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we have a workshop that we've had before it's about anxiety in children and adolescents and so um Sarah Rogers from balanced Learning Center in Fall River will be here to talk with parents and she's very generous with her time and she offers some tips and strategies and it's a great it's a great workshop and it will be at Potter School on the 14th so that's all I have that's great we good our next meetings and meetings are going to be March 20th and 22nd uh at 6 pm and that's for our superintendent interviews finalists type of deal and then we will be meeting on the 27th which will be out we're just going to move that school committee meeting one week back that's also going to include our budget hearing okay that okay so I'm just just a quick question sorry um so when we announce like so after our deliberations is there like a time frame that typically we would announce the uh whoever we've chosen probably do that on the 27th okay give us time to and then chew on things yeah all right great thank you that's my thought provided that way all right so at this point in time material will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session for an update on collective bargaining and pending legal matters and not return to open session so moved second move by Mr Oliver second by Miss Wade on the motion any discussion hearing none roll call vote please miss Gunther yes thank you very much enjoyed your week be safe and happy St Patrick's Day [Music] foreign [Music]
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March 8th 2023 electronic meeting of the Ann Arbor design review board this meeting is held electronically to protect public health and safety due to the covid-19 virus and to comply with the orders issued by the governor the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and or the Washington County Health Department we intend to conduct this meeting similar to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call 877-852-5247 or 888-788-0099 toll-free an intermediate ID 974-6174-9412 uh public uh comment will be via telephone already did that this information is also available on the published agenda in Public Notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on CTN Channel 16 at T channel 99 and online at www.a2go.org watch ctm the design review board is a volunteer resident board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by city council purpose of the design review board is to Foster excellence in the design of Ann Arbor's built environment and to advise applicants on how a project can meet the spirit and intent of the downtown design guidelines first the applicant will have 10 minutes to present their proposed project to the design review board then the design review board will hold a discussion on the design of the project following the presentation and discussion members of the public are permitted to come in for up to three minutes um I think I might have asked this once before Jeff but does CTN put that call in information up for people that are um looking remotely because if I didn't have a pencil in hand and I was watching there's no way I would have gotten that those phone numbers down and so forth I I believe that they do but I can look into that after the meeting okay good all right well then if you can do the roll Jeff uh happy too um member Perkins here remember Singleton member oh I I see I I see Lori's here um member Burns here remember Cooper member Kinley here remember Mitchell here remember Ramson here and John katarski yeah you you have a quorum all right I talked to Gary earlier today and he he said he'd be here so I would expect him to uh zoom in any minute right so on to approval of the agenda um if everybody's had a chance to review it if there are uh so I'll entertain a motion for approval motion to approve report moved and supported uh any discussion changes Corrections all right all those in favor signify by saying aye all right all opposed same sign agendas approved on to the approval of the minutes these are minutes from the December 14 2022 design review board meeting um so I will entertain a motion for approval motion to approve support moved and supported uh anybody have any questions Corrections uh comments all right hearing on all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed same sign minutes are approved and now on to public comment um to speak during public comment please call now get your pencils out eight seven seven eight five two five two four seven or eight eight eight seven eight eight zero zero nine nine toll-free and enter meeting ID 974-6174-9412 anybody anymore here to be any callers at this time okay then we can move on to regular business and we are looking at a proposal for 300 East Huron Street um Jeff before we jump into that I wanted to make sure that you all had a chance to meet um Hank Kelly who is the city's new Deputy planning manager Hank is going to become more involved with the drb process as as I uh right off into the sunset and so I wanted to make sure everybody got a chance to meet uh Hank Hank do you want to say hi and tell us a little bit about yourself um I would love to and first I'm going to do something requested of Me by friends in the disability Community I'm going to do a quick self-description so I have a lightweight skin I have short brown hair I'm wearing a brown sweater I'm sitting in an office and um uh Jeff gave me a great mini intro I would also add that my pronouns are they them I've worked uh primarily coming from a transportation planning background so I'm excited to delve into new areas of planning as I join the the department in the city of Ann Arbor I just joined in November so there are a lot of things not just drb that are new to me so I appreciate um everyone's patience with me as I take over a very small part of Jeff's big shoes that I'll need to fill I'm uh available to any of you for for questions that you may have about the transition of the drb I just didn't know I know sometimes these meetings are canceled if we don't have incoming applications and so I wanted to take the opportunity to get some face time early on with you thank you thank you to meet you Hank yeah welcome thank you so much um just one other piece of business that I wanted to cover before we uh move on to the um to the first item um and and that is if if uh if a member um of the drb needs to uh recuse themselves we're going to ask that um you you do so but then to remove yourself physically from from the meeting um uh that's that's the um that that would be the appropriate um way to go about that that's all I think we can move on into um into our um into our first item all right well I guess we should promote the development team into the meeting thanks Jeff uh that that might take a minute or so hey Mike hey how's it going good to see you good to see you too uh can you hear me well yeah yeah I sure can I can see that Nick has joined us and I can see that um a representative from Myers and Associates is with us and um I understand that maybe Nick is going to be running the slide deck is that is that the case that's correct great and will Nick also be uh narrating Nick will also be narrating correct okay but just before he does I just want to say hi to everyone I know almost everybody on the um on the board so good to see you all again and Jeff you have to stay with us until we're done you can't quit mid-stream when you're actually you're leaving what your last day is but we got to get done before you go all right I'll postpone my retirement then probably not okay um Nick why don't you tell us when you're ready to start the presentation you guys will have 10 minutes and then after you're done with the presentation uh members of the board will offer feedback and then at the end I'll um offer uh some feedback myself and then I'll summarize uh the comments that I've heard um and that's um pretty much how the process is going to work okay great can you guys all hear us um we we can Nick you were a little crackly there do you wanna do you want to speak again a little bit yeah I just wanted to confirm that you guys can hear me okay yep that's better better you should be able to share your screen okay I need you a co-host and then I will have a havoc and I will let you know when there's uh yeah and just to just to clarify here I I have my computer running where you can see my face but then we're also connected here to a conference room computer Chris Myers is sitting across the conference room table from me as well good afternoon everyone hey hey Chris so I will pull up the PDF right now and that should be visible to everybody correct uh it is let us know when you want to begin all right we're ready to go okay so thanks for the opportunity to um meet with us today we have uh just a quick introductions you know first Martin Mike Martin our team I'm Nick Munoz the project manager on the project and Chris Myers our principal architect on the project and in our office um our civil engineer who I don't believe is is on this meeting at this time is Midwestern Consulting uh Tom cover who you may know as well um so just jumping into the the plan so the proposal like Jeff had mentioned is at the corner of Huron and East Huron and South Fifth uh the southeast corner and the D1 Midtown District um directly across the hall across the street uh across Huron is City Hall um and adjacent to the south on South Fifth is uh Bank of Ann Arbor um adjacent to the West is uh I believe it's a telephone company facility there the proposed project is six stories 139 guest rooms 79 808 total gross square feet um which is about 75 500 square feet as calculated based on the floor area ratio requirements um it's kind of a reverse L configuration with building tight to the street at Fifth and Huron and some open space for parking uh on the interior side of the site there's a pass-through for vehicular access to that parking area that's located further down fifth um so in the in the project overall floor plans we've got a a small basement area to house some utilities and service functions for the building which is primarily intended to free up the ground floor square footage for as much as the Public Hotel amenity space that we can get to really kind of activate the the the streetscape along those main public ways and then of course two through five are occupied by the guest rooms and then when we get up to floor six we've got a fitness facility with two guest room wings and a roof Terrace area that's out at the corner for um you know guests to kind of go out and get a view down over the city and into the surrounding landscape the elevations I'll kind of run through fairly quickly we can focus mostly on the 3D perspective views so this would be the Huron Street elevation with um a combination of brick metal panel and some stone paneling this is the Fifth Street elevation which has our entry point vehicular drop-off and entry point uh to the check-in area of the hotel and also that vehicle drive that I mentioned back to the interior part of the site the South elevation that this is on a property boundary a property line so it's a solid wall on a zero lot line and then the East Elevation is the same thing essentially the the part of the building that's up against the property line is right at the zero lot line um so then getting into the massing this is where you know we wanted to describe how the building is situated and how it's configured in relation to the UDC requirements for offsets at the upper floors so along Huron which is this this long elevation the yellow area represents what we're considering to be the street wall which is a four-story street wall along the East Huron um streetscape in relation to the larger taller buildings that are in that area then we step down along South Fifth to a two-story Street wall and the kind of break between the four-story street wall and two-story Street wall identifies where the building entrance is with this taller piece that pops up and creates a brand a facility identity uh directly above the message we've also Incorporated some some recessed areas along the street to allow for some landscaping and building related amenities to soften up the experience of the pedestrians walking along the street there so at the top of that four-story street wall we kind of jump back about four and a half feet in this blue area which is um Stone panels and then a little bit further of a offset if the green area which is also Stone panels with that rooftop Terrace above and a small kind of trellis Sun shading device over top of that the the South Fifth Street facade is a little more straightforward in terms of the offsets where we just transition back five feet between the masonry and the metal panel areas so then looking at that in a more kind of rendered elevation you can see that four-story street wall along here on with a brick ground first floor ground story with Windows pretty much along the whole street Frontage until we get down to the to the staircase but there's a bar dining facilities in this corner area and then we transition into some meeting rooms as we get further away from here on that terminates the glazing area terminates at the entry vestibule on down fifth where we transition back up to the two-story charcoal masonry the material palette is of you know three minutes remaining right it's very in line with the the brand identity with um kind of simple clean aesthetic brick and metal panel and Stone so the brick areas are we're considering to be this kind of Darker charcoal colored brick maybe not all the way black but a very kind of dark base to the building and these this volume of guest rooms making that four-story street wall is a champagne like a champagne Mica finished metal panel uh and then the white material is a very simple penalized Stone system and then looking over at the bird's eye view uh you could see this popped up area related to the rooftop Terrace we're thinking of this kind of high roof area potentially as a good spot for some solar panels to align with some of the cities and some of the brands uh green energy initiatives um and then the rest of the roof there's probably how some mechanical units and things like that but right now at this preliminary stage you were thinking that's a good spot for some solar panels another set of views the South elevation as I mentioned uh just a simple materiality here to relate to that zero lot line which um requires a fire rating and no openings in order to kind of maximize our site coverage there and then we've also got a couple views of this Street Frontage along Huron which I'm gonna give a little bit of the character of that streetscape with some recessed areas for maybe some planters and some seating areas that are directly adjacent to the sidewalk one minute remaining and then looking down towards the entry vestibule um a similar character and then the vehicular Drive kind of cuts through the sidewalk back there uh getting back over to this materials this image shows some photos of what we're thinking that I've also got I said product data on some reference to the metal panel materials that we're talking about as well as the Stone panels the stone panel system which is you know similar I think in geometry to the metal panels but just a different texture a different reflectivity a different finish and I think that's about it unless there's anything that you have to add occurrence you know I think we're about out of time as well Nick why don't you go back to uh one of the architectural elevations that have been rendered so people can see just in an image um at the corner and uh we'll be able to reference that uh yeah I think that that's a good one okay thank you thanks thanks for the presentation this is the point in time when members of the drb can offer uh feedback um I'll jump in this is Tamara um yes it if you read the design guidelines one of the very first things it talks about is the importance of the new development fitting comfortably into the existing fabric of the city or the community the area it's in and typically we would have seen context photos and there's really no nothing to show us what the context is around the building um I mean I know the area well enough I don't really see that it responds to the context so I would really like to see um something that that fits in a little better um the other point that it makes right at the beginning of our guidelines about why we exist and why the guidelines exist is that new development should be ageless and when I look at this um you know we talk about character defining features we talk about that a lot with like preservation projects but this building will age and this building will be you know 50 years old at some point what are the character defining features of this building it's just it's very Bland and um lacking in character and I think downtown Ann Arbor is is a lot of character in fact this area is very very diverse character um so I think I just you know the first thing I thought about when I saw the first picture of this was a mobile home park at this the the metal cladding is um just very very Bland I guess that's the best word for it um this is a gateway location um you know there's just no real focal point there's no nothing really distinctive about it um I like the I like the brick at the sidewalk um there is some you know variation in character at the at the very base where where people are walking um I think that's that works um and I guess just the other comment is um stairwells are just a great opportunity to introduce Windows into Assad and which brings light in um Dave's energy encourages people to take the stairwells they feel safe um you know take promotes Health taking those stairs instead of the elevators and all that so I would we always try to promote getting getting Windows into the stairwells um that's all I have for now thanks Tamara let's see if anyone else has anything they'd like to offer well as a non-architect I look at it and I agree with some of what camera said some I don't as much I'd like I'd like to see at some point a better view of the those Stone panels that looked like is promoting the notion of they look weathered so they have some texture it'd be nice if we had a piece to actually look at which we obviously we can't but I'd like to see more about that more concerned about the windows and maybe it's just they all look like they're flat in a flat plane and that's my first reaction it looks like they're sort of pasted in place now not being one of the Architects on board I don't know exactly what I would suggest to make it different but I don't see those windows as being a positive distinguishing feature just the way they're shown in this in this elevation that's my only comment this is Lori Singleton um I would build on camera's comments with the potential that the the three the four-story kind of three-story bar at the corner is a real opportunity to be strengthened as an important moment in this um Corridor this is an important intersection with um the city facilities right across the street and um the entrance to the hotel seems like it could be strengthened or the language of the entrance could be brought to or around the corner so there's kind of a moment of hierarchy there maybe that's an opportunity for identity but it's also maybe a better uh kind of sense of the expansive space that someone might be standing and waiting for a ride at the drop-off or or you know gathering at that entrance to meet folks it's a common you know demanded a hotel so it seems like that would be a place that could be strengthened in terms of the indoor outdoor connection there and the expression of the identity and the building around that corner so if if no other part of the building got a little extra juice I think that that three-story that starts on the second level that that component I think could be um the place where that those improvements are focused maybe richer materials or some detailing that gives a little bit more depth in the windows some Shadow and then a moment at that corner that is prominent and important I think the blank panel on the on that right above the tree that's shown there that blank section between Windows seems it like a part of a building that wouldn't be exposed to a primary corner and I'm sure there's a programmatic reason for why that's so opaque but it's architecturally that that facade in particular is one of the weaker ones on the building and it's one of the most prominent as a view from Main Street down here on that's I'm you know the most highly traveled course and so that's going to have a lot of exposure um I I was also thinking about the streetscape I know you're just kind of showing some things in there but that street along Huron has all been redeveloped with pavers and lighting and other things so I just want to ensure that that's all coordinated with the design and then also the brick paving that lines fifth is continuous along the entirety of that street so my hope would be as these new improvements are done and the new pavement is installed that that those kind of standards are maintained across those edges and resolved in terms of how they hit the intersection I'm not sure what the typical condition is but you've got newer gray kind of modern pavers I'm here on and the traditional brick ones and um Fifth and so those two streetscapes come together at that corner and with that work being redone it needs some intention and how that gets put together thanks Lori any other thoughts comments with that sorry was that question to us uh no question two um the design review board wondering if any other members wanted to offer uh some some feedback at this point yeah I have a few comments Jeff um this is Dick Mitchell um you know we we always ask for drawings real early in the process so we can give you input before much money has been spent that's our goal unlike planning that's why we come first and so I'm going to ask questions that the required detail that you probably don't have yet um but uh Jeff outlined some some psych questions about trash and bark biking bike parking in his report and the thing I worry most about on site and I think I'm glad that that you don't is that there's just a two-car drop-off pickup um Bay to to service the hotel and uh it I don't know how you could expand it knowing that Huron property is not available and um so I'm sure Marianne must be content that two cars is enough um but it it doesn't seem like enough to me and I I wonder if you could tell us how cars will be parked there are 17 spaces behind the building and and you may have more than that or does your Intel indicate that most people are arriving by taxi or Uber and cars are not an issue maybe you could talk about that yeah Mike would okay I'm happy to address that so you know the thought with the 17 car parking lot is not that it would address all the needs of the folks that would be coming here and you know our hope is with another downtown location and being in close proximity to the transit station on 4th Avenue and and spanning over the Fifth Avenue that folks could take the uh you know uh shuttle from the airport uh potentially and not have a car but the idea here is that we would run a valet in this hotel which we have experience in with our other hotel and it's simply the two-car drop-off would be a staging area to the larger 17 car parking lot which would also be a staging area and then eventually into City infrastructure so we would look to utilize City garages for uh you know the Lion's Share of the parking needs that we have here and you know certainly agree we can't if we could have um you know parking for five cars that'd be great we just can't do that here with the site and so the idea is you get them out front and then you move them around into kind of the holding lot per se and then based on when people would need their cars um we would either leave them there in that lot or we would then shuttle them potentially to any number of the city garages that are in close proximity and like I said we have experience with this with our other facility yeah okay I've stayed there and it does work yeah um the the other one thanks Mike uh the other question I have which might fall in the same category is about um the mechanical system because I I worry a bit about screening of rooftop equipment I think there'll be some exhaust hoods above the elevators there's some air conditioning condenser somewhere maybe an emergency generator and I assume the rooms are going to be heated and cooled with um unit vents underneath the windows and so there'll be louvers and yeah you can see that in the drawing oh you can yeah a little bit Yeah Chris go ahead and point them out yeah sure we use v-tax well then I see they're vertical units yeah they're vertical units so there's really no you know there's no big condenser Farms but there are there would be a you know dedicated outside air unit and a rooftop unit on the roof but that would all be you know pushed back away from the working side so that it's screened so it's above the mechanical room and the East Wing as far south as you can get it yeah I believe so and we'll have we'll have you know potentially units at at each end because they drop down into chases that are aligned with the stairwells um but we'll you know we'll continue as that as that approach develops we'll continue to put together sight line studies and things like that and screening if necessary but uh the generator will be located back in the in the parking area on one of the corners as well as uh or sorry no no generally the Transformer and the secondary enclosures will be back on the site tucked in okay thank you thanks dick I saw that Wendy had um her hand up Wendy do you wanna um take a shot sure uh some has already been discussed but my initial impression of this was that even though Huron and fifth are considered secondary streets I tend to consider Huron as being the vehicular Street and there's less pedestrian activity so I guess one question is why isn't the entrance on the corner or on Huron um kind of associated with that I'm I'm wondering about that um the bump out is requiring a driver to cross on and park on the left which is not typically what people do um so I don't know again that that turns the Fifth Avenue Frontage into much more of a vehicular area and even though there are more pedestrians that go down there so kind of a mishmash of questions there but if you could maybe talk about why there is no entrance on Huron yeah well I think so there's a graphic there's a graphic in this drawing that should have been cut off which is this WL Line This is a one-way a one-way southbound Street the fifth so when you so there's no crossing over of the lane is if that's what you're asking about on South 5th um well if you right but if you're coming from Main Street and you're turning right you're going to have to Cross Lanes to get over into that okay it's just it's awkward right yeah I agree um we can I think we could we've looked at potential um entry point along Huron there's about a three foot grade change um from this corner As you move farther east and there's about a two foot or so grade change As you move from this corner South so the low point uh the first floor kind of the lowest point of fire department access is at this corner so that's where we've aligned the ground floor elevation to to stay under the high-rise requirement if we you know we push that first floor up we start to get you know perilously close to a high-rise classification which is is just not ideal for the project so uh that's you know those are two two reasons why we've maintained this location but also um we wanted to really have all the bar activity and the the more active public space activity aligned with Huron as opposed to fifth well if that's the case then perhaps an entrance as as someone else mentioned uh pedestrian entrance on Huron to do that and I know that's more door control but one other thing that I wanted to mention about the Huron Street side are the are the columns structural that you have shown here yes okay because you know if if you're planning to put landscape in there it won't work just look at the Michigan bell building next door and those poor little trees that have been trying to survive all those years so for me a more pedestrian friendly approach along Huron would actually be to pull those windows out and have them flush with the upper floors instead of having that little and I think that is yeah I would just I'll just jump in real quick yeah um uh part of what drove the columns was for visually um I think impaired there was a an area of Refuge potentially I'm sorry it was a DDA code about potentially being set back from a curb but then there was maybe conflict with a visually impaired folks and so it seemed like there was not necessarily um you know a meeting in the minds with respect to what the DDA was trying to promote and then some of the issues that it brought up I think our inclination is to as you say and I know we did this a long time ago with respect to engaging the street front I think we want to go ahead and look at something that does push it back out onto Huron Street um to bring that activity out and make it more focused because I totally agree that any sort of vegetation in there is not going to be very successful and it's going to end up probably being like a garbage collection or potentially people sleeping in them so um it was there's a little bit of code nuances that we were trying to work through but I think our heads are where your head is which we would likely go back to pushing out and not having those right yeah so I mean we have had that we've kind of been back and forth with that elevation of is it at at the street is it pushed back in the course of some of these Planning and Zoning conversations um so at the time that we made this submission we had it pushed back but we have kind of since come to the conclusion that we should be allowed to push that wall back out to the parcel line right and you know just in reinforcing that Fifth Avenue is the stronger pedestrian street it seems like you know someone else say commented that maybe that blank portion next to the parking lot opening could have some windows or some activity there I think that would be good that's it from me I have just a quick question and maybe it was I had to jump off the meeting just for a second so maybe it was addressed but and I could ask address this more to the city folks is there any potential for changing Fifth Avenue into two-way I think there's been some discussion of division I don't know where that goes but if division went two-way this would probably go two-way just like Ashley and first where our building is sitting right now have switched over to two-way very successfully and can I assume the configuration you have now if the drop-off would work either direction it could yeah I think it could so from the developer standpoint I think we could utilize the um the drop off or um if needed the drive aisle back to our limited parking back there uh and could figure that out I don't know what the city's intentions are I know that um I think they put infrastructure on both those streets um kind of to preserve them one way but I don't I don't know maybe somebody else does thanks um dick the best thing I can say is that uh the city uh being led by the DDA and our Public Services Group has as you know been in the process of of um of moving um uh the envelope with regard to uh transitioning one-way streets downtown into two ways um I I don't know what the status of uh fifth in division um is but I can certainly check in with um the capital programs manager at the DDA and and see if there happens to be anything um coming down the line in the next few years I I know I I don't believe there's anything imminent jump off this just for a moment I'll walk to the other end of my office and ask the chair of the DDA whether he knows that is great it seems like it actually would work better if if the streets were two-way because I'm I keep worrying about traffic coming along here on and making that left turn and now there's cars maybe there's already two cars there where do these cars Stack Up um whereas if it was two-way there'd be room to um kind of pull off to the side across your parking lot entry I wonder consideration might be to think about instead of having a 12 car staging parking lot is to turn that underneath space into a loop if it's 60 feet wide you can get passenger vehicles to come in and turn around and have a loop so that all of the arrival was happening through that zone you know it's an entirely different way of thinking of it but it does kind of allow that corner to be a bit more you can have trees you can have the landscape come all the way out to the edge and have all all of the basically like a portraiture scenario underneath there that would probably stage just about as many cars in queue as as it would parking so just a thought I know there's columns and other stuff in there that you have to sort through but but it's a thought because if you were to leave it where it is it's the only place you could have a drop off frankly on the whole site I can't think of any other way to skin the cat if there were if it was too too way in the other direction but you would have valet would have to drive all the way around the block and knowing valet drivers there would be a lot more inclined to make a U-turn in the middle of Fifth Street so to answer just the question the DDA chair just said that it isn't in a definite plan but it's certainly in their wheelhouse of con for consideration two-way both fifth and division so for whatever that's an answer thanks Bill um is there any other member of the drb who'd like to offer comments I'd like to um sort of reinforce from my perspective what Tamara had to say and that is I'm pretty underwhelmed by the overall architecture of the building um sort of jokingly thought that looking at the uh building massing strategy on sheet 13 is a better looking building than what I'm looking at on my screen right now um it's just Bland um so you know our purpose isn't to design the building for you but for instance the space to the right in the rendering whether it says AC Hotel down a grade level I I don't understand the massing of that wall uh at all um so I'd like I'd like to see something a little bit more uh done with fenestration do something with the openings uh same thing with the stair Towers being blank walls as they are with no windows no natural light in the stairways so for something could be done there to maybe liven that up a little bit and um from the standpoint of fitting into this block or this corner of downtown right across from City Hall uh and so forth I just I guess I'd like to see something with a little bit more Pizzazz and I know we can't dictate that in the design guidelines but I'm pretty underwhelmed by the by the architecture that I'm looking at John oh thank you Jeff um I'm uh the art commission representative so um Nick have you considered public art and any of the location of the building uh I know that the staff has has recommended trying to uh uh activate more The Pedestrian experience both on Fifth and Huron um do you have any plans for public art Nick I'll go ahead and take that one I think they were definitely evaluating opportunities on the building to add some public art so it's um uh certainly aware of the conversation in the community and so absolutely are looking for areas where we could potentially add something uh well along those lines if you're thinking of a kind of a mural sort of a a display I would encourage you to consider high pressure laminate or uh composite aluminum uh that would rather than paint on uh that um and uh and and and also try to engage our local our community um as well as if you um if if you can find an area and it doesn't have to be that large where you can have rotating art in your lobby and uh it would uh uh and it it could be a Gathering Place for for a creative community so just ask suggestions uh let me give some comments to my just my first impression of the over um overall building and um that uh I mean Jeff uh found the word for me underwhelmed uh I'm I'm really uh uh very underwhelmed and uh and Tamara has has it right I I think this is uh this is a gateway piece uh uh a property um and um that you know it it should should really have Timeless elements