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yes in midt of 2023 I convened a meeting with SI reps where I invited reps from several other community organizations the purpose of that meeting was so several other organizations could hear about us being approached and what the project was all about I opened that meeting by disclosing that a member of the SI team had worked for me over 10 years ago in cincin City reps made SI officials aware of aware of some non city-owned sites in the downtown area they expressed a preference for the Klein lot and discussions began in Earnest I would like to invite uh Sarah Miller the CEO of destination Ann Arbor up to make her presentation you have to turn the mic on y now now can you hear me thank you for all the adjustments wonderful staff I appreciate that all right let's get started some of us some of you may not know who we are for over four decades destination an arbor has been a guiding force and marketing Washington County establish establish establishing it as the premier destination for travelers meeting and sports planners our dedicated efforts have not only highlighted the Region's appeal but have also played a pivotal role in driving economic growth and Community Development through tourism and events on the slide you can see we are a private nonprofit Regional organization whose mission is to elevate economic vitality and connect our communities through the power of travel to deliver on our mission you can see the slide some of the ways we are working to actively promote washon County this evening we are focusing on a crucial aspect of our mission the importance of tracting large meetings large scale events and conferences to an arbor and the surrounding area these large scale events fuel economic growth Elevate our profile and Foster a Vibrant Community I would like to inform you on Independent research that reflects the need for large meaning space and a meeting planner's desire to be in a downtown core such as Ann Arbor as I move through tonight's presentation it's important to note that we are not endorsing or favoring any specific project rather supporting a need for large meeting space by sharing this knowledge we open the door to innovative ideas and potential Partnerships that can benefit our community from our our 2021 post pandemic economic impact study with Anderson economic group we saw that visitor spending is essential to Growing the local economy and Workforce in 2021 washon County saw 6.1 million visitors generating 634 million in visitor spending at local businesses including shopping dining entertainment lodging and more visitor spending supported over 6,800 full-time equivalent jobs in Washington County over the same time period and provided 90 million in in income for local workers across the county the visitor econ economy generated 30 33 million in state and local tax revenues that provide an array of essential public services for restaurants or residents excuse me including K through2 education law enforcement local libraries Parks Road services and more as we anticipate a 2023 economic impact study to be completed this year we anticipate these numbers will only grow due to the stabilization of the travel industry and continued recovery from the pandemic further showcasing the vital role of tourism in our Region's Prosperity destination an arbor partnered with Wasa County in 2019 for a feasibility study to officially determine the economic potential of a conference center while considering land use sustainability Community impact and funding strategies the last time a study like this was conducted was in the late 1980s due to the potential impacts of the pandemic we have gone through the process to update the study with finalized results expected in mid-February through the results shown today in today's presentation they are preliminary findings from this most recent draft convention Sports and Leisure which you'll note on many of the slides as CSL is the organization com missioned for the study it was founded in 1988 to provide focused and independent research to the event facility industry CSL Consulting Services have provided guidance on more than 2,000 convention conference multi-purpose and many other event facility projects throughout North America the CSL team has overseen an extensive number of event facility planning studies throughout Michigan and the greater M Midwest region including but not limited to Detroit mome County Jackson Lancing Grand Rapids Port hon mosan and South Haven CSL conducted over 50 stakeholder interviews with local area organizations and Community leaders in washon County along with 100 phone interviews of Meeting Planners representing more than 6 50 conferences this includes a larger area of study examining existing marketing market conditions and competitive set preliminary findings included a substantial Gap in the market for a well-located adequately sized convention facility this ideally would have a total sellable space of 75,000 square square feet broken out the way you see here on the slide as you can see there's a need for ancillary hotel rooms within walking distance to accommodate the large potential attendee numbers this does position downtown Ann Arbor with its Hotel Supply walkable downtown and amenities for visitors Cent which is a locally is a globally excuse me recognized leader in event management and venue sourcing technology utilizing their extensive database in industry-leading technology they were able to accurately assess the volume and value of requests for proposals in the market that couldn't be accommodated due to the existing space limitations this data is crucial in understanding the market potential and planning for the future in the first 9 months of 2023 there were 8,213 requests for proposals for Meeting Planners sent out across nine states in the midwest seeking venues from with 50 to 75,000 square fet of meeting space and accommodations for 250 hotel room nights due to the limited meeting space available in washingon County we were unable to respond to these rfps the $5 billion figure you see reflects the cumulative value of the missed opportunity in rfps due to the current space limitations it is not a projection of future Revenue but an indication of potential Market reach with expanded facilities meaning we would not be awarded all 8,000 conferences yet even a small percentage would have significant economic benefits looking at the broader picture this slide Compares washingon County to a potential competitive set in like markets identified by CSL the B recommendation reflects the suggested ideal facility that I've referenced earlier that currently does not exist without that type of facility you can see we are not competing with this competitive set while there is no exact replication of our destination the competitive set here may each have something similar to ours such as size being a college town close to large metropolitan areas or a large airport Hub when we consider Michigan's conference centers the to uh by the total sellable space they offer cities like Detroit Novi Grand Rapids Lancing and cazoo are home to some of the largest venues on top this list Ann Ann Arbor however is notably missing from this ranking according to csl's recommendations including a new venue is advised would position Wason County among these leading locations turning our attention to was County and their meeting venues let's examine the spaces available sorted by the total area available for events it's important to highlight that currently our Market lacks dedicated exhibit space entirely the consulting firm CSL recommends that to meet that demand we should aim to offer at least 40,000 square fet of exhibit space exhibit space is known to have more open floor plans and be able to accommodate large groups into one barrier-free space the an Arbor's area the an arbor area's strong appeal of world-class dining entertainment arts and culture vibrant academic institutions and proximity to Metro Detroit airport create an attractive destination for Meeting Planners to host their events here however we often find ourselves facing a challenge with our current space limitations these limitations are particularly evident in how we can only accomodate certain large groups based on availability of the venue and only at certain times of the year for instance many of you are aware of the three Union groups that come to town the iron workers electrical training Alliance and the UA instructor training program or plumbers and fight Fitters as most of you know them the latter two which fill all the hotel rooms in Washington County all use our University spaces in the summer yet outside this season our availab our ability to host such a sizable events and conferences is significantly limited due to the the active academic calendar and student presence on campus with our space limitations we try to get as creative as possible with our Community Partners and often host meetings across multiple venues planners tend to look for destinations where attendees can fit Under One Roof for reasons of logistics and cost we often he I'd love to bring our group to Ann Arbor we just need to have one space to hold our meeting in closing Ann aror an arbor offers many things that Meeting Planners want including a safe and walkable downtown filled with restaurants nightlife and entertainment complemented by convenient airport Access Detroit and multiple downtown hotels the insights from the convention center feasibility study bring to focus the vast potential that lies untapped due to our space current space constraints the economic impact of visitor spending in Washington County is significant supporting thousands of jobs and contributing millions in state and local tax revenues not to mention supporting the local restaurants retail and attractions we love from the findings today from the findings I've shared today it's clear there's a significant opportunity here for meeting space in the county and that other communities in the state are capitalizing on that my hope for sharing this information with you today is the key takeaway that we have an opportunity to create new economic opportunities for our community if we had a conference center to accommodate large scale meetings and events thank you for your time thank you Sarah next up i' invite Chris Schroeder from SI to do his presentation yeah yeah coach thank you hi I'm Chris Raider I'm the CEO of sports illustra resorts I'm also a citizen of ant Arbor for the last 31 years or so my kids have gone to school here my daughter graduated from University of Michigan sorry nope get it's okay um first of all I want to say thank you to all of you for coming here you know this shows your interest in what we're doing I appreciate that you know is interesting after listening to this presentation I'm going how do we fix this how do we take advantage of this um you know the reality is it was interesting we are doing projects all over the country literally all over the Western Hemisphere I woke up one day and called Otis I said why are we not doing this here this is our own backyard I actually drove around in Arbor looking for a conference center because I thought we had one and then after driving around I said we don't have a conference center we are world class destination we are world class University we just won the National Championship I heard you know so that's a big deal it's a big you know I'm excited because I have people from all over the country that have come here to support what we're doing so I want to tell you a little bit about sports illustr resorts a little bit about what we're doing to address the needs that destination an arbor showed I first looked at those numbers I thought we needed the conference center but when I looked at those numbers I said wow we're missing out literally on like you said if we just had a small piece of this hundreds of millions of dollars that would be coming into this community we going to our restaurants to our retail you know to other hotels because if we bring in big conferences all the hotels are going to benefit All Ships are going to rise with high tide so I think tonight our goal is to give you information so you know more about what we're doing why we're doing it and who we are um so Sports Illustrated Resorts let's see if this actually works there we go so trusted leader so Sports Illustrated has been around for 70 years you know we first started talking about sports illustrating taking this you know iconic Legacy brand and turning into an active lifestyle um kind of Hotel Hospitality entertainment brand everybody got it in fact when we first put out our first press release on our first university project which is in University Alabama Tuscaloosa that's when Otis and some of my partners said why are we not doing this in an arbor we had over six major universities contact us and their towns say we want you here we've got land for you we want you here so we kind of put the full court press on saying let's get something going in ant Arbor and you know so I'm going tell you a little bit about Sports Illustrated again 70 years worth of you know iconic IP thousands and thousands of covers covering everything from the Olympics to all of our favorite sports and Beyond um one of the things that's unique about Sports Illustrated and something that you know you were talking a lot about when we were talking about we need a world class facility here we want to compete against all those others we are an attraction we have literally been given you know dollars from States because they look at us and say you're not just a hotel you're an attraction that's going to stand out when I say attraction meaning that people are going to go okay I can go to this conference center I can go to an arbor which already has a fantastic brand we have great restaurants you know an Arbor's done a great job of creating the destination and now now we're taking that one step further and doing something very unique just to give you example there's really three major components to Sports Illustrated one we're a Powerhouse media Authority you know we're also a Big Brand we have multiple facets underneath the Sports Illustrated brand from our ticketing to our events to our conferences to our broadcast to you know we do camps we do all kinds of stuff through the brand the other thing is we have 70 years worth of iconic images we have the one of the largest data bases intellectual property there is I mean you can imagine all the covers at one time Sports illustrator was a weekly you know so being able to come into this particular property and bring this kind of iconic intellectual property we can literally you can walk into the history of you know the University of Michigan you can walk in the history of the Town history of you know the people that have come through you know this and you know Michael Phelps you know Tom Brady Etc all these different people that have come through and that we can high highlight and really showcase San Arbor and the University of Michigan tyan in a whole different way than ever before just give you a little quick background on sports illustr resorts right now we have projects you said we have about a billion and a half dollars worth of projects you know around the country in the Caribbean we have properties open that we've opened in the Caribbean U we have multiple University projects you know I I probably get in trouble for saying this but because I'm from Ann Arbor I I want this to be the first in the ground I want to beat out some other universities um and we plan to do that the other thing is where everything from our Sr Resorts and experiences to Eco lodges you know Eco and Adventure lodges to our University model just give you some of the components of um the Sports Illustrated you know hotel resorts brand for starters you know we do have a strong food and beverage component when you see some of the designs that we've created you know we do want to create community space you this is the other thing that I'm excited about with everybody being here this is your project a lot of developers come to town come to town from out outside and they say okay this is what we're going to do and the city eventually gets their plans and they try to say okay this is what we want to do we started by coming to the city saying we want your input first we want input from the community we want to talk to you about this being your community space I know one of the the concerns tonight was were we going to have a big enough space to house everybody we shouldn't have that issue we should have a place that we can go to to have big events and have big conferences um over right now we have over actually 70,000 square feet of conference space it's a really unique conference space when says 50,000 that's kind of one contiguous type of area and we have some other unique areas that we'll show you in a minute to the renderings um proprietary events and award ceremonies this is a really unique component through Sports Illustrated we have our own proprietary events one is the Sports Illustrated Sports person of the year award you probably that's one been one of the biggest awards that they have in professional sports but we're taking that out to high schools so 4-Hour radius of Ann Arbor for example be 200 high schools that we're doing Sports Illustrated Sports Pur of the year you know Awards including some scholarships well those will culminate at a night here in an arbor for those high schools that come here and everybody else to celebrate you know let's call it 10 of their greatest athletes for various reasons they only have to be the best what they do but there's a story behind them and we award them the Sports Illustrated Sports Person of the Year Award with some kind of scholarship that could be 150 different a year we have people coming from different towns to experience an arbor um we have our Teamworks programs some other things that we do that are proprietary to the brand um Fitness and Wellness we have a very strong dedication to health and wellness and fitness this property will have a very nice state-of-the-art health and wellness fitness facility that we would like to make available for people to have memberships there locally so they can partake in what we've put together um upscale food and beverage offer offerings you know and Arbor's a foodie town I mean I unfortunately probably eat out too much but you know I know all the great restaurants here and and then some but we want to bring in some great food and beverage you know some upscale to you'll see our SI Stadium which is just a great Gathering Place for families which we'll show you in a second um storytelling as I mentioned before we have just almost an unlimited database of fantastic intellectual property that we can put within the the facilities to really bring the story of you know Michigan Athletics of an arbor to life in a very unique space you know we were met with you know the coaches of all the major teams at University of Michigan they're ecstatic because they're having to bring in players and recruit players and they love to bring them into this facility where they're walking into the history of the University of Michigan you know that would be part of it not all of it this will give you a quick example and some of these images you know that we we really loved what the university had done and if you see the top left image that's what we call the Hall of Champions like I mentioned before we're taking and creating a space when you walk in where you see you know we're kind of represent all these famous people that have come through this town through this University and highlight them so you're walking into the history of you know I say University of Michigan and and on Arbor you know again this is a world-class destination let's celebrate that and that's what we want to do um just again just a little highlight some of the things we do this is our Teamworks program where again we can go out to a thousand different corporate you know companies and say we want to host a Teamworks building session you know EMT Smith is one of our partners you know Shaquille O'Neal Tom Brady you where we can actually host events where companies will come here and have motivational you know speaking plus we'll show you some of our facilities where they can actually do physical team building activities because of the brand we've received incredible response from both high schools for the you know for the university the Sports Illustrated uh Sports Illustrated Sports person of the year and the teamwork programs you know one of the things that I've been passionate about my entire life with my family my kids myself is you know Athletics and you know activities if you look at all the studies you know nine out of 10 parents whose kids have been in sports you know have benefited in many many different ways we want to highlight that we also want to provide you know programs or work with groups that are doing programs already in the community sports related programs and provide our facilities this is a community facility again just a little bit information about the Sports Illustrated Sports person of the year you know we are again we're very excited about this because it really does get the you know the word out to the entire surrounding you know 4-Hour radius 5H hour radius AR is a place to be especially when we hold our proprietary events um I just tell you a little bit about Cobblestone and our partner I mean part of what we're GNA do tonight too is just kind of talk about um who our partners are and why we are kind of best-in class of what we're doing um Otis sitting here in front is a good friend and you know they've been involved in P3 financing throughout the country you know done a lot of stuff in the city of Detroit that's been incredibly beneficial to the city um you know 2.4 billion and P3 financing bonds you know what we're talking about tonight is something that you know 90% of the Cities across this country do this structure in order to be able to facilitate building a project like this it has to Happ some kind of public you know private partnership Leno I'll let you introduce yourself but big crowd hi uh I'm Lena Chu I am an architect and principal at Lamar Johnson collaborative I'm also an Ann Arbor native I moved here in the second grade went through the entire an aror Public School System proud River Rat um and a graduate of the University of Michigan architecture school so needless to say it's a full circle moment for me I could not be more excited to come back here and be a part of this project team and really make sure this project has an impact to this community oh let me go back and tell you about Lamar Johnson collaborative um I'm here with my my partner Louis Vos um we represent a much larger team behind this project it's not just us it can't be done uh with individuals we have a large team at ljc um we have over offices across the country the two of us are based out of Chicago uh we have over 100 um 350 employees across those offices uh and are have the ability to deliver a diverse range of project types um especially unique to this project with so many different assets uh and and expertise we really are well suited for this we've won 160 Design Awards um and 95 of which are currently certified sustainable projects so you've heard a lot from Chris about the SI Vision the SI brand um and how that influences the hotel but part of our job also as Architects is really how do we bring that Vision home to the community and make sure um this project really embodies that so because we're only at the beginning this is a proposed project concept this is not a finalized design so all the renderings that you see are you know the potential of what it could be it's kind of our dream inside um but really what we what we wanted to do is take a step back and share the why behind the design drivers and use those as guiding principles so the following slides are our project's commitment our project team's commitment to the community into to Ann Arbor um so it's important to read this one I'm not going to read them all verbatim but first and foremost we want this project to be a people- driven neighborhood focused project that embodies Community collaboration and partnership so this project is more than just a building what happens beyond that building Beyond those walls which is a is a mantra of our company um and we really want to partner with the community so that we can make an impact um in the communities in which we operate so truly want the final design to embody that we have a commitment to sustainability um we we are committed to make this an environmental environmentally responsible project um we're going to