonight okay next item is a discussion on the second forward yes uh Mr Hopkins and members of the board um what I wanted to share uh once again I want to just use this at practice this this discussion with We are following the the lead of asba they provided this training on January 27th actually on this Julie bacon the leadership manager shared with Miss Olson Miss Rodriguez and myself to just focus on three goals focus on three goals and have a be efficient so what you have in front of you what I wanted to do is is uh from the last meeting I typed up for you to have and this can be you know can be a working a work in progress or if you like how it looks we can leave it how it is uh but it's a governing board goal goal one the governing board will receive beginning middle and end of the year student data with a focus on reading scores demonstrating growth on the Dibbles reading benchmarks and measures of academic progress map benchmarks instructional strategies resources and professional developments such as Beyond textbooks professional learning communities formative assessment re-teaching data analysis and m-class training will be implemented to support reading growth what I wanted to do is provide to you artifacts that show that so you can see that and following the lead from Miss Bacon that the board goal helps provide Direction and collaboration with Administration so that you guys know it's a goal but we're also following it and we're working with it it's not just stopping here at the meeting it's continuing day to day so activities to support go on I put down Beyond textbooks professional development on professional Learning Community for Beyond textbooks leadership committee January 25th Beyond textbooks professional development on PLC reteaching for Beyond textbooks leadership committee February 15th I want to highlight the re-teaching strategy was implemented for fourth to sixth grade plcs by our fourth fourth to sixth grade teachers starting February 15th are going to continue until April 19th it's a pride that's taking place at the same time in preparation for the state assessment why not get two words with one stone they're doing the pilot and it's also preparing the students for the Arizona academic standards assessment as well beyond textbooks formative assessment pilot for secondary teachers plc seventh grade team for the um aasa preparation but also High School Math and Science teachers are doing a formative assessment starting February 23rd to April 4th or act preparation we wanted to share this with you our our our weekly leadership team meetings have taken a different angle to whether now professional Learning Community meetings it's it's not just Dr Cheval to myself Mr Casey masarakon for the last two weeks now you've had on Mr meningo Miss Macario Mr Lara Miss Williams and Miss Caballero Mr diazenora has also been present to focus on the azalo practice test and the end of the year a salad test but also we're going around and getting feedback from every teacher how is the formative assessment being implemented how are you doing it and Mr Casey and Miss Island Khan are also at the table providing valuable feedback we're going to meet again this Thursday this will be ongoing until the K-8 Arizona academic standards assessment and the 912 act assessment in April we're doing these Pilots right now so it can also help prepare the K-8 and the Lions we're calling the countdown count down the aesa and countdown to act that's just um for you guys to have that the lawyer setting jump right into it and follow it for the last meeting to right now so we can stay focused and go to you guys can that's a you guys can focus on that now that's your call excuse me one of the things I do have in mind which I love seeing this was actually kind of getting some input from stakeholders when we make certain decisions um I know we can't get input on every single thing but you know things like uniform we can certainly reach out to our stakeholders and kind of get a feel for um their thoughts before we get there yeah so I think this is a great one um and that ties into one of the um themes from Miss Bacon's training which was um was communication um that she did kind of point out from that that training we had so there was a communication there was strategic version but um I think just the communication piece is reaching out to our stakeholders way we can when we make decisions especially with the social kind of a novel decision for the district it's you know uniforms we've had a few other ones where it's like okay this isn't something that people foresaw coming out so that's and it's you know the people of the district who would be putting the bill for it so I think and there are times like that where to me that comes at end if you get more information from that I'm aware that I'm not from Ajo or a visitor five and a half years and I really think reaching out to our student body our staff members our community members it will really help create a nice Bridge you know between the school and the community which is something I think we want to be able to build that relationship with them the trust that you know we're doing the right thing for our kids and so um I think kind of opening up that channel on communication with our stakeholders is important and like you said no we can't of course do it on every decision we can't do it but there will be times like this one where it's something that is more valuable to get the input from them before as it should have been said by other workers there are also times when it's well they elected us to make this decision correct but like usually like you said with this one yeah I want all the info that you did right so where we can I think we really should make an effort to reach out too sure so that's the goal have this goal to report communication and like collaboration stakeholder involvement yeah and I believe let me think I think it was standard one uh that had the underlying theme of communication and second here um and then standard two question 26 including stakeholders When developing and revising districts Vision but you know even District policies the communication is one I think it's I think it's been improving here lately and I'd love to see it continue to improve and I think like you said things like doing these occasional surveys on to the topics not only give us that communication but it strengthens the impression in the community that we're open to hear from people absolutely and we want to hear that right I believe we all really really here I have a few people say you know over the over the last month I'll be there Monday [Music] if you don't come to tell us we're getting there I think Saturday was was we didn't have as many people but if you look at the eye test more got done yeah four palm trees here the awful Improvement um it looks input I asked questions I think there were several things going on in town on Saturday so I think that might have been if there was I think there was a there was a funeral too right yeah okay we'll we'll work on something and actually I think those are the beautification bills are another good example of the communication communication I think the way if we're going to do surveys to stakeholders as in the student body but also putting them out to the parents also for sure so yeah our community was our staff members yeah you know yeah especially one like this because it's the parents that are going to be buying you right so for the next meeting we'll have a word about the parents opinion not just some random person in the community well I don't think this well because usually when we do Google surveys I have the list of the parents and Guardians and I say okay you can only take this survey if you have this email address that it would be really hard to say we would have to do like a survey monkey or something like that if we wanted the community that wasn't a parent recording the staff we can say okay only the people with this email address can take this survey that's but it would be really hard to put something in the compartment and say yeah hey you know if you've been here your whole life and retired in you know 1976 tell us what you think about uniforms so that's going to be a little bit because sorry I would invite community members you could send us an email yeah right well they're welcome to come today yeah right what does survey for sure it doesn't make sense to go to the entire Community right again right but you know if we were deciding yeah there are other decisions we might make where it would be okay we won't be in bed most of it is going to be impact of the immediate statement right so we'll have that for the or the April meet we'll have the survey results of paragraphs and staff and other students right yeah so I do have so actually when we do surveys is it one survey per family or is it one survey per child because I have four children in the school so how would that work um it's really good the the survey the Google the um yeah it's really good that if um because we do have like you know when we have the kids listed I would go in before because we did another survey about two years ago on like whether or not maths whether or not vaccines stuff like that I go through Excel before I I send them out and if there's doubles of the email address then I take them out so if it's one if even if you have six kids it's only one survey for them yeah yeah that's what but but each of but each like each of my children though will be able to take this yes okay okay the students individually yes but if you're one but the parents only the one time right so it's like one per email yeah yeah because when they enroll their child they give their personal email address and that's what we have on file for PowerSchool so then it gets it gets weird we have like three or four of these in a family where mom and dad are divorced so Mom wants an update and dad wants an update and it's like so it gets a little dicey on those all kinds of things but we we've narrowed it down to just one parent Guardian per shot that's the primary right caregiver essentially okay so whoever that is yeah and Google Docs is really good about if that person takes the survey they can't come back and keep the survey again yeah unless the administrator which it would compromise email address allows it or if they the and we've had that with the max or the vaccine ones where they said oh I just hit submit and I didn't put anything so then I would look and it will tell you the results of it and then so you can delete that one and then resend it to that particular one yeah okay should I read from the discussion on the second protocol okay [Music] yeah between them or you can suggest one I think for next month as well I think I think you made your suggestion last Monday and that was my first question yeah oh good so I have one I guess for the April one if we can just focus on our third and final four goal sure I love to make the most to a journey Mr Hopkins it's fine that's Olson aye Ms Rodriguez at 6 21.