and I really don't see any um that um and I'm not so sure that public art could help you much uh I would encourage you to do solar and also live roof you know you have a huge expansive uh and and really kind of tie into that element I think it would help with rain water Reclamation um that uh south facing that facade I think that's a stairwell and um I I agree with I think Lori mentioned it letting some light in but activating that big huge space um but beyond that I mean just my impression of it uh is that um that this should this should look different um that this to me doesn't uh it doesn't uh it doesn't say that this is a Timeless nor a Gateway sort of project for that particular corner it's um um so in any event um and I know this is uh as as um I think Jeff and and uh um Bill had pointed out that you know this is the beginning stages so um we uh we want it to be a collaborative process and and um I think you have pretty much unanimous that um the board uh thinks this really needs a rework uh but in any event that's just uh um one one more voice thank you I'm not an entire agreement that it's underwhelming I I think the massing is is pretty well done and it's not that far away Bill had a really good comment about the window plane in the wall plane being very similar if there were reveals at the windows I think that would give out a lot of depth um and I thought Lori's comments about the uh panels directly above that tree at the corner um rethinking that corner might might render some benefit but I I think it's a lot closer than maybe some of the other people do I think I would agree that I support and I think uh we were I can't recall who else was saying the other diagram was Stronger the masking to me is interesting for the scale you do get enough variation it doesn't feel like you're trying to be three different buildings to get that scale it feels like one building but it also feels like it's broken up so it's more about the details of of the execution of it and um yeah like like I think just adding a little bit more something special or a little bit more richness at least in at this corner yeah I think it's that four-story piece at the corner that is you know if you could put more into that make that more interesting give it some more character put some more windows in and keep mentioning above the tree um do something with the windows um but that could be you know even bring brick into that that piece it's it it really needs to be anchored um and I I do agree with the massing comments um as it is trying to think about the building is across the street from there that got something this reminds me of that and I really like it um I think it's very interesting um but it's just it's really yeah if there's anywhere you could work on it I think it's that four-story piece at the corner yeah I think that I mean that all it all makes sense to us I think as we you know get into this next level of detailing and you know maybe some some of the articulation um to make that four-story section really stand out against the you know kind of background of the rest of the building I think we definitely have some ideas on how to do that and how to treat the windows so um you know we're not we appreciate the feedback and we'll uh continue like like we've said this is really a preliminary stage there's still a lot a lot of work to do so we definitely have opportunities moving forward to you know address these comments in the proper fashion great thanks Nick let's see if any other member of the design of reward has um any final thoughts we'd love to have you come back oh he definitely will yeah for sure um I I would just like to um just Briefly summarize my uh comments in the staff board I think uh the petition has had a chance to see them but for the for the record um I I thought that um uh I want to reiterate what a couple other board members mentioned with regard to solar panels on the roof I think that would be a big plus I also wanted to indicate that the design guidelines themselves say quote Corner sites an opportunity to to express an architectural Gateway or focal point and a dominant feature um and I think um this site as Wendy had mentioned is really sort of the crossroads of downtown um like like almost literally in the heart of of Ann Arbor's downtown and so I do think it provides a really remarkable opportunity to come up with something uh special in timeline um just a couple extra comments um the the first floor on the north side of the building doesn't didn't seem to include a lot of elements that help activate uh the project at the street level so I'd encourage you to rethink that I felt that the color of the Upper Floor was very muted um and my feeling is is that the building has some elements that are appealing or attractive I like the Symmetry I like the fact that the facade has some different depths and and elements but when my eye looks at this it's so neutral in color that that nothing really stands out it just sort of Blends in and um I I would encourage you to rethink color materials textures verticality um particularly at that corner um and um separately when I look at these projects I'm looking at them in terms of a design review but there are sometimes when I can't help put my putting my planner hat on and mentioning that it might be important to look at some um standards related to our unified development code when I looked at this my first thought was Solid Waste how is that being handled and something tells me that this isn't going to be the final version um Solid Waste is sort of sometimes can be an Achilles heel there's some projects downtown so I would encourage you to get ahead of that instead of waiting to deal with solid waste after this after the project has been submitted I I would I would really try to um dig deeper into that earlier um and not have Solid Waste be an afterthought um if now is a good time I will try to summarize um all the drb comments uh unless somebody else has any final comments to add I have just wanted because probably people are disappointed I haven't pointed out that this would be an opportune time to put a clock on the corner the only reason I haven't is because on the southwest corner of that intersection there already is a lot I didn't want to disappoint anybody I'm going to add that to my notes Bill okay all right here we go uh Tamara started started us off and um uh talked about the existing fabric of buildings in the area in hopes that um this project would tap into that and and try to complement that context um and um it felt that the building doesn't really do a great job in pulling some of those themes in the immediate um in the immediate vicinity and would like to see something that might fit a little better in in the context of the site [Music] um um the um Tamara felt that buildings like this in locations like this should be timeless or should have Timeless elements I think the term the term you'd use was ageless um and and and rethinking some of the design features uh camera also thought this was really a Gateway um and a Gateway site but there didn't seem to be a strong focal point um Bill added some comments he felt that um he would like to see some samples of the materials that are being proposed particularly the Stone panels to get a better sense about you know what this is actually going to look like um Bill also indicated he was concerned about um Windows uh in in a flat plane um Windows didn't appear to be um uh a positive distinguishing uh or distinguished feature uh Lori mentioned that um uh the fourth floor element that is on the North side and wraps around the West Side could be strengthened um Lori also felt that the um that the locate that the entrance Door um could be greater could be emphasized in a in a in a better manner um um just looked on the on the west elevation just off of that corner is a blank wall that's a pretty substantive blank wall in in this location Lori was hoping that you might revisit that um Lori also encourage you to rethink the streetscape particularly along um East Huron uh that that there may you you may need to um uh work with the DDA to try to um create some uh better intentions for for for what is um going to be happening there really think about how to activate that space and and create some some interest um Dick had some questions he wondered if the two-car pull-out space was uh was enough he was hoping that you'd describe how parking was going to work and Mike was kind enough to to share that information and Dick also asked questions about how the mechanical units were gonna or um how how mechanical was going to be handled and um Nick emphasized that um each of the rooms will have its own uh HVAC system um and um bill um suggested a clock on the corner oh no I said we don't need it I said oh okay Bill said we don't need no stinking clock on that corner um and Wendy had a number of comments Wendy pointed out that Huron really does function function as a very busy vehicular Street um wondered if the entrance could be rethought and maybe relocated to the north side to the to the Huron side um and um uh Wendy also wondered about the drop-off area um she pointed out that if you're East heading eastbound from North Main uh toward this site and then you turn right you're sort of in a challenged position to to park in these spaces that are very close to the intersection so she wondered if you might want to rethink that um Wendy also asked about the columns whether they're structural it sounds like they are um Wendy pointed out that Landscaping was going to be highly challenged on the North side indicating that the Michigan bell site uh just to the east is really a tough site to get anything to grow uh on on that north side and um um Wendy really emphasized a need to um to activate that North Side in a number of uh of different ways um Lori uh talked about um uh the the parking area and thought that you might want to consider a loop drive system that could allow vehicles to park along the loop um and um Jeff indicated that he was underwhelmed uh by the overall uh architectural design of the building he felt that uh it it looked Bland some blank walls um could be filled in to um to enliven the facade uh John uh indicated that um um he he provided some specific ideas for uh materials for types of murals um he also felt very underwhelmed uh in general with regard to the overall um feel the building the overall appearance of the building um didn't feel that there were any Timeless elements uh sort of felt temporary like the idea of getting solar and maybe an active roof excuse me a live roof which could handle uh some some some storm water um dick talked about um creating some reveals uh for the for the windows which would provide a little bit more depth give them a little bit more depth so it's not as as flat uh uh to the eye um Lori felt that the massing was um was interesting it was you know pretty well broken up um but details and execution it's sort of a richness needs to be rethought um maybe a richness needs to be uh brought brought in um and then Tamara uh it lastly indicated that the um that the corner is really the most important you know point of this building and that it should be more emphasized possibly bring brick in uh creating something of of more visual interest so let me pause to uh see if I missed anything or if I uh Mis misquoted anything I see Tamara's hand just um I think a couple of us talked about stairwells I'm trying to get some light in the stairwells and then I just wanted to um emphasize the context um comment was um not even so much about it not fitting into the context we didn't see the context that um and especially if you're coming back if we you know it's great to get pictures around the area if we don't have a chance to walk around um beforehand to and then have and also take explain to us how it is fitting into that context what are you picking up on um and we're not talking about matching things just how do you respond to it um and I just then thirdly I just wanted to say Jeff that um we are really going to miss your excellent summaries because you do such a good job with summarizing our comments so thank you thanks Tamara and I did get those last two down Jeff I just want to make one slight correction the comments about the streetscape along here on in fifth there's a brand new streetscape along here on and the building should have that in mind and coordinate with the existing Planters and benches and light poles and other things that are in place along that edge I don't think it'll have a significant impact but that's an entirely different streetscape that's older and traditional red brick and so how it fits those two pieces together is what my comment was more about it great thanks for pointing that out you okay um is this the point Jeff where we invite uh public comment or does that come I guess that comes later so yeah we can provide um I think we made an attempt to provide public comment at the front end and we'll we'll be able to do it at the back end okay all right we can see if the petitioners um uh would like to provide any uh final thoughts yeah thanks I think like like we said earlier it's been very helpful uh and we look forward to continued conversation with this group as we um continue to develop the project great yeah I want to thank everyone for their time and um yeah it's always good to hear people's thoughts and suggestions on how to make a project better so um you know I know it's a volunteer board and everyone was very busy so thank you for taking the time out of your day to meet with us all right well thanks gentlemen for the presentation and do we need to stick around or are we done public commentary you can be on all ranging topics right um I think it might make sense just to wait for a minute or so to see if any members of the any members of the public have have any comments about the project okay uh Court Courtney do you see anyone who um is interested in joining the conversation there do not appear to be any callers at this time great okay okay Jeff um I don't know if you want to look at the um so just I'm sorry Jeff real quick are we uh ready to go uh at this stage I think you I think the petitions can can can leave the meeting if you'd like yeah okay thank you all so much thanks thank you so that should conclude our regular business section let me double check the agenda yeah so we are on to regular business uh I'm sorry unfinished business don't see anything on the agenda but are there any um anything sort of hanging fire from previous meetings okay then we shall move on to Communications with anything there uh nothing nothing from staff okay all right then we are then on to the second section of public comment um Courtney I don't suppose anybody's jumped in in the last two and a half minutes no there are no callers at this time just sort of as a side comment I probably should have said this in front of the developer but you know sometimes I fear that some of my comment can be taken as overly critical and not constructive and it certainly wasn't meant that way um so I but since they are coming back I'm sure they will bring us something um uh that will respond to the comments so not in the way of an apology but sometimes I think my comments are a little bit too uh unconstructive so with that uh anybody got anything they want to add or I I had one thing Jeff it it has struck me the last several meetings that that Courtney needs to interrupt way too early in the presentation maybe we could give people you know another five or ten minutes to present um because I I feel like when she says three minutes they start to speed read their way through the presentation and we lose some things I I think we limited it to 10 minutes when we had one petitioner down on um South Main or a brew pub who went on and on about their menu and and really sort of aggravated everyone but seems like that that was a nature reaction we could give you know position like this another 10 minutes to talk about the project I agree I don't remember that we used to give them a certain amount of time we just said you know do your presentation and they'd usually be 20 minutes or yeah um drop that requirement and Jeff can interrupt if someone is rambling on and maybe be a better way to do it yeah part of that I think came from years ago uh when a couple of times we had more than one project to look at in one yeah meeting and so we thought we had to limit it but I agree with you dick that um I I wouldn't want if I were in the developer's shoes making the presentation and I have been many times that having to rush through at the end and then after it's all over and done with you realize hey I wish I would have said so and so but I it I forgot or I was rushed to it so I I totally agree with you I will say coming from the design Community I think that if we don't give some parameters then there might be a lot more content than is necessary to share that sometimes there's some just over communicators um out there and I think it's helpful to say you know if if now it's 10 and we say it's 20 at least we're clear about what the expectation is and they aren't preparing 45 minutes worth of content right would you be comfortable if I uh encourage developers uh in in their um and their design staff to limit their comments to 15 minutes about 20 20.
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foreign [Music] we're going to go ahead and get started thank you so much to everybody that's here it's a beautiful faces I I get really happy when I have people here so thank you so much for taking the time to be here tonight we're going to start off with our land acknowledgment the crane school district understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the honam duet and the cumulative who descended from the Hohokam and have inhabited these lands since time immemorial the Odom whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and Community spanning countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful Legacy for Generations into the future with this acknowledgment the Creighton School District formally recognizes the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an inspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations Miss Michaela can you lead us in the pledge please to the flag of the United States of America divisible Justice all right next this world call I have myself Miss Gibson McLean Miss mcshaffrey Miss McCaleb and Miss Ayers we're all here and once again we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address the board cards that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for two cards White cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items they're not on the agenda this is per policy bedh that brings us to approval of the agenda I move the governing board approve the agenda as presented I would like to move course God um I would just like to move um 9A to above Personnel because I do have some questions about Esser in there um so I move that we approve the agenda as presented with the change of moving 9A to um 6A [Music] after success before 6A so make it 6A and then put 6 as 6B yes Yes actually I'm sorry it can be before Personnel so make it on 6B okay I second all those in favor emotion passes so I'll keep them thank you okay and that brings us to public comments Hilda do we have any public comments okay awesome thank you and that brings us to our superintendent report I just want to say that I'm so proud of our uh Kennedy at Loma Linda school for just doing an amazing job for the Kaboom partnership what a beautiful new playground we have with our partners uh about seven different partners worked with us on that and uh it's a hundred and forty thousand dollars worth of playground equipment that was installed so many thanks for our Kaboom relationships and I wish everybody a marvelous spring break I know that Pi Day is coming up for our Math teachers and plus so March 14th 3.14 is high so I'm very excited to celebrate that it's always a favorite silly thing on my part but uh Happy Spring break I know everybody deserves it you're working really hard and we'll come back and get back to it as we get ready for our kids thank you and that gives us brings us to governing board reports Ms um Gibson McLean I'll start off with you if you have a board report awesome thank you Miss Mick Jeffrey yeah thank you so I just want to say how um much I enjoy going to the community Forums on Thursday and Saturday and appreciate everyone who is there um and especially your honest feedback um while I was experiencing The Forum I was wondering to myself why don't we do this more often um well as it turns out we can um I've been just running up against roadblocks trying to do this type of thing with um bagels with the board chat with the board um the trick is you know just like unlike a board meeting the board members cannot talk it would be a listening tour so um I've asked um Administration to um set those up and the first one the focus I want the first one to be is on a listening tour with cea because they've requested you know a seat at the table um this was something that all staff would be invited to of course but I I know there's a couple of priorities um that cea would love to be heard on discipline and communication so um stay tuned for that um some of the feedback I heard that I wanted to share at these forums I heard over and over again that we need more teachers and we need to retain our teachers we invest way too much time in teacher PD to lose them the way we are um you know that is about money too you know in addition to um you know their salary we're just you know bleeding PD money um when we lose a teacher and we invest so much in them um we need to pay our teachers more we need to pay our pairs more we have a shortage of Paris Paras we have a shortage of bus drivers that's coming from community and um parents and teachers we also heard overwhelmingly that our community wants Gardens and that was really great to hear um I Heard the garden um oh my gosh I've I've forgotten the title which I did but get and I didn't write it down um our garden Master he will that is not his title but um Czar he stuck driving buses and doing other chores and because we are short staffed and he has not been able to do the job he he is supposed to be doing because of that and that is um um really unfortunate to hear but I was glad to hear it and it makes sense um it answers some questions for me so I hope we can Rectify that soon we also heard that we want the community wants input into the lck build and they have yet to see that happen and I I that's what I'm seeing too so um that was a lot of this was validating for me to hear as a board member so I appreciate everyone who came and who was online um and look for more Miss McCaleb um not a lot um just kind of um ditto to miss mcshoffrey I wasn't able to attend Thursday because last week I got sick for the first time since 2019 and very cranky about it because I lost a week of my life but um I was able to tune in virtually on Saturday and heard some really amazing things um and some of them we know to be not just Creighton struggles but everybody struggles but um it was just good to hear Trends and and know that where we're focusing the conversations that we're having as a board the conversations I'm hearing from staff and cabinet and teachers um that aligned with the feedback we heard from other community members too which I think is important because if we all think there's different problems going on we're not going to be very Solutions based but if we're all seen that we want the same things that we see the same gaps that we see the same things we're proud of as well then we have the potential to move forward so um it was just really great to hear all that feedback and I I look forward to getting more the finalists forum is April 27th so please spread the word we want that feedback it's very very powerful to us because it's five of us and we need way more than five voices on these decisions so and also just please enjoy spring break three days ahead I know they're long days parent-teacher conferences but um you're almost there and please enjoy and relax next week thank you Miss Ayers um I also want to say I couldn't go on Thursday because I had a prior commitment but I did um attend Saturday online and it was nice to see that all of us were there um well three were two were online and three were there um but we all participated and it was it was great to hear from people and I appreciated their honest feedback because I did feel that it was um honest um and I also want to wish you a happy spring break I cannot tell you how excited I am to go my spring break although we did our conferences like in February so like I'm not sweating the rest of this week like you guys might be um so good luck on your parent conferences and have a great break thank you so much so a few things with me um this last two weeks I have a kid that goes to the Creighton Academy and they just got a cheerleading team and I got to see them perform for the first time and it was one of the most amazing things to see just our middle school students cheering on and Performing and my daughter's into cheerleading so she was totally obsessed with it so I love that we added that extracurricular activity there um I know our basketball at BPA if uh is Miss Demar here I think they won the championship on on the weekend I went there and I promised my son that I would shout out his friends for winning a game at Central High School so there it is um so congratulations to them to the basketball team for winning um just to Echo everybody else Community Farms are really important so thank you to all those who took the time to come our surveys are still open until March 13th so we have a lot of teachers in here I know we have parent-teacher conferences coming up so if you could slip those into the parents to get their feedback because that's what we really do care and want want Community input one of the things that a lot of people don't know is that we don't have to do as a board Community forums we could have just done this behind closed doors and said hey we're going to choose the superintendent it's one of our one priorities and we could care less what anybody thinks we could have gone that route but that's not what we want we want true transparent input so the more input that we can get the better April 27th will be the last finalist where you guys can actually come meet whoever the finalist is and ask your own questions directly to those finalists so April 27th I believe it's going to be at 6 00 PM in conjunction with the community council meeting that we have at excelencia school so if you guys can come that evening I'm not really sure on the time because we're there like at one o'clock where we're going to be there way before but I think it starts at six so if you can start informing your parents and if you guys can show up that would be great too um and one last thing that I decided to do um just in a personal note is that I started a teen run club which has been really amazing I had four teens show up on Sunday morning and it's just that activity that I'm doing to build community with our teens I think as adults we navigate you know a crazy world and our teenagers do too and I wish I would have had a positive outlet just like hanging out with people and running at the park or doing something like that so I've created that space for some teens if you guys know of anybody that's interesting you are interested you don't have to be an All-Star Runner I didn't start you know running miles out of nowhere so it's just something that I I've decided to do and really developing those relationships with our teams so they have a positive outlet on whatever it is that they're navigating in their crazy world like ours those are the updates from me and that brings us to the next with yes yeah yeah go ahead um I brought lemons if anybody wants them that there's a whole message so I have a lemon tree too maybe you should tell me how to take care of it because it doesn't give me lemons um okay that brings us to our next which is I move the governing board approved consent agenda items a through F in accordance with policy b e d b Dash e H I just wanted to discuss one of donations um yes so which item number which items Foundation we'll see okay anybody else want to pull anything okay so I moved the governing board approved consent agenda items a through b and d through f all those in favor aye aye and then miss Gibson McLean go ahead and discuss item C so I just wanted to bring this to our attention um it's a habit of mine even before I was on a board I do this for when I look at when I go to any board meaning to see who donors are this isn't like a huge red flag I just want to point it out that GPD employees Foundation I've noticed we got a lot of donations from them they're all that's the non-profit arm of um an architect and Contracting Fern and so I just want us to be aware of like who we're accepting donations from and then who we contract with in the future so as to not create an appearance of impropriety I just want us to maybe if that's not already not on other people's radar but it's just something that I pay attention to and I would hate for people in the public to like look at this and maybe get the wrong idea so I just want to put it out there but that's something I pay attention to and I will bring up or if there are donors for example um one time I brought this out of the Phoenix Union there was a private prison organization that they were accepting a donation from which they then just decline the donations so I'm just bringing about that will be an issue for me and so depending on who the donors are and I'm pointing it out for this just so people know moving forward I don't have an issue with it now I'm just letting people know awesome thank you for that so I moved the governing board approved consent agenda item C in accordance with policy bedb Dash e second all those in favor awesome so that brings us to our next item which is 6a Federal pandemic relief funds update thank you for your patience good evening Madam president member governing board this evening we are prepared to discuss our progress and our updates on the Investments of our federal pandemic relief funds essers one two and three so we'll share how the expense and encumbrance process has gone and where we've landed to date in order to support some recommendations that will be coming forward in the agenda item following this relative to compensation adjustments and stipends so with that I'm going to introduce Pam Burkhart who's going to lead the team then Robin's going to start us off come on up Robin the pandemic task force to talk to you about where we have been where we are currently and some opportunities for in the future uh in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic hit this it became very clear quickly that the government was going to make some funding available to support schools in the Endeavors to deal with the impact of the pandemic on education and on students and teachers and we realized very quickly that we were going to need to form a group and to consult all of our stakeholders in terms of how that funding could be best spent and so we committed to investing Federal pandemic relief funds to offset this impact and we created some desired outcomes and those outcomes were that we wanted to empower our community to eagerly take on learning in this new environment that we wanted strong schools that were connected with and developing all of our families and neighbors that we wanted students to be nurtured in holistic ways in mind body and spirit that our students would be reading fluently and that our Educators would be inspiring learning using the best professional methods and highest quality materials our goals were to create a consistent and focused plan that would meaningfully uh connect with all of our stakeholders and stay focused throughout the course of our work um starting from those purposes in order to help ensure that as a district any decision decisions we are making in terms of how the answer monies were being spent the task force then proceeded to start brainstorming some ideas underneath each of those purposes on things we could do positions we might want to hire um tasks we might want to take care of materials we may want to purchase it the the length of of ideas were a few hundred ideas that came out of that process um from there the task force started kind of looking at all that all those ideas that were that have been gathered and started prioritizing them and grouping them together to help give some shape to why we would be spending money and and making sure that everything came back to these priority areas um the task force um well it was made up of a cross-section of our stakeholder groups of course teachers were involved members of the cea administrators of course uh parents were part of that that test course as were Community Partners so it really was representative of the community and then even as the work was being done by the task force to kind of synthesize all those ideas together we were doing Loop outs with staff to get further input as well as presenting it at a community council meeting to get further input from the community um so I'm as you can see I mean the the priorities that came to uh to the top um consistently not only with the task force but with staff and with the community um the first and foremost was focusing on social emotional learning and uh trying to hire people into positions that could help Provide support with that whether it be at the time we were thinking social workers and counselors um focusing on reducing the student to adult ratio and providing in intensity and learning and additional learning supports for our students um providing enriched learning during and Beyond the school day so both before and after school opportunities um increasing family and community services and having and increasing compensation and work opportunities for staff um both um certified but also classified um there were a few priority areas um that were a little outside of that because they were important for us to keep in mind because they were they are they were priorities that needed to be in place in order to make the other priorities a reality and so those are those operational realities so we also we need to focus on technology especially as we're moving into needing to have online learning for everybody um and what we were going to do in terms of Technology um and then how we were going to sustain virtual learning for however long we were going to be not in person since none of us knew how long that would be um and then ensuring oversight and continuity of services um which is a lot of the behind the scenes work work to make sure that all of the money is being spent the way it needs to be spent and that everybody's getting the equal opportunities to um access whatever Services were being presented during this plan if I can get this so you can hear me so I will start by telling you that I am abundantly overwhelmingly glad that when we had our offending uh during the early and mid 2000s that I was aboard for that because it taught me lots of lessons on how to do this work and um it too was this kind of thing all of you have three different documents just wanted to draw your attention to them so that if if you need to look at them while we're doing the presentation or later they maybe of help one is just a one sheet page that's a quickie little glossary about some terms that we were asked to define the other is the whole guidance from our Arizona Department of Ed which includes at the back the allocations that were given to every District in the state it gives you some information about what we were given as guided so that will help kind of frame the work certainly don't expect you to read that today the third thing that you have is a budget and expense report for sr3 as of today so we're going to move along and we're going to talk a little bit about the funding timelines and availability so as all of you know we have had three separate Esser grants I'm sorry did you guys no she was just looking for one of the packets that's okay I just want to make sure that you had what you needed uh so as you know we've had the three separate Essa grants it started very early on with sr1 which actually ended on September 30th of 2022.