use high performance building design we'll be responsible with our material selections we're aiming to go for lead gold this is a Brownfield site that we plan to remediate um we want to go all electric except for gas at the food and beverage restaurant um and ljc our firm has signed the American Institute of Architects 2030 um pledge which is a climate it's a it's a actionable climate strategy to reach net zero emissions in the built environment So In The Same Spirit as the A2 zero plan as well um we all know that an arbor is an Arts and Cultural destination we have amazing museums uh bookstores independent bookstores and um arts and so we want this project to acknowledge that and U one of the one of the things that we can do to Foster community and collaboration in the Arts is to have a fairy door competition this is one of the things that um is a big passion of mine as I've taken my daughters through through the disappearing doors throughout Ann Arbor um we we will demonstrate a commitment to public art we have some opportunities to can you hear me now sorry um so we'll we'll have a commitment to public art we have um have had conversations and are committed to really making sure we integrate art into this project and so it's representative of the culture and finally we want to take we want to reimagine the void that currently is in this parking lot um in create a a destination not only for visitors but for locals and and really create an experience that extends the core of that downtown so fancy slides the fancy slides so it's interesting when we start to look at locations when we first I mean literally the first day that we said hey we should be in N Arbor we started you know driving around looking and I go downtown to downtown a lot to go to restaurants and there are many times that you know I look at this space that this site that we're talking about and it really is just a giant void there is no connection with the community there's nothing that happens there there's no real pedestrian traffic it's just a 60 foot it's a parking lot exactly you know it's a parking lot and I don't know if anybody's a big fan of 65,000 foot of asphalt you know we're we're not we know we need parking but thank you yeah you want parking yeah oh we do too we actually want more parking we do not want I downtown no no we don't plan to have an iore it looks well you haven't seen the new design yet and that's why you're here tonight see a bigk well that's the parking lot so but we're going to show you some stuff you know what and again I appreciate it one of the great things about Community meetings like this is we all have opinions and we appreciate those opinions and we want to take those into consideration because we want to design something that's important but I think when you see this you're going to really like it so yeah that's an well I'm going to tell you what I think it is could we have some order and allow him to finish and then will come up and then we'll do Q&A so here's what I see when I walk by here at night it's a big parking lot all right if you maybe you're a big fan of parking lots it's a big parking lot and you look at this design I see a community I see a neighborhood we've actually brought this giant Park parking lot that has nothing there and we've created Community we've helped bring the city together it Brocks the what well right now we Face we have a parking lot facing an alley so what we want to do with that alley when we have our buildings we want to create a pedestrian area where we're going want would like to work with the arts district to create more murals along that alley and light it at night so you can have a pedestrian safe friendly area because right now you're you don't you're walking by a big parking lot at night it's not that you know not to say it's not safe but the fact is we can create something very nice here this is a community area that we can bring people into that families can come and you'll see that shortly um I think that's you want to go into yeah I mean we really think this can be an anchor the downtown design guidelines um call out corner corner sites which we have the opportunity right here at Williams and Ashley to uh create an architect tal Gateway in which uh we really believe this project can be that gateway to the downtown district especially as the site slopes down towards the railroad tracks um this is a great opportunity to accomplish that so uh quickly to go over the programming again very conceptual at this point it's a proposed project um starting from the tower half of the tower the upper half in blue is represented as residential um and then the other half are hotels that sits on a shared outdoor po um that will also be invited for you'll see some some renderings coming up next to have um some food of beverage and experien spaces outside followed by four floors of parking we are replacing the parking that is on site now and creating more um that is bookended by a basketball court which will follow with that as well below the parking you'll see that we positioned the conferencing um that is well suited and sized appropriately for this site um in in coordination of what we've understand the needs of the city are which we think is a great opportunity um then next to the ground floor we have that anchored at this corner site again with the Field of Dreams the SI stadium that we will show right here so in concept so one of the things that you know I don't know about anybody here that has kids or kids are grown but you I've had three kids and you know this time of year we're always looking for places to go you're looking for a place that we can go and have community space you know have food let the kids run around and do something with what we're creating you saw from that last slide that ground up is what we call the you know the um it's the Field of Dreams that's what we call it you can literally come in Giant Food Hall we want to celebrate local chefs give local chefs the ability to come in have their own micro restaurants we have can have events there you know we can have birthday parties there you know whether it's nice weather we can roll the doors up and you know have this great community space when it's cold weather like this the door shut and we have a big place for people to actually come and families to come and dine and have their kids run around and you know have an actual community space this will show you rendering and again like Lena said these are all conceptual and part of the reason they're conceptual at this point because we like the community's input but gives you just again this is just a quick rendering but it will show you it's a it's a food Hall you know Vince area birthday parties watch parties you know all kinds of things that you can do with this space and again when I start thinking about all the benefits all the benefits I mean hundreds of millions of dollars in this community from what we're doing and creating a community space here on a Brownfield site I know you understand what Brownfield site is that site needs to be remediated there could be some toxic things there that need to be removed because there was an old building there at one time we're going to take that and create a space for the community so um we're very excited about what we're doing with the spaces themselves this can also be used for conference space you know so I think what about 8,000 square ft roughly yeah it um this this image really is to emote kind of the potential of an indoor outdoor experience and how these how the exterior wall can open up and really engage the pedestrians on the sidewalk one of the things that would be great feedback that we love to hear from the community is how you think this space could be used are there better ideas that we're not thinking of that we're open to as we're early on in and how we position this as it is at the corner and a in a prime opportunity so looking at this from a massing standpoint um we wanted to focus here on the entry so the entry is mid block off of Ashley this is how you would arrive um and get dropped off as a guest for the hotel um and if you live in the residential units you would also access this way this is also how you get to the ramp to get to the parking garage um it an example of kind of our community part partnership Chris has had some conversations with the Ann arber Art Center which is where I had my very first art class when I was 7even years old um understand that drop offs for summer camps happen here in this existing parking lot so you know that's that's feedback we love to hear and we love to to kind of accommodate our project with so we would rework the the brick wall that you see here and allow for the art an Arbor Art Center to use a cover drop off for their students in the summer this is also opportunity to have artwork in the alley um and in addition to maybe some spaces up above so above the port coer you'll see the conference center which is this oh you can see my Mouse um which is the appropriately sized Conference Center that's flexible meeting spaces different sizes and types to meet the community's needs um in addition above that you'll see the parking with the roof deck and the tower above at the end right here we'll get into this next slide where we're really highlighting the um potential for you know changing The Pedestrian experience as it is existing now and creating a street Edge that invites The Pedestrian and activity inside so the ground floor um which the the downtown standards encourage to be highly transparent we think we're achieving with uh looking at all the activity that's coming through here from the conference center entry being separate from the hotel um access to the food and beverage retail and entertainment into the SI stadium so sharing a little bit of the inspiration let me go back one slide really quick I want to note here that the basketball court is above the SI Stadium at the corner go there you know one one of the things that you know unfortunately again this is why we're here tonight is to talk about you know the appropriate information one of the first renderings that came out made it look like a big building what we really did was try to create a I mean as you see a green space on top we've got what 30,000 square feet of green space on top of this building you know we try to create an upstair a park like atmosphere it's a lot prettier than you know buildings I've seen there going up there's a lot of them I've got but we've created so you're coming down here on Drive you're going to see a building with all the Green Space CU that's the kind of the eye level you're going to see it's going to be a very pretty building it's going to be a great addition to downtown again for those that seem to really love parking lots I think this really does tie in you know downtown so much better as a beautiful example of a worldclass city so look at this basketball court you would say why is that not at the ground but we have some reasonings um at a prior firm I I worked at we this is a project we did that's highly successful in the city of Chicago um it is a rentable bookable space that has connected to an outdoor um rooftop which we serve as a great precedent um these renderings represent you know the potential for our project this could be used as a community space to host summer camps to supplement any needs the park district has um with red having a high school tournament even having teams come through and do walkthroughs before games here um nice views of the big house Beyond and the tree canopies of Ann Arbor and then the same space I clicked too fast the same space being flexible can also be used at night to be booked for private events whether it's a wedding or a reception or um a lecture a simple change to adding down carpet tiles which is what what happens in Chicago really elevates and changes the the space and the opportunity above the basketball court we um have a destination fine dining restaurant um with indoor and outdoor dining that the public can get to yeah again I kind of covered this earlier but you know one our commitments is to you know health and wellness and fitness uh we are creating kind of a state-of-the-art health and wellness fitness facility again that will be open for you know the community to have memberships there um it's going to be a fantastic space again with indoor outdoor You Know Places uh trainers um the basketball court you know a number of different uh amenities asso with the the SI fit Center this is a view of that outdoor SI deck next to the SI fit place with the the restaurant Beyond and then we hopefully this can work it's hard to understand the context of the project through these renderings so we wanted to show a video looking North really emphasizing this corner of the SI Stadium a Field of Dreams on the ground floor moving up to the outdoor rooftech and you see the basketball court and above that the fine dining outdoor restaurant um adjacent to that that SI fit deck and outdoor Turf area and then as this moves we we were joking we should have played music to this um and then also being able to maybe you don't want to be part of the dining or an exercise and just really want to enjoy the outdoors you can come to the north side here and have this uh really take advantage of the rooftop on level eight again what you're seeing here is just proposed very early in concept um but an a way to get the idea across of uh of the great potential of this project so thank you Des the tower the tower um the the top half will be residential and the bottom half will be Hotel are you designing resal coming later so yes the condos will be um well we're designing all it this is this is the full building as you see so that will Encompass the the residential and hotel yeah there will be then goes above that that's the full building yes do you know how many rooms can can we can we hold on Q&A cuz we got one more presenter who hasn't come up yet so we're gonna just quickly Dev will have you introduce one of our partners hi everyone my name is Dev petik I'm the president of destination here we go can you hear me now my name is Dev petik I'm the president of destination development for Sports Illustrated hotels and resorts uh previous to this by way of background I founded a company called the sports facilities advisory sports facilities companies is currently the largest operator of community-based Youth and amateur tournament style and community recreation venues in the country we also operate a number of amphitheaters and other venues that serve as destinations that firm will serve 40 million visits this year and we are the only strategic partner to the international City Managers Association because we've done a great job of partnering in communities to create destinations that elevate and improve the economy while also improving quality of life for citizens I had not thought when I retired from my seat there and joined the board that I would ever work again but when Chris approached me this Visionary leader who's done so many great things I couldn't resist and so what we will do here unlike any hotel you have ever heard of in your life the SI brand allows us to co-create events with Partners similar to what we did in my previous firm so here in an Arbor we'll have a sports medicine conference series that can be an annual event the SI Sports Medicine conference our Arts festivals would be in partnership with the Arts Community here not created for it but created by it where it has the opportunity to co-own those those events the same with our Sports person of the year the stakeholders in that are everything and so the net result of all of this my teams that I'm putting in place will be responsible for delivering upon these promises and the net result of that at a relatively conservative forecast based upon the model you've seen and the occupancy rates that are that are indicated by by research and study for us and the use of this venue is $240 million in tax revenues to the city over the life of this project plus the ongoing lease payments for the land to be clear you're not giving up the land the land is yours it's being leased and so it produces more Revenue in our model than does today in just the lease it produces more parking than it does today in just the lease it provides an answer to some of your demand your needs around conference space it provides an answer to some of the Gathering space needs that you have and it creates opportunities for your organizations locally to collaborate in ways that are probably unbel believable for some of you I suspect when you're used to looking at that lot you think that's what it is I think we're offering an opportunity to think in a sort of visionary way and a very different way than another conference or hotel or other brand might do because there is no other brand in the marketplace that can own co-own create events in this way you don't find Marriott creating a sports person of the year award you don't find any of the other brands doing this and so I'll leave it to you to uh because all of this material is going to be available after we're here but if you were to research who our team is the team that Chris has assembled I think you'll find that we're all uh quite credible that we've actually done what we say we're going to do that we've been trustworthy partners that the promises we make we fulfill on my team's job under Chris is to do exactly that there's still a lot of listening ahead there's still a lot of work to done no decision has been made a proposal has been put for we hope in all sincerity that it's a proposal that most of you Embrace and some of you we hope have changed your mind tonight because there's been a lot of misconception out there and then others we absolutely recognize it's your neighborhood it's your place you may never have your mind changed we hope until you're in one of our events until we get to host you so I just want to thank you for for allowing the conversation we're going to move to Q&A I know there's a lot of emotion and energy around anything like this um I I would invite that we can all try to be civil in that process um even if there is a lot of emotion and so we'll look forward to now moving into the question and answer period with you thank you and I think we're going to formally move ourselves somewhere else not not yet we got thank you I want to bring up Brett Leonard from our local building department and he's got a presentation to to give I think you're already down there good evening my name is Brett Leonard I'm the planning manager for the city of Van Arbor uh the planning department is responsible for coordinating conducting and completing the development review process and I think uh I'm here because this is a unique uh experience that you have maybe not seen happen a lot in the city where uh the city is active partnering with one of a property that's been under public ownership so it's a public private partnership so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what you can expect from the process um as a petition for development on this site moves forward um even despite any transactional relationship between the city and this this development it will still be subject to all the requirements ordinances processes that any development would require and so um that process is independent of any question that the city has to will will consider from a transactional perspective on the property itself um but I just wanted to walk through quickly what the development review process we would anticipate will look like for this process so you can ex uh understand and um be mindful of of what's coming so I'm going to break it into three phases to be simple uh the first phase of the development process is what I'm going to call pre-submission work uh based on this project location there's going to be a couple aspects of that uh one is that based on the project attributes that are being proposed in concept at this time a citizen participation meeting will be required so what that's going to mean is in addition to this meeting that is that uh the city administrator has initiated there will be another meeting hosted by the development team uh inviting property owners and residents within a th000 feet of this Pro uh property to provide uh another early look at this proposal that happens before anything is submitted to the City for consideration um because of its location also in the downtown district you heard reference from the architectural team that this um project is considering recommendations of the city's design downtown design guidelines um this project will go to our design review board this is a uh Consulting board appointed by the city um that applies those adopted design considerations to projects in our downtown um this is just a consultation it's not required but it's a required step to have that dialogue um with that board and carry the outcomes of that conversation forward with any review of The propos Proposal so the the the meat of the review process is the site plan review process um that's where a site plan uh with all of the details of this proposal are going to be submitted to the city um it's going to be submitted on our City's stream system which is publicly available everybody can see uh plans that are submitted in the city um and that's going to initiate the the work of City staff um measuring the merits of this project against the codes and requirements and laws of the city the city communicates what it expects out of private development by our codes um in in our case it's called the UniFi development code you might have heard it referenced as a zoning ordinance that's where we explicitly specify what we expect out of Development Across the city this will be no different that any plan that's submitted for the site will be measured against those uh stand standards and that's how we will make a determination that is done not only by the planning department it's done by a variety of our my colleagues across the organization including engineering Transportation the fire department uh natural features storm waterer solid waste and because of its location we'll also talk with the Downtown Development Authority given their important role in supporting infrastructure and advocacy in our downtown business district um after review process ultimately we will make a deter mination that the project uh eventually does or doesn't U meet all of those standards if it is determined that it meets all those standards we will schedule it for a Planning Commission meeting this is where determination on the actual development will occur uh what that means is we're going to schedule it for a public hearing uh this picture might look familiar it's going to be in a room that seems a lot like this one uh where we're going to uh we're going to schedule it and uh what will happen is we'll publish that public hearing we're also going to notify people within 300 ft of the property at that time uh both property owners and residents of the proposed public hearing and what will happen that evening is that will be featured on the Planning Commission agenda what's going to happen is uh the petitioner is going to have an opportunity first to present and introduce their project then uh my colleague a staff planner is going to uh summarize the technical review that cond was conducted on this proposal and then we're going to open it up to a public hearing this is an opportunity for anybody to speak on that proposed uh site plan and the the decision that's before the Planning Commission at this case I anticipate that that's going to be a PL uh site plan approval um and then the Planning Commission will deliberate and then the Planning Commission will make the determination if that site plan is approved or not uh because no legislative action is being proposed at this time that final decision of the site plan approval will happen at the Planning Commission and and again I want to reiterate that that is distinct from any decision that the city elects to take with a lease or a transaction regarding the property they really are separate independent processes that will be considered by the city overall um I'm asked a lot how long will this take Often by uh applicants and the short answer is I don't know um it really depends on the project it depends on what is presented but generally uh uh without a legislative action we're probably looking at about a six to nine month process um all things considered um I have to caveat that it a lot that depends again on how quickly we meet all the city standards uh review Cycles meeting schedules but I think you can expect generally about a 6 to n month process and just to just to reiterate the city's stream system is available online that's stream.