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okay yep so we can all tune in and catch a lot of the game this evening and cheer for our North High men's basketball team so with that being said turn over to you all right so um I am standing in for um principal to bed tonight but she wrote something that I would like to for our two students that are here tonight representing Deca so Dr DeMent writes tonight we have North High students with us representing Deca Deca is unique because it lives in both the academic world and the extracurricular rule the club is designed for students interested in business and marketing and they get to compete with kids from all across the state I'd like to introduce Omni cower and Kate Peterson and the sponsor Mr Baca if he's here which I don't think he is but we will celebrate his gifts anyway to talk more about what Deca is how they compete in business and marketing and how has that benefited the students who participate in this amazing program so I'm going to turn it over to you and we're looking forward to hearing about what you have to say whenever you need the slides to advance just let me know I'll be your clicker and I'm a senior at North my name is Kate and I'm a sophomore at Downers Groveport and I'm also the vice president for our Downers Grove North chapter so DACA is similar to a business Club um the acronym stands for distributive education clubs of America and um it does a really good job at preparing us to become leaders and like future entrepreneurs and it helps us if we want to have future careers in marketing Finance Hospitality tourism and Entrepreneurship and it does a great job at having us um you know do public speaking thinking on the spot coming up with creative ideas and um efficiently explaining your ideas in a short amount of time and core values that the national Deca honors itself on are competence Integrity Innovation and teamwork and um but then Deca there's like individual events but there's also team events so that's where a lot of students can work on working with someone else to effectively show what project you're kind of communicate to the judge and whatnot sorry so why is it beneficial so it takes things that students learn in classroom and applies them to real world situations as well as it connects to the business field which is a huge industry and those students can take those skills it also encourages competition which is always fun amongst different students from different schools as well as kids from your own School it also allows students to become accountable in a professional manner and they gain skills in communicating with others public speaking which is a huge one managing projects and just expanding their Network overall and just to add on a bit with that like I know at North we have a huge business just like our class A lot of classes in it and a lot of students who do take it they really love Deca because it's like they can use the skills they learned in class somewhere outside of class and deca is a really good way that students can use the business curriculum taught at our schools to apply that somewhere else and another thing about the professionally responsible is like I learned a lot about how to dress professionally and like when you have to compete like how you're supposed to look and present yourself and that is something that the DECA judges do score you on so that's also something that um kids can learn about like how to even for the boys like a lot of them were learning how to talk um so that at the competition so um we do perform at the sectional State schools and there's over 40 different competitive events so um there's like within this club you everyone can find their own Niche and whatever they're interested in So within so there's four main categories there's entrepreneurship Finance Hospitality tourism um in marketing and then within those there's different types like within marketing they're Sports um you can like go into like travel and tourism or you can go into like Hotel lodging and management so there's different areas um that students can like go into there's also like automobile services or retail merchandising so whatever students are interested in there's like it's like um and then students also compete in Prison events I've done written events in the past see um so written events you can prepare before the competition and you write a 20 page paper um and for mine I got to research a local business I research Adorn 512 last year and then this year I researched a local um so I'm an auditorium in Westmont and those are also really beneficial for me and then at this sectional sectional competition is held in January in Rosemont and then the state competition we just had it last week that's also really beneficial because we got to stay overnight it was really fun like making new friends within our chapter but also like I've met a lot of people from schools so I really enjoy that as well and then last year I qualified for the national competition but I couldn't go due to like covet and all of that but uh that would have probably been a really fun experience so why should you join Deca I mean as our meet said but we get to travel which is always fun this year Nationals takes place in Orlando and next year it's in California and then the year after that it goes to Georgia so it circulates through those three places and as amnit said also you get to meet new people expanding your network is definitely one of the biggest things and you learn to step outside of your comfort zone because everyone's there for the same reason so there's so much to connect on and you can find similar people within your Niche and outside of your Niche and your career it builds your career you can put it on college applications it looks very good in college applications and you just get to explore things before you actually have to do them in the real world there's diversity and events as Amit said you get to compete in entrepreneurship marketing finance and hospitality and tourism and there's so many different ways that you can compete in those it's also very fun like I said we get to travel but also after fall leadership we get to go to Portillo's and that's always the kicker is right uh it's always fun going in there and all of our business attire we get a lot of stairs and it just helps students create um in like an appreciation for the ideas around them uh so yeah yeah um that just like was really been like I really like that we connected deck into the whole school because like in our school compared to a lot of other schools we don't have like the biggest club we have quite a few people I think we had like 70 or something this year which is a huge amount but not many people know about Deca like they're not as informed and some people might think like oh it's just a little business Club but like it's so much more than that and I think like Omni said having these different events to promote Deca really encourages kids to want to join the club this past weekend from Thursday afternoon to Saturday afternoon we had State and we did really well this year we had 11 students placed in top 10 and then we then we board students Place top four and qualify for the national competition um and uh uh it was really good this year uh we did it like compared to last year we didn't score last year we didn't score very high but this year we did really good as a group um and it's like we all had a great time like um before we were a lot of us were preparing for the exam so there's a random exam and then there's the role play so we were all preparing that together and it was just like great to see how we like all came together and placed really well at state yeah um my experience with Deca my favorite memory would be um this past weekend in the hotel we had a lot of fun I remember those three other girls um we did a lot of fun activities and we were watching like Netflix in the hotel room between our events um and then there's like we all had like events during the day so that was that was like the stressful time kind of but then during our downtime we had a lot of fun um and then I've done Deca for the past four years um and I've had like um I