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oh see ready good evening I would like to call the brief board business meeting for Tuesday March 7th 2023 to order right now and we'll start off with 2.02 roll call Mrs Wilson Mr Chad Thompson here Miss Sheila eugetti here Miss Jill Humphries here Miss Rhonda page here Miss Laurie wood is not present Madam clerk you have a quorum thank you Mrs Wilson we will move on to action items 3.01 do I hear an emotion for the appointment of Wendy Norberg as the principal of Mesquite Elementary for the 23-24 school year Madam president I move that we appoint Wendy Norberg as principal of Mesquite Elementary for the 2023-2024 school year thank you Mrs Humphries do I hear a second second thank you Mr Thompson Dr McCord any discussion no discussion just it's our pleasure to bring Wendy before you tonight for the approval she has some fans out in the audience that are excited about tonight and we are very excited for her so so I will call for the vote all of those in favor of the appointment of Wendy Norberg is the principal of Mesquite Elementary for the sorry 23-24 school year please signify by saying aye aye finally so on a 4-0 vote we welcome Wendy and if we can give her a round of applause we will move on to our second action item and then have a brief or we'll have a have them be able to speak for a minute and then have a brief break so 3.02 appointment of Cheryl Pollock Newser as the Director of federal and state programs for the 2324 school year do I hear a motion I move that we approve the appointment of Cheryl Pollock news as stated do I hear a second second thank you Mr Thompson it's been moved in second in Dr McCord thank you madam president government board members uh tonight we bring before you Cheryl Pollock Newser as a candidate for the director of federal and state programs had the pleasure of knowing Cheryl for a little while and we're very excited to bring someone of her Caliber Caliber and knowledge to our school district and looking forward to working with her thank you any further discussion if not I'll call for the vote all those in favor of the appointment of Cheryl Pollock Newser as the Director of federal and state programs for the 23-24 school year please signify by saying aye so on a 4-0 vote we welcome Cheryl Pollock Newser as a new director of federal and state programs so without Wendy come on come on down you have a seat right in the middle right and turn on your microphone and if you would like to say a few words all right governing board Dr McCord cabinet thank you so much it's an honor to be here tonight 25 years ago this past January I walked in the doors at Mesquite Elementary as a student teacher so to be named as the principal tonight to give back and serve a community that's given me so much is an honor that I can't explain I'm very grateful for the people that are here tonight I think that speaks volumes of Gilbert and it's why I'm so honored to be a part of Gilbert people from multiple campuses people that aren't with Gilbert anymore and I think my husband and kids for being here as well husband and kids please stand out thank you Wendy Cheryl [Music] all right thank you I started my career in education 18 years ago here in the Gilbert District at South Valley Junior High I want to thank the board selection committee and Dr McCord for this opportunity which I'm thrilled to have and for bringing me home I want to thank my kids and my family my kids have grown up here in Gilbert schools and my family for all of their love and support throughout this journey lastly I want to thank Angela Connor for building a wonderful wonderful federal and state program it's my absolute privilege and honor to take the reins from her I know all the work she's done here and she should be very proud of what she's built I'm thrilled to come back and thank you all congratulations congratulations Cheryl it's now 605 so we will get back together at 6 10 give everybody a chance to congratulate our two new administrators and Mingle for just a minute thank you very much challenge [Music] here we go thank you very much we will go back now to our work study um after the brief board business meeting and then we will reconvene our brief board business meeting after the work study so I'm calling the work study to order and we will move to 5.01 presentation of our GPS traditional math curriculum adoption Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members if I could have the members of our teaching and learning and CIA team whoever's coming up tonight Dr Newman I'll let you introduce the team and then you guys it's all yours thank you governing board members Dr McCord um with us with who's sitting up here is actually two people that have been very integral in this entire process Mr Robert butcher as you know is our elementary curriculum instruction and assessment director and Crystal Udall who is our math Elementary coordinator perfect good evening governing board members and Dr McCord on November 1st Dr Newman and Crystal Udall are elementary math coordinator came and reviewed how we selected math InFocus to move forward with pilot implementation tonight I'd like to review what we learned from the pilot implementation as well as the Cur the public review of the curriculum foreign as a reminder this whole process started in the summer of 2022 when we learned from the manufacturer that the Beloved Saxon curriculum was going to be discontinued as they move towards a homeschool model or sorry going towards homeschool rather than selling to just Public Schools eyelid implementation went of math and focus was from December 1st to January 27th we learned real quick that that might not have been the most ideal time to do a pilot Implement implementation during December on an elementary campus we really have to give props to our teachers who stayed steadfast in their dedication to teaching with Fidelity during that time during this time we also accepted public review feedback from Community traditional teachers and the pilot teachers additionally CIA tried to place pilot teachers in an appropriate chapter rather than starting at the beginning because we do know that these students are held accountable at State Testing so we tried not to review stuff that they've already learned that proved difficult in trying to match where they were in Saxon with a different curriculum despite both of those challenges the adoption committee on February 17th voted unanimously to move forward with the math and focus curriculum curriculum sorry I've got the clicker too okay I'd like to give a big shout out to the 16 pilot teachers that went forward with the pilot of math and focus as well as our traditional accelerated and gifted coach Sarah Earhart it takes a lot to get a pilot off of the ground and these teachers were phenomenal in their dedication to ensure that this pilot was being taught with Fidelity during the implementation time um sorry at the end of the pilot session we asked our resident Experts of math and focus our pilot teachers for their feedback on the curriculum and the implementation we specifically asked for feedback in the following areas content pedagogy and activities the quality of materials for both students and teachers whether or not the assessments were quality and what their overall feelings were about the curriculum one of the most important aspects of implementing a curriculum is ensuring that it adheres to the mathematical standards and practices set forth by the state of Arizona so Criterion one holds a lot of weight for us in this the curriculum instruction assessment Department for alignments mathematical practices and habits all of our pilot teachers agreed for uses the language of mathematical standards and mathematical practices all of our pilot teachers agreed with that statement his engaging activities for all for students all of our pilot teachers agreed has students practice with key Concepts all of our pilot teachers agreed as a balance of collaborative student work and independent student work 93 percent of our pilot teachers agreed and for alignment to mathematics standards 87 percent agreed overall a perfect score would have been a 4.0 and for criteria in one our pilot teachers um gave this a 3.7 [Applause] the following are quotes from the feedback that we received from Pilot teachers and I'll give you a second to review those okay as you can see the teachers felt that the curriculum would benefit our traditional students it's aligned to the grade level standards and it builds the rigor relevance and routines that have been a Hallmark for our traditional programs for Criterion two we wanted to make sure that math and focus had quality materials for both our teachers and our students so I'd like to point out that I know the the Criterion looks very similar but one and two are focused on students three and four are teacher so I know the verbiage can look confusing a little bit so has quality teacher materials both in print and online all of our pilot teachers agreed has quality technology tools for teachers and students all of our pilot teachers agreed has quality differentiated instruction resources all of our pilot teachers agreed for the other two has quality student materials both in print and online and allows for ease of access for students to use materials 93 percent agreed with both of those statements overall our pilot teachers with a perfect score of 4.0 gave Criterion to a 3.5 again here are some of the feedback that we received from our pilot teachers and I'll give you a second to review those you can see in the quotes from our pilot teachers that the students enjoyed the activities in the workbook and there were reteaching and enrichment activities available for teachers to utilize that workbook is going to come up several times and we believe it's something that our traditional communities have become accustomed to and will lead to an easy jump from Saxon to the math InFocus curriculum okay the pilot teachers felt in the area of assessment that there was room for a Improvement in the assessments provided in map and focus and further analyzing the feedback that we got from our pilot teachers there were some Scantron like elements in the assessments that they felt were less than ideal I need to give a shout out to Heather Cooper she was our representative from hmh and she was very responsive and said if we were to move forward with this program that she would ensure that those are eliminated so that they're willing to meet our expectations and again we were impressed with her responsiveness and even despite all of that the pilot teacher still gave math and focus a 3.1 out of four and that's also something that your Crystal that your department can work on too isn't it if if it doesn't meet all the needs you can create your own our own absolutely assessments absolutely and we've also math and focused actually we found out directly links to our illuminate platform that it's our testing platform where we do District benchmark assessments oh that's good yeah exactly thank you yep all right here is some of the assessment feedback we got from Pilot teachers okay I promised our pilot teachers that I would stand from the rooftops and Shout the Praises for waggle they were borderline begging for waggle waggle is a differentiated instruction resource that they all were pretty unanimous and liking what that is is it allows students needs to be met regardless let's say they're a fifth grader and they need third grade support it will enrich or it will provide intervention opportunities online for that if it's a fifth grade that needs 8th grade support enrichment opportunities it provides that but if you were to walk behind the student you wouldn't be able to tell a difference with how it looks on their end so again this was they were like this is a must-have if we move forward and it's in the quote that we've provided overall all said and done as we wrap up the pilot teacher feedback 88.5 the math InFocus received 88.5 percent of the points and the feedback that we received in the aforementioned criteria foreign okay we're gonna shift gears from the pilot teacher feedback to the public review it's important for us at Gilbert Public Schools to allow the community to review the materials we did it for an extended period of time we house the curriculum on each of the three traditional campuses as well as the district front office we had members of our team that stayed after hours to ensure that parents could come after work and review any of the materials of the program we encourage Prince of we put it in districts newsletters we encourage principals to put it in their school newsletters to come have parents check out the resources additionally we told principals that they should be talking about it in their site councils Robert was there a pretty good turnout of parents that that were involved with this there was a decent turnout when we compared it to other adoptions that we've done yes um we took into a fact that traditional students make up about about 8.5 percent of our elementary students um when you compare that to our readygen which impacts almost all of our students we actually had a bigger turnout I would think that that would be that would happen because the parents that that want the traditional are going to make sure that their children are getting you know what they what they're asking for so I I'm not surprised to hear that you didn't have that you had a better turnout than normal okay all right so when we asked the content within the materials is interesting clear and appropriate for the traditional students at this grade level parents and community members 82 percent of them agreed with that statement Robert yes do you have any of the 18 that did not agree with that statement did you did you follow up with why they don't agree with that statement we didn't some of them are unnamed names were optional as well as email address um so we left it as Anonymous as they wanted it to be okay okay did you get any kind of feedback about what it might be just you know like informally I don't think we had that did we most of the time there was not comments left there was a section for comments and so if they scored a certain particular piece there was not a comment left to notate why they put a grade versus disagreed and Dr Newman just based on other previous adoptions we've had the 82 percent are pretty high yes I mean we were confident we all of these results that you're hearing right now actually went to the committee and then the committee reviews all of this and listens to this feedback and then they make that final recommendation and it was a unanimous I don't want to steal your lender it was a unanimous decision in that regard so yes we were very confident based on the numbers that we have thanks for the question okay on the following slide we ask community and teach traditional teachers at the campuses not involved in the pilot the tests texts and tasks provide students with multiple opportunities to practice mathematical content and practice skills this one is crucial to highlight because of the amount of practice that our traditional community community is accustomed to with the Saxon curriculum 82 percent of our parents and community members agreed with that statement and 89 percent of our teachers agreed with that statement this one is always important materials are of high interest and will prepare students for College and Career 82 percent of the teachers surveyed agreed with that statement and 84 of our community members and parents agreed with that statement again we wanted to highlight a couple of the comments that we received in the public review I'll give you a second to look those over again as you can see the workbook was pointed out as a strength of the curriculum as it allows multiple practice opportunities for students to show their learning and skills Robert yes so there was a a parent that commented the online access which is easy for students to access anywhere is that when they access this program or platform at home do they do they log in does the program or the does the curriculum know who logs in so they're they're still getting if they're if they're a fifth grader but needs more support right the pro the at home they're going to get the same level of support as they would at school absolutely they would still log in Via our rapid identity tile which automatically pulls their information in okay thank you also too our teachers are the ones that are managing that platform so they're the ones that are assigning whether it be intervention or enrichment for the students so whenever they log in they're getting what their teachers are pushing out to them and how are teachers how are teachers currently doing that I guess I get well let me let me follow up with a second question how are teachers currently doing that and with this new platform is this going to put a greater Demand on teachers time to categorize all the all the different students of their class I mean in theory it seems easy to just they'll be able to see a student's work and know okay this one needs more help the student is doing fine and maybe needs to be challenged a little more um how does how does that process compare to what the teachers are doing now and how does it compare to the demand on their time so I'd like to point out that the technology portion of the curriculum is a tool we can go is is into the technology as the teachers are comfortable with so it might be that we start very paper heavy and that as this teachers are learning how to use the entire platform also generally and I it may be Crystal you can respond a little bit more about what that looks like when kids are in there right now but generally our teachers are searching everywhere for resources for kids whether it be intervention or enrichment so this will be available to them so they're not having to search from everywhere they can just use within the adopted curriculum resource which is a good thing for them as I've seen the pilot teachers work within this program the teachers go in and select this lessons and uh Concepts that they want students to learn whether on level or whether they're scaffolding for their intervention or enrichment needs and the scores are automated there's no hand doing of any type of problems it is absolutely automated from the student input to the teacher outcome to see what the data says they can then reassign students according to what that outcome is with their data it's instantaneously and the reports are right there for the teachers as soon as the students have entered information okay so one thing that that I feel like we're all very sensitive to is Teacher's time and making sure that teachers are getting the the prep time they need getting you know breaks throughout the day they're not taking their work home with them and this is I know it's taking the place of the Saxon platform I keep calling it a platform is that the right curriculum okay thanks so this is the taking the place of the Saxon curriculum how how easy of a transition will it be for teachers to switch to this curriculum in regards to um helping either input the information or or identify the kids that are struggling and the kids that are excelling and and how and does it is it is it cohesive with the other subjects that they're having to do that for because I think one thing I know one thing I hate is that I have you know I have bank accounts I have electric you know an account with APS I have an account with you know the City of Gilbert and I have all these logins and all these different platforms that I have to go to to do different things and I just want to I'm just I'm just sensitive to the fact that are we adding is this adding something else to the teacher's routine that they're like they're just going to think oh great one more thing I have to input one more data point I have to you know make sure that I'm I'm checking and marking and submitting and one more password that I have to remember totally agree so how does it just so you know on the back end this will be a rapid identity title for tile for our teachers as well so it's not another password when we log in every morning uh to our computers uh we log into rapid identity and it goes automatically to kind of we have a whole Bank of this is what's used across the GPS District anything from our testing platforms to our email we all use one password username so it kind of logs Us in automatically I think it's critical that as we go through this implementation the first year will take some more time and I'll go into our implementation plan but I feel like math and focus offers way more than what they're currently receiving with the Saxon curriculum sorry um the the manufacturer um sorry sorry teachers teachers right the teachers I'm sorry yeah and so I think once they get it going because I've alluded to as a principal that particularly with math that instantaneous feedback is critical because practice doesn't make perfect practice makes permanent you know so we want to make sure that when they're at home they're getting feedback uh to ensure they're not practicing wrong the entire night and then the next day we have to unlearn and then teach the right way so just a side comment yeah I was I wrestled in seventh grade at Mesquite High School and it was the wrestling coach that told me practice doesn't make perfect perfect practice makes perfect okay and so I I like that that it it's gonna help our teachers and our students in that regard okay thank you okay so implementation plan so using the pilot teacher feedback and the feedback we got from the public review should we move forward with this adoption we'd like to begin initial training in May so that teachers have time to explore all of the elements and potentially try teaching a lesson or two at the end of this school year our CIA team is ready to facilitate these trainings through the lens of focusing on our math priority standards some of the feedback from our pilot teachers were that the math and focus pacing guides were much too quick with that being said we'd like to bring pilot teachers in to provide the feedback necessary to build a more intentional pacing guide for year one that provides scaffolded opportunities for student learning and I think that's going to be critical as a year one pacing guide that realizes that teachers are Learners of this new curriculum as well additionally our traditional students and parents have grown accustomed to the consistent Math Fact Practice as well as the constant Spiral Review spiral nature of review that comes with Saxon both of these will be featured in the aforementioned pacing guides so when they say the um currently in the sorry the the trial period I say the pilot thank you I can think of the word um the pilot period they feel like it's moving too fast the kids aren't getting enough practice in the things that they're learning is that what they mean by the pacing is going too fast or what no I just think that they're from I just think more than anything there are some scaffolded supports we have to build on the back end to go from Saxon to the problem-solving nature that goes in math and focus okay all right so the more it's more changing the way that they're doing math to to this type because I noticed it does have problem solving it does have um different types of math so getting more used to this group right okay thank you remember with the pilots they were popped in in December right we dropped it had we began at the beginning of the year which we can never do and right in a pilot but had we then there may not have been that angst that they had so that's why we want to build the scaffolds but if teachers recognize that that's not necessary they can continue on with that pacing guide we don't want them searching it's up to our department to build that for teachers so basically I mean even though it's a new curriculum and that will take more time because they have so many resources right there they won't have to go find a worksheet or something that teaches this concept they should be able to have that right there at their fingertips and be able to figure out how to teach that to the kids and how to help them get that concept under their um in in their heads and that will be part of the curriculum resource but it will be also part of what the CI team develops in collaboration with the teachers so it'll be a combination of both I think it's important just to know because I think a couple of you have talked about time and and and and I think it's been said but it will take more time at the beginning something's new and they're going to have to get used to it and some will get used to it quicker than others will and but that's what's nice is that you have it on a campus you have it in grade levels at a couple other campuses and they'll be able to help each other out with that but yeah it will initially take a little more time a new Adoption and okay I see that it says the initial training will take place in May and will will the there were 16 teachers in the pilot how many teachers are we talking about total that are going to be teaching this curriculum I believe it's about 65 to 70.
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thank you yeah all right how's everybody doing great good thank you all right [Applause] uh we have a pledge of allegiance for us please I pledge allegiance to your wife [Music] is thanks everybody uh John for the fifth graders just a little bit a few special guests okay two kids [Music] so while these guys get set up with uh we're kind of moving uh business item number eight Williams number eight to the front for these guys the special guests come in here uh we could probably get to uh since we're going on board and is that okay with everybody yes hello Megan second all in favor so that's taken care of oh yeah so we're moving business item number eight to right now [Music] student councils are all fifth graders are here to ask for your permission to support them for a charity called Make-A-Wish Foundation this Foundation helps children with critical illness and Growers plan on starting the carnations and even the profit to this Foundation the student council will send Flyers home and they go a classroom to classroom to advertise and leave deleted information out students and family members will have the opportunity to purchase a carnation for students faculty members and also family members we will be purchasing the carnations from Danielson flowers and Wars the cost is 75 cents and we'll sell the carnations for two dollars each we'll start taking orders for the carnations on March 20th we will stop taking orders on March 30th before I say they need two weeks in between so we will give out the flowers on April 14th to give up the flowers available to each classroom and hand them out we hope you like our ideas anybody have any questions great job okay awesome all right um so should we have a motion to approve the Berlin memorial school fundraiser activity for carnations for thoughts Megan Julie II all in favor aye yes all right motion passes congratulations well hey they were brave enough to get out there and do it so that's one thing good stuff thank you um all right so back to the top of the agenda uh time for public comments I don't think anybody has any public comments I'd like to make oh yeah I see a hand raised over there so hi I'm Kyle Barnes from Berlin uh students at EMS also Association link the entire teacher Association just wanted to let you all know that the budget is topless parents um and so we are working collectively on a get out and vote campaign Place child care for the night of the Town boat that will be at on school grounds and cafeterias so that as many parents would be kissing first week there so we're we're talking we're learning from all of you we're continuing to learn from the town we have a computer thank you [Music] like today yeah okay hi Christina California [Music] I am the treasurer for the vespto so my turn to what those guys are doing in Berlin uh we are trying to get the word out for parents as to what this whole process looks like um the types of things that you guys are reviewing and that you're putting forward and voting off and we have similar plans to Rally parents to come out and vote um to support the budgets that we need for our students to continue to grow and have the experiences that they deserve thank you hi Patty Ann Inwood teacher was in elementary school I'm sorry I'm coming in a little on the Fly terrible service of the cremator tonight anyway um we just wanted to come tonight to represent our staff and friends at Wilson Elementary School I was able to listen in last night to the meeting between the financial committee and the school committees about what was happening with regards to the budget and one of the things that really struck me was someone said you know we're not being pitted against one another and we wanted to let you know that we're aware of that you know we've been talking a lot about how there's no bad guy in this situation that we're all coming together to try and find some balance between what the students need and what the town needs through a financial perspective so we really wanted to say thank you because we know how much you are valuing what we do and how hard you're working to try and make sure that what we do is appreciated and taken care of so thank you that we also wanted to make sure that you knew and I'm sure the folks at Berlin feel the same way we really love our jobs every single one of us we really value all of our new employees and would hate to lose any of them and last night when I was listening in on the zoom and I don't know who it was I apologize because the camera was only basically pointing to Caroline but someone made the comment they complimented us on the amazing job that we are doing um considering the the per pupil expenditure that we have in comparison to other school districts and they're not wrong and it's because we're working our tails off with what we have and parents may not know you know the roof is leaking in the library that my classroom was leaking for the past three years and I was wearing them I get the black lung was murdered I was going to get the black glove um my co-worker her um personal her laptop excuse me for work quit working and the tech department said I hope I can fix it because we don't have another one our students who are going to take the MCAS in a few weeks we don't have all the keys on the keyboard so the situation is not ideal but you're not going to hear that from us because every day we're coming in and we are getting the best experience that we can teach because we love your kids and we love being in Doylestown and we love being Improvement so we appreciate all that you're doing we have faith that the parties are going to come to the table we're going to figure this all out and without our fingers crossed all the parts crossed so thank you so much for coming together and doing all this hard work we appreciate you thank you anybody else's uh public content list any last comments we'll move on all right all right so we went through the consent agenda we have some reports now I know everybody's here for the budget discussion we are going to spend the majority of tonight on the budget discussion I imagine we'll be tired by the time that's done so we're going to get through a couple of things first real quick then we're going to focus on the budget so um Caroline do you have a report you'd like to give I do Caroline's our student rep for people who don't know class of 2023.