good evening everyone I'd like to call to order this school committee meeting of uh Monday January 29th 2024 um roll call Kate Kathleen Amal here Chris Oliver here best Coughlin here Shannon Jenkins here John noones yeah thank you um I ask that um folks who are able to please rise for the Pledge of [Music] Allegiance I pledge allegiance alance flag United States America and to the it one nation under God indivisible with liberty and thank you everyone thank you for the beautiful Graphics um so let me get to my uh so this meeting uh is here where we're remote via Zoom um and this meeting will be recorded on uh to be rebroadcast on DCTV channels 9 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 5: Fridays at 6:00 a.m. Saturday at 8:00 a.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.

to order 602 with me in Beaver Brook car Teresa myself as committee members remotely is Kate caneta and Wanita Harris is that correct Wanita sorry I was muted I am here okay all right so we got four and that's the so consider that the roll call Kate also in attendance with me here is Mr John Spang Cara casamero and Michael Weaver the purpose of tonight's meeting there was a lot of documentation that was sent to you but essentially the purpose of tonight's meeting is to try to explain solve a mystery that I've been trying to figure out uh between the initial budget of 150 million then it went to 154 then it went back to 150 I'd like the clarity on the transactions that bring it back down to 150 because that's the starting point for our difference between what we're doing currently once we go through that and have that understanding John has presented a spreadsheet it's the long spreadsheet where essentially he has classified the $1 million of the S money into account classifications and for clarity purposes our operating budget this year in round numbers would be the $160 million as we refer to as the lights on budget plus the $10 million of the Essa money that's made up of our operational budget this year totaling some $170 million other8 million referred to that as is your operational budget the other $8 million is essentially new asks that that we put on there um so with that I'm going to turn it over to to John a lot of the materials that he sent is for information purposes you could read it at your leisure not sure how much of that is relevant to answering the questions tonight thank you Don it's all yours thank you Rich Ken is gonna help me Ken Wallace with uh presenting some of the documents and Ken I'm going to throw you a little curve ball to start with we're going to open up with the second slide we talked about the one that says 2324 Opera yep that's it right there so I think you all everybody has this in their package U so it's what what you have there are we call them the major objects these six or seven categories of expense that's what they're called and in front of you you can see uh three years there you can see the 2122 actual the 2223 budget and the 2324 budget those three columns and uh you also see this presentation of major objects each month when we do our monthly budget report you know the first page you see is the condensed line items and that's it's the same thing here so the salaries and benefits and so on and so forth so as you look out at the 2324 column the far right the typical kind of things you see as you go down um one of things that was um a little different last year and we're doing it again next year is when you go down to program Improvement you can see the line in this year's budget shot way up went from a million3 the year before to million and what that was we had like we did this this year we isolated the budget drivers so that we could talk about them if we needed to zero in on them it wouldn't be Blended in with everything else and the big drivers uh in the current year budget in that 5.5 million was the S2 that was expiring if you recall there were over 30 positions but a number of um High School teaching positions s two was ending he said here's a driver we want to add that into the school budget we need to keep those teachers in the classrooms and that's where we put it it has a slightly different name when you um look at what we're doing next year but that that those are the accounts that it's in and uh dues and fees and stuff but that undesignated line you can see that's a minus figure it's a minus figure so when you add the column down and including the minus figure you can see it comes out to 150 million the difference between all of the Plus numbers and 150 million is 4.7 it was not at the time really based on anything more than the fact that our Target was 150 million last January um and before we get into what happened to that um if you look at the middle column and for those of you uh recalling the 2223 budget uh we did something similar um in that we I isolated some savings down on that line and in the 2223 year there really were two uh things that we thought we would achieve and we did one was about half a million dollars of positions that we didn't need to carry forward at the time we saw our enrollment at the elementary school level going down we were coming coming back from Brookfield and we didn't think we'd need as many Elementary positions as we had all the while keeping class size about the same so that was 500,000 of that um and then we also felt and and we had a very different Outlook of the labor market than I think it was more of a traditional we were coming back from Co but we definitely did not see the tightness that we're seeing now or a competition uh for the few fewer teachers who are applicants and candidates that we eventually saw but we thought we would have what's uh some people called breakage or salary savings the difference between people who were retiring and we knew we had an a a higher number than normal of retirees just because of covid number of people said were saying I'm not going back that's it you you heard all that so we we knew we'd be hiring Replacements and we thought as we always did we no problem bringing people in at the lower steps compared to the steps that people were leaving at and we figured we'd get $900,000 just from that turnover so what of course what surprised us was the labor market Market that year and I won't go into that but those two things were savings that we built in the budget after the city council had lowered our ask and we had to come up with a operating plan for the year but you see but in the in the year the current year it wasn't based on anything other than trying to Target 150 as a goal but we also knew there were a number of vacancies going on at the time we actually put this budget together in November of uh 22 and at the time we had 86 vacant positions I think almost 40 of them were teachers but most of them were Paris we by them were're struggling with hiring them and we figured there would be some savings uh when we closed our books seven or eight months later but what happened uh Ken if you want to go to the next page I here I I listed a few things that during those six months happened that it chewed away took away the savings we thought we'd have in November uh you know we we tried to fill the vacancies and we were moderately successful as the pandemic Eed uh but we also had to cover the classes the whether they were Court classes or electives and you've heard us talk about teacher overloads that's a the teacher has uh contractually six periods to teach and they're willing to teach a seven we would pay for that extra work and we had quite a bit of it I think it probably was over $600,000 when all was said and done but we had to cover that work work we also what what's called period coverage if you have a vacancy or a absent absence you might just go up to a teacher who has a lunch period or a free period or something like that and say can you cover this class just for one day just at this time and our our teachers are always willing to help um but you have to pay a little for that and so that was going on um during that period and we also began to be successful hiring remember we in our minds these were positions and they still are that would last long past June so we that's why I call them their permanent hires um you know we continue to do that so that that took up some of the the savings we had budgeted but it was really the Self Insurance uh claims that hurt us they they jumped up beginning in February and according to Gallagher who's our consultant and advises us they said there's really a couple things going on uh one is they said you have a much higher number of high cost claimants than you normally had you ever had before uh they show you know we don't of course we don't want to know who they are but they would describe some of the situations they were in and the cost of their care and how the number of people in those situations um was much more than we we typically have so that surprised us and they also said that what was happening not just here but AC what signis says across their book of business that's what they describe it was that people were beginning to go back uh to the doctors and hospitals that they hadn't been able to go to or wanted to go to uh while covid was peing including some of the elective surgeries that they put off um but also some of the care that they would have gotten some of that I wouldn't quite call it preventive care but early care you would get they were now returning to their doctors um a little further along than um was expected and and so here's where being self-insured you you take that risk things are going to be normal or typical and when they're not U this is what happens our our claims went way up compared to what we thought they' be as it turned out the end of the year put pretty close to budget but we had had so even with so many vacancies um it it really shouldn't have in a normal year and I I think that it took us a while to catch up with that I think that's one of the reasons we weren't reporting on this happening with a little more clarity didn't couldn't quite figure it out so why are we um why are we so good versus budget but we're hearing all these things going going on and so that the savings that we thought we'd get from the 86 vacancies included Health insures claims but that's not what happened and that uh really hurt us the other things I I put on there uh the right to read legislation that really didn't impact the budget but what we did when that legislation uh required school districts to put in a new Elementary reading curriculum we used our S2 grant that was about to expire we had some money there and the reason I mentioned it was had we not used the Grant I think there would have been money there that we could have used we could have moved other expenses in there to create the savings that we were budgeted but we needed to go forward with the reading program that was a couple million dollars um so it was a Factor last spring and then finally we like average homeowners too we were seeing much higher energy costs uh we used some heating oil to heat some of our buildings uh we have natural gas too that was up uh fuel even our electric bills had um gone up like anyone else so several of those were above budget so all those things happening uh cut into the the savings we thought we' get can you want to go to the next oh sure you're the chairman yeah just let me follow the thinking on this because to me it's important I understand the sequence of events so you're making a budget of $150 million and when you're presenting and coming up with the the numbers you have anticipated categories or line numbers that you feel are going to be not utilized or you're going to have savings on and therefore you adjust down your however your premises your starting point to a net a net number ultimately you get down to the 150 short time later you realize that the anticipated savings you had was not going to be recognized or materialized and therefore there were costs that were incurring that were offset against those savings that were now in in the red so to say we didn't have any offset savings for that necessitated you to go back and say that we needed 154 and change 1547 instead of the 150 is that basically the way it works yeah exactly and that that's the Year we're in now so that that's still what we're faced with a a good example I think is the school bus contract so after we had this plan in place we called in the bus company and we said to them we is there a chance we can negotiate prepaying our bus contract we would pay you in June instead of in September and October because they're on a a calendar year what we would have done was use the savings pay the bus company and then lower the line in the budget for transportation this year because we had already paid it they said they would be willing to accept uh now remember the bus contract is close to $14 million they said they would accept a prepayment of $2 million and in exchange they would lower our liability by $20,000 so almost like a a prepayment discount so to speak of 1% we weren't just going to pay them early unless we got something for it and we would have gotten $20,000 savings by doing that um but as it turned out when we got to June we didn't have the two million to give them so the deal never happened we had some other ideas we were going to do something with some of the special education settlements that were signed and sealed we would have had to pay those in September uh accounting wise we could because they were obligations already signed from earlier years we could have paid those in June would have been okay with the Auditors and then lowered the budget in the fall for the fall but we were never able to do that either so we had some strategies but we we couldn't enact it I appreciate that yeah and not withstanding uh the strategies we're now left with a budget at a point in time that's $4.7 million higher correct and you and I had previous conversations where I wanted some sort of an accounting of how you came away with um I'm trying to come up with a word yeah came away with a balance of $3 million because I remember at the time there was a lot of H Baloo in the papers and that's when the the 1.6 or the 1.7 here was was uh indicated as to part of the part of the the the cut that left me with two questions one was the balance of $3 million what happened to that and then secondly the $919,000 that we have on the other schedule I think can't see but it's School operating budget where it shows the 150 154 the 1.6 uh the 999,000 where it says allocating Staffing to Grants okay that 999,000 if I'm correct was then taken out of the operation budget and applied against some grants the grant grant funding my question is is without getting into specific the the type or what funding it was Etc are those monies that this was applied against there for the current year or is this something that is temporary and we're gonna have to make this up um Ken let's go to the next page and I can answer those the one that says school no the school operating budget page no you have one that says School operating budget no keep going I think you missed it it should be back right next to the first the unanticipated expenditures it's right back you have another one there um what comes after that and then what what's after that there it is right there just out of sequence can you make that a little bigger okay um so the first uh so this is what happened um in when we realized we hadn't made the savings that we thought and when June was coming to a close uh we went in front of the Board of Education said um we the plan didn't work and so what we'd like to do to balance our books so to speak y stay on this page for a second is we did two things uh first we cut our spending plan as much as we could and there were three areas primar that we cut and you see those in the third column of number there you you see that there's 1.6 million can can you make it any bigger at all K even if we lose the size yeah and go one step either more okay let's try it okay so you can see there those are the the line items we've caught and they came from three areas the first was our the cost centers I'll call them our principles program leaders anyone really anyone who had a budget and we cut back those spending budgets by 30% we we we Exempted a few people of programs we Exempted uh technology that you know such a growing feel we just didn't think we could cut there realistically we Exempted facilities that budget has been under a lot of pressure and look at our buildings we didn't want to do any less than we were doing and we Exempted the high school base allocation uh just because of the growing enrollment it it didn't make sense but we did include in the 30% cuts the High School athletic department for example and then all of our other schools and programs we we cut the cuts came to about $800,000 um little less in that as part of that million six that you see there the second thing we recommended to cut should back up we had also gone over and talked with the City Finance director gang barck uh with a rep from the the mayor's office and we said we want you to know the plan didn't work um we're going to um try and cut our budget but we can't cut 4.7 million we'll cut what we can but we're gonna have we're g going to come back and ask for something and in that meeting they suggested that we look at our utilities and uh they said you know prices have come down since you set your budget in January February take a look at those and we' also locked in some purchasing with the town purchasing department at prices that were lower than we had budgeted back in the the winter so the second set of cuts were to some of our utilities and I think it was heating oil energy maybe Vaseline I'm not sure I could F those up but that gave us a little more than a 100,000 of Cs and then the final the third leg is What U Mr janelli mentioned and you see it on the chart there the 900 thou 919 th000 if you read over to the left it would say allocated Staffing to Grants that's the one that got misunderstood that's that's the one uh believe the teachers union thought there were layoffs um it got to we didn't do a good job messaging that but what we uh what we had going on is by July we also had a Governor's new two-year budget and in the two-year budget the alliance grant our our $20 million Alliance Grant was going up to 22 million part of a step up it's going to continue to go up so I think the Mr janell's question was that a one-time Source or do we have to make it up we took uh nine positions and put took those out of the budget and put them in the alliance Grant because of the $2 million increase we needed 1 million just to keep the contractual commitments in the grant Zone uh meaning you've heard we have 40 some odd kindergarten teachers in there they all get steps and adjustments things like that uh they they have health insurance and the regular benefits any uh teacher would get here so we needed one of the two million to uh get those U increases but we had another 1 million that we felt could receive um additional staff so the 999,000 you see here represents that decision to put people into the alliance Grant now what I I could have showed it as a reduction on the salary line but I thought it was better to isolate it and show it right where it is as allocated Staffing to Grant so we could talk about it like we are so i y That's good in terms of I'm satisfied that is at least an a grant that has is scheduled to to increase in the next couple of years uh so it's not a a grant that's going to be depleted we would have to then take this back into the current year right so that's fine so that accounts for the 1.6 um now the mystery is the other $3 million um I say it's a mystery because I get confused in that um we went before the council we you went before the council and just recently said that we're going to I forget yeah condition it and allow us to to draw down on that and it was my understanding that you had mention we expect a a favorable year for I'm not put your words in your mouth but as construed to be almost the break even and if not we'll draw down on on the three million and then Kevin had said we were looking to best case scenario we come up with a break even and again I'm paraphrasing and we were next year we're going to ask instead of for the threee for the full $5 million that correct uh there's an important step that went into that um if you look first before we leave this slide you can see it going from 150 for the second column then there's a million six in cuts that brought it down to 153 K if you look at could you pull up the slide I think it's right before it says budget balancing there it is and make it a little smaller that's just a summary of the the two uh strategies you can see it adds the 4.7 million it was a combination of those budget cuts I said of 1.