remember my freshman year uh Deca state was on March 12th um 2020 so right they canceled the field trip right before that and then sophomore year we um we did video role plays um so my Junior and Senior year were a lot more fun where we got to stay in the hotel and I did a lot more of the social aspect of deca so I really enjoyed that and um it's impacted me to learn how to be like more professional and um like public speaking um with the role plays there's like the time crunch so like how to effectively um explain um like as quickly as possible and try to get your message across uh so my favorite memory had to be State last year because it was my freshman year and I didn't really know much about Deca because our sectional competition got canceled so we basically just got full ride to state which was really fun but nerve-wracking because now instead of competing with just a few schools you're competing with the entire State and I was one of the only sophomore or freshman girls and it was really scary because I didn't know anyone and that was it was fun for me because and now I have I have friendships that I never thought I would have um I also got to make friends with the upperclassmen like Omni um so that was always fun and since I'm a sophomore this is my second year in Deca and it's impacted me just by building connections like I said meeting new people and stepping outside in my comfort zone it really helped me just honestly I when I'm at Deca I'm a completely different person than I am when I'm with other people because I these people understand like what I like and I can talk with them about that and there's so many different ways to connect with people throughout that's that's all for today any questions for for our students you guys did great yeah yeah that's great thank you what are your what are your what is your biggest area for each of you know you're you're uh you're a senior meet right yeah so are you either going to enter the business world or study business I'm interested but um I feel like Deca has prepared me in like like there's like the there's a difference between like classroom instruction and then having that like um participate like actively participating in something outside of school so deca's like prepared me to understand like how it would play out in the room and then what's your favorite area because I know you're a sophomore so it's a little early for you to make a decision well I what's your favorite area so far so both of my brothers both one of them's a junior at Western Michigan University and he's majoring in sales and he has an internship in Kellogg's and my other brother is a senior at Downers Grove North and he wants to become an entrepreneur so I kind of was surrounded by that business aspect like growing up and I fell in love with like marketing and real estate I like I've always wanted to go into the real estate industry and I know that sales and marketing has a big impact with that so something I that's something I want to pursue when I'm older I've always wanted to go to like Kelly School of Business at IU that's like my dream but we'll see if I make it there but I definitely think Deca helped me so much in finding like what I want to do and like what I love when you go to the state competition how does how does that work so are you are you you're interviewing or you're pres it's probably a lot of different things that are going on let me tell us just a little bit about your individual you know experience uh it's you know something kind of specific okay so um on Thursday after after a written exam so under each of those four categories there's like a cluster exam that's based on like basic business knowledge under that certain area so I was in Hospitality tourism so I had a Hospitality tourism cluster exam and that was like 100 questions in an hour um and it's like it's pretty much based on like uh business vocabulary and um how to like deal with customers in certain situations and stuff um and I feel like um some of the classes I've taken at North have helped me so they have to like rigorously study for that um and then on Friday um there's uh you're given a schedule of your role play time so you have to take do two role plays you're given any time from nine to five because they have so many kids um and then at that role play if you're an individual you're given 10 minutes to prepare and then a 10 minute presentation and then if you're a partner you do a 30-minute prep time and 15 minute presentation and then I also did the written event so I had my presentation prepared beforehand and then I gave that presentation on Friday and then um they also like in the evening they have um fun uh events they have like a DECA Banquet dinner it's like a formal dinner um and then at night they had a hypnotist show and we watched some of our classmates get hypnotized that was pretty entertaining um I got hypnotized my freshman year and then uh Saturday is like um pretty much it's like all Awards yeah so that's pretty much like the DECA schedule impressive very good all right well thank you for coming out congratulations [Applause] all right continuing with student reports who's first okay thanks again thank you so um last month there has obviously been a lot going on with like sports and different events and awards and um all across the board dgn has been excelling in so many different areas I could not fit it all on one page and I didn't want to be sitting here for more than maybe five minutes but um to start off like they mentioned Deca went to state which is a great achievement because there are so many individuals who join this year and it's great to see that although these clubs might seem small at first we're all like spreading the word and talking about it and including more individuals and just kind of creating that school Community where we're bringing in more people even though they might be shy or have little to none knowledge about those different clubs and also with that we also had our Varsity scholastic bowl placed second in our West Suburban Conference and following with sports our boys swim and dive team earns State medals and then also like today our basketball game which is a very big achievement and we're top top eight yes in state and I know so many people are there right now it's going to be so packed and so fun so it's gonna be great to see that later on and following with that there's also the our School Musical this weekend March 9th through the 11th called Chicago and I have so many individuals in the Fine Arts area have been working so hard and have been putting in so much effort I personally know my friends who are in pit band have been putting in several hours a day almost every single day just to make this performance amazing so it's going to be great to see how many people come to that and watch it and just things around the school many of our clubs are starting to honor like obviously women's history month and also we're going to have a huge amount for culture week and many clubs are also putting their ideas in for that there's nothing final yet but overall I know that's going to be amazing because usually we do something really big for these type of um like weeks trying to see um how we can represent specific groups in our community and then also this week another big thing is our pretty and purple fundraiser fashion show which is going to be so much fun I'm going to be excited to see how that goes usually it's one of our biggest events because we raise so much money and the booster club obviously helps with that and we have so many individuals coming out to have a little fun and show off their little modeling skills and everything like that and lastly I just wanted to say although like I personally know since I'm a senior there's like the senior right is going on but I've seen so many people still put in so much effort throughout our school and students are still trying so hard to keep pushing and getting their grades to be at the at the fullest potential as they could be and it's just amazing seeing how our community is still growing and putting in their best effort all right um at South we just had our Winter Dance which is really fun because like students can dress up and all dance together and just have fun for the weekend and it had the most attendance in school history so a lot more people have come out so that was really fun to bring that back before Kelvin um we also have our orchest show coming up which is always really nice I went to it last year and it was so good just seeing all the dancers um create their own dances and perform a show we also um I need to give a shout out to the girls gymnastics team for winning State that's a huge accomplishment and I've seen so many pictures and know people on the team and it's just like so I'm so proud of them for doing that because that is a huge thing for our school and then we are celebrating respect week next week which is just a week to tell every student that they belong at South and just build our community I know last year we had a table with a bunch of stickers to give out to students and just games during lunch periods and in the Commons just raising respect and making sure that everyone's just continuing to be kind to one another and then this past week we had our snowball event combined with North which is always a fun event for people to attend and get to know not only people at their own school but people at North as well and I know a lot of my friends went and they loved the DJ part of it and just dancing at night so again was filled with a lot of fun and then other than that we're just trying to get