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thank you superintendent are you all set I'm well set okay I'm gonna call the meeting to order would you please join me in a pleasure a pledge of the flag and that remains standing for a moment of silence I 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 please keep in your thoughts this evening the men and women protecting us around the world okay thank you if you could could you call the roll for the purpose of attendance please Miss Fitzgerald Miss disler Mr Hayden Mr Cirillo miss Mama yeah okay minutes from February 14th the chair would appreciate a motion discussion all those in favor anyone opposed oops when you call the roll please when you have a moment miss Mama Miss Fitzgerald yes Miss disler yes Mr Hayden yes Mr Cirillo Mr LaMontagne yes Mr DeStefano uh cash balance report please sure cash balance report as of February 27th 2023 the account balanced on February 7th was one million 873 229.03 we had deposits from the 8th to the 27th of four million 167 489.76 less payroll on February 16th of a million 88 650 272 and warrant number 33 on February 14th of 581 985 49 leaves us with a book balance on February 27 2023 of 4 million three seventy 080 spot 58 and corresponding bank balance on the same day of 2 million five nineteen six eighteen ninety two in our mmdt account uh year-to-date interest of 172 000 131 spot 79 and a beginning balance of nine million three Thirty One three seventy two forty three leaves us with a balance of 9 million 503 504 spot 22 interest for February has not posted yet because it was the 27th and we have a total operating cash balance of 13 million 873 584 spot 80.
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Board of Education it's March 7th 2023 because I have a uh Mr Martinelli present with Rosenberg yeah the white you do have a poem all right let's stand for the pledge of the United States okay so we have a presentation tonight by Johnson Controls my Mr Aaron I love Rio that's correct all right the floor is yours do you want to kick it off we have no audience Communications by the way and I did speak to Mr White earlier so you know what I've left for um formula attendees planning committee models especially is the five-year capital expenditure plan which February 16th so um we sat with Aaron alibrio oh I do know for many years through the Connecticut Association of school business officials and reviewed the capital plan with him um because his specialty is looking at among other things that we know shots of controls but they do specialize in um taking Capital infrastructure projects and bundling them and finding a way to obtain additional savings through the bundle or alternative ways to finance through the bundling and I'm going to let Aaron speak speak to that but the backdrop and the most important thing is that you know if you started with a review of this Capital plan and so I know you're intimately familiar because you went line by line to approve it so Aaron thought he might be able to present some options for us and you know with that great you can introduce yourself but yeah so Aaron alibril I live in Manchester Connecticut I cover all of Connecticut four Johnson Controls and um not sure whether how familiar you are with Johnson Controls as a company but it's a global company which does everything in your buildings okay and outside of your buildings as well and when we think of what that is it's it's HVAC it's fire it's security um and then a whole host of things another tremendous amount of small companies within there and you would be very surprised that we'll touch a building even if you don't know some of our Brands you watch your medicines major manufacturer filters and so what what I do and that's Branch Services if you will so we have 300 techs uh trucks in Connecticut that are doing Fire Security and HVAC and controls for a whole host of cni customers K-12 state state and Municipal certified but I work above the branch and my division is called sustainable infrastructure and I actually work and partner with a variety of different um groups K-12 is where we do most of our work and we're trying to help you let you do your core Mission and partner with you and come up with creative ways to to get more done uh and to try to stay up because we know that the amount of deferred maintenance in the K-12 is tremendous and we know it's very difficult to do that and so I'm going to walk you through some slides these typically are 50 60 pages I scale them down I think what's important is to have a little bit of an open discussion give you a high level preview and let me just talk about maybe some things we've done with some of your local neighbors that have been successful and from from um what I got from Ben uh with the capital plan kind of where I understand uh you guys may be you know what what things I could probably contribute and how that would look okay and by the way you did a great job at the cost meeting with the Tiff discussions so I know there's some creators out there which to be honest with you we look at and we do a potential tip with uh for Broadband infrastructure but that Broadband is a little bit different than what you typically see because that Broadband is going to be disappointed something that's been enough money to do a lot of capital thank you cheers everybody no no but I you know I thought it captured a lot and I I you know I went back right away I'm like I need the slides because I need was that a board of ed meeting that was very interesting gotcha okay other half very passionate I mean you know I can tell when somebody's talking fast and they know what they're talking about and they just pause and he slowed down and you're like what do you guys got he had a lot of different headlights yeah I'm sure but it was creative and it's certainly a way you know rather than take it and everybody likes to do when I'm talking about energy and power purchase agreements everybody's like I don't want to pay for it I don't want to do anything just give me the money right and it's like okay well but they're maybe a bigger idea here to do and so that's where I come my partner with you and I come up with a lot of different creative ideas that can try to help you do a little bit more and a lot of it is really um using your Opex for capex okay all right this is Tim White he's all right also a member of the planning committee I should have mentioned that this is similar to what we did you know about nine years ago with ameresco it's kind of the thinking and the representative who served on the sales side in that Moresco is now joined Johnson Controls I've known Jim daler for for quite some time he came over about three and a half years ago he was my manager and now he's got a divisional um uh director's position if you will working on higher ed so he does higher ed for a greater part of uh the greater New England area oh it's great no I worked with I mean I've spoken with Jim quite a bit yeah I like working with him he knows this stuff yeah yeah hmm so this was interesting putting the agenda together because to be honest with you I hate agendas and I just hate the just the flow of the Powerpoints because I'm personal I like to talk uh there's actually a funny little note in here Finn that I was going to point out that maybe you wrote there which was a little bit of a directive where it says in your line item I don't want to miss miss state it I just love the way it was read about it I know you probably didn't write it though funding is a request and Isa is all together I said oh I got a little time yeah yeah here it is this is what you're gonna do notice that title a couple of days ago for an agenda a few times like yeah yeah you know so I do too so I really you know I I don't like speaking to people like speaking with people but this is actually me formulating an idea um it's obviously K-12 schools in Connecticut and a lot of people you know in the country that I deal with because we have all of these peer reviews they don't understand how New England works you know their schools are actually owned in almost a regional by by the towns so they always want to know oh is it a town job or is it a school job as well you got to understand how the funding works and who can get obligated so yeah we're going to talk about some schools obviously cost or a high topic on schools and if you look at the pictures there there's always going to be a little leaf there in the first one right so schools and are you looking to green your schools or are you taking the uh you know ESG perspective and then there's a little lightning there so that's about cost and energy and deferred maintenance and then CO2 you know I mean are you really taking a net zero look at your buildings whether the new one the two new ones that you're going to build or try to decarb you know some of your other buildings and that's for me trying to partner uh with you to understand what your lens is so that I can bring my lens to it and expertise and that's another thing you know that it's a differentiator for some of our competitors some of our competitors just launched into that energy space I have subject matter experts that actually design those buildings and because we make the equipment we're agnostic so I don't care what equipment it is if your staff is trained on tritium system and we have a controls opportunity and that's what's going to be if it's a train or Carrier equipment that's fine ours is yours because I'm above the branch I don't push it but I do have the benefit of having subject matter experts that actually do this and work in the buildings um and that's not to put Engineers down you know but I'm talking about partnering with some of my guys that are actually in the field on a regular basis not just making you know using your education to look at existing buildings they're actually designing them uh you know on the ground floor uh and then global concerns um this is simply a focus on the core Mission educating the students at Cheshire and you have an opportunity you have a responsibility to make sure those buildings are the healthiest that they are they're operating efficiency efficiently and somehow you're able to maintain those and it's at the low in the total poll in terms of the mission I understand um but I think you've got a fairly good plan it's a robust plan the the you know taking three schools offline getting two maybe doing some of that redistricting I think that's all really good stuff where I come into those types of things is what is the system that you can do and how how we can do them best and I'll send you some follow-up documentation on this point if you're building new schools I'm not going to be really involved with it except for when there's a problem when you come to the value engineering side of things because you wanted the Smart Board you know the the cooling system and you want and all of a sudden the budget's not there what ends up happening is everybody starts throwing things out and they don't get what you want if we are working collaboratively together I can supplant some of those costs in the other project we can pivot and try to make sure that you're getting the best of best and I'll send you a video with four parts you can look at at your leisure with a school system that was having the same types of struggle I've sat with some school boards and literally listened to them um where three million dollars over the HVAC and I'm like I don't have a project yet I've been talking to you guys but I could solve that problem very quickly and very easily and so it's not a bad time um maybe my project doesn't even get off the ground but we're actually looking at it and there's a way that I could pivot and help sooner than later um and understand that you know I understand that's the process because when you're looking at 52 million over over um several years and you've got the new schools on there I mean it may seem like a lot but don't don't um don't discount the fact that it could actually really help you get what you want when you when you when you get those two buildings uh moving down the path so this is just you know Common um things that you're seeing like where your pain points are and and this lots of times we'll we'll do this we'll get a meeting we'll move down a little bit and we'll take all of this out and we'll start to do it collaboratively together let's really make sure that the team that's going to come in to help you really hear us from you so but this is just collectively some ideas that's on timing it's going to try to keep me going huh um so agent infrastructure life cycle costs Rising energy I mean eversource just went up like 38 everybody went from 12 cents to 22.
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[Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] fella [Applause] [Music] Taco Time [Music] thank you foreign [Music] supper time [Music] thank you foreign [Music] good afternoon [Music] [Applause] [Music] chocolate day [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] put up the steps [Music] [Applause] [Music] stop the time [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign rep I'm Carr OTs and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all hello um okay so just last week the month of February ended and within a month dedicated to Black History although in the incoming although the incoming months may not necessarily be dedicated to it by name the struggle was faced by black individuals in America it is important to recognize your struggles George Floyd Brianna Taylor and other individuals passed far too soon this moment of silence is not intended to be political in any way however a tribute to the fact our social structures are still marred by harmful actions towards POC communities join me in a moment of silence in remembering the lives lost too early and to the lives that worked to overturn a harsh reality thank you now we'll have a closed session report by the clerk alrighty item 4.1 no reportable action taken regarding public employee performance evaluation superintendent 4.2 the Board of Trustees took formal action by a vote of five to zero to conditionally resolve litigation against Jewel Labs Incorporated and other defendants regarding liability and damages related to e-cigarettes and vaping in Orange County Superior Court case number 30-20-011-26712-c-u Dash mt-cxc slash jccp number 5052 4.3 no reportable action taking regarding existing litigation 4.4 the same 4.5 this item was pulled prior to the adoption of the agenda 4.6 no reportable action taken regarding negotiations 4.7 no reportable action taking regarding Personnel 4.8 this item was pulled prior to the excuse me adoption of the agenda 4.9 the Board of Trustees unanimously voted to approve the release of temporary certificated teachers and counselors a full copy of this employee numbers affected by this action is available for inspection 4.10 the Board of Trustees took formal action with a 5-0 vote to approve the expulsion of student 22-2-7 okay well thank you well moving on to recognitions we have donation we have a donation by a farmers and Merchant Bank the amount of ten thousand dollars unfortunately there's no representative here this evening but we want to on behalf of the board we want to thank them for their generous donation to the aim program yes yes so we'll now move on to reports the first is 7.1 student Representatives report omkar hello everyone good evening so um on the front page for those of you who can't see the report um it's a picture of all the ambassadors and the board Representatives have been attending these events in the past couple in the past month and just to highlight um like collaboration between students and the board members I know uh recently we invited uh Boardman Guerrero to speak with the ambassadors we had a girls in engineering day we had the Black History Month celebration and also the Saturday Academy which is uh Randall Trail actually saying it with Mr Hoshi and it was it was a blast and all the enjoy is truly all the students truly enjoyed the um good evening thank you sorry okay so on to the school reports so to highlight something from Anaheim on both February 16th and February 17th they held the Sister Act performances where a student-led tech crew full on makeup crew dance student performers and actors came together to create an amazing performance at CVA ASB has worked in diligently to bring forward the Masquerade event clothing drive a beach cleanup a readathon and an annual event to connect CBA students so pretty busy ASP at CBA at Cyprus they have started a centurion games which is a way they have different classes against each other to raise points for the seed during class or the freshman class has been going to blast recently I think we have the Esports games today so the seniors versus The Freshmen and they played Mario Kart so it's quite fun there and also our show choir with pink Thunder which is one of our teams are in second place and have the division's outstanding soloist award and high voltage was another one of our teams for choir they are in first outstanding performer and soloist at Gilbert they held the third City of Hope blood drive and once again students came out in large support to provide for their communities uh Katella had the BSU Club hold another Black History Month spirit week which included wearing Kobe Bryant Jersey day 90s hip-hop day and other such celebrations at Kennedy the Irish Academic Decathlon team came first overall at the Orange County Academic Decathlon so yay for the Nerds like me so um agency nerds are they're definitely winning out there and yeah and they also held their first soapbox speech contest which I think is also um an Ode to the district of prioritizing Civic engagement uh low era recently held their evapa pep rally which had class like Ceramics demonstrate what they do they had instruments playing and other such performances by the Visual and Performing Arts at Magnolia they held an international event which was a week-long celebration of cultural diversity they had an exciting opening ceremony which set the tone for the entire week and I know they had a culminating Celebration Day where that performances by students and activities of those kinds Oxford Academy had the association of Latin American Scholars take a field trip to San Diego uh toward the end of last month to take a look at UCSD SDSU and the University of San Diego and the um ways they can continue higher education Savannah had their Living Earth Science class go to the San Diego Safari Park to be more interactive with what they learn in Living Earth and given that opportunity so they were very grateful for that and finally Western's ASB and numerous clubs on campus organized we called Western cares week so different clubs on campuses pick different activities and we're designing to encourage students to participate in different community service projects so once again ahsd an action towards community service thank you very good great thank you and also enjoy your your written reports every time it's a great job you and all the ambassadors do we have any student speakers that's next on the agenda I haven't I don't have anything in writing from them okay seeing none we'll move on to reports from associations and what about Grant Schuster from esta number one good evening cabinet Board of Trustees and uh and guests um you know relationships that have been built over the last few years um you know these are the times that that test them you know March traditionally is a very difficult board meeting for teachers for Association presidents for any of the employee groups when we hear about reduction in force notices when we deal with you know declining enrollment when we deal um with uh funding issues um you know we've managed to avoid this my first 20 years in the district this was an annual trip to the board meeting in March to find out how many people were going to be let go we would try to figure out how to balance retirements with positions and keep as many folks as we could um in 2017 this is actually looking through the materials this is the sixth anniversary to the date of the last time we had a reduction in force notice and to just refresh people's memories just in my Association 45 names were put on that list and within six weeks through the hearings by the time the next school year started 44 of them were retained out of the 45.
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yeah yeah especially because this group didn't have all of the contexts that would have taken up a few of those moments and um yeah yep that sounds good all right anybody else all right well before we adjourn Jeff I do hope we see you again um we'll miss you and Hank welcome aboard um so I'm sure you will uh for instance today I had a question about previous reviews and I couldn't remember whether we had looked at the site before and Jeff was able to respond to my email and say no you're thinking about another site so unfortunately you won't be able to bring that but if you're here long enough you'll be just as uh tuned in as Jeff is it would be impressive indeed to remain in a role as as long as Jeff be is the true veteran of the department we're going to miss him and I do rely on his knowledge a lot right all right well if there's nothing else and I think we can adjourn this meeting great to see everybody thanks everybody thanks everybody thanks everybody take care bye
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uh that was the initial funding we had to support this work following we received sr2 funds those funds in next September 30th of 2023 and then we have September 30 2024 to conclude our spending of Esser 3 funding so it's kind of like this wave of a rollout you're going to have to plan what am I going to do with my first grant dollars and where am I going to go with the next in terms of where we are to date as we mentioned sr1 is finished so it's spent down currently sr2 is 81 either encumbered or expended and you'll you can look at your glossary if you need to refresh your mind about those or 19 and 19 obligated obligated simply means that it is those are expenses that we included in our grant that we have neither encumbered nor we have have we expended but they're sitting there waiting to be used when it's time to use them that's uh eser2 sr3 we are currently 38 encumbered or expended and 62 percent obligated because it is the newest of our grants we began spending that money toward the end of last budget year and spent in the neighborhood of about five hundred thousand dollars and started this new year this new budget year with the remaining funds so I have a question sure so between obligated and um encumbered um encumbered and expenditures um the money is 100 spoken for is that correct unless we yes it is 100 spoken for and the reason for that is in order to access these funds we had to submit an application to the Department of Ed and they review the application and determined whether our our request for uses of the funds were appropriate or or not and when you do that you commit 100 of your funds you can at at times if you need to revisit the use of those funds you can do an amendment and you can request repurposing of funds but yes when you when you talk about all three of those terms we're 100 obligated or they're 100 spoken for so just quickly if you want to look at sr1 it's uh the very next page and I'm not going to spend a lot of time because you you folks have seen this but as you know it was uh agreeant or an allocation and the amount of three million three approximately These funds were intended to be used primarily to deal with the startup of covid-19 we bought PPE gloves masks sanitizers you know all kinds of things to try to make our schools and our offices safe as we began to get toward the end of the use of those funds and we had uh kind of exhausted our room for storage of all the sanitizers and things which we did pretty quickly we did buy HVAC filters we bought covet testing kits then we found a little bit of money that we could use for some classroom kinds of things we you we bought newsella the Newsela subscription that our teachers are now using we did recruitment of teachers as we had on unfilled positions we did some substitute pay and some work with aim and dyslexia train that's basically what we did in the beginning with our sr1 funds we also had budgeted in that Grant eighteen thousand dollars for our non private schools that participate that's a process that we use where we're required to be the Fiscal Agent for Pennsylvania they're entitled to use and I can explain more about that at another time it's kind of lengthy um movie are there other questions about sr1 specifically um I do have a question this report when was this report ready are you looking at the beginning of the big packet yeah I think we uh I think we printed that yesterday okay because I I guess my concern and I just want to put this out that I'm very blindsided by this report and that we just got it today um this information is nice to have when we're gonna time right however today but when we walked in and sat down at this chair yeah actually right now however somebody else gave me the same report two weeks ago I requested the same information about at the same time and I was told that we were not able to have it because it wasn't ready but I have the exact same document s this is exactly the same thing that I have two weeks ago so I'm just saying like it's really hard to go through a presentation try to go through all these numbers when it's just been given to us literally within the last 10 minutes that we sat down to do that either I I truly I would not want to do that either it's a very in its own budget and expense report I did uh share this same document when I met with meet and confirmed last Thursday I believe so they had a copy of it I I I'm sorry I was unaware that the board wanted the this backup I brought it because I thought it would be helpful which which it it is helpful when we're making budget decisions over such a great amount of money but we have stuff that we're supposed to approve today and we it's it feels um disingenuous to make decisions off of budgets when we just got thrown all the information to us and and I feel like it puts us in a hard spot because we have people that have shown up today we have people that are here we have stuff in the agenda but we're getting thrown information at last seconds or minutes and it's it's like a it's a really hard position to be in so again and I don't think it's Miss burkhart's fault right I'm not I sat with Sophia just a week ago when she asked for this information from Dr Lewis and she we are just getting it just now it's it's impossible impossible to prepare for a meeting like this um when we haven't read this at all so and I you know I don't know where the blame Falls but we did ask Dr Lewis one week ago for the information um and I guess to go back to saying that the sr1 since it's been done and said all that information is here and itemize and I can go back in here and find out no that's not you're only looking at sr3 okay so where's where's sr1 information I did not bring those because I it was my understanding that the discussion was around sr3 okay and so I didn't bring them but of course you may have those okay I'll be happy to provide those for you thank you um and then I I guess that's a good question asking for sr1 and sr2 breakdown it's just like this made that clear and the meeting that we had two weeks ago or a week ago yes I can provide those thank you and ideally I mean this is a 30 page document um yeah I think there's like eight or nine hundred lines of code and yeah and it's it would take some time and we'd probably want to sit down and go through it because it's not necessarily uh self-evident about what's really happening right if you look at something yeah and I think that's just for context it would be nice because then we can figure out how we really want to prioritize right we want our budget to reflect our visions and and what we're doing and if we don't have that information it's really hard to pinpoint well this area is needed or versus that area if we're just getting a little pie graph 62 is done in 82 well what does that mean that means nothing to me yes there's lots of stuff behind all that because we couldn't get to the pie graph without looking at this so yes of course and we certainly can give you that information and I'd really be happy to sit down with anyone that would like to go through it well I apologize if I've misrepresented the board because it was my understanding we wanted to go through the process of prioritization today relative to the 1500 ideas that were gathered from the community clustered into four thematic approaches and then how those were allocated and obligated and then what's been expended so far so that we could be clear on what funds were available when we later make recommendations to the board for Action so I must have misrepresented your intentions my apologies I guess to follow up on that though we are there are things coming to the board for Action that involve These funds tonight correct correct so that doesn't I guess that doesn't make sense to me it doesn't and we can take more time if we don't want to make action tonight that's absolutely an option what I would encourage the board to do at this point is hear all of Pam's presentation so you can get the overall big picture and then if you choose to want to check into the dollars and cents Associated and assigned to the summary she's sharing tonight and then question that it's absolutely possible uh I think that the the napkin math as it's been dubbed is something that that we wanted to be nobody's talking about napkin math I'm talking about and so as I talk about that I want to make sure that we're clear on the proportions that are being recommended to help staff get what me and confer worked on so that's why this is the groundwork I'll just add I don't I don't think anyone's trying to cut off Pam or her presentation thank you I know that we're going to listen to it and all the other things still apply yes I'm here to provide you the information I brought and if you need more I can get that too and Pam if I made real quick one of the things as we move through the conversation tonight we're going to show is how in the analysis of the budget that you have the priority opportunities that are listed we are confident that those funds can be utilized to support tonight's recommendations and we have a set of next steps that are collaborative between the effective schools team meet and confer team members and I feel like oh the pandemic relief task force so that we can go through and continue that analysis work in deep detail in order to see if other opportunities for reprioritization exist so they're the recommendations that are being brought forward have been vetted in alignment with these priority opportunities and again we're confident that the funds exist to support them okay thank you okay I I will move ahead because as as we all noticed sr1 has been completely spent now we're working on azer too sr2 was a 13 million four hundred thousand dollar Grant in this grant I'll say up front that we did not need to manage funding for private schools the state department took that on for both sr2 and sr3 so you're not identifying that in the in this presentation anywhere what I will say is that we're almost spent down in sr2 we have sufficient funds to finish our any salary obligations and outstanding commitments uh through September 30th and to do an approximately 1500 to 2 000 stipend for a staff in the spring that's kind of what we've been doing we've been you know utilizing the funds and then when we get close to being ready we look at it and so how much money do we have now because one of our priorities was getting compensation to our teachers we did that in a variety of ways one of the ways was uh sun summer schools and after school and and other kinds of opportunities to do as additional work provide time for uh schools to do some professional development but we also wanted to do some sign and stay kind of stipends and things because we know that we're losing staff and so I won't let you know that with sr2 we're really right down to the the very end I'll mention that in sr1 the indirect and there's a definition for indirect on your little girl glossary it was 12 for sr2 it's 6.93 so it's a variable percentage with Esser uh two we were permitted by law to do all to fund all the things that we could do with sr1 like we could continue to buy Mass we could continue to buy the kinds of things that we needed to keep people safe now they're also encouraging us to address learning loss so now we're looking at what kinds of things do we need to support our students and our teachers to address learning laws and so in this this particular Grant we began to look at our e-lit present positions