at Highland High School we're hosting it this year so if you have some Spare Time head on out there I'm telling you what there's some Fierce competition and uh I'm just extremely proud it's really hard to get up in front of a bunch of people first of all and then be asked to spell several different words that most people in the audience don't have a clue I Googled a lot of stuff when I was watching you guys and I didn't even know some of those words so uh this is a competition that my family was very thankful I never entered as a kid so it would just be embarrassing to the name so we're really really proud of you good luck in your next step um we already can tell that you represent Gilbert Public Schools well so take that to the next level one more time for our folks if you guys would shake hands with the governing board and stay up here we'll take a picture of everybody okay so you sir just head on that way there you go head on down the line congratulations J conratulations [Music] I can have all of you right here stand in the same line just shift down this way keep going right there get shoulder to shoulder and we'll fill in around you smile there's a lot of cameras flashing everybody good conratulations next um we have some high school students who have definitely excelled in what they're doing the Flynn scholar semifinalist there are 80 Flynn scholarship semi-finalists for the class of 2024 pursuing Arizona's most competitive merit-based college scholarship the excelling High School seniors were selected as semifinalist for more than 1,000 applicants and in so doing have already earned a generous scholarship offer from Arizona's public universities could I have Nicholas Carlson and is it Gabriel Lopez come on [Applause] up so talk to me about what your next step is who wants to talk go ahead um well we were selected as semi-finalists um like he said from over a th000 applicants um now where we go from here is it goes into the finalist stage um right now there's 36 finalists we're going to have a inperson interview at the Flynn foundation in downtown Phoenix and from there they will select 20 winners to get to receive a full R scholarship from any Arizona Public University Nicholas do how do you qualify for this so you okay I got it um I'm pretty sure you need to have a 3.5 GPA and then you just need to submit an application so for a lot of people even that step is just something to get over because it's pretty long and Nicholas what school are you at Gilbert Classical Gilbert Classical Gabriel Gilbert High Gilbert High and we have one more um he's playing basketball right now he's on the varsity basketball team and that's Max Robison uh a Highland High student and so uh Gilbert Public Schools is represented well uh and we as you can tell just from the group before this group here um we're we're extremely lucky and our teachers our support staff and our administrators at our schools do a phenomenal job in supporting you so congratulations to you good luck and uh we look forward to seeing you one more time as winners okay give him a hand gentlemen go ahead and squeeze in here in the middle right here one more time our splint semifinalist I think they're already strategizing good for you ladies and gentlemen that concludes our recognitions for this evening thank you [Music] e thank you Dr McCord um I still remember the word I missed in the spelling be and that was like I'm not going to tell you how many years ago it was um we'll now move to your superintendent report thank you Madame President governing board members good evening everyone again thank you for being here we have some other folks we'd like to give a shout out to uh we have some folks that received the national board uh certification uh and the those are PE it's the national board certification was designed to develop retain and recognize accomplished teachers and to generate ongoing Improvement in schools Nationwide it is the most respected professional certification available in K12 education and we have a couple teachers who have renewed they're already nationally board certified but you have to go through renewal process and uh those teachers are Stephanie saaki from Global and Patricia Smith from Carol Ray Elementary and our new certifications brand new to ncbt uh Nathaniel bourman from Camp overie High School Wendy mcquilkin from Desert Ridge High School and Melissa Nelson from Desert Ridge jior High so a hand for all those folks [Applause] congratulations uh on Friday January 19th I met with council member Bon Giovani along with assistant superintendent Marcy Taylor assistant superintendent uh Jason Martin and our K12 prevention coordinator Susie kadana council member uh Bon Giovani is a member of the town of Gilbert subcommittee on teen violence we had great discussions about the need for the municipalities school districts and communities to come together to help protect our children the subcommittee is interested in sending out a survey to all students in our district surrounding districts charter schools and private schools to to get a better understanding of the struggles teens are facing when it comes to teen violence the survey is being constructed and once that is complete I'll receive it and all the other districts as well will review it before it heads out along those same lines I sent a letter to our families the first week of winter break asking parents to talk with their children about the importance of their child safety while attending our schools are moving around throughout the community of Gilbert we ask them to find out where the most popular Hangouts are we ask them to check their social media and the social media of their friends we ask them to ask as many questions as you can and when you're done ask more questions if you see something or experience something please say something violence has no place in our community or our schools we all parents school districts and the the community need to come together to put our arms around our children and each other to ensure our community is healthy and safe what happened to Preston Lord was unimaginable and heartbreaking please keep their family in your thoughts and prayers and let's keep a watchful eye on our children to ensure nothing like this happens again Mr Jetty that concludes my report for this evening thank you Dr McCord and I I just want to say that I have had heard a lot of very positive comments about your letter and to the community and how positive and and the points that you made so thank you um we'll now move to 7.01 um Financial year 2024 monthly financial report and second quarter financials year to date ending December 31st 2023 Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members this agenda item and the next one I'll turn over to our associate superintendent of Business Services Miss Bonnie Betts good evening um president ugenti governing board members Dr McCord so I will uh sit at the Das for the monthly financial report then I'll move um to the front of the podium in support of our auditor who is going to who's joining us this evening to present the audited financial statements so um to begin this is our monthly report that we present to you monthly shocking this particular this particular report does include the ctly the second quarter financials um because it represents the year uh to date December 31st 2023 so um this is always what we share the district operating fund grid uh just pointing out me maintenance and operations as well as understated capital the continued uh spend and encumbrance increases are normal during this time of year and expected um and so you'll see some small increases as we complete uh this fiscal year in both of those um in both those funds uh under the federal Grant funds were highlighting the idea high cost as well as the eser3 required 20% set aside U my understanding is that uh later in this uh in this um in this board meeting you will be hearing from the um the team that did the summer school as well as the intercession uh sessions for students and uh so the S 3 the 20% set aside is being utilized to pay for the teachers and the materials for those intercessions as well as summer school in addition the SR 3 is slated to also fund the spring break intercession as well as summer school this summer and any remaining monies will be used to offset the cost of the uh math adoption that we will bring to you probably April May time frame for approval the idea high cost is something that we have not received a lot of in the past uh we we do expect to receive the 21,6 48 in reimbursements it is a full reimbursement Grant not they don't necessarily give us an allocation it's all dependent upon the number of school districts that apply for it every year and so um so uh we do expect to receive the 2,648 in revenues in the high cost Grant uh the state Grant funds were highlighting the Arts consumable Grant as well as the school safety program so the Arts consumable Grant is brand new uh we have applied for it and we are uh planning on using that $600,000 for art education consumables as well as some Performing Arts needs uh this is a little bit of a difficult reporting Grant because it requires us to report by teacher um throughout the school district so thanks to the uh Federal projects team for assisting us with all of that work uh to make sure that we are fully compliant with those requirements and then the school safety program we're just highlighting that because of the negative 10,196 available balance we've talked about this before we are monitoring that to find out whether there will be uh an adjustment that we could actually get additional revenues in that school safety program Grant but if that does not happen this will be cleared up by the end of the year and that overe expenditure will those expend expenses that cause the overe expenditure will be moved to another available fund so that that is zeroed out and then finally on the other funds um we're sharing the joint technical education fund because our year-to-date revenues are much higher than they were last month so we have received our second payment and then just a note we do expect to receive $4.6 million of new J revenues by the end of this school year and then the bond fund is the last fund that we will talk about today you'll notice the security technology and transportation lines that are highlighted um but also uh note that the facility's renewal balance is $2.7 million tonight in the consent agenda you have about 2.3 $2.4 million of requests that will eat up a majority of that so please know that the leadership team as well as um uh doc um Mr Dutch over and Mr castalano and Mr Kaine as well as Trace Toby are all submitting uh information to the leadership team on what their needs are in security technology and transportation possibly we will be able to move some of any available resources from one of those other lines into facility renewal to make sure that we can meet any unexpected expenditure uh through the remainder of this school year and that completes the monthly uh the monthly report are there any questions on the monthly report before I get to the court Le Financial just before you get started I I would be remiss by not saying that um I did not we did not skip the request to speak to the governing board tonight we did not have any requests nor did we have any online ones so that's why we moved to the report so now turn it back to you okay great thank you thank you okay bunny I had just a quick question can you go back to the Arts consumable what did you say again that was used for that grant money the um the for both Performing Arts as well as um the um art classrooms for consumable supplies so paints and materials such as that uh Performing Arts we cannot use it for equipment it is just supplies m&o type expense not Capital expense um and then it has to be reported on a teacher by teer basis Okay so no it cannot be used towards the new art teacher salary that we approved correct okay thank you y okay then moving into the quarterly Financial our practice on the quarterly Financial has been to compare the same time frame a year ago to the current time frame so we always start with revenues so you can see from this grid that we are expecting um we we have received at this time last year about 150 million and this year about 160 million remember that in and that in this particular case we are we you would expect because we're halfway through the year that we should be 50% of expected but this occurrence is due to that state aid delayed rollover that doesn't occur until July of every year so that's the biggest reason there and then note that a year ago we still had County revenue Vues that we were expecting but um um actually that's not true the the um that's the fiscal 23 so both in 20 in December of 22 as well as in December of 23 the County Equalization was um suspended and so you can see the commensurate increase in the state from 84.7 million up to 92.8 year-over-year and then this is that same information presented in a column graph um so again you would expect that since we're expecting $350 million in TW um in fiscal 2024 that we would have about um $175 million year to date and you can see that we only have $160 million total okay um operating Revenue by fund of course you would see that the M fund would have the most dollars and you can see that increase year-over-year 133 to 141 um note the capital a little bit um increased year-over-year primarily that Capital Revenue that $400,000 is actually interest earnings that we have earned um from the uh County Treasurer's Office expected annual revenues again uh in a column graph and then the other thing I wanted to share about um I'll wait and go to the next one when we're talking about expenditures so this is expenditures so operating fund expenditures year-over-year I wanted to bring you back to that operating fund grid that we always share on the monthly financial report so all of the expenditures are really reflective of that grid that you see in these py graphs except that the capital is just unrestricted Capital it does not includes School Plant we recently added School Plant to that grid because we do have we are treating it as a if it's an un unrestricted Capital fund because due to our debt level we're able to use that school plant money that was due to the sale of Neely we have full discretion to use that for unrestricted Capital spend and we do not have to use it to um pay down our outstanding debt because our debt is so low because our debt is so low thank you and then that is the end of our monthly and quarterly financial report today if there's any questions I'm happy to answer any of those so I have an another question if you go back to that pie chart I know tonight on our consent agenda we have the approval of some cooling towers you just mentioned the which budget is that coming out of operating or Capital just based on what you just talked about how we're moving money around and that's coming out of bond so it's coming out of that Bond grid so that $2.7 million that we shared with the monthly Financial it was just gave the bond by itself um those U cooling towers are coming out of the bond bond fund so that $2.7 million will now be 2.3 million available I mean .3 million available about after after you approve that this evening so everything that we're approving this evening is coming out of that Bond not everything Transportation the transportation is just a that's coming out of the bond exactly as well okay that's just a correction it was originally incorrectly put into unrestricted Capital but but transportation as you saw has a resource is allocated so we're correcting the funding source with that consent item and then um and then there are um there's one expenditure um the compressor at the compressor at Finley Farms is coming out of unrestricted Capital unrestricted yeah which is which is in this particular pie chart all right thank you Bonnie does that help you was was the elevator modernization as well out of unrestricted capital I believe we went ahead and H maybe we did that opposite maybe I probably got it backwards right the elevator is coming out of unrestricted capital and the compressor is coming out of bond sorry yeah so the the um the elevator is also eligible to be paid for out of um Bond um but due to the decrease in available resources in bond we opted to fund that $150,000 expenditure at Superstition Springs out of unrestricted capital so miss bets just thank you thank you Mrs wood for that for clarification can can we explain to our community the difference between bond funds and unrestricted capital I think that's that's something that might be challenging to understand sure so um bond funds we have authority to sell bonds to investors and so the bond fund 630 accounts for all of those um proceeds from the sale of those bonds and then we can spend that down over time the unrestricted capital is really part of our Levy funds that we get from the state of Arizona and the and the local local taxpayer through the school Finance act formula so those are what we call Levy funds or in other words District additional assistance correct District additional assistance is the funding source for unrestricted Capital yes yes okay it's just it is hard to understand that we have these different buckets and some of them can be spent on similar items and some of them you know we we can't spend certain things on uh Capital items or certain Capital items so it is very complex and you bet over time I we hope it gets clear but it is complex you bet okay that's all I have with that and then Dr McCord would you like me to move right into the next one there's no more questions okay all right well we move to 7.02 uh fiscal year 2023 annual comprehensive financial report and single audit reporting package and I'm just assuming we're going to give it turn it over to she's to move down to so can you hear me okay oh good it's on so um I'm uh supported today uh by our auditor Mrs Jennifer Shields who's going to participate but I would be remiss if I didn't also identify um Mrs Jackie Matten she plays a huge role in supporting the audit process every year and also Lauren toska is in the audience as well so to begin now we just talked primarily about the current fiscal year but now we're going back to last year to June 30 of 2023 which was fiscal 2023 we're in fiscal 2024 so I want to make sure that you're all aware that we're talking about the audited Financial results from a year ago okay or from a half a year ago I guess you think okay so today's report um Mrs Shields will present the audit process and results as well as the single audit report the single audit report is focused on our federal funds and then um I wanted to share you all have the books in front of you I wanted to share a little bit about the organization of the book so that if you're interested in a particular piece of information it would be more easily found um by you and note that they're all tabbed for your for your benefit and then um finally other items to note which is really the results of our audit and our and our financial status here in Gilbert Public Schools so to begin I'm going to hand this over to Mrs Jennifer Shields to share the audit process and our results good evening Madame President members of the board Dr McCord thanks for allowing me a few minutes this evening to share with you the audit process results and um this will be a little bit of surprise for me Bonnie tells me that I have two slides up here so we'll see what the second slide is um here let's just see right now oh it's it's the single a report let me um start by first just going over some of the required Communications you all were um likely provided a letter format but I'll go through kind of the key um elements of the written format um we'll start with um the timeline for the audit it starts really once we Eng um issue an engagement letter and excuse me for the fiscal 23 audit that happened in May of 23 and then what that does is that allows us to get started on the actual audit procedures we perform procedures during quite a long period of time and um we started the procedures in June we did those procedures remotely we do um procedures we come out and do a site visit I believe we did in August as well as September and then we finished up the audit procedures on site here in October of 2023 and then after we're done with that what we do is we go back to our office and we take all of the information and we sort of compile it into this lovely um annual comprehensive financial report that I like to personally geek out over because it has lots of good information for you all um once that is put together we provide a draft of that to management and we did that in December it was December 20th so right before the winter holidays and then the report was ready for issuance on December 29th and then we're here before you tonight to present the results of that um the audit opinion itself was unmodified so that's first and foremost is to know that you're um essentially getting what's known as a clean opinion it's an unmodified opinion there was a new accounting standard that was implemented during the fiscal 23 audit which um we call spedas or spitas