through the last three weeks before spring break I do I do know the senioritis has been kicking in for me at least so I'm just trying to get through these past three weeks other than that we have a lot to look forward to it all right okay moving on thank you both staffing recommendations all right so I'm going to turn this over to Rob all right everybody um before I get started on this I just want to remind the board this machine of figuring out how to do Staffing for next year starts in January with students requesting courses um we're still in the Weeds on sorting all of that out but that will come to you at the business meeting in two weeks but there's really two parts to that there's the part of courses that are selected by students and how we staff those courses and then there's this other section of Staffing that isn't tied to those course selections but are areas that we've identified our needs for additional Staffing in the district so on the page here on the memo that I wrote for you are the ones that are outside of that sectioning process needs that we have so I'll go line by line with you uh the first one up there is we've recognized that as special services program and needs have grown the demand on our department chairs has also grown uh to the point that most of their role right now is managerial and tasks and so the instructional leadership part has been forced to be pushed to the side because they're trying to keep up with all of the work that's there so Scott is working with our special services chairs and our principals to identify some release periods in the form of FTE that we could have some of our other staff who are aspiring to move into leadership roles take on some of those managerial tasks off of the department chairs so that way the department shares have more time in their day to be able to lead and and push the department forward so what we have right now preliminary is 0.8 FTE but again they're working through those details right now to to figure out which roles and and which responsibilities are going to shift to that we'll have a final number in two weeks of what that FTE is going to be but right now we're at a 0.8 wrap for this and for the next when you say like point eight or one yeah north and south or is that a total of 0.8 yeah so this is District 29.8 or this is District wide right okay so that division right now is a 0.4 at each campus but we're evaluating whether that's what we what the real need is uh once we look at all those duties and responsibilities that would shift over so you're anticipating one person to do part-time itself and part-time at North correct yep and the same with the um path coordinating path is a little different so path is a little different yeah uh we currently have the the staff in place for path coordinator right now uh but at each campus at South it's 0.6 FTE and it's 0.4 FTE at North uh for this one what we've learned over the past year is that we really need that employee in there full time to fully implement this path program with fidelity uh so right now what uh the staff who are in there the certified staff who are in there is part of their day is in path and coordinating it and part of it is teaching classes and that disruption in their day of Shifting over to classes uh and leaving the program but having a support staff member there is is not helping for us to fully implement the path program so this is a net new position for special services like back up to the top yeah um how old is Santa line like their other room Department chairs where they be you know yes a really good question when you look at the number of teachers that the special services department chair is responsible for and all of the support staff they're essentially running their own mini schools so it's far greater than what a normal regular department chair has responsibility yeah we probably wouldn't be able to support that no no there's no need in the other department S I mean South has like 17 yeah it's like 17 or certified staff um with all the evaluations and and that work is like where I was mentioning you're kind of in the managerial part of it and it's like the stuff that we need to work on in terms of structural looking at our programming we we do it's hard to it's hard to get to it so it's like 17 more teachers at South in that department versus our next largest Department which is English plus I don't know how many support staff for supporting special edu itself I mean yeah I'd have to get the numbers that I mean we have I think in the district support staff we have like over 75 support staff like paraprofessionals that are just being managed by our specialized chairs so okay and one of the things we'd like to do next year is evaluate Scott's going to lead the charge with that team at looking very closely at some of our instructional programming with our chairs but if we're going to have them take on that leadership in program evaluation of our instructional programming we need to take some things off of their plate to make space for that work to happen so this is what we're looking at to try to make that work I think I think it's good to tell him that discussions on it yeah I understand right yeah and then the bottom three there are all related to t99 and the growing of the t99 program uh the first one is uh we'd like to create another Lea position but it's specifically 14.99 to assist Lisa with the out placement um so that would be a district outplacement coordinator when she came in there weren't as many as there are now and so that just keeps growing and growing and growing we also have a need for an additional teacher based off of the projections that Scott has so that's the second to the last line and then also the services needed another 0.4 FTE for a speech language pathologist to be over there at t99 so we have growing special education needs across the district Scott's I asked him to pull some data for you tonight as we talk about this so let me share with you yeah so like t99 um currently this year has 60 students right around 60 and we're going up to a little bit over 70 next year for the school year so there's where the teacher ask is on the line item there and then we're actually going up but roughly 10 every year after that until we Peak out at 90 to 100 so another reason why we're building onto the building to accommodate that so we will be you know down the road for another staff member to manage and support all the students and then in the buildings I pulled numbers from 2020 for North 220 special ed students and at um if I could read with my glasses 288 so from 220 to 288 next year the north is looking to bring back our directive programming which supports our students with emotional disabilities years ago we were running low numbers in that so we kind of moved away from that and we were using Sal's program but there's enough students to support that and and the increase obviously is over 60 students from 2020 to now and then at South where we were at in 2020 333 students and we're at 356 this year and a lot of the next year is we're adding another classroom for our multi-needs so our multi-needs numbers are going up which will then eventually feed into t99 so it kind of all is you know working together there to support those numbers so so this is a little preview you're seeing some of this in what we call the below the line the non-tied to section the sectioning process of FTE but those numbers are a kind of a Prelude to what you're going to see in the above the line around sectioning when we come back in another couple of weeks in growing enrollment in our special education programs so this kind of dovetails with what you'll see the next time we present our projections for that growth are based on um looking at enrollment yeah where the theater yeah so for a special one yeah we're we're how how are we projecting that we're 10 more 10 more 10 more peaking at night oh at t99 because there are current students now remember t99 is grades 18 through 22.
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so he certainly paid his dues and it's just amazing to see how that he he stuck with it and was just a solid person for us for our community again coach Cooper I don't want to steal a lot of his Thunder because I'm sure he has a lot of good things to say but that the recipe stays the same with young men like him hard worker every day at practice does all the traveling stuff in club wrestling has an outstanding family his grades are just solid grades I mean he is truly a unique individual we're very proud of him but at this time I will turn it over to coach Cooper to talk more about Tommy good evening uh I I could talk about a lot of our guys pretty much all day long but you know Tommy is uh is is quite the unique individual uh you look at Tommy and you're like that's the guy I don't want to wrestle at weigh-ins like that like I want to stay away from that guy but uh there are several times we were driving up to practices uh at Franklin or Perry Meridian last year in the spring and I'm driving the van and I'm listening to the conversations behind me between Tommy and my sixth grade son and they're talking about Pokemon and Minecraft and if you didn't look at Tommy you would think it was two like third graders back there just talking about video games like his his personality is nothing like what you get on the wrestling mat um so I you know having known Tommy uh for the way he is and just a fantastic human being we're putting together our stats and stuff for our uh our banquet coming up tomorrow and you know you got your top 10 lists of takedowns and and pins