because we were concerned about reading we began to look at our child Justice and advocacy positions because we were concerned about the social emotional well-being of our kids who we understood very clearly from their families that there had been a great deal of trauma so we have those kinds of things we also fully funded the Creighton Virtual Academy so we have all of the staff and that that we hired for that um School in sr2 we did after school tutoring summer school all of those kinds of things and we're almost stepped down we we've spent that money exactly as we said we were going to we have enough money remaining that's in play to do like I said a 1500 to maybe a 2 000 stipend for all staff and we know we have that questions about sr2 so crane Virtual Academy is all paid for out of sr2 it is do we know what the total budget for that is I don't off the top of my head that I'd be more than happy to get it okay that would be great I did you know um we the I think it's the auditor General's report did report that we're paying the most per pupil at that school and it's you know it's not sustainable so um you know that's problematic um for us as a district yeah yes I can get you the okay that'd be great I just don't remember it off the top of my head and the Phoenix Union partner school districts are talking together about how to possibly collaborate and work together to offer that as a source for students who still want that service and where we might find the most cost efficiency thank you other questions answer to you know we love our acronyms so real quick we've talked about elit teachers and that's early literacy intensification teachers in keeping with that priority around making sure that students are able to increase reading fluency so just to clarify the um the 1500 um dollar retention stipend that we'll be discussing later that pretty much will be the rest of sr2 it's just the rest it's the amount that's left after we finished paying the you know the rest of the contracts for the people that are in sr2 at this time because we do have obligations but we looked at those obligations and said you know this is how much money we have that we can re-prioritize for this particular purpose and I've also uh in my discussions with meat and catcher last week I did let them know if that if that amount increases we will make that available in the stipend because you never know if somebody is going to buy something and it's not available maybe that money won't be spent you know there's always some some end of the year reasons why you don't spend all the money you think you're going to be spending you mean like in an additional stipend in the future correct is this yes this one will be we intend to pay this one out in April May I meant like if you found additional savings we could increase that particular stipend and the amount of that site how you voted on October 4th So you you're saying that stipend that we're voting on tonight is actually between fifteen hundred and two thousand yes and I believe the language reads a minimum a minimum of and I suggested that we might ask to do a minimum of so that we don't have to come back to the board if we have another you know five hundred dollars that we can get that we can source to that for every every person okay I think um on the recommended action it just says for how it's going to be worded it doesn't say minimum and so that's why when I uh saw the agenda item that's how I was like you're gonna have to come back here yeah on the okay I just wanted yeah I was saying the background it does but on the motion it doesn't so whoever when we get there okay I think I noticed that myself but I assume that we could yep you know you guys can take care of that that's the only reason I had the question because I was like are you coming back here not yeah I can assure you you worked long and hard on making sure that word was in there so yeah right you know we really don't want to give any of this money back and so that's the best place to purpose it because you can you can change it quickly so if there are no further questions I'll move on to s or three sr3 was a very different um Grant than either one or two because it came with some requirements that are much different than those first two grants and I will point out for you later we're in that guidance you can find that they have a side by side um pick few pages in there I'm going to tell you where they're at what they are but I'll point out to you so that you so that when you want to go back and read it you can find it okay so there were some requirements that were very new and they included first of all the 20 set aside that addresses disrupted learning using evidence-based strategies for academic and social emotional learning for vulnerable populations our district is uh you know considered to be a vulnerable popular a district with vulnerable populations of kids so we had to set aside 20 of our budget which was a little bit over six million dollars if you take the 30 million and you compute that out it's a little bit over a third over six million and we did uh things they wanted you to do this to the extent possible outside the school dance school year because they wanted kids to have extra time with teachers because they knew that the time was not going to be adequate so they were looking at after school tutoring after school programs some of it could be enrichment some of it needed to be academic and then the same thing for summer school so they wanted you to do extended summer school in our district we could have chosen to do some work during our fall break our spring break you know if we had been able to get uh you know someone who who was able to do that so that's the first qualifier that's first thing they said you have to take 20 off the top um and I think it's it's uh about a little bit over six million six million too I think we also added in sports and some clubs and things because they wanted us to do it after school so we're we're now paying out of sr3 the cost of doing our Sports programs after school you mentioned the basketball we're hoping to pay for the cost for the referees and the buses and all the kinds of things we're doing with that other kinds of things like Battle of the books cheer and clubs that are different schools have because that fell into enrichment and they were allowing you to do both academic enrichment and SEL so a variety of things in there the next thing they said was you have to get a committee and that is representative of the stakeholders in your District to help you decide how best to use these funds we already have the pandemic task force so we went back to them and said okay guys now we've got 30 million dollars and let's talk about what we might want to do and you gave us a priority list before so maybe these are some of the things we might want to consider parents parents really talked more to us about the social emotional health of the kids than they had then they did about academics they were very concerned about their kids social emotional health so we really invested in things like Kara Salas when the board that was brought to us we have Southwest Behavioral Health we have ours just as an advocacy groups and and we are looking for some materials that can be used in the classroom for those kinds of things quick question regarding the task force so I see that you included the task force membership and I'm hearing you say you got parent feedback for this one but I guess I'm seeing way less membership in this one and no parents on the list so I'm just curious what was going on so I so I can only answer that in one way this year the way that our committee work was done it um we decided that if you're on one committee you can't be on another so before people were on multiple committees that seemed a narrow down uh the the folks I have been very concerned that we have had no parents and we have no uh Community Partners we did up until this year and I would I would really like us to kind of see if we can't get some people we're doing it all all WebEx now so people don't have to come to a to a meeting and how are those meetings being communicated to the community or parents because I'm a parent of two different schools and I've never heard of an invitation to come to these Sr fund meetings so how are our parents or committee know that that's even happening um I think what we did in the beginning was send a communication out to everyone who had been a member of this Committee in a prior year so if you were a member of the committee in a prior year a communication went out and said this committee work is going to continue and we'd like to have you back unfortunately uh either I'm really not sure why well then I can jump in if that helps we did do personal invitations to all so like on the first two years of that task force there's a Community Partners and others listed we did personal Outreach every time and even for this year there are many challenges with adding additional workload to people's schedules people are busy other kinds of things I do agree with Pam that there is an opportunity to expand parent voice and access to this process the only sorry United We interrupt I just don't want to say that we don't have any parents when obviously we haven't even done the half of the parent involvement we haven't even reached out I haven't seen any Communications anything so I don't want us to come and say yes we we've done this communication or whatever but clearly it hasn't happened so we don't have parents because we haven't done the Outreach to our parents or community members so is what it sounds like to me so so I I think we we did Outreach in the beginning and you're quite right we haven't done it since I have I several times I think taught the Mr Carver Hall about uh meeting with the CEOs to see if we could in you know generate some interest again in this committee we certainly could do a post on all of the school websites and on our main page asking for people uh particularly parents I had you're right I did not do that I did not and one of the things that's a reality with this plan is it wasn't built we're kind of presenting it as a here's the sr1 components here's the sr2 components here's the sr3 it really is one plan that like all the colored slides that are in the appendix with those different priorities it was built as one plan that was going to be funded using the three sources along the way so throughout this process once the plan was established the Justice advocacy team was built now that's not something that you team was very Vivid at the beginning we're not going to do this for just one year we want to put it in motion and let it work over time so we this past year and I agree the committee is small and it wasn't tasked with making wholesale changes to the plan once we got it in place we were seeking to maintain it for a period of time now we're at a normal process a normal point in the timeline and Kelly's going to talk about this where it's appropriate and we did this exact same thing a year ago to the week last year we looked at where we were with vacancy savings what we hadn't filled and we used that to create the first round of stipends so it's not a year by year plan it's a three-year plan funded with three funding sources so we were not seeking the kind of input that we needed to make big changes and I'm not making excuses I'm just want to frame it in terms of that larger context because we couldn't it wouldn't make sense to do a one-year plan and then another one and then another one yeah how would I recall like didn't at the beginning in order to make these priority categories we did not just with parents on the committee but we did a lot of Outreach we did you know surveys and things like that so I guess like I agree with you I think you're not rebuilding a new committee every year for this um and it's unfortunate and I think we should do some more Outreach when we see members drop off to see if we can kind of fill those pieces but I am curious um I agree it's not manger changes but it is revisions it's adjustments and because it's such a long plan making sure that the priorities that were developed two years ago are those still the priorities now and maybe it is as simple as could we bring back some kind of survey to families you know not necessarily asking you know come to a meeting every month but maybe it's time to do another survey to say hey these were the priorities these this is how they've shifted over the last two years this is where we're at now do you have feedback to refine moving forward that's great feedback and in fact the pandemic task force has structured a draft of a survey to send out to our family we really did we were holding because we didn't want to interfere with the superintendent search survey because we do know that we all get a little survey fatigue it's been very intentional so that draft survey is in the hands of Hanover research right now so that they're structuring it and trying to package it with a like a stewardship kind of of survey so we look forward to Gathering additional feedback through that method so I guess my concern was as opposed to sr1 and sr2 there's a specific requirement with sr3 to meaningfully consult with stakeholders and provide the public with the opportunity to provide input and take such input into into account in the development of their plan and then it also goes on to list who the stakeholders must include my concern is we're not complying with those requirements of sr3 right now and I just want to make sure that there's a plan to make that happen and and I I will 100 agree with you because I have said that and that we are not in compliance because we do not have the representation that they ask us what I will also say however is that the representation was intended to be the involvement of people to develop the plan the plan is developed that does not mean that we shouldn't seek the same representation for me my my concern is that we would want input from parents and other stakeholders if we're going to repurpose money that they intended to be used in a different way certainly and I would also add that the plan was developed by a different group three years ago at a time when needs were different and so I think readdressing and making sure you're constantly adjusting our needs aren't the same as they were I absolutely could not agree with you more so I do believe that we and I will you know I will own taking 100 responsibility for not finding a way to reach out to more parents because I really truly we did the survey and hoping that we could gain some input from the survey but that just hasn't happened because of where we are with the superintendent search but we can find other ways to do that and we will commit to that I just want to Echo with what Sophia said you know I've been in here it's my ninth year and it's it's really been pulling teeth to get the district to allow community members to be on like budget advisory committing committee for example Kathy ring was on there for a while and she fell off I mean it's it's a it's a big time commitment so you can't you know it's going to be challenging to have people other than staff on these committees for three years um it takes work to get them on but we have the network of people and I'm I am so tired as a former parent hearing it as a parent we don't we can't find any parents who are interested in doing it it's like well you didn't even ask you you didn't ask for our help I mean how would how can we do it so so we have the social media networks we have the newsletter you know you will get people um I think yeah this is way too small even the first one I mean there's only a couple parents on there um and there's you know it's mostly staff that are making these decisions um and I think you know parents are a really important voice that are missing here just in general are you so I am I I agree with you 100 and as difficult as it is to get a high return on on surveys because I think most of the surveys that we've sent out the return rate is not what we would hope for but anything would be better than nothing at all so if we can get to a place maybe when we get a little bit further down the road and you guys are not where when we're past is at March 13th at the survey for the superintendent closes maybe we can let this out for parents then it will help us forward plan after we get by this particular this particular place in the road because we are going to gather up meet and good for representatives represent you know my team and look again at areas where we might be able to find the money and certainly we would want input from parents if we go if we do that again so we we can perhaps let the survey then um the other thing that we had to do we haven't gotten by the requirement yet sorry the other thing one of the other things that they re required that we do was develop a safe return to person instruction plan and to review that every six months and revise it as needed and then submit it to the state department we have done that uh I think we're due to submit our spring revision somewhere around the 4th of April or so so we call that safe return to school committee back together and they look at all the things that we've done to see whether we need to do any revision so that's a requirement that was a requirement of sr3 there was one other major requirement that does not affect our district because none of our schools are larger than uh as large as a thousand students there was a requirement that if you had a school of a thousand students or more that you the district could not reduce the it's support of that school excuse me if that was a high poverty school if it was one of the 20 up in the 25 we did not have that problem I might get a drink of water here so we're back in sr3 we find out all the things we sended in sr2 and then we we've taken on um things like like continued pay for careful Solace and Panorama we've taken on language line any of you have any of you ever used language wine uh we've done core one and then once again the department of Ed is managing the private schools quick question just because you meant from care Solace do we have there been conversations about how we can continue to fund that Beyond Esser you know I I guess I guess I would have to say this when you infuse the kind of money that we then choose into the district with these Esser funds and and you know the sr3 is the 30 million dollar one it's big there's going to have to be a lot of prioritizing about what we're going to do in the future because I I unless the legislature gives us with a lot of money it's going to be difficult so I can't say what will be the priority and what we won't but certainly Kiera Silas will be Solace will be one of the things that we'll need to look at because it's being used I I look at the reports you know every week so I I know that we have our our community whether it's our teachers or our parents or whomever are using that my apologies if you already answered this but so moving forward and I know this is a little bit jumping ahead will we be able to see a more um I guess broken down of the efficacy of what we've chosen to prioritize whatever measure we can use to figure that out so that we know how we might approach prioritization in the future and or the public could have input on that when we do have to make these tough decisions about what to keep and what to put I I am sure that that certainly the board would be up at the table for that decision since you when Pam talk a little bit about their requirements in lesser actually one of the things we have to provide yeah are impact data okay yeah so we're in the process this is where the relationship with Hanover research becomes so important they're helping us establish measurement parameters for the priorities and answer specifically around literacy um specifically around SEO our social emotional learning work and a couple of other areas I'm sorry yeah no that's that's right yes it needs to be I think we need to be intentional like as a board and cabinet and everybody be intentional about what data we want to get from it so that we're not last minute trying to gather data we're disappointed in what we were seeing so yeah so like we want the categories but we also do need a breakdown we don't need a line item like this but we need yeah but we don't want an SEL yeah we need to say like you know cjas Cara Solace you know like those sub categories um and you know I'm sure Hanover can be a big part of that so in terms of what we have to report to the federal government we are required to do impact data on only the 20 percent that's what they are requiring because that's the part that they looked at for intensified learning and support for social emotional that does not mean that we would ever not look at everything because we spent money on it but for the FED we are only required to do that 20 so right now our with our agreement with Hanover are they looking at more than just the 20 percent are they just looking at the points they at this time are looking helping us look at the literacy most of it's the 20 percent social emotional learning components the child Justice advocacy and literacy intensification um and then they're helping us with feedback about this prioritization process so we could expand it to include some of the other pieces but those are the the biggest chunks that would have data sets associated with them we can certainly expand it it'll take longer but yes we can expand it yeah well and that's why I want to bring it up now because it will take time but I think it's important well the while the 20 is like the the meat of importance 80 of money is still very important too and this ties to a important part of the development process of this plan the things that were the priorities that were established were not just there wasn't an I um a desire to inspire creative changes for the future because prior to Esser we were already looking at how to repurpose re-prioritize existing title funds so we're now in that space of needing to make those prioritization decisions once again the data can help us let's jump ahead and let me say one thing before we move ahead and that will just be a quickie uh little incentive because we talked so uh so much about the pandemic task force I would be remiss if I did not tell you that we have I'm sorry do you mind speaking a little bit closer yeah I moved over out of the way when I wasn't talking so I wouldn't breathe into the microphone I would be remiss if I didn't say to you you uh that we have had a good deal of acknowledgment from the Department of Education about the development of our pandemic task force and the links to which we went to have them involved it did not happen other places in the state and and so Dr dupin and myself both were invited to do some presentations around that we've been in some of their newsletters and things so I think we just you know I want to Pat ourselves on the back while it isn't certainly perfect and this year it's not good uh we certainly have done a good deal and and I want to acknowledge that Kelly you're an adult in for this to be the Slate I'm just gonna put it out there it's maybe my opinion since I was raised in the state and I don't put a ton of stock in what Ade thinks is like like going above and beyond and that's just me but I'm just putting it up there but you know what that's that's not a bad thing to feel but in this case it came from the people that were handling the SR funds and people that I hold in high regard and I don't hold everybody in my regard but there are some I do well and I will Echo because I like I feel like the present you know while we always are asking for more and we appreciate you guys giving us what we're asking for every time um but like there's this is way more information and detail than I'm seeing shared publicly in other districts so which is terrifying yeah like I will say I I feel much more knowledgeable about this than my own district and other districts that I have friends in who are like we have no idea what our District's spending us are on so I really do appreciate all the work that the task force has done and and the presentations and updates we've gotten throughout Pam's being humble and really what happened is there was like there was a request made for us to actually teach people about how this has been done and so it's it it absolutely we recognize how hard it's been to engage people and if it's that hard for us it makes me think of how very little I'm assuming these other districts are done if we're being recognized and we're already you know recognizing how hard it was to try to engage people I'm like well what the heck are these other people doing nothing like that's scary I mean I can speak to that I mean there isn't a lot I think that a lot of teachers just say they don't really look at the budget right I mean we we don't really look at the budget as teachers um for the most part unless we're involved in a committee and we learn the budget but then I don't think that that is at all shared even maybe during IBM processes or meet and confer processes because I asked that question today in my own meet and confer and no one could tell me the answer to how much sr3 funds that we had available so I I think I think we are moving beyond I mean we have a good understanding of this and but the community does need to know sometimes they choose not to sometimes teachers choose opt out as well all right I've been creeping over here long enough um I just wanted to jump in because as someone who definitely breaks the you can only be on one committee rule um I serve in several capacities one of which is on the pandemic Relief Committee and then the other is on meet and confer and this year the two definitely have an overlap in the funds that we're talking about and that's specifically in sr3 so I'm tasked with talking about the next steps which is where we can re-prioritize and look at some of the funds that are available and how we can pour them into our people because we know as we said that was one of our priorities was to increase and I know we have several distinguished guests that are waiting patiently to hear the results of this vote so and the effort to move us along um this slide that you're seeing uh or the next few slides I should say are talking about some areas that were already identified by Pam and her team as spaces that may be potential re-prioritization of funds as Eric already shared earlier the um meeting that we had around the same time last year related to sr2 was doing the exact same thing I stood in the same spot and told you this is what we're doing this is where we sort of saved some funds that was related to unfilled positions or vacancy savings this year we're looking more at programs that were not filled to their capacity so as an example the YMCA we allotted a number of spots we ended up getting an enrollment that was significantly lower across our sites so that's a space where we can save some some cost right and then pour it into hopefully stipends um in the discussion about who makes those decisions and how are things cut and how are those things done that was also brought up in the meet and confer process and there was a lot of energy and passion around exactly what you brought up um Madame President about uh the line items and being able to look at who's saying what is a priority and what isn't so in the effort of transparency a side Committee of made up of members from meet and confer was created and they will be meeting with Pam and her team to do exactly that to look at the line items I love the feedback of including a Community member or parents I think that's something that we can definitely readjust because the committee hasn't yet met we just made this decision last week but I just wanted to put that out there that is coming in I think it's the end of the presentation that we'll be meeting with that committee they'll be looking line by line at where those cost savings can happen so that we can fund and repurpose those funds into stipends was that clear okay you all have uh the slides that have the areas that we have looked at it's important to know here that the cost savings for this year is unspent funds so uh for example if schools were unable to do after school tutoring and that money has been sitting there that may be money that we can purpose because if they haven't been able to hire people this year then we can use that if her daddy's tired and so and so uh maybe we need to rethink that it doesn't mean that the things that are on any of these slides and I won't go through everyone because this has been a long presentation and I know that you guys can look at it just remember that this doesn't mean these things are going away we may move them to some other Grant if we can repurpose some money there may be some things that we can do with with some other funds but this is these are the things that when we took about a day and a half takes a long time to go through and say not spent spent what you know it's a big budget that we came up with but we are not going to to deprive our kids so I want you to know that because there are some things on here that might imply that we were and I don't want you to feel that way and that is the whole purpose of the committee right is to be able to make those decisions to have stakeholders in the room and people that were part of the meeting can process to be able to um uh be transparent about what is cut and what isn't and where those cost savings are coming from so just to clarify these slides 9 through 13 the opportunities for re-prioritization those are areas where we had money set aside for XYZ and we no longer need to set that money aside either we couldn't build a position or we've set aside more money than we actually needed for it correct with opportunities being the very appropriate word because nothing is set in stone and like I said there was a lot of passion around what certain things should and shouldn't be sort of on The Chopping Block um and so that's that was the The Genesis of this side committee to be able to make those decisions um so with that in mind uh the last should we just skip ahead then can I jump in real quick I want to affirm my earlier remarks about my confidence in the team's ability to support the stipends this slide here indicates that the total available um including existing vacancy savings plus the total of all those suggested opportunities for re-prioritization again not meaning that they go away just saying there might be less or we might have to move them to additional funding so a different funding source so that total puts us within very close reach of the dollar figure that's recommended second action item for tonight and we're confident that through this process that is here we will be able to identify the remaining balance in order to be able to commit to those type and that one does explicitly say minimum right Jay yes could you clarify though because on the later agenda item it says per um staff member it doesn't say a total number on the agenda item itself yeah for seven for 7B I I know it's based on but and it's also prorated on FPS so so one of the challenges and then I'll just share this real quickly if I could come up with a quick amount for you that one of the challenges is that the eight the fifteen to two thousand dollar stipend will go to the people that sign their contracts for next year it's a sign and state yeah so we don't yet know who those people are going to be that's where there's some variability we also don't know for the stipends for next fall how many positions we're going to have filled so you know you can take a well there's an apx at 760 employees in the district who would be eligible for the stipend and multiply that out but it was estimated at the highest number possible yeah and that's what I that's what I wanted was obvious total possible because that's not in the agenda item but it says a minimum of is it not it's as a minimum of a stipend amount to an individual not a total so when when I only bring this up because when you look at the slide prior and and Dr dupin said that number is almost the amount of the total and I'm like well we don't know what that total is but if I do 760 times 10 000 that is less than this so if if I if I can help with that subject hopefully this is being recorded I just want to be abundantly clear it's a floating number we don't really know what the number I believe the estimate we worked with the other day was about 9.2 million it was so um it's a little bit well it's higher than the number you're seeing here I think what Dr dupin was trying to express is the number you're seeing here is from a first pass through budget lines to identify what's available for repurposing the purpose of the team is to go through and do an additional pass because that work is as Mrs Burkhart shared was done in a day and a half so you know it takes more