um and what it does is it um it requires um any long-term subscription based Information Technology arrangements to be analyzed and if there are long long term um liabilities associated with these long-term subscription agreements then you would report those inside your audited financials with respect to that um we worked with Finance staff and determined there were no um no items that needed to be reported um there there might certainly be some some of those agreements out there but they didn't rise to the um level that needed reporting um we did not have any difficulties that we encountered with management management was very helpful um Miss bets pointed out miss manin and miss torsa and a lot of other individuals um play a huge role in providing um our audit team with just a ton of information so that we can complete our audit procedures so um you know my hat is off to them because it's no easy feat to deal with all of our requests for for information so no difficulties encountered management was able to provide all information for us and there um were also no uncorrected misstatements that were required to let you know about so all of that is very good and then um shifting gears we'll talk about the single audit report as well so we have a draft of that out with management right now for review and approval the single audit report is the report that includes all of the federal assistance and the expenditures made uh by the district for things like um child nutrition programs Title One education all of what we call here at the district user money so those education stabilization funds all of those types of expenditures are part of the single audit and the single audit report is also where we would report any deficiencies in internal control if those were noted I'm happy to report that in the draft we are not anticipating writing any findings or deficiencies and internal controls and um our compliance opinion on the federal program that we tested is also unmodified and I did a look back um for a couple of years and you have a what in the single audit report um there is a schedule of expenditures of federal Awards and so that's the basis for the single audit there was over $38 Million worth of federal expenditures made by the district during fiscal 23 comparison to last year fiscal 22 there was about 41 million so as you kind of you know think about you know um I think the the Esser programs are you know winding down here in the near future um I looked back to prepandemic levels of federal funding and back in 2019 just for comparison purposes the district had about $20 million so you know we've over the last couple of fiscal years you've seen like almost double the amount of um Federal expenditures with um with the single audit sorry I have to peek at this um we looked at a total of five Federal programs this year so that's a lot of federal programs that get audited um just to draw your attention to the programs that we audited we looked at title one we looked at special education um we looked at what's called supporting effective instruction which is um the grants that we use to do a lot of um teacher professional development um we also looked at the education stabilization fund which is um those Esser funds and then last but not least what is referred to as the Corona virus state and local fiscal recovery funds which is a mouthful um that those monies are the monies that come from the governor's office and there there were some changes during last fiscal year but they had to do with um like a 100 day Grant and also um some summer enrichment type programs and so all of those Federal programs were audited this last year and so again um you know we we give a a huge shout out to finance for getting all of the information but a lot of the information that comes with the single audit we end up dealing with program Personnel so director of federal programs and the the individuals that run those Federal programs and so they um are to be thanked as well this evening so um those are all of my required Communications and with that I'd be happy to stand for questions or turn it back over to miss bets oh there is said it did I already say it oh there we go yes so oh yes um the um single audit is actually required when you as an agency spend more than $750,000 so obviously spending close to 40 million is significantly in excess of $750,000 so that's what um precipitates the need to have this type of audit and then of course um the two bullets which I stated which are what we audited in terms of the federal programs as well as the fact that we had no significant deficiencies nor material weaknesses thank you before down I there might be some questions okay yeah I I do have one excuse me um when you who makes the decision on which areas are audited every year I know you can't audit every single thing sure um are do you mean with for the single audit or just in general in general um well with the single audit there's actually a risk-based program um process that we follow um the the federal government issues they issued something called uniform guidance and that spells out what the requirements are and we have to look at the largest programs and audit those at least every third year um there's also a rule that the federal government or its agencies can identify a particular program as high-risk and that would require that um program to be audited in the single audit so in the case of Gilbert Public Schools both your Esser and your Corona virus um we call them Slifer state and local fiscal recovery funds um both of those are designated by the federal government as high risk because they are new and they were um part of those large um Federal Acts to um you know mitigate the spread of covid and get get um get everything back to normal so those funds were identified as high- risk so we were required to test those two programs um and then because of the requirement that programs be tested at least every third year for the large ones Title One and special education had not been audited for the past 2 years so those were required to be um audited as well um then with respect to other areas um Financial areas of the audit much of that is precipitated by compliance requirements so the uniform system of um compliance records that is issued by the auditor General's office has a lot of um procedures that we have to follow so like for example when we look at student attendance records or Student Activities um you know receipts and dispersements and those types of things those are because the state requires that and then other areas that we choose for financial audit have to do with our risk assessment process and determining whether or not there are high-risk areas within the district that need to be audited thank you other questions Mrs Paige um just a quick question thank you for your presentation if the public wants to access these reports is there somewhere they can go to look at them I'll defer to miss bets but um there is a requirement that they be posted on the district's um website so that post they're posted on the website thank you well I just wanted to express appreciation um we as school districts we have to be very careful to spend our money in a fiscally responsible way and I think the audit and the auditor General's report those kind of things help our community to know that we're using their text dollars in the way that we promised that they're used for the benefit of students so thank you for um ensuring that we're in compliance in the way that we're doing things any other questions thank you okay thanks is that it Mrs bets or do you have do you have more you have more right I thought so on now only two slides I should have known you should have known better of course so um the annual uh comprehensive financial report the act for this is the document that's in front of you that holds all of our audited financial statements so as I indicated a little bit earlier we wanted to just kind of walk quickly through this book so that you have an understanding of each of the sections so I'd like to put you through the top where it says statistical section it's the it's the the topmost tab so that's what we're going to talk about first and just wanted to share like three or four of the of the um tables that are in there um to give you an idea of some of the information that might be useful to you so um the statistical section includes Financial Trends Revenue capacity debt capacity demographic and economic information as well as some information regarding how we as gilber public schools operate so as an example we'll talk about this a little bit later but this is net position by component the last 10 years so for us this is the meat and potatoes of our audited financial statements because net position gives our bond holders gives the taxpayer gives you all information as to the financial status of Gilbert Public Schools but I wanted to to go back to 2014 2015 um in which if you look at 2014 we had a very high total net position and then you look at 2015 it was like oh my gosh what the heck happened we have a negative restricted a negative um restricted amount that that is a little bit hard to understand when you're going back and looking what could have happened between 14 and 15 well at that point in time it was due to a new gby regulation that then required us to include in our net position statement the um our proportionate share of Arizona State retirements unfunded liability so it's only at the net position financial statements it's nowhere else and it's important to note that Gilbert Public Schools is not responsible ever for paying that deficit the intent was to make sure that the community knew that there was an unfunded liability associated with a defined benefit program such as Arizona State Retirement so it's important to understand that because it really skews how we look um as an organization and then um the other thing that's back there in the statistical section it can show the district tax rate history the first thing I wanted to point out is the trend line note that from 2014 to 2023 our tax rate continues to go down but if you look at 2015 16 and 17 you can see where the secondary tax rate plummeted that was when we lost the um override altogether in fiscal 16 was when we did not have those override funds at all and then we received them back in 2000 for fiscal 17 and then you're looking at fiscal 20 versus fiscal 2021 where you can see that both the secondary as well as the total increased that was when we were successful in November of 19 to go from a 10% override to a 15% override so the point is is that by going back into the statistical section you can see some of these Trends and see what happened at least back 10 years um and then finally this is uh an example of an operational table that shows how Gilbert Public Schools is operating in terms of the number of types of staff so if you look at the supervisory position and this is only a sub of the table that's actually part of the statistical section but our supervision of instruction our highest level of leaders you can see from 2020 through 2023 it it has remained relatively flat we're not adding any um of our highest highest level administrators if you look at instruction our teachers and Librarians you can see it's stayed fairly consistent over the last 5 years and then uh finally if you take a look at student services the social workers well what happened in 2020 versus 2021 2021 was the first time that we were able to use the additional 5% of override dollars and we made a commitment that we were going to increase Mental Health Counselors and social workers at that point so that accounts for going from 24 to 34 between those two years and then finally if you look at the support and admin the bus drivers in 2020 going from 180 down to 160 at that point in time transportation was implementing the new routing software allowing us to be more efficient um and so then we were able to increase the number of FTE of our bus drivers and van drivers so those are uh good examples of what's back in the statistical section and the community might be interested in some of that information so before I go on are there any questions on any of those I did want to point out that the um excuse me the when we um the nonp passage of the override in 20 I believe was 2013 it takes a year and a half to 2 years before that actually um is implemented into our budget the vote was in 2013 that's correct um and then also 2019 it took until 2021 for us to actually receive those funds and then be able to use them so there's a a delay from when the voters vote until the implementation whether we get additional funds or whether we have to deal with the um consequence of losing so I just want people to be aware of that that's correct so it was actually in fiscal 2020 so November of 19 is in fiscal 2020 so during that year of the election the tax rate is already established which is why it has to be delayed until the subsequent year so obviously going from a 10% to a 15% it would impact the tax rate yes thank you yeah um so then the rest of the eer book we're going to zoom through that um so if you go to the next tab at the Top This is where you have your fund financials if you're interested in what's going on with classroom site fund inst structal Improvement or our food service fund the details of Revenue versus expenditures versus fund balance that will reside in that section the next section is required supplementary information this is a budget to actual gen uh general fund based budget to actual treatment um includes some other details regarding Arizona State Retirement and stuff like that if you go to the next section that is the notes section so this is notes that are related to our financial statements that might give you information about well what is our outstanding go go debt General obligation debt what is our outstanding debt how much is it when do we expect to pay it all off those kinds of things are in the note section and then the financial section is what I've what I've termed as the meats and potatoes of the audit financials so that includes your um your manage M discussion and Analysis which is the mdna that's required of of us in our office to describe what is the story behind the numbers that are being shared in all the financial statements also in there are your your governmental and your government-wide statements so the government-wide is the highest level and we'll go into some of those details in the next couple of slides so that is all I had about the act for book and so before I go into some details are there any other questions is this available online also to the public yes thank you you bet okay so the government-wide financials as I indicated to you just earlier the government-wide financials is really the organization as a whole and these financials are what they call a full acral treatment which means we have all of our outstanding debt that's going to be a liability for a long time we also have depreciation reflected here as as well as our um asset value so the value of all of our buildings those are all included in the government-wide financials so as an example here's our government wide net position this is again an indicator of the financial status of Gilbert public schools at the end of um June 30 2023 so I want to point uh point out the change in that position so a year ago in 2022 we actually increased our net position by nearly $55 million in the current fiscal year we actually increased our net position by nearly $33 million anytime you have an increase in that position it's a very it's reflective very positively on the organization and our bond holders and taxpayers should be should be pleased to see um this kind of result okay any questions on that SP can you give us um I'm sorry that I'm I'm just trying to figure out so what would cause the net increase like that just give me I'm trying to track this in my mind here so um since it's government-wide it's the entire organization so uh we had a bond sale at the end of June 2023 and it was about $19 million it's hard to spend $19 million in a couple of months um so that would contribute to the net position on a cash basis that's just an example everything like that okay thank you m okay so the governmental financials so this is on a modified acral basis so we don't have the data regarding um depreciation expense or regarding um our assets or our outstanding uh G General obligation debt um and this is closer to more of a operating type funds but it's aggregated into um categories and so the categories are the general fun fund special Revenue fund and they have Bond separate and Debt Service separate but this particular slide shows the expenses by function so this is that the governmental and all of those funds are included in this governmental comparison so what I wanted to point out was when you look at 2022 on the left and compare it to 2023 on the right I wanted to point out instruction so note that instruction in 2022 was about 58% of this p and in 2023 it was 57% of the Pi so very very close um but why do we care about that well it does give us an indicator of what our results will be when the auditor general provides to us in another couple of months the district spending report so we're always comparing the ACA results to the district spending report only because it gives us an idea of how we're doing um in terms of how we're spending money um it's not directly related because the rules regarding the district spending report that the auditor general uses um in Arizona is very different than this treatment in the Acer so specifically again let's focus on the 58% in 2022 we know what the district spending report was in 2022 so we're giving that information to you so the acfer said we're about 58% instruction the auditor General's report came out month two months later and it showed that instruction percentage was 59.6% so it does give us an idea of how we're doing and that we're spending our money where where we need to spend our money which is in the classroom any questions on that before I go any further okay um fund balances we've we're always talking about fund balance um because over the past three years due to the eser funds we've been trying to be very careful and having as much fund balance as POS possible to give us future flexibility and how we're able to spend monies so we've been focused on being very diligent about how we're spending money and trying to maintain uh a very positive fund balance so you can look at our total fund balance and remember this is this is governmental now this is all funds not just our operating funds this is not just the general fund or the M fund so I want to make sure that that's clear this is all of our funds classroom site fund bond funds all of them are included in this in this treatment so you can see our fund balance has gone down year uh year-over year by about $5 million 213 214 million down to 208 million but note these two items so you we have a policy it's policy DB in which you adopted some changes about 3 years ago allowing us to designate fund balances um so that it's it gives more information to the reader so the total the total um assigned we added assigned fund balance back in um back in 2021 I think we is when we approved that policy change and so in 20122 we assigned $2,150 th000 so the 20 million was the planned Arizona State Retirement contribution the prepay of the Arizona State Retirement contribution and the $50,000 was how much money we gave back to our schools because you all approved that any unspent discretionary monies at each of our schools would come back to them in the subsequent year so $150,000 was awarded to each individual School based upon how they spent in the year prior so that was the assignment back a year ago so now the other uh total assigned um for the current fiscal year 202 3 is about 5050 million but you can see that I circled this restricted this restricted fund balance so that $20 million that was assigned in 2022 became a restricted fund balance in 2023 because that's not free for us to spend we can spend it um it's it's was considered for this particular treatment as sort of an investment and we can't ever take that money out we have to use it to offset future Arizona State Retirement contributions and then remember that by doing that prepay we did earn about $400,000 of Interest earnings because we we made that that decision so just wanted to make sure that that there was a conversation about fund balance in this report any questions on any of that okay great so we're always sharing revenues by Source um you can see that back in fiscal 20 22 we had a County Equalization then you can see the county a revenue of $13 million but in 2023 the County Equalization was eliminated and you can see that the state picked up the difference so that was what I had shared earlier as well regarding County Equalization and then now we're into other items to note um this is just fun information that we've presented I know you guys are all laughing at me I Sherbon this is really fun so other items to note so Food Services Fund performance I'm not going to go through the details of this just see that in 2023 which is very similar