and just career wins and all of this stuff and I'm sliding Tommy into these spots and uh just realizing like I need one that's just great human beings I mean because Tommy is a hundred percent of of all the Fantastic kids I've had the privilege to coach he's on the top 10 list of great human beings that's for certain so um it went uh 11 to 3 11-3 loss versus the state champ mid-season and in wrestling in the semifinals and got it within two points I mean we came up a little bit short but he plays third in the state but uh there's no doubt in my mind I mean State metal is cool but uh the time that I've been able to spend with Tommy and just just be around him as a human being is what all cherish forever so uh you know I really appreciate uh recognizing Tommy Morrow and just having the chance to to speak about so thank you [Laughter] laughs hey all right next I believe we have a special presentation we do Mrs wooden so I'd like to ask Mr debmer from Rock Creek Elementary School principal Rock Creek Elementary School to come forward uh we are going to get some information about officially dedicating The Rock Creek Elementary gymnasium floor in honor of Mr Gary Barker thank you for having me this evening very excited to be here with Gary's wife daughter and a close family friend as well with me this evening for consideration to rename the Rock Creek gymnasium floor to the Gary Barker Memorial floor Gary Barker was a significant stakeholder in our community and a member of The Rock Creek Family he not only contributed countless hours to our basketball program both boys and girls but he also played a significant role in the Athletics program our students social and emotional development and academics for all players Gary Barker attended Rock Creek as a student and continued his passion for the Rock Creek community as a coach for 18 years while coaching students at Rock Creek Gary made it his mission to build strong relationships with students and Families and he promoted the program within our community if you've ever attended a Rock Creek basketball game it is a standing room only event I believe the continuity of coaching and development of the Rock Creek program by Gary Barker is a factor in our community's engagement with The Rock Creek Athletics program Gary believed we needed to mentor and work with all students in the school not only our top athletes he held camps for students as young as first grade to promote the fundamentals of the sport Gary allowed students to learn and explore if this was a pathway that they enjoyed and felt successful with Rock Creek was more than a basketball team for Gary it was truly a home and a passion for helping students succeed I was fortunate enough to work with Gary for eight of the 10 years I have been at Rock Creek Elementary I've always been impressed and encouraged by How Gary worked with the students and families of record he expressed and showed that academics were important to being a successful student athlete he truly cared for the whole child Gary was well respected by students other coaches community members and officials for his passion for helping students improve we all like to have a victory at the end of the game but Gary showed a victory with something that could be obtained by growth and not just the win at the end of the game please help me honor a man that gave so much of himself for Rock Creek students families and Community by considering my request to rename the gymnasium floor at Rock Creek to the Gary Barker Memorial floor thank you thank you Mrs Detmer so on school board members if you notice under the approval piece of our packet tonight there was approval of the official naming of the Rock Creek gymnasium floor I would I would request that I'd be allowed to make a recommendation at this point to have that vote with Mr Barker's wife and and daughter here so if you would entertain that Mrs Wilden I would I would like to make that recommendation and just as an FYI before starting a formal process a reminder that policy um uh 72.50 uh bcsc policy 7250 does give you the authority to to name um a facility in this case the gymnasium floor after an individual and we we ask that uh when that is done it's because of the significant contribution to the enhancement of Education generally or the corporation in particular or to the well-being of the corporation Community State or nation and I think that Mrs dubmer has argued well that Mr Barker's contribution to this community has been extreme and so would recommend that The Rock Creek Elementary gymnasium floor be named in honor of Mr Gary Barker Dr Roberts do I have a motion to name the Rock Creek Elementary gymnasium floor for Mr Gary Barker I move that we officially dedicate the Rock Creek elementary gym floor to Mr Barker thank you Mr Grimes to have a second thank you Mr bright and Mr Schultz any questions or comments from the team I just have one question I don't know because we don't do this very often I don't know if it would be possible to see if there are any Rock Creek Elementary former students in C4 that are part of the graphic arts department that might be willing to do the design work for whatever the design looks like I think it'd be a just a cool gesture for those kids to be able to give back to somebody they gave to them that's very good idea good suggestion okay thank you all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed thank you it's approved all right very good uh Mike Gary's wife and daughter please stand so we can recognize oh okay next I believe we have a senior project presentation we do some really cool stuff Happening Here uh at the beginning of this meeting important stuff and I failed to as you're coming up you just let me we're talking through everything with um in regards to Mr Barker there are some photos up here that we have in the presentation this presentation we put on our website as well for people to to check these out and see um the need inaction stuff over the years so all right so we have a special presentation tonight everybody I think in this room is aware of senior projects and the importance of those to the path to graduation for the students in each of our high schools here at Bartholomew Consolidated Schools and we had an opportunity to talk about solar a few times Utica over the last few months I think and so we looked at this as an opportunity to present very publicly into this school board her ideas about solar panel and specifically looking at Columbus East High School since that's where she is a student so I want to turn things over to you and that that clicker I think should work you want to test that real quick and make sure got it so I'm ritika Savant a senior at Columbus East High School and this is a part of my senior project about spreading awareness regarding solar in Columbus Indiana so the topics that will be discussed in today's presentation are what is solar energy the benefits of solar PV my experience with solar why do we need solar case study on Columbus East High School and my petition with comments so solar energy is basically the energy from the Sun but it is the most abundant source of energy on our planet Earth it can be harvested in multiple ways such as solar photovoltaics solar PV is a type of technology which uses solar panels to generate electricity directly from sunlight it has multiple benefits such as it is renewable unlike fossil fuels which will run out in 50 to 100 years renewable energy is here to stay the sun will remain for millions of years for us to continue to use its energy it is also cheap in the long run as it requires a one-time investment after which you don't have to pay any electric bills it is also clean as it requires as it has negligible carbon footprint and it is long lasting as one solar panels are installed they have a lifespan of about 25 to 30 years my personal experience with solar so I've seen firsthand what solar can do in India in 2021 we installed a solar system with battery storage on our remote Farm since our farm is not connected to any power grid all our electricity is supplied by solar panels after the initial installation cost we had to pay absolutely no money in terms of electric bills or maintenance costs my family is glad to have chosen solar why do we need solar on our schools the first most important point is that it will reduce electric costs in the long run can free up funds which can be used for other school resources and supplies it will also help us reduce our carbon footprint as you all know that climate change is a real crisis and we need to fight it it will also help us become more energy resilient solar power but battery storage will help prevent grid disruptions and interruptions to Student Learning Community activism solar panels will help the school become a leader in the community by engaging and motivating others to take steps to be sustainable work first Workforce Development solar installer is projected to be one of the fastest growing occupations over the next decade schools all over the country are already training their students with the skills and knowledge to succeed in this Dynamic sector stem education schools are also training their students with Hands-On learning opportunities with the solar panels in science technology engineering and math I have a case study of Columbus East High School here so our school building alone uses about 4 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually and that is equivalent of over 6 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year and this usage equals to over four hundred thousand dollars in electric bills per year what I