time to vet through there and now that um The Lion's Share of the work with Esther 2 is completed the team and now the adjunct committee can work together and have the time that they need in order to verify every possible opportunity but everyone from myself to miss do Molina Director of Finance to Mrs Burkhart to Dr dupin as we've looked at these numbers we all feel very comfortable that the capacity to support that dollar amount is there the work just needs to be done and the important part and Kelly sorry to um to kind of jump on what you said earlier but I think it's really Bears it's worth repeating and I appreciate you sharing it the important part is to make sure that team also ensures that things that could potentially be reprioritized that we may not want to reprioritize have replacement funding it's not just finding the additional funding it's making sure if we say this particular thing is a non-negotiable that it gets put back in the budget and something else that everyone feels comfortable we don't need to fund this at this level replaces those dollars and Mr Mann isn't the same fluidity true with any data sheet we would provide with numbers that they are constantly in the movement of payment or adjustment in particular when you're talking salaries and benefits those numbers are continually changing because there's a fluidity to um you know when people leave us when they come back we had an extended um we had an extended conversation um during the meet and confer process about what's called termination benefit that's one of the things that's almost impossible for us to estimate every year we don't know how many people who retire or leave the district when they do there are dollars owed them I I if there is a finance person out there that can estimate those at the beginning of the year I would love to meet them and learn from them because it's you basically would have to know as you're entering the fiscal year who all's leave at the end you know sometime between that point in time and the end so there are always these components of what we're dealing with the change on literally on an almost daily basis so having having more people you know you've heard us say a lot when we talk about like the budget advisory committee we have the saying that none of us is as smart as all of us having more people at the table to review and provide oversight I think will give us both a better product and a better sense of transparency and comfort with what's coming forward on I understand that I'm just trying to clarify because Dr Dubin said the 8.1 is short of what we would need for the 10 10 000 stipend and you just said that the and I know these are all estimated but if the the estimated highest amount for the 10 000 stipend would be 9.2 million I was just trying to figure out where 9.2 is when I've heard we have 760 something input like I'm just using the number 750 I think yeah so so here's yeah but it's not that much contract returns yeah a word of caution when you do the 750 you can't multiply it just time the ten thousand because you have to multiply it time the 10 000 and then multiply that times uh it won't reduce the amount of taxes that are being pulled this isn't an offset to the x amount of employee pays what this represents is the portion of various taxes and benefits that are based on employee salary that the district is obligated yeah so what ends up happening is for a lot of those types of things there is an employee District match so the easiest one off the top is Arizona State Retirement System right the employee will pay whatever the percentages the district pays the same percentage so that's part of that calculation another thing would be um there are other items at the federal level like Social Security where there's both an employer yeah workers comp yeah workers compensation so all of those types of factor every year we um our finance team gets from you know the powers that be that calculate all those things a percentage and it's it's Dina could probably tell you exactly it's just below 0.21 so we always err on the side of the larger number so I know when we did our calculations we use 0.21 so that way we knew it was adequate about that no thank you like I said I was assuming that I just again in the vein of transparency I think if we're sitting here going check check like we need to make sure that everybody in the audience and online understands that as well um I heard you call the 1500 to 2 000 stipend sign and stay what are we referring to this other statement that's you know um haven't called it anything yet we're going to do the ten thousand dollars we'll be divided into two stipends five thousand will be uh distributed at the beginning of the school year that can be a sign of stay stipend the one that that we distribute uh in just after January let's say we do it we did it this year January 20th let's say we do it some that can be a sign and stay stipend for the next year or we can wait until everybody signs their contracts and we can distribute that second half after everyone does their contracts for the 23-24 school year it's just a matter of timing we just have to figure out how we want to do that we just have it quite dot in there yet and what aligns with what the Ade will appear yes yeah that's kind of what my question was yeah we can call it a retention stipend you know they use different kinds of adjectives if you will what different kinds of descriptors if you will um for it so we could call it different things I have a question um so you said you're going to give out the first 5000 at the beginning of the year is there concern that people may leave after that you know Jake can you talk about if I could please clarify so what would I heard a meeting conferring Kelly if you'd help me make sure we're relaying it accurately the first one would be during the first semester and the second one would be during the second semester there are a lot of factors that go into when we issue those we have a very small payroll team so the problem when we just you know pick a date at a thin air if we just choose one at random I will tell you we will miss it because all it takes is one person being sick for a week and we're lucky if we're making payroll at all so um so what we've traditionally done and one of the things I very much appreciated from the meeting for a team and from their understanding of it their recommendation to us was actually give it to a group we call Triad which is human resources Pam's team um and the business team which includes payroll to figure figure out where in that first semester is a date that we can commit to that we know we can execute on so if you recall from the one that went out January 20th the desire was actually for that one to go out in November or December but there were a number of other deadlines not only in November and December but new tax tables that get loaded in early January and in order to ensure that the regular ongoing payroll didn't miss a beat and everybody got paid on a regular basis the two dates that were most viable were January 20th or February 4th and the team opted for the earlier of those two dates so I don't think we have uh written in stone day yet there's no reason to determine that date until if the board approves because it's all pending board approval but that team will figure out when that can functionally be distributed I find it unlikely it would be very early in the year because all of your initial payroll work that happens to make sure everybody's in the system is extremely time consuming and I think it's in the past when we've tried to do that we've missed dates ever since we we did it we did it early uh this last year this the thousand dollars stipend was early but um but we already had the work done and we did it early because the first payroll for teachers and people that are just coming back to work is not very large because they don't work you know how that is if you're a teacher it has to do with the days but we may not be able to do this when we did a timeline uh in Triad we'll sit down with a calendar and figure out because there are a variety of things that you have to do you have to do an agenda to even be able to pay this out so you have to get a dentist done for everybody that's going to be in receipt of the stipend in order to be legally able to give it so you have to do that first and then you have to be able to say okay what what week is going to fall in between payrolls and they do it on a non-payroll week I'll just jump in real quick I think Heather's concern was about people taking the money and leaving we talked about that extensively and we talked about it at the first round of stipends as well it's it might happen right and we just felt like we can't punish all of the district and the people that have poured their Heart and souls and money and time and energy and all the things to punish the few people that are going to take the money and run right that's just going to happen and so we kind of decided as a team and collectively that we would issue this stipend at some point in the first semester leaving it up to these teams to make those decisions about when that would be and just hope that people understand that this is a reflection of the work that we appreciate from what they've given us and and hope that they don't will some people of course will right but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the actual budget that we're working with so it's just sort of take the bad with the good okay so we've talked about it a good bit but there is a set of next steps Kelly if you want to run through that timeline real quick yeah so let's move on yeah I did I did have a couple questions I'm sorry just on the opportunities for prioritization so you've said that we're not getting rid of any of these things but they are all important um um after school tutoring for example um you know I'd hate to just kiss acabitus because we can't find people to tell them I mean that's something our kids actually really desperately need so remember this knock is a goodbye it's just shrinking the opportunities that are available so instead of opening it up let's say to every child there would be some sort of cap or limit based on the enrollment or the interest that we found this year so that's sort of where we capture those funds same with YMCA and a few of those other ones and like I said before some of those made us the tmce I specifically very uncomfortable and that is why we created this separate committee to be able to ask these very questions and say hold on a minute this feels very close to kids why are we creating this when we have other opportunities in other departments or other positions that possibly could be cut so that's where the super detailed line budget comes in and that work we'll go to those individuals to be able to look at right so I think that'll be important for the board to get confirmation that you know we aren't cutting kid things for kids yes our our hope is that I am waiting for allocations for next year's federal grants we have a bevy of them uh and I'm waiting to get those allocations to see what I might be able to move into one of those if if we can can do that that's the difficult part of this guys we didn't budget any of these things because we didn't have any money I mean that because we couldn't think of anything better to do it's all important and that's what makes it hard when you want to reprioritize it and when you need to reprioritize it you're exactly right I think maybe a helpful perspective like I totally understand what you're saying and maybe a helpful perspective would be to see that table with what still is being funded in comparison to what that cut is because that cut is like you said probably minimal compared to this is what is currently being used and is still set aside like just to have that perspective and to verify like that we're not cutting and then it also we're calling it a sign and stay and a sign and stay would go it would this the second part would go be paid in the fall is what if is it go to new people that come get hired in the fall you know we have we really haven't talked about that we did some rules around the last stipend we had a cut-off date you had to have been employed by a particular date in order to receive the stipend I anticipate that something similar to that would probably be uh called for for instance if we're if we're going to pay out stipends and somebody comes to work the day before you're going to be paying out that stipend maybe they don't get the first one maybe they get the second one and we have not really talked about that yet but that is a conversation we probably want to have because this is a sizable stipend when you're talking about a thousand dollars it's less you know you're not going to worry about that as much but when you're talking about somebody five thousand dollars you know it would it be fair to give somebody this maybe not okay or even like that first one like if you started the year with us like you can you signed on here in the next month or two great you're here for yeah you're here for Camp green and went through new teacher and you know orientation and all those pieces I think they need to think about it that's important so it's one of the things we have not yet discussed we the reason just for the urgency it feels like we're moving into this typing conversation which we're happy to do um is contracts right so we have a contract deadline which is March 20th and so um there was a lot of back and forth and discussion about moving this discussion to our March 28th meeting but obviously that's beyond the date so that's why some of those pieces aren't necessarily worked out and we appreciate your grace and understanding that there has been a lot more transparency this year with the meet and confer process and the overlap with the pandemic Relief Committee as well in making sure that we can make this happen for people and encourage them to sign their contracts appreciate you guys answering all of our questions because as um Sophia said earlier like it's hard when we get this we we want as we get through those agenda items like we want to move forward for all those reasons we just really need to make sure we all understand everything and feel confident and well and you're reliving you're reliving the committee's direct conversations okay go ahead go ahead please I was just gonna say this is exactly what we went through as a mean confer and there was a lot of anger frustration ultimately we came to this will make our process stronger this will make sure that we have the information that we need moving forward that we will be able to get out in front of the information that we request so that then we can make more decisions that are concrete that are having obviously a huge impacts so yes it's a parallel conversation did you want to add to that nope awesome any other questions comments were you finished Kelly yeah thank you I appreciate that as it evolves uh regularly it'll keep so that brings us over to 9A we're gonna jump in and make it at 6B which is the acceptance of financial audit reports for fiscal year 2021 and 2022.
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I'm completing like in our instructional coaches and our administrators so that numbers including everyone okay ties and everyone and and maybe you said this um will they have access to the program in May well maybe is it something they'll be able to look at and start if they want to start preparing for over the summer an adoption vote you know from the governing board today we're hoping to have materials in teachers hands in May so that when we do that training they're able to see touch experience all of it and you you said you're the representative has been very helpful so she'll be around to answer questions and so on absolutely she's local oh that's good thank you is this more of a new curriculum so they're still working to improve it or she's just willing to make those adjustments based on our feedback she's willing to make those adjustments based on our feedback okay um the curriculum first came out in 2009 the most recent Edition came out 2020.
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yeah I'm a senior here at Toronto um I was class president for three years um but yeah hi everybody um I just want to comment on a couple things so last Thursday we had our first um eighth ninth grade transition night and welcome event um it was pretty low attended but the people who did go said that it was a very helpful event and actually this speaks to a pretty major problem we've been seeing a Toronto where many of our events have had written those programs this year like people have been putting Disney effort to make them but still there's kind of like this disconnect between people coming and to be honest it's been a little too long to continue to play cobit um there's an overall shot of apathy from the Big Lots of that needs to be addressed and cared for I know that many of my peers have mentioned that they feel as though they have it mentally aged almost since it started like I'm a senior in high school but yet I still kind of feel the mentality like I'm the dear headlights freshman still coming into high school and um throughout the school I've become the same feeling people who you know they had coveted them in third grade they still feel like they're in third grade even though they're now you know any kids are sex um and I think that we need to take some drastic measures to support students mental health in the aftermath of covet and try and do some things to try and fix this overall feeling students have been having yeah does anybody have any questions about that that's uh I don't know would you say mentally aged freshman yeah I was just like I've talked to a lot of students from all over Toronto in my sixth grade and they say that they feel as though no time has almost passed for them since clothing began like they feel as though they've just had a really long like for me I feel like I'm still in freshman year type thing and it's like whoa you know now I'm just looking at where I'll be in six months and it's like it's almost like there's like a disconnect a lot of students brains like from the time continuum um and so I don't know it's just it's been hard for some students to adjust to that because I feel like they're still behind where they like they feel like they've lost time in a sense and they're having trouble catching up I'm curious with the adjustment counselor kind of aware of that situation and we increased on [Music] is uh I don't know who the adjustment counselor is but is that person busy yeah they're very busy because they are very well aware of kind of the needs of all levels of our students at this time we're very fortunate that students are actually feeling more they're stressors and concerns it's tough enough being a middle school student as well as a high school student but when you compound that with mental health diagnoses family stresses that are going on We're just trying to let them know that we hear them and we want to help them process through their stresses just so that connection can can continue to be enhanced because we never want them to feel like their voice and their concerns aren't being heard um I was also present at the evening that Caroline was talking about on Thursday yes we would have loved to see more representation of our parents there but the parents that were there we did provide them with an exit ticket survey so they can give us really insightful feedback about what worked what didn't work what you would prefer in the future and we're really hopeful that this is something we can continue to do in the future they like the idea of just being very informative being able to kind of walk around even in the cafeteria at different tables of people that were there representing Clinton Savings Bank the library yearbook so that they they're hearing firsthand that yes academics is a huge priority but there's also the involvement of social skill set and the availability of staff to talk about them Carol do you have an idea of how many people did attend any fans I believe at one point I'm counting about 55 people yeah which is really nice to see back to the Consular Office yes are you able to describe was it workload Now versus you know three four five years ago is it changed is it different how is it different yes and I feel comfortable speaking on that because my first year here at Challenger was 2019.
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second discussion okay thank you very much thank you um so I've printed this presentation you have it in front of you as well as the supporting deci information straight from the website um but this is just a high level overview of what our fiscal year 24 budget is going to look like um and this is um it's just a summary so I'm planning to have the complete budget book at our next meeting which will have all the underlying details that go along with this um so whenever I present a budget I think it's really important to start out with what the budget process is it's how we get to our line item budget at glts this process starts in September really when we bring the budget calendar to school committee and then it starts with the planning phase where the lead teachers really lead the charge and each Lead Teacher in each department is looking at what their current year budgets are what their past expenses were and they're looking for Trends in you know trying to determine what the needs are for next year and then once they once they get all that information they load it into our financial system and it's sort of an ongoing process of review and Analysis kind of at the same time um but we take all that information and we start to have meetings with the whole leadership team where we go through each line item line by line and we're looking at what the budgets are again and we're taking into consideration some of the things that came out of advisory meetings and we're making revisions as we go and then it's just using historical data and state guidelines to try to make the most informed decisions for our future needs and then we bring that whole budget to you as a district committee to the superintendent for approval and then that becomes our line item budget so if we're looking at fiscal year 24 the biggest budget drivers are definitely our colas cost of living for all the new contracts that we settled we're looking at adding some positions to Staffing we're looking at a 1.0 mtss coordinator a data specialist which is a current position that we have but it's been unfilled this year so we're going to add that back for next year a Freshman Academy administrator a dental teacher and then we're adding additional positions for Co-Op students we also have three new programs coming online Aviation child care and programming and web design and then we also had a large increase in our transportation contract which you all saw at the last meeting continuing increasing costs and health insurance and we're still continuing to upgrade the building and make renovations so this is a roll-up of our preliminary Foundation expense budget these function numbers correlate to the destiny chart of accounts so basically we're looking at if you look at the bottom of this our total Foundation budget for fiscal year 24 is 43 million 68 000 and nine dollars which is a little over a four million dollar increase from the year before that number represents our net School spending amount so we are required to spend that amount of money on educating our students what I think is interesting when you look at this is that almost three million dollars of our increase is going straight to instruction and that's all instructional costs not just salaries but your teacher salaries are in there but also all of the equipment and supplies that that go along straight to instruction I always like to look at the budget in terms of our salary expenses and our non-salary expenses so this is sort of a visual that shows you that about 55 percent of our budget is strictly salary expense and then 15 is employee insurance and opeb which are also sort of salary related expenses 29 of our budget is non-salary expenses and then we have a small one percent of our budget going towards debt right now so our non-foundation expenses these are our transportation costs our opeb costs these are capital projects as well as long-term debt yep um we're looking at a little over a 1.5 million dollar increase on these items which would give us a total estimated fiscal year 24 budget of 47 million 694 962 dollars so when we when we look at this we need to consider how how our budget is funded and one of the key components of how our Chapter 70 funding is allocated is based on enrollment so this is just a visual of enrollment by town so you can see the increase or decrease per town from fiscal year 23 to fiscal year 24.
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if you bought you know for a few years you know it's going to change it's Spike cyclical um but it was a certain pain point so I don't know how to stop that guys um but again there's also some transparency stuff that that we'll we'll talk about and keeping up with the technology making sure that you do you're doing are attracting students and they're not going other places they're staying here in your school system because there's a cost associated with that which is it's painful um I'm very astute with with school funding opportunities so leveraging state of Connecticut funds for HVAC programs new school construction has always been there very familiar with running through that process we do have some customers we put up for the new American schools which is a new eight-year program that you have the opportunity to um to get involved with and put some projects up there as well as there are some new energy conservation Bond grants that are back and available on the table that we could take a look at and making some applications I have a grant writing team that sort of takes that heavy bit for you and sort of helps us get all the documentation up um utilizing alternative contract vehicles to streamline the pros uh the Project's delivery uh as well as maybe utilizing Cooperative purchases to streamline that process uh when we're looking at a bigger project uh and I noticed some things that you guys just recently did and this would be a do different right you're spending some money with Architects and Engineers designing boiler systems designing roofing systems I mean it's forty fifty thousand dollars but it comes out of one pot if if we have some sort of a deal in place I cover all those first costs for you okay and as they move down the line you know then those costs are built into the project sometimes the development agreement could State something as bold as I will take care of the architect for the roofing cost and we're going to add a solar project to it if we're not successful in getting the grants you're gonna tell me nothing you still own the roofing design but if I couldn't put the package together to meet the ROI that you looked at then you know then it just doesn't happen and so um those types of work working arrangements with how we do business sort of is through that lens of preservation of cash okay so don't put out the money right now um for the architecture or the engineers that you need to do get this work queued up let's just go through the process and we we have the money built into our pre-order costs if you want with the doe um is that that's a federal program I'm assuming and it are we is that something that funds that we can go after obviously and just wrote it down because I was the first time hearing about this Suburban districts applicable it is it is it doesn't it is Spearing towards um some communities that are going to be where you're receiving programs saying 50 which is based upon on the different um income levels uh with your student population some of them are targeting more 66 to 67 percent before you start scoring a little bit higher but it doesn't mean that we can't take a look at those and they're it's an eight-year program right now which is going to get a little bit more focused I think what the department of energy is doing um from some of our discussions and I have local and federal lobbyists that worked out of DC is the department of energy wants to be part of some of these opportunities not just continue to throw money over to the state and see what happens and you know I I meet with them with about and no Sarah who's on the federal side of receiving federal funds for the state of Connecticut it's built agreement all the time and so what's interesting is the original 800 million commitment that came out of VP Harris uh got sidelined it didn't actually go to um the um the states at this point so there's another tranche of money that's going to be coming but what deal he did was they launched their own renew America a program and pull back some of the money that they're probably going to end up giving to the states and so that that application um the first pass for this year was due January uh 26 and we're getting our move forward to the full applications now which are due in uh by April and then we'll get notices May or June about the same timeline as a state of Connecticut's HVAC program which is it isn't roll it's it's rolled into uh School constructions but not through the same program that you know typically you do Roofing and windows which is that non-priority rolling admission uh any ideas it's it's already going to be funded for next year for for 23 about 75 million I'm here to get more money um the the first watch was subscribed I told you we've asked our legislators to Lobby to add that ad HVAC as a non-priority grant item it should be it should be rolled in that way instead of having this one big hump that everybody tried to get into with a 60-day notice I mean come on it was it's like that's a pretty big and you had to have your money appropriated right you had to have money appropriated well they backtracked they backtracked on it because they they but they said that they needed it and then then they said well if you just get it to us by February but the deadline for the applications December 1st and then they were saying for February and I don't know if you if you followed what happened but there was some big school districts that didn't get into the new construction that they let they let in legislatively they changed the rules right and so okay in anything so I'm very familiar with all the folks up there um I don't have as big as voice as you guys because you're really the customer they don't see us as we both have you guys as customers but um I'm happy to uh Point things out that need to be done Tim you have a question oh yeah thanks Andrew Yeah question on funding opportunities sure do you know Connecticut uh energy incentives rate structures at all specifically I'm wondering about bile cell all sure okay so we have 10 acres in the up in the north end of town that's near by our bus depot 10 acres of basically is not there's restrictions on it and stuff but it's basically unused fields is that a situation where in theory at least we could just put you know two or three megawatts on there do the buy all sell all and just take some get the town just makes a little bit of money right off the top because it's unused anyway it's right next to the prison it's not getting used for anything else yeah so under the new non-res program you can go up to five megawatts and you can virtually in that reader and them to beneficial accounts they don't have to be technically your own but I would imagine you have significant load across the the town buildings and the school buildings to be able to appropriate or use those as beneficial accounts okay so you produce them on site you put your own meter there you run it through there you get the z-rec and it's in the atres program you get the Renewable Energy Credit which is a subsidy you bid into it and then you can then take it to beneficial accounts all of the production uh that's associated there on top of that I would capitalize the new ITC for you start it up to get 30 it's you know be a check from the federal government uh 40 if we could do at least 40 made in America there's a lot of transitions that happen they make that a little bit easier so if you if you think about that opportunity um to put the solar array up there get 40 uh reimbursement payment I cover bridge financing for that because it'll take 18 months to come in fit into the program and then start you know reaping the benefits across the board I think for an Roi perspective we just have to talk about what the rate is that you're actually offsetting what you agree it to be and this is this would be the guarantee in the production that you agree agree it to be or what you want it to be and some people have said look I'm paying 22 I just bought down the 12.