to 2020 we were drawing down fund balance but in 2021 and 2022 we were actually building fund balance because that was when we were on the universal free um uh lunch breakfast and lunch so we really benefited from that so this is just that same Revenue Trend over time I just wanted to point out if you look at 2019 we always include 2019 because that was pre pandemic results and you can see when you look at 2019 and compar to 2023 they're almost they they're almost identical and you can see how the the pandemic related Universal free impacted Us in 21 and 2022 and though the free the universal free did not if you remember in 2020 that was the year which we were starting the covid pandemic so 2021 and 2022 were the two years in which we enjoyed the advantages of the universal free lunch again these are meals I'm going to zoom through this you can see the meal pattern again you look at 2019 versus 2023 again looking at 21 and 22 you can see that the alart sales were very low why would anybody spend any money when breakfast and lunch are free so you can see the difference in in the Food Service uh funds the employee benefit trust performance um enjoy sharing this with you so we had a gosh it seems like we've been doing this for a long time but it was just a year ago that we changed how we were going to operate the employee benefit trust and due to that change in 2023 we realized $522,000 in investment earnings not that that's our intention to earn money but it does offset some of our expenses and allows us to control those premium increases to our employees in the future um and then the bond fund finally the bond fund and note the um two uh highlighted rows so the revenue this is investment Revenue in the bond fund and note the transfer out so in Arizona this is not true in most States but in in Arizona statute requires us to we're allowed to earn interest on our bond proceed Pro seeds that come to us after a bond sale but we're not allowed to keep that interest we have to transfer that money into The Debt Service fund so it goes to um decrease the taxpayer um debt uh debt burden so and then finally note the the end of your balances so I just shared with you that there's $2.7 million well a little bit more than that may less than $10 million left in the bond fund today but remember that fiscal 23 is as of June 30 remember that we had a significant amount of work that is still actually going on using up those bond funds um so that $27.9 million was true at june30 of 2023 but has since been encumbered and drawn down leaving us um about $8 million in the full bond fund today and then this is just information for you again due to our short amortization our short time frame of amortization you can see that our um our projected outstanding principle at this year end is um or at 2023 year end is I'm sorry this is um projected so it was 152 down to 131 so we are um paying out our principle very quickly and then you can see the general obligation debt to assess value ratio Contin Ed to decline again um that's why we're able to use School Plant monies as freely as we are for unrestricted Capital type expenditures uh compensated absences is one part of the uh value that we must put onto that government wide at the highest level it's a long-term liability compensated absences are associated with our medical days that are not used our sick days um medical days or sick days um personal leave days vacation days that are expected to be paid out at at an employee separation we're obligated to calculate that annually and then finally this is the last slide um this is Arizona State Retirement so I shared a little bit about how this net pension liability impacted our net position back between 2014 and 2015 this is our proportionate share 276 million just for Gilbert Public Schools again just to reiterate we are not not responsible for paying that back that is really a liability for Arizona State Retirement the intent of the gby regulation is to make sure that the community and the taxpayer knew that there was this outstanding liability that eventually would have to be paid uh the next so the B section here is just a what they call a sensitivity analysis so as Arizona State Retirement does Better or Worse on their Investments you can see how that would increase Gilbert's net pension liability so if the if the discount rate or the interest rate earned by Arizona State Retirement is 6% instead of 7% our liability would go up to $48 million conversely if they're successful and have an average 8% return then our liability goes down to 167 million and then finally um in because we did do this we we took advantage of what they call a contribution prepayment program with Arizona State Retirement it's important for us to understand what is the annualized rate of return for Arizona State Retirement over time so in 20123 you can see that their annualized rate of return was 8% which was which was very um positive for both the net pension liability as well as just for our beneficiaries of the Arizona State Retirement throughout the State of Arizona and then these are just the contribution rates as they change over time and then this is just a note for you um we we discovered um through the audit committee that there was an error on our AFR pres presentation we decided to take this opportunity to show the error so you can see that $180 million is not 37% of the total $107 million is not 62% of the total so we corrected it on the next slide um so this is the the corrected and and we did correct it back to the October 10th presentation as well and after that I don't have anything further yay any questions well that was a very detailed presentation and we do appreciate it we do if you're not interested in hearing all this don't be on a school board that's my because that's our job that's our job to make sure that we understand how the finances are being managed and the only reason I I know know it's we spend a lot of time on this it is the most important financial report of any fiscal year and so um it's important that we go through some of it so thank you for your Indulgence and your time thank you thank you bnny you and I I just want to say that I you know being transparent is so very important and you do it very well you put the fun in itk you okay we'll move on to 7.03 teaching and learning academic Spotlight Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members I will hand it over to our assistant superintendent of teaching learning Mr Jared Ryan Madam president governing board Dr McCord thank you um as Bonnie alluded to a few moments ago um directing funds at specified programs is something that we take very seriously in ensuring that money is spent um really well and directed toward our classrooms and directed toward our students uh at all times and so you all have given us the the latitude by moving to a uh and supporting a modified school Round uh year round school schedule to support our students academically during intercessions and through various programs in summer and tonight um Miss uh Taylor and Dr Martin are going to brought a a group of people to join us here this evening and talk about the great work that they're doing and share with you um some of the great work going on with our students and in the buildings during those times thank you Mr Ryan governing board members Dr McCord thank you tonight for the presentation tonight we're going to be uh administrative services along with the teaching and learning department is going to go over with an overview of the various programs that we've been offering our students the last couple of years during our spring and fall intercessions as well as our summer school programs I want to note that these programs are separate from our traditional Elementary summer school and secondary um summer school programs those are totally separate programs as Miss bets had alluded these are paid out of Esser funds currently right now um and they uh have helped all of our students the first program that we're going to talk about tonight um is our elementary brain boot camp program then during the summer and it's designed to assist students with deficits in both the ELA and math math areas before moving on to the next grade level and tonight we have Mr Bill McDonald who will be covering that he is our current dean of students at neie Traditional Academy and Highland Park Elementary and then also Cheryl Pollock nuer our director of federal programs will be interpers throughout the presentation tonight giving lots of different data about our various K through2 programs Miss Taylor Madame President governing board Dr McCord at the secondary level our summer transition ition programs are focused on meeting the needs of students during those critical transition years between Elementary to Junior High and then again between junior high and high school um as Mr Ryan said with the adoption of that modified yearr round school calendar uh we made a commitment to the community to offer academic support during the second week of both fall and spring breaks uh and doing that K12 uh so in addition to that the secondary has taken it a little little bit further and offered great enhancement opportunities uh at both the junior high and high school during both the fall and the spring during those inter sessions to assist secondary students if they were failing any courses uh and so our team here tonight is going to give you the details of those programs as well as some of the data that we've seen over the last two years uh the secondary team we have Adam stro who is the dean of students at Gilbert High Christina Jackson who's the dean of students at Desert Ridge High School and Johnny stagel who's an assistant principal at mosqu Jr all right there we go uh good evening Madame President governing board and Dr McCord uh thank you for the opportunity to really showcase uh these programs that we offer here uh for our Gilbert students um I'm really proud of the the program we do uh for the elementary boot camp it's uh really gives a a a good opportunity for students to really address those who have the greatest needs of of those math deficits and Ela deficits um at the elementary level um and really uh it's a big Showcase of all the good programs and good departments and people we have here in Gilbert it's it's a collaboration of the federal gr grants programs um the CIA program contributes a lot to it um and builds the curriculum for it um and then obviously transportation and our teaching staff uh really uh the whole district is it touches the program and make sure it's as successful as it is um the way our boot cramp uh is is run and I'm just going to give you really an overview of what it looks like and really the days of lives of a student that uh enters our program um is like I said it it really addresses the students um who have those highest needs and really we tried to um give them a really rich and fulfilling experience that really addresses it from a hands-on experience um you know even though the the goal is to improve and show growth in that math and Ela we know with such a short amount of time that we do see those students uh three weeks in our program um you know as much growth as we can show that would be great but really the the biggest impact we can make on those students is if we can kind of foster or uh spark that that love of learning in those students something that Beyond those three weeks they can take back to their campuses and will help them really uh uh flourish and back in those environments students that maybe um up until that point uh maybe had lost that love of learning or kind of kind of felt a little bit more distraught about the you know what's going on in the classroom and and their their experiences there um so that was really our Focus as we put together the program uh the students uh were identified um really from as being the bottom cortile in their schools uh we looked at data from fastbridge and um their ASM mimic scores um and really identified where those students were um and then we sent the a list of those students to the campuses um we found over um uh checking and reviewing our processes over the last few years that letting the um the teachers the instructional coaches at those campuses who have that uh that close relationship with those families those students let them reaching out and kind of sending the invitation out and creating that connection with them um really served well in increasing our numbers over the last couple years um as the students were identified and ID uh invited uh then they enrolled in our program um and they they got to come to really three regional sites um where each one of sites served uh8 to nine schools um in those areas that way we kind of reached Each corner of the district and there wasn't kids that had to come from one side and had to come all the way over to the east side or the west side there was something in their in their neighborhood um it was 3 weeks in the summer uh they students were there for 4 days um during that time um they obviously had Fridays off uh but they would rotate um from classes you seen math Ela um uh science they would have a stem class and they would also Al uh rotate through a specialist class that was a big part of it um students were uh provided breakfast lunch and transportation free of charge the transportation was from their home campuses uh so if they would just go to there as a little Hub and we would make sure we got them over to uh the the campus where they were going to be at I'm going to see if I don't do this look at that it worked okay um the classes we we tried to keep small uh we capped them at uh 16 thereabouts and that was uh in intentional so that way the students would get as much um uh in individual attention they would have a little bit more feedback uh from the teachers on a personal level as much as possible um and obviously we know smaller class sizes helps helps helps them learn um like I said before we had the The Three core classes math reading and stem um the curriculum was created by uh our CIA department and um like I said it was all handson the kids were playing math games that and they they would they would tell you that this this is fun I love math this is great cuz they were they to them they were they were just playing Math Games the whole time and really um uh Christy who all put together uh really good math uh lessons that really really attacked those fundamental and foundational skills that we needed the students to really gain between the end of the grade they were in and going into uh the next grade um the uh specialist classes that we offered were music art and PE and the kids would rotate through that throughout the week just like they would during the normal school year um we uh established a el cohort and in that cohort uh the students that were in there um during their Ela time they would actually go to the ell elll teacher um and they would uh give them curriculum uh that they designed for them specifically and then we also had ell peras that was supported not only them in that elll classroom but they would go to the science and math classes to make sure the students were supported there um and then finally just to make sure that the the students had a great experience and we created that connection with the families uh we would run what was called a family engagement night um and that was a night where we would invite the parents uh out to not only um do some activities and um get the chance to see the kids on campus but really see a lot of the good work that they were doing um and each campus ran that separately and it just gave us the opportunity to work with those kiddos um I'm going to flip over to the next slide and I'm going to invite Cheryl up uh who's going to give you some of the more nitty-gritty details since I didn't put as many uh charts and bar graphs on my slides but just one question um abely on the previous slide you had bik so were're students who were identified were they able to attend the brain boot camp and then go to vik afterwards is that thank you yes absolutely good question they did so we worked uh hand inand with the vik program uh and so students who were in The Vi program they would be busted from those bik spots to uh the regional site that was uh closest to them so we had three viik sites um that they would go come from um they would work with us and then we would send them back to vik um and uh they would finished their day over at vik and so uh we worked really well with them to make sure and coordinate that that that was smooth and that the parents knew where their kids were and we all knew where everybody was going all right thank you you're welcome thank [Music] you thanks Jason Madame President board members and Dr McCord so brain boot camp in 2023 we had about 78 teachers um who participated to teach our students through that program we serviced approximately 877 students as um my colleague said it was three weeks Monday through Thursday about 5 and a half hours per day some of the feedback that we received from parents were things like it was a great program provided extra learning for my student helped my son so much this summer and he had a great time so we tried to really um marry you know the academic piece with also the kids having some fun it is summer and of course we tried to um marry those two things together and I think we were fairly successful the cost for brain boot camp is about $250,000 um all told approximately and um that's what we saw we spent last year although this last summer we did pay for um the boot camp out of the um summer enrichment Grant which came out of the governor's office so it was not this last summer was not Esser and it was not title it was um out of the governor's office so we've since closed that Grant out um as far as academic growth post boot camp of the students that participated we saw about 22% growth in math and about 26% growth in ela from beginning of year assessment to beginning of your assessment the next year questions about that okay sorry was that the total for the entire year a test from the beginning of one school year to the next school year or was that the growth per summer that was the growth that we saw over summer but we did it from beginning of the year year Data before the kids came to us to beginning of the year data when they exited the okay thank you all right I'm going to move move on to the spring and fall intercession boot camps which um were really the summer boot camp but then scaled back um to a one-week program 5 days uh and then specifically we targeted um so like in the uh let's say for example the fall intercession it' be those foundational skills and standards that the students uh were would have been getting in the first quarter and so same thing we would have identified the bottom quartile from uh from the data we retrieved from first quarter um and invited those students to our program um and it's obviously a little bit more rapid turnaround because we're trying to get those kids and get the invitations out before uh fall intercession vacation plans are are set um the students were still provided with the uh breakfast and transportation for free um it was a little bit of a shorter program so now instead of having um the specials uh classes for the students uh the students were actually with us for um a total of about three three three hours cuz they were with us for an hour and a half for math an hour and a half for ELA and then we would send them home um and then the uh um uh we serve the same three regions uh we we tried to marry those with the um uh the same schools that we had for the summer school and and that way the kids were at a familiar campus and then we rotates those campuses from year to year thanks so for elementary intercession we had 36 teachers participate we serviced 49 5 students um it was about 3 hours a day um and it it's been typically from my understanding held the second week of intercession again we got some really good feedback from families um one comment was my child was excited to tell me all the things he learned every day he even went home and um made his mom quiz him which was so cute and he was you know very excited with himself that he got all the answers correct so it it's nice to read those things um another comment was my child enjoyed going and learned some tools he will use when he's back in the classroom which is the goal um let me go back here for elementary intercession um the cost for that program is approximately $83,000 per intercession and that did come from Sr funds this year so as far as academic growth though the numbers we hope for across the board um were probably not as great as we would have liked to see it is a onewe program the turnaround round is very tight we did see some really great both growth in both math and Ela and if you look at the graph more specifically in third grade and fifth grade and then again in ela in fourth and sixth grade we saw a lot of movement there as well I'm just going to stay here no you're good awesome Madame President members of the board and Dr mcord uh I'm excited to be able to talk to you guys about the junior high part of it you know as we're going into the secondary no