propose is a thousand kilowatt solar area system and according to my projections the estimated install costs will be 2.5 million dollars with a payback time of 24 years but I have not taken inflation into account According to which the electrics electricity cost from power grid will keep on increasing over the years um which means that the payback time will decrease and I understand that this is a very huge sum but there are multiple financing options available such as the latest inflation reduction act which mentions that for the next 10 years schools can receive 30 direct payment for solar energy and battery storage projects and other than this there are multiple direct and third-party ownership options available you can find them in the appendix so here is a slide of my petition the education sector in the United States plays a very important role in progressing our country towards a clean future bcsc has already put panels on two of out of 18 schools and putting panels on Columbus East High School is only going to increase that ratio so I created a petition to put solar panels on Columbus East High School and I was greeted with positive responses as you can see I have received about 201 signatures from students parents and teachers and most of them are students over here I have compiled a few of the comments which I received some of them say that Columbus is a place for great ideas and this is one of such great ideas cehs has a large flat roof which is ideal for installing solar panels reducing our carbon footprint is a good idea it's an awesome idea to make use of renewable energy it will save the energy and our world it would be awesome and make me so proud of our school install them do it let's evolve together thank you I would like to thank you for your time and thank you for letting for giving me the opportunity to present here I would like to take your questions if you have any any questions you talked about the one thousand kilowatt system is what you recommended out of how much of the four million usage kilowatts does that cover so is it collect I don't know their system so that will cover about a quarter of the electricity different options for funding it that you talked about can you tell us what your preferable way would be and how you might how you would suggest going about that so back in India we use direct ownership and we installed them all at once without taking any loan so I think that is the best option to just install them at once with without taking any loans could you tell us a little bit about yourself what what you're studying at East and whether or not you think this project might relate to your career plans um so right now I'm I'm going to Purdue next this year and I'll be studying in applied physics and I think that this project will help me in the future because I want to do something insustainably for our environment so yes I think that will help me in the future does the costs include the 2.5 million does that include the 30 office no that does not include the 30 cost and this cost can also change so because of inflation right now the costs are high but it can't and then I have a question probably more for the general public that Dr Bozeman's probably best position but like what percentage of bcsc's power is powered by solar if any question Dr Bozeman sorry you're over there I think he he thought he might get a question or two with this topic before we do that I'd like to ask permission to create a a solar position here in bcsc because I have a candidate to my direct right that I'd like to have a conversation with foreign yeah we have we have uh solar panel systems currently on North Side Middle School and Taylorsville Elementary we've had a lot of success she and I have met and discussed this a couple times we've had a lot of success with those systems and generally speaking they reduce about 40 percent um of the um the cost that we have for those buildings so far and Dr bismo and you're making considerations on Taylorsville and Northside can you talk about The Balancing Act that you go through to decide which school gets solar sure generally speaking it's good practice and we've adopted this to the extent possible when we replace a roof on a building buildings that are good candidates East is a good candidate it's got a flat roof when we replace a roof on a school building then we as I said if it's a good candidate add some funding to put solar panels on that so East in this case as we're discussing is probably a candidate for a roof replacement in the next handful of years I'd say five or six years or so and and we have a pretty exhaustive list of our other buildings so when those opportunities come up we do consider putting a panel on panels on as we can thank you I don't have another question but I just want to say I've I've seen a lot of senior project presentations but your presentation along with the appendix and everything was was one of the one of the top ones that I've seen and I appreciate all the work that you put into it thank you so much yeah really nice job really nice job thank you thank you so much I'll just add to that with Mr nellons comment about the appendices there were many many slides and if our board thought that those were also going to be shown tonight they were probably thinking we're going to be here for a few extra minutes but uh just a lot a lot of information in addition provided so thank you is that your family in the audience yeah yes they must be very proud congratulations we're gonna bring you four deer to shake your hand is that okay oh okay next on the agenda we have best practice sharing from Central Middle School all right thank you yeah Blake's gonna share some things that we used over the last couple months with our staff and students so uh thank you for this opportunity to share some things that have been going on at Central Middle School so see if we can get to the first light just a little background again uh Central Middle School started in really in 1956 when the Columbus High School switched over and they opened that building as the Central Junior High and so in 2007 bcsc took the opportunity to invest into that Community into that school and to keep the school downtown and to create you know one of the state of our state-of-the-art schools that is around so a couple of things about our building obviously it was the architecture of Ralph Johnson and Perkins and will of Chicago it opened in 2007.
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Dartmouth Administration started implementing changes to this practice about 10 years ago resulting in an inconsistent mishmash of practices across the elementary schools in the district there have been many iterations resulting in the erosion of community building among students and among staff morning playground time is the only time of day when students get to come together as a whole school it is also the only time during the school day when all staff except those on the rotating duty roster are available to work with each other consult on shared students plan Student Activities and school events and give and receive advice Etc this morning time is especially important to the work of reading and math interventionists related service providers of Occupational Therapy Physical Therapy speech and language English language education teachers and special education teachers these non-classroom teachers get 70 minutes less prep time per week despite having seven eight nine sometimes even 10 groups each day of varying grade and academic levels we are not included in CPT time there is no time built into our schedules for Consulting with classroom teachers or other interventionists regarding shared students these 20 minutes before the start of the school is vital to our being able to connect and communicate with the many classroom teachers of our students and with each other Instead This valuable time is used sitting in classrooms to provide classroom teachers coverage standing in sometimes empty hallways or being assigned unnecessary duties for the sake of everyone having a duty 100 minutes per week per staff member is spent just on morning duties all of these staff members then do it again at the end of the day for afternoon Duty for an additional 50 to 75 minutes per week per staff member that is approximately three hours per week per staff member on duties returning to the practice of outside playtime in the morning would be beneficial to our students as well our current practice of students doing seat work at their desks or on their Chromebooks until 905 just adds to the current concerns of increased screen time in sedentary Lifestyles and decreased social and emotional skills furthermore giving back this morning time for teachers to use productively comes at no monetary cost to the district thank you for your consideration in this important matter foreign ER co-president at Dartmouth Educators Association I'm just recognizing on tonight's budget that um you have an old business item of um talking about the budget and would just like to ask you to um uh let's see recognizing that Dr Gifford has just left the district and that I know I know you're aware that she was one of the highest paid superintendents in the state as well as the highest uh salaried individual in the town recognizing the need to get a very qualified superintendent just please keep in mind that um this town needs a good superintendent someone that's going to do a great job but we want someone to come here to work for our town um not to come here just for an exorbitant salary so um please just keep that in mind when you're considering