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and I just want to make sure we all understand as a Cabinet as a board we have an opportunity to reprioritize what we're looking at in funding right now you know the last six years we've managed through retirement incentives through negotiated class size reduction in the contract through several different means to make sure that we did not have to let any of our staff go through the pandemic there was extra funding provided and we actually expanded we have more teachers in this District now than at any time since the qeia funding and Grant that we had going back almost 20 years but right now when we look at where we are and what we're looking at at financially we also have an opportunity um at at the end of this school year the end of the 22-23 school year there will still be 59.8 million dollars in the covid relief fund accounts a fraction of that could be enough to fund Staffing at current levels so I think the board the district all of the associations we need to make sure that we understand exactly what opportunity we have to continue to deliver all of the services all of the relationships everything that we've built coming out of the pandemic and understand specifically what that coveted relief money was intended to be used for and if we have an opportunity to use that to continue the Staffing levels to continue the services not just in the classroom but the psychologists the social workers our counselors if we have the opportunity to continue that for another year to make sure that our students who are recovering and coming through that receive the same sorts of services then I think we need to take a hard look and make sure we take advantage of every opportunity we can so I appreciate any consideration that you have for that and look forward to working to find decisions moving forward with with our staffing and moving forward with the next school year thank you thank you Mr Schuster um Hilda Vasquez hello everybody good evening president O'Neill Board of trustee superintendent matsura executive cabinet students parents and Community online and in person it's a great um great day to be here with you um I'm gonna just start with it's incredibly enough um crazy enough that we're fast approaching the third the end of the third quarter which will be March 17th I want to share with you that during this time our school sites have been very busy not only with all of the regular activities CIF events and everything that's happening at school sites but also preparing and planning for the upcoming school year with students as they are going through all the course requests process and are also reviewing and strengthening the six-year plan my friends who are not in education say oh you must be happy you're almost done I said no this is the worst time you're ending this you're planning next year so it's very very busy at school sites our teams are continuing our focus on student engagement attendance reconnection and re-entry and have further developed their size teams to address these areas also during this past month I've a couple of our school sites had their wasp accreditation visits and we want to thank all of the people who are involved in the process for their support and time for making them a success in terms of instruction this past month we had the spring Civic learning Institute which took place and also we have all the school sites continuing the training on community building circles and implicit bias also School sites continue to celebrate diversity her a lot of the events from omkar today this this evening we want to celebrate diversity and power students through their continued work on student Capstone growing our exclusive Pathways stima palooza showcase which is coming up and also soapbox speeches I want to also share that we are celebrating International days and assemblies I want to highlight the girls engineering day that happened this past weekend as well as the student-led Saturday Academy workshops which was a mindfulness Focus we did get Miss Guerrero Miss Randall Trejo to sing and dance with us so that was fascinating it was great they're great singers by the way and also I want to acknowledge and celebrate our district by celebrations for Black History Month and with that that is our report for this month of February thank you lazy monger of apka good evening it's been a while since I've been up here so bear with me please um just to give us an update of what's happening with apj and our counselors within the past couple of months because it's been a couple of months since somebody has been representing our Union up here um what's important to know is that everything I'm about to present to you is with our 80-something counselors that we have our 80 plus counselors that we currently have knowing that 24 of them did receive or will receive their temporary layoff notices so important to know that what I'm about to present is with our 80 plus counselors at this time currently all of our counseling teams are wrapping up our registration with our schools our theater pattern schools within the five school districts that we work with are sixth graders going into seventh grade and then our sister schools within our school district the junior high going into High School our main priority during registration as you know is our student voice we want to make sure that our students are aware of the multiple opportunities Pathways anything that is offered through our district our students and our community is aware of their choices and their options and so student voice is very important that also leads to a student-led master schedule when it's time for us to build our master's schedules at our school and this is all done by the counseling teams what I think is important to note is that our counseling teams are the main focus when it comes to connecting with our feeder patterns whether it be in the elementary school districts or Junior High to high school we are their first point of contact and we will continue to be so the time that we are spending doing counseling presentations parent nights one-on-ones with our students to make sure that they are given the choice and given the voice to do and choose what they want for registration that is all done because we have counselors at the school site moving on our high school teams just finished with the FAFSA push for March 2nd and so of course the goal is always 100 percent and even though FAFSA will continue through the end of the school year our goal was to have 100 at each School site we are interested to see what the end result is when it comes to the March 2nd deadline but that does not mean that we stop with FAFSA or encouraging our students to apply we will continue to do that until the day they graduate and if after if need be we did and we are appreciative because last week we had a group of counselors who were able to travel to Sacramento and participate in the careers in education conference and we'd like to thank Amanda Bean Allison Conrad Scott Rendell and MJ cook from the district because they came and supported counselors and we supported them as well but we appreciate that opportunity to do so because it allows us to grow our counseling program it allows us to basically see what's going on outside of our district and what it does is it gives us a really good idea and and it opens a lot of eyes as too we are really leading the way when it comes to our pathway programs dual enrollment options for our students and we are that leader um Scott Rendell and MJ cook gave a great presentation and I'm not just saying that because Scott is in the audience it was actually fabulous and I've heard them speak many times being a work based learning coordinator but to hear have other districts hear the same exact information it just goes to show that we probably should be doing more presenting in my opinion to the rest of California based on what is available through our aim program work based learning all of those different things so we do appreciate the district allowing a group of counselors to go and to experience that it really was an eye-opener and what we provide our students additionally our Puente counselors last week went to a um a two-day conference for Puente once again at the same time allowing our counselors to go and collaborate and communicate and just be with Puente counselors across the state of California once again just honing in on what we could do better and what we're already doing very well and then lastly because I see my times coming up so I apologize once again um just looking towards the next couple of months we're looking at our social emotional learning lessons that will be coming into our schools that will be counselor-led along with the fact that college acceptances are now coming through for our seniors and so we'll be working with our seniors in terms of right choices for them guiding them to where it might be the best what will be the best spot for them and of course dealing with of course if they are denied as well so thank you very much and I look forward to seeing you again thank you Lacey any other Association members out there that I'm over overlooked okay so you know we'll go to uh 7.4 parent teacher Association Student Association PTSA report Peggy Cruz everyone I have you here this evening thank you thank you it's been a while since I've been here and good to see you all um on February 17th PTA turned 126 years old so we've been around for a long time and to celebrate that our Anaheim secondary Council held a fun Bingo night so thank you Miss Jessica for attending that um it wasn't just a purpose to celebrate PTA but what we're trying to do as a PTA is to bridge the gap between our feeder schools and our High School junior high schools so we invited all our incoming districts to attend the event we had a few families that came and it was a very fun night right now our ptas are working on doing their elections for our next year's School Board we have on March 28th coming up our fourth district administrators dinner and I'm sorry I know that is during our spring break so we hope that some of our principals will be able to join their presidents at this dinner and then in may we will be having our honorary service award dinner so we're just working out the details so be on the lookout for that invitation for you guys so thank you very much thank you Peggy next public comments on Open Session items we have two people wishing to speak first we have a Stephanie Camacho Von Dyke good evening board my name is Stephanie Camacho Van Dyke and I am the director of advocacy and education at the lgbtq center of C we're a long-standing organization that serves lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer and questioning people in Orange County for over 50 years our organization has responded to the changing and growing needs of the community providing culturally appropriate and affirming health and wellness services I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for your unwavering support for our lgbtq students your leadership and commitment to creating an inclusive and safe learning environment has made a tremendous difference in the lives of our students over the last decade the lgbtq central CS partnered with Anaheim Union High School District in providing resources and support for lgbtq students hosting educational workshops and activities and supporting student-led initiatives to develop inclusive and affirming School environments your efforts to promote equality and acceptance have create helped create a culture where every student feels valued and respected for who they are by supporting lgbtq students you have shown that your school district is a place where inclusion and diversity are celebrated and where every student is welcome your support has not gone unnoticed especially amid this time when lgbtq students especially trans students are under attack for who they are the lgbtq center of C is grateful for your commitment and collaboration to making our schools a better place for all students your leadership sets example for other districts to follow here in Orange County you know in comparison to other districts um that might not be following suit unfortunately and we are proud to be a community partner with your District that values inclusivity equity and diversity as a group I've had the opportunity to work with various student groups on campuses across Anaheim from attending Long Beach Pride Parade pre-pandemic of course to hosting district-wide picnics campus-wide events providing support to lgbtq students especially bolstering mental health support all these things are certainly noticed and we're so grateful for your support So once again thank you for your support for lgbtq students and we look forward to working together in this coming year to create a more inclusive and welcoming learning environment for all thank you thank you our next speaker is Patricia Ibarra Buenas Tardes my name is Patricia Vara and I am currently serving as one of the four dedicated administrators at Western High School today I am here to tell you a little bit about my experience at Western this year has been definitely a learning experience as a first year administrator I am beyond lucky to be a part of the Familia here at Western today I'll also be highlighting about our amazing lean crew program at Western link crew exemplifies the five C's to the core so I'm going to share a little bit about how they exemplify those five C's so let's start with collaboration our Lincoln leaders collaborate with other groups on campus to promote school spirit support freshmen in their transition to high school before the school year even begins they participate in positive relationship building training among themselves and their mentors and attend athletic events as well as send off our teams whenever they have to depart campus to go on those amazing games communication our leaders teachers and students communicate with freshmen they share events and organize events talk about supports that are available on campus and encourage every single pile to get involved in clubs Athletics and extracurricular activities critical thinking these students and staff participate in almost every single Saturday Academy and I did say that I'm going to highlight a couple things I want to highlight that Western leads when it comes to our Saturday Academy percentages we have a lot of teachers and students that come to Saturday Academy during Saturday Academy they not only work on important academic events but they also ask for help they organize and facilitate some of those social events academic Summits and community service opportunities for all students creativity Varsity talks has anybody heard of our city talks before yeah I see some hands and if you haven't I'm going to give you a flyer in a little bit so that you join us soon okay so this is a link for inspired branch that through creativity and a lot of heart found a way to empower our Varsity athletes to Mentor JV and frosh athletes through athletic etiquette preparing them for higher education campus Harmony and having student parent affairs so again if you have an experience of Varsity talk our next one's going to be during our April 8th Saturday Academy from 9 to 11 and I'll give you a flyer in a little bit okay compassion and kindness as a former special education teacher and an El student this one comes close to my heart our lean crew members not only welcome every single student but they also provide El students with low stake opportunities to practice their English via the many activities that they facilitate and on a weekly basis they facilitate PE sessions with our adaptive PE students which Fosters buddy relationships that you can see across campus now this is only a very small section of all the amazing things that are happening at Western so I'm very thankful that you gave me the opportunity to come and share that with you all thank you let me pass these flyers out that's neat that you took the time to do this very good thank you Bravo thank you so much thank you hope to see you there [Applause] next is 9.1 presentations measure H citizens oversight committee annual report March 2022 through February 2023 Dr Neil we have our chairperson um Mr Walker here to present uh the report to the um Board of Trustees tonight thank you so much let's have our executive director Petty Nelly ready to answer any questions as well thank you good evening Board of trustee members superintendent matsuda cabinet members and members of the audience my name is Alan Walker and I'm one of the members of the citizens oversight committee for measure h D and this evening we're gonna just I'm just going to touch on the highlights because you should have a presentation folder in front of you there with all the images perfect so we're going to move right along this evening this past year we we actually met five different times on different campuses we chose Ball Junior High Sycamore Junior High Magnolia High School and Western High School were the campuses that were getting activities and work done to them so we were there uh we met May 18th of 2022 June 15th August 31st December 1st and February 9th were the actual dates on the committee we actually have seven members this year we have Blanca hargi Grant Rowan Peggy Cruz stoddshill Brenda Soto Brian uh Moses Kim Robert Nelson and myself some of the duties just kind of give some of the audience and per I know you've seen me here before so you have a good feel for what we do but we review revisions and we approve the bylaws as far as the Committees concerned we review the current projects for the from the facilities master plan we take visits to the different construction sites which I really enjoy I think all the committee does we have a really good time doing that and seeing the work in progress um we attend regular meetings as a complete committee we review the various reports annual performance and financial audits quarterly expenditure reports construction project updates uh uh planning in the status of the new upcoming projects and then we review the bond issuance there's been three actually and we also review the district make sure that the district is maximizing the monies that is being funded now on the three issuances the first two have already been completed and working on the last one now and actually there's been savings on the prior two and we rolled those into the the next issuances which has been very good as a community member myself to see they're being very efficient with funding and you can see the different amounts there I'm not going to run through all that because I've been through that before but we're working on the the last issuance um and we're figuring that this next year will be the final year of the monies being funded and the project should be complete the just to remind you and the audience as well the the actual measure H Bond measure was uh the total funded was 249 million which is a pretty sizable number but here's the cool thing about it and that I really appreciate and I suspect the board members are are the trustee members are aware of it as well there's been State matching funds that have been brought on board specifically and exactly because of Patty Neely and her team's diligence to be out there looking for new monies that would be applied to the measure age projects so year to date or I don't know how many years it's been now four or five and dealing with this which has been amazing their team Patty Neely's team has brought on state funding extra monies above and beyond the 249 million of 87 million seven hundred and twenty thousand Thirty One dollars that's incredible that that's astounding to me I mean money that wasn't there that wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for her and her teams so Props to you uh and your team so that brings a total actually to 336 million 720 000 31.
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yeah so Madam president members of the board um Dr Lewis and executive team I am very um please I know this we have done this since before it's become a state statute to bring our audit Partners from heinfeld will meet forward to present the audits of the board um I think it's two years ago Brittany the three years ago well no you've been coming for many years oh but um but the law I think it was last year it was last year that it went into effect that it's required to have a roll call vote in order to accept the results of the audit so also several years ago I just want to point out is since we've been having a lot of conversations about when we get information to the board um You probably noted in the both each of the last two board updates that we did provide these documents and some information about it that was in a direct response to requests in Prior years from board members because what we used to do is attach it on Thursday before the meeting as you can see from the handouts this is a sizable amount of information so I appreciate uh the kindness of the board to receive that information early and the fact that there's an interest level to dig into it um and so with that um because I am struggling with words this evening but I'll let you introduce yourself to the board sure um and explain what you're what you've got to share with them it's a good thing thanks Jay Madam president members of the board thank you so much for having me here this evening I really appreciate it as uh as Jay said I've been coming for many years um even before it was required by state law so I think that that's a testament to um the board and the district for wanting to have this information um up front so you have a few different reports in front of you I am not going to take you through this entire thing I will point out the highlights so we'll start with the big one this is the annual comprehensive financial report this is the financial statements of the district and I'll just draw your attention to a couple of important pieces page one starts the transmittal letter which is updated annually by the superintendent um talking about things that are going on in the local economy long-term Financial plans of the district picked in various items like that um on page seven and eight you will see the the awards that the district received for the prior year act for as long as you submit this report by December 31st and and the asbo and the government Finance Officers Association both have a chance to review it you will get the awards again in the next year so that's a really commendable thing to be able to do that early I'm doing a lot of reports right now that aren't due until March 31st and so um that's really the actual deadline but a lot of districts do go early to get these Awards and it's a lot of extra work so come in definitely um very commendable to the finance department on page 13 you'll see the independent Auditor's report so that's our opinion on the financial statements as Auditors so we issued a clean opinion on the financial statements this year and there's really um nothing else super important to point out in that document it the next section if you wanted to look at a few different things on your own I'm not going to go through it would be the Management's discussion and Analysis which starts on page 19 and it kind of does an overall comparison and explanation of last year to this year of things that changed the other section would be the statistical section which is in the very back and that starts on page 125 and basically what you're looking at back there is summarized financial data historical data employment data information about the population of the district those types of statistical information for the last 10 years so that that can be really interesting too if you want to see trends of the district are there any questions on the financial statements and the act for itself before do we have any questions or comments doesn't look like I have questions but I'll ask I'll wait till the end so the end okay you bet all right the next one I'll talk about is let's do um the paper document this is the uniform system of financial records this document goes directly to the office of the Arizona auditor general it's a questionnaire um put out by them we as Auditors are required to answer yes no or n a to every question and every no or n a requires a response so um the no questions are non-compliance issues so they may not have actually nothing Rose to the level of reporting to the federal government in the single Auto reporting package they're just non-compliance things that that occur from year to year okay um any questions specifically on that one or should I keep going anyone have questions okay thank you Sean uh this last report here is the single audit report so this is where you'll find the results of our review over government auditing standards Independence ethics um those types of things as well as the results of our testing of the federal programs this year so uh funny enough we tested the education stabilization fund which includes all three essers as well as many other grants because the federal government calls it one Grant whereas the state likes to break it into a bunch of confusing pieces and send it out that that kind of confuses everybody but it is just one Grant if you look to page nine you'll be able to see the summarized um report so this goes through what our report was on the financial statements the federal Awards which federal programs we tested this is the clean this is the cleanest that this can get there's no's all the way down no significant deficiencies no material weaknesses no non-compliance with federal grants and so it looks unmodified opinions on everything and so this is the the best it can get so definitely kudos to Jay and Dina over in finance and the entire it's always so helpful to us when we come out for the audit and we come out twice a year and um and we're here on site and and interacting and testing all kinds of things digging into payroll and attendance and uh you know debt and this year with the major change this year was something called Gatsby 87 it was a financial reporting standard that required a big change in leases so that that took a while to kind of compile and get through but um management was really helpful and we got it together so I also issued one last report directly to each of the board members back in December probably um directly from me that's the external Auditors required communication to governance if there was any disagreements with management or any situations of fraud or anything like that you would see that in that letter I would be drawing it to your attention so that we could have direct communication about that there was nothing like that so just wanted to point that out and Brittany if I could I think it's really important you use the phrase unmodified opinion yes so I know one of the things that's come up in conversations with the board is about when these audits happen like do they go through the superintendent do I get to you know make adjustments to things um when they say an unmodified opinion sometimes the Auditors will come back to us and say well we're going to find this in your in your audit and we will make an argument for why look there was extenuating circumstances and sometimes you know in in the past I think there's been one or two cases where the Auditors said look we still have to find this but we will allow for you to provide your explanation if I'm hearing that oh okay so so I see what you're saying if there's a finding correct if there's a fight there's a finding yep you in the single Auto reporting package management does have the opportunity to respond and say what the planned corrective action is yeah so but what I think what's important is that letter that goes directly to the board the fact that what you're getting is an unmodified opinion means that it has not been tampered with by the management of the district that's coming directly from Beyond that's true that's true and in the context of um kind of in the single audit report when we say unmodified opinion it means that we have a clean opinion meaning um we didn't have to we didn't have to change our opinion on the financial statements or the federal Awards because there wasn't say enough evidence for us to even apply them so a little bit different context yeah but I understand what you're saying to you yeah so I have a couple questions so do you still work with a board member to review it we did that once I still do um well um we still call a board member every single year to do our annual fraud interview and open it up for any questions that you might have um it's not necessarily a review of all the reports because it's taking place before they're prepared okay it's during field work but yeah we like to alternate who we talk okay so you haven't been will be I'm just curious who you worked with this year I don't I don't recall it wasn't me that made the call okay okay um I've only done it once on my nine years so uh let's see you did Esser funds within this single artist okay we tested the compliance for them okay are you able to tell me like um have you verified that everything we've used and planned to use Esser funds meet the federal guidelines for supported use that's a good question so when we do the single audit and thinking about it we're we're testing everything that was spent prior to 6 30 22 that was an approved award so it has to go on to your single your FIFA so with some of these Awards there's some differing things whereas you'll get a contract after year end say in September but they'll say hey no you can go back to the prior year and grab monies but maybe you haven't done it yet so those wouldn't be included um necessarily but they might be because they're it's very single audits are not what they used to be they cross lines and cross fiscal years now on those Awards but anything that was spent out of s or one two or three because three I believe had about five hundred thousand dollars spent in 22 so anything spent prior to 6 30 22 that that that was in the sifa and reported as an expenditure of 22 we would have included a sample in our payroll test work our disbursement test work we would have tested internal controls over the compliance requirements as well as the compliance requirements and making sure that they were tested accordingly any sort of reporting period of availability procurement it's all samples but yes we tested all of that um do you know what the process for allocation of Esser funds and who is running it as far as the state no within our district oh no we don't we don't necessarily get involved in we do look at allocations to make sure that they're in compliance with the with the compliance requirements set by the federal government okay so the federal government is very different from the state government though okay so we're reporting to the feds when we're testing your federal report okay Federal Awards and we don't do any sort of you know advising or opining on business management decisions at all so we're looking strictly at Federal compliance requirements occasionally some State compliance requirements will will be in there as well okay thank you foreign any other questions or comments doesn't look like it okay all right thank you so much for that thank you for having me so with that um I will move the governing board except the audit reports for fiscal year 2021 and 2022 in compliance with ARs 15-914 dot h dot or Point whatever second and then I have to take a roll call per person so miss Gibson McLean aye Ms mcshuffrey hi I myself aye and Miss Ayers hi motion passes and that brings us to 7.8 which is approval of the first retention stipend for the return of contracts for the 2023-24 school year used to add the okay the one the second one has it the first one doesn't or yeah one of them had it in one there we go yeah the first one does not before we get and who's going to be discussing this no no discussion okay I do have we can have a panel of people ready to answer questions if you like um we have some of the members of the median Comfort team ready to answer some of these questions so please members of the medium Comfort team all of those who are still present please come forward and be recognized for your hard work facilitator you moved Diane so I didn't see you uh Diane she's also our external facilitator so if you have any questions about the process she's also ready to answer um some questions for you thank you guys for being here does the board have any questions or comments about the 1500 base retention stipend sign and stay sign and stay go ahead I just I just wanted to specify um because I know there's some overlap with the Esser committee but the 1500 stipend is intended to go out by the end of this year and it is a sign and say sniping so it would only be for employees who are signing their contracts for the following year awesome anybody else have any questions I have a request that would cover both of these and I'm not sure who to direct it to I am totally into this I support everybody coming to an agreement my concern is keeping data um moving forward about how this actually impacts retention um just because I would like to have that data in the future if we're having a position again to have the ability to give out stipends my only concern is to make sure that we know what that like the the rate is for the retention with the stipends if we can track that somehow I don't know what your conversations are I don't know if targeted stipends were discussed or anything like that and so I'd want us to have this picture possible in the future if we were ever in this position again and so I'd love to have that tracked and not miss out on that without thinking about it moving forward so we made at the end of our process we made a list of um just recommendations and things that we wanted to refine for the process moving forward so we can definitely add that and I think all of us version our heads like yes we definitely want to make sure that we collect that data I don't know even if that falls to who the facilitator or the the person in HR but we can make sure that it's added to the list of other priorities that we wanted to begin next year's process when absolutely we can collect HR in the podcast collector retention and the impact of this riders that we have implemented so we can add that to the responsibilities and bring also the members of the meeting confer so we can share that data and everybody has a common knowledge sweet thank you thank you I also just wanted to say um that I I understand this is all work you all did outside of your regular hours and it's a new newer policy that y'all are still like trying to make sure you're working through the right way and everybody seems to be trying to come to the table to do this the right way and so I just really appreciate everyone's time and effort and energy and to getting this done so thank you So based on that a little bit um you know I really I've been struggling with this a bit because um we have we do know there's still a big gap in the district between teacher pay and Leadership pay um and you know this is a different bucket than our normal raises um I realize but um you know I have a proposal or an idea that I'm sure will not be popular popular with some and I I doubt that I'll have the board votes for this but um you know we talk about creating a leadership um path for teachers so that they can go into Administration and make more money but you know the teachers I know in my family my good friends they want to stay in the classroom you know because that's where they love to be and I know we're competing with some districts that are paying teachers more um salary um I have a friend who's at a charter school who's making um quite a bit more like 68 000 um you know um she used to work at this District actually um so what I had thought about um proposing and I will all propose it um is that anyone that this stipend goes to anyone making less than six figures only um in this district and I understand that is life-changing to those folks um and that above the six figure amount we cut it in half this is supposed to be a retention stipend um and we have a massive retention issue with teachers Paras bus drivers custodians we do not have a retention issue as much with our leadership team so I'm talking about the 10 000.