longer talking about elementary a little bit um but what's cool about the secondary this is talking about our transition programs of the summer um every junior high does relatively the same style um however I'm also going to be able to talk talk to you guys the excitement part that happens at mosqu junor so it's kind of a little bit different but talking about junior high as a whole um kind of similar to what's happening at the elementary uh schools uh it's however they're two-e programs um there's four days a week during the summer um ranging from anywhere to 3 to 4 hours in that morning time and the goal is to help help those individual students with Ela math um and then as well as helping them transition from that tough time of Elementary to Junior High if they're a little bit nervous going into that so they get some of the cool stuff and this is for all Junior highs um that take place they get get some of the swag they get to meet some of the teachers that they get to be paired up with um going into that seventh grade year as well as getting to know a counselor and some Administration and of course familiar with the campus as they transition into that point um what's kind of cool about what the junior highs do as well as mosqu Jor um with us being a little bit different is targeting those individual students specifically um so with that Ela math I'm helping those individuals out at mosqu Jr um we were lucky enough to be able to use some of our Title One monies uh to do a little bit different um so we were able to add in elective courses uh during that summer to extend that time so students transition from they're in different cohorts so they would go from English math to an elective or math English elective whatever the cohort may take place um in those electives would be your art your PE and then our facts the family and consumer science so the homech um for back in the day and so what as awesome with that is using some of that money we're able to get those students excited about mosquet Jr and excited about that transition that does take place um and we're also very benef uh benefited from uh everyone on that secondary part as well as the junior highs all of them across uh we're able to get the food and nutrition as well as Transportation un luckily mosqu Jr food and nutrition already hands out um their summer meals at mosqu Jr so made it a nice easy transition for our students as well to see where our cafeteria is uh where the allart session would be as well as our bus stops um so it was a very beneficial opportunity for our students to see those exciting things um and that's something that we have definitely taken on uh as well as our elll this is one more thing I just want to add in there our English language Learners uh they did have the opportunity to uh participate in our summer transition programs as well we did have a el teacher as well as our El peras um and of course our special education students as well we made sure to have peras and a social worker on campus during this time to be able to make sure that transition goes smooth but also students to feel more comfortable and at home and to get the benefits that they need academically to support them awesome pass Madame President members of the board Dr mcco I'm going to talk on the high school transition program at this point and what's nice about this program is it's very similar to the junior high so it's the students that have been identified as most at risk it's the students that might have academic concerns might have social emotional concerns might have behavioral concerns I just have attendance concerns these are kids that they struggle with going to school and making that transition from Junior High to high school is a big jump and so this was a program was developed four hours per day and the idea was to ease that transition for atrisk kiddos and so these are it was a very intentional process of defining who these students were it was done in collaboration with the junior highs and this is done at all of our high schools but they all look a little bit different based on the individual needs of each high school so I'll talk a little bit more to what was done at Gilbert High but know that this is a very similar process across our district and so we had two ELA teachers and two Math teachers and those students attended an Ela block and a math block during the day but we also were very intentional with at least of the Gilbert side of things of those students we had in the program we tried to match those students with those same English and math teachers for their school year so they already have some of those relationships built they already know some of those teachers and they because these are also we're matching those students they also know some kids coming in on day one so it's a nice little hey I know somebody when I get here we also build in an advisory period and so they have a time in between the ELA block and the math block where they could learn more about opportunities available to them at Gilbert High School and so we had days where they had student council presenting things to them they had days where they had Athletics presenting different opportunities for them Performing Arts band Orchestra choir presenting opportunities for them got to learn about various clubs robotics speech and debate we have a jam Club where we basically have a rock band club on campus kids got to learn about these different opportunities right right and then they also got to learn about some of the resources available to them counseling services and just being able to know some of those processes and opportunities for them before they walk in on day one and then like the junior high and like the elementary Transportation was provided Food Services was provided and all that was provided free of charge for the students so any questions no you answered my question I was wondering about Jam Club so thank you for so started out as a few kids wanted to learn how to play guitar there was a teacher that said yeah we can do that and now we have like 40 plus students in there multiple bands they put on shows it's it's a it's organically grown it's acoustic guitar electric guitar both okay yeah I'll come visit but I think I'll bring my head out I'll help you out y I thought that meant making Jam like raspberry that was that was my question I'm like that sounds start that so actually I went to high school a very long time ago back east and I was in a class that was actually called Rock Band I got credit for that it was crazy but a lot of fun a lot of kids would come to school for that it's what brought me to school my entire senior year so so with regard to the secondary transition programs as my colleagues have said we have four Junior highs including um GCA typically 8 days over 2 weeks five high schools each school has a little bit of a different program um and the cost for um those transition programs are approximately $888,000 um all up with the exception of mosquite as they have typically used some of their title funds for those programs um and their program has typically cost about um $33,000 there was no charge to them for food um due to their title status so that was good for them um and again all the programs have typically um focused on um academics electives and then support in that transition from you know school to school I do I do have a question um because brain boot camp we paid for that with Esser funds and grants and this intercession I'm not sure if we're going to plan to continue the brain boot camp but the intercession was part of the reason why we changed our calendar so what is our thoughts about how we're going to uh provide for these programs going forward out of our budget well it's a great question we're going to budget for it because that was a commitment we made uh as when we change calendars and so we'll have to figure out one way or another to fund it okay yeah all right just wondering thank you madam president board members and Dr McCord I get to talk to you about secondary intercession um this is a grade enhancement opportunity for our students so what we look at with this is the grades that come out of the first and the third quarter so once we identify which students are in need of a grade enhancement we invite them to join us for intercession um we offer specific courses in math English and science for junior high and high school um we have two locations Gilbert High School and Desert Ridge High School um and what we do is we kind of organized them into two different potential classes they can make they can get the grade enhancement for one or two and so we have an a session in a b session we run about 8: to noon um what we do then is we will recommend back to the home campus that they get a 60% that's the max this is why we focus on kids who really need the enhancement as opposed to finding a place for kids to get enrichment if that makes sense a little difference there we do offer free breakfast and transportation um and we hire about 20 certified teachers for that we employ uh the CIA curriculum and we give teachers a box with everything ready to go in it so they just deliver this information it's very organized and well-run and the kids really seem to enjoy it so we've had a very good success rate with that Cheryl will talk to you about the data on the other side but we're looking forward to doing this in Spring as well Adam runs it at Gilbert High School and I'll be doing it at Desert Ridge so as you just heard for our intercession at the high schools or our grade enhancement program we employ approximately 20 teachers approximately 185 students have participated and it costs about $70,000 per intercession to run some of the survey feedback that we've received is that um this session helped my daughter get up to speed with math and helped her confidence and we hear that a lot that students go they get some you know remediation some of those skills that they may have missed and then they go back feeling a lot more confident which is really nice to hear um one comment was he loved the smaller class sizes and felt he was improving his learning so it's nice for students to be self-aware about those things as you can see in 2022 of the students who um who attended uh 61% of those students maintained Ed a passing grade at the end of semester so we're pretty excited about those results and in 2023 of the students who attended we saw about 54% of them also maintain passing grades at in that class at semester's end questions about that any questions at all I've got a couple questions sure um going back to Jill's to miss Humphrey's question about being able to uh continue this program um has it has uh have you ever considered getting student volunteers instead of hiring um or Contracting with teachers to run these uh to run these programs during the intercession and during summer do you mean to tutor in classes or uh yeah if you get some you know some of the some of those students at the higher high school levels that are excelling come in and help some of the elementary kids or help some of the Junior High kids instead of using certified teachers for that I I don't know if we've ever thought of that um this is my first year so um I've just kind of built on what was already in place but certainly it's something we can take into consideration I think what what we've considered in the past is if like NHS wants to come in and help out sometimes they have to log in C hours that's one thing but you also need a certified teacher there for supervision purposes primarily uh they're still under our watch and so um plus if there's grade enhancement we want a certified teacher in there making sure especially at the high school level to be a part of that so and I I think um we're dealing with students who need extra instruction and they need really competent teachers who know how to give them what they need a a tutoring maybe a tutor to help and come in is fine but we need people who are professionals to give that really good instruction that helps them since they haven't caught it on the first go round as much maybe to bring up their understanding so they go forward with a solid platform for Learning and that's what we're seeing obviously we've seen a lot of students come at last you know the end of semester and maintain that grade which is really the goal so they don't have to retake it in the summer or whatever that looks like for their family um we've also had a lot of really good feedback from teachers they're excited to teach in smaller classrooms um with fewer kids so that they can really spend that individualized attention and time with those students thank you uh my second question have you ever considered opening this up to the the broader Community to include kids that are homeschooled as an in an effort to to expose them to the public school and perhaps attract some of those parents and students into the public school you you know little one week preview how well they could do at a public school I'm not sure you guys I know at the we have not done that at the elementary tuition summer school we routin routinely each year in the summer school program get students that are homeschooled as well as charter school students I know last year I'd say 10% of our elementary summer school program which is a fee based are from non-gps students this though we've targeted towards helping our current GPS students because we're using the data and really helping at the elementary level um that bottom cortile of students that are struggling and with with respect to all these programs they're run out of federal funds and typically we can't invite students that are not our own students into those programs thank you sure anything else I had a couple questions sure is there anybody else um just piggybacking off the budget questions from Mrs Humphrey and Mr Thompson and maybe Bonnie do we have people that are on the lookout for more grants cuz you T you are okay that would be me so I know you mentioned that we got one from the governor's office so we're digging deep all the time looking for Grants I've been looking at the governor's office um and looking at the state to see if there are any special grants that are coming out um the only thing that we've been able to latch on to currently is the Arts consumable Grant which is the one that I applied for um and we received but to date I have not found anything else um that could help us with these programs but I am still looking even at the federal level yeah I at the federal level all thank you for doing that no it's my pleasure no stone and turn right when we need financing Miss paig real quick also sorry I apologize um she won't say it but Cheryl is constantly looking she's pretty modest so you'll get text messages late and I hey I think I found something I mean she is constantly going and to her credit the Arts consumable Grant and I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars are coming our way 97,000 because of of what she found out there also then she's working with folks within her Department um on attending trainings to be able to identify support right for Grants um there's sometimes language followup detail that you need with with them and so she's not only herself but strengthening the entire team and so we're excited about the future holds that way I just took my program specialist to um a conference in New Orleans for federal program directors um and other Federal type programs um where we got a lot of legal mumbo jumbo for for those of us in the federal World um it was it was great learning and she she got an opportunity to learn a lot about it we came back and she started taking some grant writing classes um and my staff really is all about learning and and continuing their growth so we're all working really hard to figure out how to pay for all these things for students well thank you I appreciate that and I know grant writing is an art for it's painful it's it's really painful one last question um are there students that you've identified that you might not be able to invite or are we leaving kiddos behind I think that as we've identified so we have two constraints we have um the constraint of seats available and um whether or not parents want to send kids so we look at the bottom 25% of students where they're doing how they're doing and where they're sort of lacking in skills and then we send out invites to um we send a list out to each of the schools and they send out invites cuz it's better coming from their their own teachers and their own campus um and a lot of times we get those kids um and a lot of times parents are just on vacation and they don't want to send their kids or the kid doesn't want to go or something like that um we had a couple of those situations this last um go rounded intercession but for the summer we we get a lot of the kids that we identify thank you so much for all of you I I wanted to I Just Want to Thank You for um helping us better understand all of the work that you've put in and all that you're doing for the students I think that's amazing that we are able to catch those students if the first quarters gone by and they're not really grasping the concepts they have a a second opportunity in a smaller class size to learn that material and I think that is going to be huge it's one of those things where it's continuous Improvement and over time is going to make a big difference a very personal story about that my daughter speak at the mic so we can hear you and the people at home can hear you very personal story so my daughter was failing algebra and took part in the great enhancement um program prog and wound up doing very well in years um as she moved forward in high school so for us as a family it was a huge huge blessing so good thank you thank you and I want to just just want to say thank you to these five administrators but there are a plethora of other administrators that have run these programs over the last three years you can imagine that a lot of our dean of students and assistant principles they're busy running their schools during the school year but during our inter sessions In Summer Schools they're also providing the support for our programs to continue to excel as well as the teachers too um granted they're all getting paid a little extra but we know how hard teachers and our administrators work and they've stepped up to the plate and really helped um our students that need extra support K12 Mrs W yes I just wanted to also say I appreciate that we are taking the opportunity to offer this to our students and I really appreciate that we're evaluating and Reporting on the data of Are We being successful in what we're doing because we just we want to get better at it so I'm glad that we're looking at it and saying how can we better reach the students how can we better accommodate them how can we better what Focus can we be and I could see that it looked like you have adjusted and Chang as the years go and I think that's really exciting for our students for our staff so I appreciate it thank you very much I will move to uh consent agenda item consent agenda items do I hear a motion for approval of the consent agenda I move that we approve the consent agenda items as as listed thank you Mrs wood is there a second second thank you Mrs Paige so it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda item as presented all those in favor please signify by saying I I I opposed so on a 5 Z vote um we'll now move to 9 01 action item appointment of Shawn Lynch as the principal of mosqu high school for the 2425 school year do I hear a motion I move to approve um Sean Lynch Lynch as the principal of mosquit high school effective tomorrow January 31st 2024 through the 20242 school year thank you Mrs hre a second second thank you Mrs Paige it's been moved and seconded that we approve the appointment of Sean Lynch as the principal of mosqu high school for the 24 25 school year and I will wait until after the vote for a discussion so all those in favor please signify by saying I I I so on a 5- z vote Mr Lynch would you like to say some words or any of the board members that want to say anything too at this point uh the governing board and superintendency I'd first like to say thanks for having faith in me uh mosqu a good place uh there's there's good people there there's good administrators there's there there's good teachers there's good support staff and good students and uh um we'll keep working hard and and do the best we can so thank you board members anybody like to add you might get question again thanks for sticking around for so long can can we take a a a little short break to congratulate him sure yeah I just wanted to say one thing I didn't get a chance earlier to to say but I had the opportunity to go meet with you in October for about an hour and I just could not be more impressed from that meeting and am so excited that we have you back I remember asking you at the end of that meeting how can we take interim off the beginning of the principal and you looked at me and you're like I don't know probably not so when this came up I couldn't have been more thrilled so thank you so much for coming back and serving those great kids and the students over at