the budget next year and thank you very much [Applause] okay we'll move on approval of minutes regular and executive session uh Mr chairman of February 13th I'll move approval of the regular session minutes for February 13th second second then we'll buy you Dr Jenkins second by Miss Amaral on the motion any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed I have to abstain welcome back by the way I'm sorry thank you good to see you thank you the executive session minutes of the same night Mr chair I'll move approval with the stipulation that they be held until the matter is under consideration are finalized by Dr Jenkins second by Ms Amaral on the motion any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously okay our student rep is unable to be with us tonight due to a previous commitment everything is okay it's just he has a commitment so we will move on Spotlight sure all right Mr Kylie thank you Mr Nunes we're excited to welcome Mrs Correa and Mr Hill tonight for our Demello Spotlight on kids um and I think they have some special guests they're bringing with them we do we do so hello and thank you so much for inviting Mr Hill and I to talk about the demell school tonight while our goal today is to Spotlight a new and very exciting initiative that we've launched at the Demello School this year we'd like to begin our presentation with just a brief overview of what we've been working on for the past six months first and foremost I know I can speak for Mr Hill when I say that it is a complete honor and privilege for us to work at and lead the Demello School our community is made up of a talented and dedicated staff who puts students first hard-working students who make us proud and positive supportive families with whom we partner every day we are lucky and it is a joy this year we continue to focus on addressing learning loss from the pandemic particularly in the areas of literacy in math at the beginning of the year we invested a good amount of time meeting with grade level teams and interventions to look at our data and instruction in order to identify areas of strength and weakness and make adjustments out of those meetings came our decision as a school to commit to several initiatives around literacy oh I'm sorry I'm not I'm not even advancing my slides you missed the picture of the building in front okay so uh the first thing uh yes the first thing implemented across the board was a return to daily targeted small group phonics and comprehension instruction during the reading block which sounds like something we should have been doing the whole time but due to the pandemic and social distancing constraints we lost sight of a little bit so that is something that we decided as a school to bring back in full force starting at the beginning of the year um we also decided to provide grade levels with professional development tailored to their specific needs keeping our focus on small group instruction in mind and knowing that our first grade team had received guided reading training during the 21-22 school year we expanded this work to grade two this year with two full days of guided reading PD facilitated by A literacy coach additionally our third grade team engaged in a two-day professional development also provided by our coach on text complexity and how teachers can effectively select and utilize various texts to support students reading development and finally as you know the district has been piloting the fundations reading program in grades one through three this year the consensus of our piloting teachers is that this program has already had an incredibly positive impact on our students reading and we are currently supporting our first and second grade teachers as they're already preparing for full implementation next year in addition to our focus on small group instruction and reading professional development our Demello School literacy committee has been busy at work on many initiatives to promote reading throughout our building and Community last fall the committee partnered with our first grade team on first grade literacy night a camp out themed family night focused on read alouds and sight word fun in February we celebrated World read aloud day with virtual author visits to each of our classrooms our literacy committee also organized our annual bookmark design contest as well as the full return of blankets and books a designated time as the name suggests when students and staff simply curl up with a blanket and a favorite book to read for a while looking ahead our literacy committee has planned many engaging reading activities as part of our demelo March Madness month we are also looking forward to welcoming a local local Storyteller and in-person guest readers to Demello this spring as well as hosting another Bingo for books event um getting towards the end of the year so stay tuned for more details on that moving on to math we continue to focus on the full implementation of the bridges program with consistency and integrity this year we felt it was important for all teachers to deepen their understanding of the components of the program as well as the number Corner portion of our daily lessons our incredible math coach has taken this Challenge on and she has modeled number Corner lessons for each grade level team over the first half of this school year this month she will begin modeling all other components of the program for all teachers in grades one through five in addition to working hard in bridges our students have also developed devoted 60 to 80 minutes each week this year to completing challenges in St Math our computer-based programs that develops students conceptual understanding of math puzzles through math concepts through wordless puzzles this year we are focused on targeting positals to the individual needs of students and it is no understatement when I say that Demello school is obsessed with st math and its lovable and supportive penguin mascot Gigi whose picture on the slide if you get to visit Demello you will have the opportunity to walk down our Hall of Gigi's where students have designed and decorated images of this beloved penguin last month we challenged our students to complete sixty thousand puzzles in St Math by February vacation our students had exceeded that goal by completing nearly 80 000 puzzles and now we are preparing for a celebratory visit from GG it's very exciting to recognize the hard work that all of our students do looking ahead we are starting March Madness which engages our classrooms in a friendly competition to see who can complete the most puzzles each week during the month of March the students are already buzzing about which class might go all the way and win the tourney again stay tuned uh and so that is what we've been working on in terms of reading in math at Demello and I'm going to turn this presentation over to Mr Hill who will talk to you about our Community Partnerships as well as PBIS at Demello good evening everyone all right so in terms of looking at Community Partnerships and projects on the slide here we have had the opportunity this year to partner with the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra and are happy to announce that this year's learning in concert is entitled symmetry in shapes and sounds so here students are learning to recognize that symmetry surrounds them in their environment in music and architecture of their school buildings and even in their own backyard and in fact today our third and fourth grade students have the opportunity to visit the zitarian theater to listen to the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra as they Incorporated symmetry into their music um with the grade 5 holiday hope project so in keeping with Demello Traditions our fifth grade once again has adopted families to support through the holidays as part of the New Bedford Child and Family Service holiday hope campaign um looking at so we talked a little bit about the November Symphony Orchestra bullet two um demelo Elementary is partnering with the Harvest Harvest Farm South Coast y to plan an Arbor Day tree planting ceremony so the Dartmouth tree committee will be donating a tree to plant here at Demello school and as part of the ceremony students particularly in fourth and fifth grade will be participating and sharing some artwork or poems in addition to that PTO and the hard Harvest Farm South Coast Y and Demello will be working in building garden beds at the demillo school to incorporate gardening into their science curriculum to start we're thinking of starting with wildflowers and we'll see where it grows from there okay uh for our PBIS uh at Demello we've refined our leader of the pack each week uh every classroom teacher will assign a student to be leader of the pact so paw prints are sent to each classroom where each student in class will think of and write a positive comment about the assigned leader of the pack paw prints are then hung in the main hallway for everyone to see at the end of the week paw prints are then sent home to be shared with their families leaders of the PAC students are also announced during Miss Korea and myself our morning announcements okay in addition to PBS we have our students of the month so at Demello we've designated specific character traits for each month of the school year so for example perseverance is dedicated for the month of March so classroom teachers will observe their class for that month and the student that most resonates that character trait will be awarded student of the month each month Demello will hold a student of the month ceremony where parents grandparents Guardians