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay all right thank you So based on the data and with your approval the plan to move forward with full implementation of math and the plan is to move forward with full implementation of map and focus for our traditional programs in GPS any further questions for our folks so I I met with uh Barbara and Robert late last week to talk about this program because there were some things about the provider's website that made me a little uncomfortable and I think it would probably do the same for uh for other parents in the district hmm and I was made aware that this curriculum is provided by the same distributor that we got the Saxon curriculum from is that correct that's correct it's also the same vendor that we use for our K-5 math in our other conventional schools as well so all of our elementary schools utilize the curriculum resource from the same vendor okay yes so I I won't go into detail about uh what the concerns are that I had I think if anybody goes to the website they'll you know they might they might see they'll see the same things that I did um and one question I have is if we if we see something if we're notified about something either by a teacher or a student or a parent how quickly can hmh respond or add stuff take stuff out based on what we're requesting of them so a couple things first when they when we receive any kind of update to any of the curriculum we're automatically notified that a change has been made so for example if they put an intervention worksheet into the platform as soon as somebody opens up the their dashboard it's listed right there that that's been added so that's an alert for us to be able to keep track so the CIA CIA team will be working regularly to monitor that to see it also notifies our teachers as well with that too we have governing board policies that are in place that if someone wants to access or look at the curriculum they have the option they can do that through their students view or they can also we did our public review already but there's also always a time that if a parent has questions they can reach out to the teacher first the principal or they could reach out to this teaching and learning department hmh has been always consistently responsive when we have said that we don't want something in or not that we've had concerns before but they've been very responsive whenever they understand that we are in a community that it is really important for us to make sure that our students are getting the best curriculum instruction and they're also receiving um the support that they need and so we have not had any issue with them delaying that or being saying that we shouldn't they are able to remove things or not make that visible for our teachers or our students our teachers are the ones again that are pushing things through and we can monitor that but at any time we have that process in place if there's any kind of concern about anything that comes through to a student okay and kind of a similar question but in regards to to the teachers so according to Arizona statute there are some things that teachers are not allowed to teach and in an effort to try to keep the focus on academics if there if a teacher sees something in there that they might find or they may think this this might get me in hot water I maybe I want to avoid this um who who would they who would they notify and is the program designed in a way that if it's perhaps an update that came out the night before and it's same day is the program designed in a way that they can that they can adjust until they've talked to somebody until they've confirmed that yeah it's okay for me to talk about this or to you know give this give this word problem to the student or not um yes our teachers will always have the opportunity and the choices to provide a worksheet for example or practice what they believe is important or what is necessary for them to do with that they also have that opportunity they often talk to their principals first they're the first ones it's not uncommon for them to reach out to Crystal um and Sarah Earhart is our traditional coach they would reach out perhaps to Sarah and let them know where they're at and so it just becomes part of what our process is not and we we communicate a lot to the campuses and it's a it's a two-way street so um it would not be unusual for them to yeah if I'm if I'm a teacher and I see a word problem I'm reviewing it which they all should before they go out to kids and I look at this and that it makes my head turn sideways I always have the ability as a teacher not to utilize that substitute something else for that just don't use that and then take it to the principle saying hey this is what was in this specific lesson and I'm not sure this is supposed to be here or can you explain this to me what's the basis for this and then we go from there well then I I just want to remind us that we adopt this curriculum as a community and so if a teacher has a concern they are concern I mean sorry if a parent has a concern they can certainly talk to the teacher and bring that to the teacher's attention and they can decide that for their own student but everyone needs to be allowed to have access to materials and parents can make their own decisions for their own students about concerns so maybe you're concerned about that problem but maybe I don't see a problem with that so my students should still have access so we just have to be careful there so I back to the presentation back to the subject of pacing I understand the the web platform accommodates for students that are that are learning things quicker and students that are taking maybe needing a little more time to learn stuff but what about the the classroom instruction how does a teacher um are there ways that a teacher can accommodate for that without having to have either group either either going too fast or too slow because we all want to make sure that everybody gets it but we also want to make sure that those students that do get it quickly don't aren't aren't held back and so during the classroom instruction what kind of accommodations are there for that and I'm actually working on two with my work groups in order to scaffold for teachers something called transition guides as we transition from Saxon and into math and focus pending board adoption that there will be scaffolds built within a document supporting what the needs of the teaching level is for what it builds to go for it you saw the Intrigue and waggle and all our pilot teachers very much enjoying that program that program is also designed to help enrich and help students so there's a pacing guide which is an approximation of amount of days for each concept to be taught it's in a belt it's not 180 days but it's built close to that and then teachers can also scaffold if they need a little bit more time a day or two they can build that in if they are ready to move on and they're welcome to move on so it's an approximation of 10 days for this subject 15 days for the subject nine days for the subject and so there it's built within our pacing guide of 180 days and the transition guide will support the teachers to support the students with those needs that scaffold the math to have them be on grade level and they use the differentiated instruction resource in order to help also enrich as well as the teacher can go in and put in other lessons for enriching as well can I just give you a little story here for the my daughter teaches it Global and she's been staying with us because she had a surgery so for the last 10 days I've been attending fourth and fifth grade math instead of being able to watch the television shows that I normally like to watch and I I have to say that I have learned a lot and I everything that you're saying right now is like totally what I've been listening to listening as she's been teaching every day um she teaches she has a group of fourth graders and then a group of fifth graders and every single thing that you've been saying and I know it's the trade it's not the traditional model but I think I'm an expert on math now all of a sudden but but everything that you've said you know going back and I mean they've been having some unbelievably Rich conversations the children with her about because it's volume I think that they've been talking about which is incredibly I think a hard concept and some of the conversations that they've had have amazed me that these kids are thinking at this high level and I mean she's admitted a couple of times I don't know the answer but let me find out and so you know this is just something that's happened for the last 10 days I don't I'd like it to stop it's not you know I want to go back to Colin coward and the you know his talking about sports which is what I normally watch during the time of math but at any rate you know I just think this is you know just I have a new appreciation for teaching math and everything that you're saying right now fits into everything that I've heard for the last 10 days in a really good way a great story how much are we paying for this program 814.35 okay for four years for four years can you round that to them yeah I think I can we're also um the plan is for us to use Esser funds to pay for this as part of our learning loss contingency that we have we always have the unrestricted Capital that's what we originally budgeted for so those are the two funding sources that we'll be utilizing and if after a year we decide we maybe don't want to continue with certain aspects of the curriculum are we able to scale back if maybe the teachers are finding we're just not using a certain part of it or for any reason if it if a teacher or as a district we decide we just don't want to use uh a certain portion of this program can it be removed from the curriculum I mean as I know we've talked about how adaptable and how quickly and quickly adaptable they are um I think curriculum is a three to five year implementation it's a first year is just a beginning to learn it's going to be three years before it's really established where teachers really know what they've taught it a couple times they're more comfortable with it and then that's when we're gonna really start seeing the outcomes the achievements that come from that new curriculum and then it's going to be you know I would say a 10-year project so even if after one year we don't we're not sure that this is I my daughter was in the ELA adoption springboard in I can't remember whether she was in seventh grade or eighth grade that first year was pretty hard it was one of the hardest years we've had but there were a lot of good things about springboard that needed to be implemented but just hadn't yet been implemented I did call and talk to the principal at the end of the year and she said I just want you to know that most of our kids have really grown from this curriculum so I think we have to give time for that decision and for that implementation to happen one year is not sufficient to know whether we've implemented it's going to take time to know whether we've made the right decision I would say three years at a minimum and then five to seven years later we can say okay this was really good for us I would say for me I don't know how often we need to adopt new curriculum but 10 years is probably where you get in that sweet spot of where maybe things have changed enough that we need a new Adoption but I honestly think it takes two or three years to really get that under our belt and it's where it's there's no Silver Bullet there's no answer that's going to be perfect it's learning to work with what we have and going through that process and making it our own by the teachers getting to know the curriculum and then being able to use it to support the students so I I appreciate that and I understand that but I'm also thinking as a student a student only goes through first grade once yes hopefully right that's the goal I was like they only go through second grade once they only go through third grade once right and so if because this is a totally new method of teaching math than what than what we're used to and so if after a year it's not working I don't think it makes a lot of sense to say oh well let's just stick it out until the end of the four years and and and it doesn't get any better and now first grade second grade third grade and fourth grade a student going through there has you know really been disadvantaged um and so I guess what what are what are our options if after a year we really are not seeing the results that we wanted to I I don't think we will necessarily see all those results after one year kind of to piggyback on what she says it takes a little time for this to be implemented now within that year if we find that there are some things we need to tweak at the end of the year in order to improve it for next year we can do that we have the ability to do that if there's components that we didn't add on this first round and now we can continue to add on afterwards then we will do that but it does take a little more time because if you keep changing curriculums each year then you're throwing a lot of money out the door right so that's why we have this process that we go through to vet this the way we do in order to get it as right as we can before we start putting it out in the public with our students okay so when we were when we were talking last week um you explained to me the process that the district goes through to vet these programs to find the best program and decide that that's the one we want to Pilot for those that may be watching online and any parent that may come back later and watch can you explain that a little bit just in not I mean don't take too much time but kind of like you did to me because I found that very helpful very beneficial absolutely thank you um so when we know that we're going to be engaging in any kind of pilot what we do first is we do a call for resources and so we identify all of the components that are necessary for us to have within a curriculum whether it be math or otherwise with that then we send that out to vendors and the vendors can respond and then they provide what what it is that their product demonstrates to them or to us so during that time while we're collecting requests for proposals we also are forming a committee so in this case because it was a traditional we formed a committee of teachers administrators district office um curriculum instruction and assessment admin services and then we also utilize individuals from special education ell as well as parents so we asked our principals to make sure please that we had representatives of parents on the committee as well so during that time that's a committee of a whole essentially in that it's a it's a larger committee during that time is once we get the request for proposals back we have a curriculum committee that's a subcommittee of that group that really starts filtering out some of the products that perhaps were not ones that we would think that would be acceptable for example it doesn't meet the academic standards that we know that it's supposed to if it was a K-8 we're looking for materials for K-8 because we know some of our students are in advanced coursework but it's only a K5 so that would be one that we would weed out but during that time the ones then that they look at that say these are the ones that meet all of our requests for proposal I indicators the committee reviews that generally we always come up with about the top two that's just how it's worked historically during that time then what the subcommittee does is they present all of the information to the whole committee and they share with them what those top two products are during that time then we engage in what we call Vendor presentations and the vendors come out and to the whole committee they present and they share information about their product they talk about how it connects to the standards they generally try their very best to hit all of our indicators because that committee is also doing a rubric and they're evaluating the vendor presentations and what they're learning from there from that time too after the vendor presentations each Committee Member that Committee of a whole each Committee Member reviews both of those products and they're reviewing them to make sure that the products have what it is that they were hoping and there's a rubric not as detailed because these are not necessarily our curriculum experts but they're one there are teachers and our parents and they're looking what they're looking for for their children essentially at that time then once we look at both of those that data is collected that is brought back again to that committee we really need to do a call out and a shout out to the committee because it's a lot of work for them all after hours when they're doing that but they come back again they review what the results are and then generally they have a consensus as to what product they want to move forward with product that they move forward within we do the pilot and we also do the 60-day plus always here we do more than that but a 60-day public review and during that time that's that that's where we're sitting here with those results so the public review and the pilot thank you that was great and I I said that that was for anybody that's watching online it's also for people that are here tonight thank you for coming sorry that did bring up one more question um there there are some differences with this math curriculum and I'm sorry I don't have my notes that I took when I was looking at it um could we just talk a little bit about the process especially at the elementary level that they go through but there's a lot of things that we are already doing with the manipulative I'm sorry my my lips I can't even say it tonight so thank you um just to I thought the the process that it showed for math was um to me a beneficial process for students so if one of you could address that a little bit I'd appreciate it absolutely would be happy to so our standards are built where we have students learning to get to the abstract learning of all numbers which is how do we do equational type works right so the process within this curriculum builds from concrete which is our manipulative to pictorial representations to our abstract which is everybody understanding that is our standard algorithm and how we do problems so it shows a conceptual way to develop that algorithm of thinking all right does that help yes that helps thank you foreign further questions of these wonderful people for a minute yes Rhonda thank you good evening um thank you so much for that presentation that you guys did a fabulous job explaining the new mouse curriculum I did have a couple questions um what additional academic tools are you going to use in addition to this new curriculum such as mouth facts and what does the homework look like with the Math in Focus sure I actually brought examples we have a student consumable which all students have K through all of our grades in addition to that there's an extra practice and homework so there's an additional piece to that so the teachers are able to assign from one or both at any given time um whether it be in book or online they have the option as well as our students are used to having power-ups and grades I believe it's second through the upper grades and there's a fact fluency practice the power-ups are likened to the fact fluency piece of it so we have similarities the only difference is there are no hardbound books which Saxon hat hardbound these are all in consumable perform and they are part of the quote write up in reproducing those each year for our students and having those available in their hands does that answer your question Rhonda it does so just a quick follow-up do these does this curriculum have any type of time math facts or like on Fridays do they have to do their Pine math facts it does not have what's quote a timed math fact but it does have daily math fact fluency practice that are available to teachers in the lesson planning and it tells the teachers exactly what that fluency would go with the planning of it so it's up to teachers for their implementation of utilizing these along with this didn't work okay thank you thank you Rhonda anything else I just want to make one comments thank you one of the things I like about the consumables is that we no longer have to copy off the board if somebody has difficulty copying correctly that could be a real Challenge and this is it's right there for them so they just have to do the math so I think that's that's really important something that Hands-On that they can have right there in front of them and they can be able to see that's very helpful for a lot of students that might lose focus between whatever is on the the Whiteboard and their piece of paper I mean I think that's really important the BenQ board yes yes you it Dr McCord anything else anything further no I would just like to thank these folks right here and all the committee members and and the parents and the teachers that participate in this it's it's always a lengthy process and and it can never be easy and I know how tied uh you know the traditional academies are to the Saxon Math and so I know this was difficult for everybody involved and so I just appreciate all the work you guys did same here thank you thank you I I do have one more question and it's I think it might be more for Dr McCord if there are any parents that would like to participate in these committees that are put together who would they who would they contact in the district generally what we do is we put a call out to principals to be able to because they have the direct contact with the students and the kids and they're the ones that help furnish us with those individuals that are interested or sometimes people will call up teaching and learning and say hey I'm really interested in sitting in a committee like this can you keep my name and look me up whenever you guys get to that point is there is there anything on our website that says if we're putting together committees and and what it's for I don't believe we have anything published on the website usually we put in some information out when it happens is that correct yes um we may put perhaps put something in our newsletter stating that we're going to be getting begin an adoption and that might be where we're getting some feedback from individuals that are interested also but nothing specific on it yeah okay thank you very much thank you and with that we'll adjourn the work study and reconvene to a brief business brief board business meeting and I need a motion to reconvene to the brief board business meeting I make a motion to reconvene to the board business meeting thank you Mr Thompson second thank you Mrs Humphrey it's been moving second and seconded that week reconvene to the brief board business meeting all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye right and so on a 4-0 vote we'll move back to the brief board business meeting we'll move to number eight which is approval of the consent agenda do I hear a motion I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented thank you Mrs Humphries is there a second second thank you Mr Thompson it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda as presented all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye so on a 4-0 vote the consent agenda has been approved as presented we'll now move to 9.01 the action item the approval of the K-8 traditional math adoption do I hear a motion I move that we adopt the focus on math as presented tonight thank you Mrs Humphries enjoy your second I will second it so now for discussion if there is any further discussion well I I do want to say I appreciate all the work that's gone into this and I certainly feel like the people who have taken time to give feedback that's really important but I also think it's important that the people who are actually who have piloted and who are going to be teaching this were represented on the committee as they know what the kids need to learn so I think it's important to take that into consideration and just I really look forward to updating our math curriculum it's been I think I did that when I very first became a board member so it's been about 10 years since we've done that for um actually for sex and methods sorry that was for our regular math for Saxon Math it's probably been a good 20 years since we had an update in curriculum thank you any further discussion I have a question and it's it pertains to the this math curriculum but also more in general um if as a board we decide not to adopt a curriculum what's the next step then it goes back to the committee to try and find an alternative so at this point we just want to start over so it so with Saxon not providing curriculum anymore and if just use this as an example just use this curriculum as an example if we decide not to adopt it is there time to get a committee to do all the vetting of get a request information from all that request everything from the vendors get it scour it and then get the public to come in and review it is there even time or at this point if we don't adopt this are we leaving teachers and students without a math curriculum for next year you know I don't I had to have not done the math on the time per se based on the 60-day review I'm sure we'd be very close to it but we'd also not have the opportunity really to Pilot anything at that point and so I think you'd be going on a little more blind than than anything else and so um yeah you'd have a difficult time and um we'd be stuck quite a bit and in this particular situation there is nothing that we would be able to do with Saxon for next year we would be doing a lot of running and punting so so the the the approval or the endorsements from the teachers from the parents everybody involved all along the way for this math program that's fantastic hypothetical if that all came if after that that all came back um negative maybe the percentages were flipped and it was 18 in favor of an 82 percent you know opposed to we're pretty late in the year well we wouldn't be sitting here having this discussion that's how it came back so they would have to and they would probably know that early on as opposed to going all the way through a review they can stop that at any time if if they feel that this is never going to go in the right direction nobody on the committee felt that this is the right thing to do they would have to stop it there probably Midway and regroup and rethink on how we're going to do this yeah it would be difficult especially since there's nothing necessarily to replace it so yeah that's a unique situation to this in particular so I think that's kind of where you're honing in on a little bit that there's nothing there yeah um and so what we would have we would have the state standards that we would have to go by and we'd have to make it all as we go so is it is it and then you go back to the time that teachers take yeah yeah that would be a ton of time so this one may have been unique because of the time that we found out that Saxon wasn't correct gonna be is it typical or I guess it it is it typical to to start this process earlier in the school year so that if if something is a flop that we've got more time than we have on this one well we look at the first thing what money do we have and when can we start it and generally if there isn't something there we may have more time to go through the process and roll it out and do different types of training before we implement it we might be able to implement it a little bit differently and so being that there isn't something there to replace it right now this is one of our only options well remember we've we've they've spent an entire year working through this process working through it but then I think as as Mr Thompson was trying to point out is that here we've gotten to the end but what if at the end it wasn't what we wanted I think well and I have seen a curriculum adoption that was more heated there were people who disagreed and um it was it was challenging but that was before I was on the board so well I think as always when you get into those situations I think you learn every time you you go through that process and our goal is to not fall into that and make sure that there's it just helps out with more and more conversations about how people are feeling about certain things thank you any other discussion before I call for the vote Mrs page do you have anything um I just wanted to thank all everybody that um but in the divine an effort to look into a math curriculum that is comparable to Brockton having three children that went through Neely traditional and did the Sox and math program I was heartbroken to find out that they had no longer offered their curriculum to Public Schools so I'm just very grateful that all of the administrators the teachers the parents and the community that came together to try to find something that could fill this void and I'm looking forward to seeing how it's going to be implemented how it's going to be received not only with the teachers but with the parents and the students so thank you thank you well also I I just want to to thank the fact that the staff is going to work hard to provide some of those things that Saxon has the spiraling and um the other things that this curriculum doesn't necessarily do but they're going to make sure that they provide that so I know that so a lot of extra work and I really appreciate that and I I know it is it is a big deal it's a lot of time and money to go into a curriculum adoption but I I think this is a really good product and I think we should go ahead with it because we've already you know we've had a lot of people weigh in as far as the committee the public and I think this one shows that people really agree with this and and that we're in a good place with this adoption thank you okay I will take a call for the vote all those in favor of adopting the K-8 traditional math adoption as presented this evening please signify by saying aye opposed so on a 4-0 vote the adoption has been approved we will now move to number 10.01 adjournment all those are excuse me I need a motion before I ask for a vote I'm getting excited here I move that we adjourned thank you Mrs Humphries do I hear a second second thank you Mr Thompson it's been moved and seconded that we uh during the brief board business meeting for tonight all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye so on a 4-0 vote thank you very much for everybody for being in attendance and participating thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so I came in the covet Year I'm still being a school adjustment counselor and then I can definitely see the increase in student needs coming through we actually have a Google Chromebook assignment so we're able to track when kids are coming down are they coming down during preferred classes or non-preferred classes and they're able to really establish those connections so I would say our counseling office is very busy not only are they fulfilling the IEP Service delivery Grant just to make sure those social emotional use are being met or just simply teachers are great saying you know there's something up with John today can someone you know can someone check in with them just so we're establishing that vision of we're seeing and hearing differences then in the classroom so they're certainly busy I I hardly ever walk down there and that there's not a public present in an office everybody else all right has anyone ever turned away because they're too busy in being in that office in the event they're turned away it's not that long like a waiting okay period um then we have staff that are able to kind of switch and switch out we also want to prioritize the needs of our students when they arrive in there we're quick to notice frequent flyer math class we'll put two and two together you know there's something going on but we're able to you know just work with each other they work really well in the counseling office as a team and if there's overflow because they'll come and see me in my office and we'll just continue to keep everyone apprised at what's going on okay pretty good Thank You Caroline thank you all right so the next item is the chairs report and this is going to be our open seat interview so if you're not aware we just had our election in November 2022 there are seven candidates six elected all members on the committee are currently elected we did have one spot open up in January and we put on a call if anyone from Berlin was interested to fill that seat and I believe Lisa Mayer is here how you doing Lisa uh do you want to come up to the scene over there and uh I think we might have a couple questions an interview process so if you're not familiar with how the committee has operated the last three or four years when someone when there's an open seat the process according to the guidelines the way the committee was organized yeah that's fine is uh for any interested people from the towns represented put their name in and if there are we would appoint a new member so that's what we're here to do tonight uh we're here to interview Lisa and uh maybe may or may not the point depends on how the community goes but at least if you want to give us an introduction sure my name is Lisa Mayer I live in Berlin we've lived here since 1998.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so Andover had a zero percent increase Lawrence is down 31 students Methuen has an increase of 59 students and North Andover is up two students and then when we look at our total student population three percent of our students are from Andover 71 percent of students from Lawrence 24 from Methuen and two percent from North Andover so this is a breakdown of our general fund Revenue which is how our line item budget is funded so in fiscal year 24 we're looking at and this correlates directly to the handout that you have from Jesse the two-page format so our fiscal year 24 estimate right now is 35 million 549 375 dollars and the towns have a required local contribution of seven million dollars five hundred and eighteen thousand six hundred and thirty four dollars which brings us to required net School spending of 43 million 68 000 and nine dollars that makes up our foundation budget when you look at the line item budget um and then if you keep going down we have a regional transportation reimbursement which is estimated at one million one hundred and fifty three thousand two hundred and eight dollars and then we're looking for an additional local contribution from the cities and towns of three million 745 again for a total general fund revenue of 47 million six hundred and ninety four thousand nine hundred and sixty two dollars which corresponds to the expenses that we just looked at a visual of our funding sources so 75 percent of our budget is funded directly from Chapter 70 funding which comes straight from the state 16 is the required local contributions from the cities and towns we're looking for an additional seven percent from the towns to get the additional local contribution and then there's a small two percent which is our transportation reimbursement question zero I don't know if you want to hold all questions to the end but I'm interested in what we are looking to fund with the additional local contribution of seven percent increase that yeah so that money funds our transportation our opeb costs the capital projects that's it thank you so this is just a breakdown of the revenue assessments by town so this is what each um each town can be expecting to pay for fiscal year 24 so again the required minimum contributions per town are based on that percentage that I showed you in the beginning on enrollment Andover is looking at just over a million dollars Lawrence is looking at just over 1.4 million dollars Methuen is a little bit over 4 million and North Andover comes in at 6 765 238 dollars then we have our non-foundation assessment so here we look at what our transportation costs are the opeb the capital I'm sorry the long-term debt is in there as well um and we take off the Regional School transportation reimbursement to come up with our additional local contribution so Andover is looking at 106 569 Lawrence is 2 million 461 338 dollars Methuen comes in at 827 960 and North Andover is 77 877.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
just give me 14 for 20 years and the ROI is going to be less than that over there I'm only saying if you want to capitalize on additional money so if it has an Roi of say 10 years but you want to borrow the money for 20. we prefix your your budgets at 14 cents if you will and I'm able then to capitalize and give you six or seven million dollars more money over that same period of time got it okay so I'm just going to put this in my own terms so I think I basically understood what you're saying but part of my role being here is always like I feel is make sure the voters are sort of aware of this and what I heard you say was there's no guarantees here or anything but the town schools I'm not sure about the town right but the schools are paying about 15 cents kilowatt hour right now that's I mean that's do a little on Highland recently and that's what okay sends supply cost yeah 15 so 15 cents delivered and what you just said without any guarantees or anything is it's plausible that we could do a project in that space that is not being used for anything else it's just a big field plausible that it could be done for 14 cents a kilowatt hour delivered via the virtual net metering but the point is is that it sounds like it's plausible that there is something that could happen there in the next couple years like reasonably good with a reasonable chance of something happening if people are interested in making it happen they're very reasonable don't and I know you were trying to not hold me to 14.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above