have the opportunity to come in and watch their child as they are announced student of the month families also then have the opportunity to take a picture using our green screen facilitated by our very own Liz fosey and lastly we have we've Incorporated Community meetings into the school year so to help reinforce and teach key characteristics of who we are at Demello which is to be respectful responsible and safe Community meetings have occurred like I said throughout the year with various themes in the slide here you'll see our fifth grade student council performed a skit for the entire School focusing on what it means to be respectful so using input from our teachers which could be observations or collecting Behavior data that is what drives our community meetings and here at Demello we are continuously working with our students to to provide them with strategies to help improve their problem-solving skills their ability to communicate with each other to best resolve peer conflict in a safe respectful and responsible way so as a segue to help build those problem-solving and communication skills I'm going to turn it over to our very own Liz vosi who has done an amazing job in creating and organizing our weekly stem activities at Demello which in all honesty is why we're here and what we're here to Spotlight so I'd like to turn it over to Liz if I could hello my name is Liz vosey and I'm the instructional technology specialist at Demello and Cushman I have the awesome opportunity to work directly with staff and students to ensure the safe and effective use of Technology this rule also gives me a unique perspective of the student and staff experience two years of covid protocols had a major impact on authentic opportunities for communication collaboration and cooperation for students and staff last spring teachers identified a need for direct instruction and practice with some of these soft skills like perseverance problem solving and curiosity we had also been looking for opportunities to increase the rigor of our digital literacy standards so we began planning for this program to launch in the fall that would provide students and staff with opportunities to learn and practice these targeted hard and soft skills one major goal of this initiative is to provide students and staff with shared experiences to build community and to support a school culture of collaborative teaching and learning so we launched stem teams this fall these teams meet once a month and each team is made up of three different grade levels teams are divided into smaller groups of three to four students to complete challenges each stem team meetings begins with an introduction to that day skill and an explanation of the tasks that will be completed students then have time to complete the tasks with that intended goal in mind so far we've practiced communication with Lego building and storytelling collaboration with game design problem solving with Hot Wheels challenges and perseverance with parachute design we're planning bridge building coding and 3D printing design in the coming months the hard work and encouragement of demello's teachers and staff have supported the success of this program so far some of our amazing teachers have agreed to share their perspective of stem teams in this video so we're going to hear from mysterious Miss Gamache Miss travassos and Mrs kudo it's to communicate with younger students for example recently we did a stem project where they had to move a Hot Wheels car from one end of the table to the other without touching it and and they were able to both communicate with their third and first grade Partners but also allow those younger students to come up with an idea that might not have worked and let them try it anyway yes okay so the one thing I love there's many things I love about stem teams but one thing that I love is when we were making games board games with the kids watching them work together to go through the whole process and create the board game starting with planning it out seeing what they could do then the planning and then giving it a name coming up with their rules they had to test it and they got to create it and then they got to play it and it was a great way of collaborating with the older and the younger kids together and being making everybody feel included throughout stem teams students learn to collaborate with each other they learn how to problem solve and to have patience our younger students are able to have older role models and learn ways of communicating when creating parachutes students were able to explain which ways they thought the parachute should be built and although they may have had different opinions they were able to come to an agreement and test out their models our students really look forward to stem team Fridays teams complete this as a fifth grade teacher it's been really great working on sorry about that as as teams complete their tasks they track their conversation planning and progress using iPads teachers also circulate around the room and recognize students who are modeling these skills by giving them stem Champion tickets and at the end of each meeting we choose one ticket and announce a stem Champion for that day the champion and their team are recognized and share their success with the whole group their picture also goes up on our stem wall of fame we're so lucky because we have a few of our stem Champions here with us tonight to talk a little bit about their experience with stem team so first we have Adeline Scott who's the second grader in Miss Reynolds class and she's one of our stem champions foreign and I am in second grade at the middle school my seven teams are great because I love solving problems and figuring things out and inventing my favorite challenge so far was the Hot Wheels cars because we got to be creative our La our best solution was to tape string onto the car and pulled across the table my team is on the stem Wall of Fame because we used collaboration to try everyone's ideas great sweetheart next we have made first who's a fourth grader in Miss marky's class my name is Maeve and I am my name is Maven I am in fourth grade at the mallow School stem teams are great because I love doing Hands-On activities and using my imagination my favorite challenge so far was the parachute design because we got to make parachutes and test them by sending them up to the ceiling my team built parachutes with the strings attached in different spots and we found out that parachutes work best with the strings attached on the outside edges my team is on the stem Wall of Fame because we don't give up when something doesn't work on the first time and we cheer for each other [Applause] and now we have Bennett Kirchner who is a fifth grader and Miss kobeck's class and one of our stem champions hello my name is Bennett and I'm in fifth grade at the middle school stem teams are great because it teaches me how to be a good leader and I get to work with younger students to complete fun challenges my favorite challenge so far was the game design challenge where we practice collaboration my team created dinosaur game where the goal was to reach the prehistoric plane players had to dodge dinosaurs and could even find shortcuts swing with gorillas Through the Jungle my my team is on the stem Wall of Fame because we use every team member's ideas to develop our game and even though we had different ideas we were able to talk about them and agree on a solution we want to thank you the members of our school committee for your support and present you with these stem Champion medals that we designed and created with our 3D printer thank you Isn't that cool well it's it's it's ours it's our stem leader Mrs Bosey who designs them and sometimes you walk into our office and there's no one there but the 3D printer is going and you know it's it's stem Friday is coming up um uh we are here to take any questions that you might have about all things wonderful at Tamela School Mr Oliver no I will just say thank you for your presentation it was very thoughtful and well put together always like to hear from from your students and I really enjoy hearing about the uh the monthly stem activities that after school that take place so no uh overall I I thought it was very well put together and it's nice to see all the happenings that are happening at the Mellow school so thank you to you both yeah I was just like when my colleague's comments it was great thank you to our students who came out tonight they were great spokespeople for the stem challenges and I just think it's really great to see them working on teams on these creative sorts of problems so awesome thank you yeah thank you very nice I just to see the little ones like Bennett is in fifth grade when did that happen but um thank you so much yes you know thank you and again I remember you know back when uh Miss Korea had my daughter and you were doing you know stem projects on Fridays and so it all comes full circle and again like I love the emphasis on as I see it you know trying to re as part of this like trying to you know regain those soft skills it's so important and such you know I just remember even going into schools with Junior Team at last spring it was something that many teachers mentioned to me is that you know they were seeing it was you know a lot of challenges around trying to do group work and so celebrating the skills that make groups successful and that's that's amazing and they're having so much fun so thank you and we'd like to welcome you any Friday any stem Friday 1 30.
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