Ms high school so we're very grateful thank you okay we'll come back in five minutes okay h [Music] but it was so weird cuz it went to that my what happened to [Music] [Laughter] them what happen no I was that's the presentation it didn't matter but then I'm like nothing nothing nothing oh wow they that when they call all of youright [Music] [Laughter] is no I looked at all of them you said that and I page [Music] okay we're all back and we're very happy to have Mr Lynch continue his um Journey as the mosqu high school principal we'll move on to 9.02 FY 2023 annual comprehensive financial report and this one we do have a roll call vote Mrs Wilson so do I hear a motion to approve the I move that we approve the 2023 annual comprehensive financial report thank you Mrs humre um second I'll second second thank you so it's been moved and seconded is there I don't believe we have any discussion but if anybody has anything they want to say because we've already gone through it otherwise we'll take the roll call vote which is something that is required by the state so Mrs Wilson Mr Chad Thompson here oh you have to say name it's I IR name say we're glad you're here but we need to know if you're if you're going to vote Yes or yes or no okay I thank you Miss Ronda page I Miss Lori wood I miss Jill humph I miss Sheila ug jetti I I by votes passes thank you Mrs Wilson we'll move on to 9.03 fiscal year 2023 single audit reporting package and this once again we have a roll call vote required so do I hear a motion I move that we approve FY 2023 single audit reporting package thank you Mrs wood second second thank you Mrs paig it's moving seconded I believe we've also discussed all of that if anybody M jetti yes just I just wanted to point out that what's posted is still in draft form okay so um I just wanted to make sure that it's still appropriate for you to accept by roll call vote and if there is anything other than typographical errors we will bring the report back all right thank you Mrs bets okay so it's been moved and seconded that we approve it in draft form and it will any any corrections will be made and brought back to us um Mrs Wilson Mr Jetty I here miss humph I miss Lori wood I miss Ronda pagee I Mr Chad Thompson still here and I Madame President all board members voted with I thank you Mrs Wilson so on a vote of 5-0 it's been approv appr D 9.04 policy development first read of policy EBC emergencies um do I hear a motion so moved thank you Mrs humph a second second thank you Mr Thompson Dr McCord thank you madam president govern many board members before you we bring uh policy EBC emergencies uh this has this and the other policies on the docket this evening have went through the first read with our policy committee and uh if it's approved or any changes we'll go back for the second uh time around with the policy committee and come back for the second read the addition to this portion of the policy reads as follows emergency response plans developed by the governing board are required to address how the school and emergency responders will communicate with and provide assistance to students with disabilities and again uh everything that we'll have tonight is as a result of what went through the legislature and approved this past summer thank you any discussion hearing none I'll call for the vote for the first read of policy EBC emergencies all those in favor please signify by saying I I I opposed so a 5- z vote and it will go back to the policy committee for the second read 9.05 policy development first read of policy JK student discipline do I hear a motion so moved thank you second second okay thank you very much uh so it's been moved and seconded um Dr mcord thank you madam president governing board members this policy uh JK uh there's an addition to it this relates to student discipline and it states a school district is exempt from having to meet the prescribed criteria for the suspension of a student in kindergarten or the first through fourth grades if either a expulsion is required pursu of a ars1 15- 841 G due to a student's possession of a firearm at school or B the suspension does not exceed 2 days and the aggregate suspensions for the P do not exceed 10 days within a school year this uh language uh will appear in the next policy as well thank you any discussion hearing none I'll take a vote on first read of policy JK student discipline all those in favor please signify by saying I I I opposed so on a 5- z vote and then we'll move to 9.06 policy development first read of policy JKD student suspension expulsion due process rights do I hear a motion so moved thank you Mrs Paige a second second thank you Mrs Humphrey move seconded Dr McCord again the same exact language from the previous policy it's just in two different policies uh within our policy manual thank you any discussion hearing none I'll take a vote for the first read of policy JKD all those in favor please signify by saying I I opposed so on a 5 Z vote and we'll move to 9.07 policy development first read of policy jlh missing students do I hear a motion so moved thank you Mrs Paige second second thank you Mrs humph uh Dr McCord thank you madam president govering board members in this policy missing students uh in the last paragraph of the first page it says currently within five days after enrolling a transfer student from a public school or from a private school the school request directly from the previous School a certified copy of the student's record that has been legislatively changed from 5 days to 10 days and is reflected in this policy thank you any discussion hearing none I'll call for a vote on the First Street of policy jlh all those in favor please signify by saying I I I opposed so on a 5- Zer vote and they will be all taken to the next committee meeting I'm sure um requests for future agenda items if you have any requests for that please see do McCord or myself anything anybody okay thank you board committee reports I will start with insurance trust I do not have anything to report tonight uh Mrs Betts covered some of the important parts in the the report that she did earlier um legislative representative Mr Thompson nothing tonight thank you thank you city of M Mesa leaz on Mrs wood just that we are going to work with councilman summers in preparing for the school connect coming up with the East Mesa schools in late February so I'm looking forward to that okay thank you um town of Gilbert Lee is on an audit committee Mrs humph well we just went over the audit tonight so that is all good for the time being and then uh for the town of Gilbert there was a public hearing there will be an increase in our utility bills um I hope people will go and look at the website CU they get did an excellent job of explaining why that increase is warranted and there's also a um a meeting um at the library on W on Thursday February 29th on learning to conserve water so in conjunction with um looking forward to an increase in our utility bills um you can go to that water conservation class so thank you Mrs humre and then Gilbert Education Foundation Mrs Paige nothing to report tonight thank you thankk you Dr mcord meeting dates thank you upcoming meeting dates February 6th board work study brief board business meeting February 13th is a board policy committee meeting and February 27th is our board business meeting thank you Dr McCord do I Heir a motion to adjourn so moved thank you Mrs Humphrey second second thank you Mrs Paige it's been moved and second it that we adjourn all those in favor please signify by saying i i i i and there's no oppose so we are adjourned thank you very much for everybody that's here or

[Music] good evening I'd like to welcome you to our Gilbert Public Schools regular board meeting for January 30th 2024 call this meeting to order and we'll start with a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance led by Mrs humph thank you it's now time for our oh oh I I didn't realize it there he is sorry my my apologies we're going to do the pledge again everybody know should have looked to my right my apologies to you Mr Thompson uh we'll go to the Roll Call Mrs Wilson [Music] please here here Mr Chad Thompson here miss lorri wood here miss Jill humph here Madame President you have all members are present you have a quorum thank you Mrs Wilson we'll move to agenda item three approval of the agenda do I hear a motion to approve the agenda as presented so moved thank you Mrs humph a second a second thank you m wood so it's been moved and seconded that we approve the agenda all those in favor please signify by saying I I I nay 5 we'll move to the superintendent recognition Awards Dr McCord thank you madam president govering board members if you join me in front of the Das for this evening's recognitions my wife left me in our in our driveway and drove off about sorry we're doing a little counseling here good evening everyone how are you how are you it's Tuesday night this is the best show in town come on guys tonight we have a couple groups we want to recognize uh the first group is our spelling be winners okay um each year Gilbert Public Schools well each year every school holds a spelling be competition and then the winners from the schools come together and we have our yearly District spelling be competition and that was held last week and I got to tell you what it was phenomenal um we have some exceptional students within our district um and I'm just very proud of them so we have eight folks that we'd like to recognize tonight can I have all of our spelling be winners contestants up here first come on up that's you that's [Applause] you now is spelling easy look at them look at they're like you guys good evening no is it easy no no did you have to study for this no you know you can tell it wasn't the oratorical contest now I'm going to give you guys the microphone you need to tell me and everybody out there your first and last name what grade you're in and what school you represent okay ready we're going to start off with you this is just so you know when you get older and you have this is like me letting other people do the work just so you know ready all right go ahead I'm Dylan Hunt I'm in sixth grade I go to Point Elementary I'm Rea Singh I'm in fifth grade and I represent NE I'm Ava gasparo I'm in seventh grade and I go to Gilbert accelerated I'm Lauren agular and I and I'm in fifth grade and I represent giber Elementary I'm Natalie Baron I'm in e8th grade and I represent South Valley Junior High I'm meline Arnold in sixth grade and I represent Pioneer Elementary I'm a Colette I'm an e8th grade and I represent Highland Junior High now we did have a winner overall winner for our competition and Miss Singh do you want to tell us a little bit about how you won this competition honestly I don't know it just came to [Music] expound a little bit on not it was just an unexpected when I found out that I want I was like is this real is this reality how is it possible what word were you given your final word to win the competition you remember fluide say it again fluoride can you spell that for everybody f l u o r i d fluoride wow there it is [Applause] congratulations all of these young men and women up here are able to go to the regional spelling be which is February 16th at 9:00 a.m.

in this room 229 and a public notice will be posted on the legislature's website I'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that due to time restrictions on our hearings we will be limiting testimony to 1 minute per testifier per bill for people participating remotely please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify when I call your name unmute yourself and your time will begin after your minute is completed staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient matter thank you and with that I would like to welcome my committee members Vice chair Senator Kim Senator Troy Hashimoto and Senator forella members we are on item sb272 relating to education authorizes the Department of Health to require the Department of Education to report Corona virus disease 2019 potential outbreaks or other public health emergencies and related information in a manner most appropriate to public health and safety as determined by the Department of Health repeals the requirement to publish the report on the department of education's website and see to testify we have superintendent Hayashi please Aloha Cher kidani Vice chair Kim members of the committee Kei Hayashi superintendent testifying on behalf of the Department of Education the department stands on its written testimony in support of this measure thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you superintendent members any questions thank you next to testify Kenneth think director Department of Health you're not kenth good afternoon chair Vice chair members of the committee thank you for the opportunity I'm Sarah kemell here on behalf of Dr thinkink um I'm the state epidemiologist we stand on our written testimony in support of this measure and I will stand by for question thank you Sarah I'm not sure that everyone has read the testimony but if you have any questions let me know you can call her back do we have her testimony did you provide WR [Applause] testimony senator has a question I don't know if better you or superintendent but how many cases are we aware of the cases consistent decreasing um Senor I can get that information Dr Kim would you know if the current case load uh of Corona virus and I don't have the number for schools right here I could get it for you but um overall the case load has gone down in this last calendar year compared to the prior uh Senator um I'm being told that the daily average is about five cases about five cases so uh I guess the question is the necessity of the report um so from the do standpoint now we are really um working with doe when there is a potential outbreak situation so we no longer require each and every case to be reported to the um we aren't doing contact tracing of each case so the um reason that we were getting those reports before is now defunct so um we feel it is more appropriate for us to work with doe on potential outbreak detection and response okay and you support this superintendent so you support reporting how we we support um removing the requirement for us to report oh okay so this got it thank you thank you we do have um one person on Zoom to testify uh from the deputy uh attorney general and H Uchi and are person oh she jumped out of the [Laughter] TV good afternoon Cher kidani members and herui Department of the Attorney General um as we set forth in the testimony under this bill we see that there's a potential for the doe to be asked to provide what's called personally identifiable information under the family educational rights and Privacy Act um pursuant to furpa the doe must determine whether there's a health or safety e Mercy that warrants the release of personally identifiable information before it can provide that type of information so to avoid any potential fura violations we provided um suggested language in our testimony that we would recommend be added to the Bill thank you and members questions I'm not sure if was answered I still still on my pone um so you know for the reporting um still is it still going to be published on you guys website oh no um should this spill pass Senator that would not be a requirement yes but previously it was yes okay cuz then you can provide that cuz what they saying that they cannot find them on the link on doe page uh it it should be still there yeah the link should be there okay thank you thank you chair thank you questions of the superintendent members thank Youk members further questions questions okay we had someone on anybody else on Zoom to testify yes please come forward thank you chair and vice chair Angela Melody young testifying on behalf of cares um so this policy advises the school system to publish covid-19 related information as a collaboration of do and doe and it's good to get do and doe to sit at the table and to go over Health emergencies um we have a culture with the focus on working all day without rest or some people don't work at all so it's good to get to know health obesity awareness emergency preparedness nowadays there's so much information about mental illness smoking Vapes bullying how do you get it to the kids without without there being duplications in the research perhaps um this um committee can consider uh instead of do and doe rewriting the reports one can access the federal resources and you'll find the work is already accomplished um for example I can go down the list of what the federal websites provide CDC has basic information about heart disease foodborn illness environmental health growth charts interactive database tools smoking and tobacco um and some of the research is very relevant to students and CDC covers all diseases basically and CMS has emergency declarations such as National opiate crisis information thank you members questions thank you thank you any anyone else with wishing to testify on this matter member questions further questions I have a question question um superintendent are you currently is uh do we currently having the stats up on your website still yes we do okay so what is the average number now you said five five yes yes and that's been for the last October October through January chair okay so the last four months four months thank you thank you question um Department of Health what is the Department's position are you guys wishing the um Department of Education to continue posting this information or do you think that this pandemic is um not done but not necessarily to keep posting this information yeah thank you for the question while covid-19 is certainly not over um we are moving out of the pandemic phase into an endemic phase and we are aware that now many people may not even test when they have symptoms so to try to report each and every case that is reported to doe is really only reporting a subset of um people families that choose to report that to the doe so we do believe that that is no longer an effective way of tracking what's truly going on as far as covid incidents um so we don't recommend publishing those case numbers at at this point in time thank you for your testimony okay members if there's no questions no further questions we're going to move on to the next issue Senate Bill 2069 relating to the Department of Education appropriates funds to the Department of Education for the establishment of three full-time equivalent curriculum specialist two positions and 10 full-time equivalent FTE classroom leader POS teacher positions for K papahana kapuni schools K testifying is superintendent please my name is and I'm the director of The Office of wine education um the department stands in strong support of this request given um the growth that we've experienced within the line language immersion program over the last 10 years um we Advocate that additional classroom resources U be provided to our schools as well as um program staff to be able to continue to develop the supports that are necessary for um what happens in our schools I'll be available for questions um as needed thank you can you state your name again please you say Co is there anyone else here wishing to testify please come forward aloh my name is Kyle K Naka um I am a former Kaki teacher I was a kumu at kak an and k um I wanted to share my experiences to illustrate um the need for this bill this is my first time ever testifying at any State uh for any state bill but I thought that this was important enough that I should um while I was a casual h um part-time teacher at um I saw so many things that Illustrated the need for more kumu there I saw classrooms full of full of H 29 hanana full classroom was so full you could uh hardly fit students um as a science teacher the kumu there was responsible for teaching all four subjects in high school that's of biology physics chemistry uh plants and animals of a and for that kumu they bear so much of a burden to develop curriculum for all of those subjects um adding another kumu adding more kumu is something that would allow those H allow those kumu to be able to uh spend more time to develop curriculum to where in any other school they would have one kumu per subject in this school uh having in these schools the one kumu has to handle all four topics and this is something that would um allow them to have the time that they need to support our hamana uh similarly when I was a kumu at kamoko I was uh um was a first year kumu I was um in many ways needed a lot of help but at the same time the kumu were there to help me they were um they were also kumu they were teachers they were administrators who also had the same burdens that they had to bear I had to stop myself I mean I don't know if I should have but I did I didn't want to burden them more by asking for help so I didn't um and that put more responsibility on me the specialist positions that this bill asks for is something that would allow for um would allow for those kumu new kumu like me to get the help that they need for their uh to give the education their home on it deserve so all for your support of this bill um I'm sorry I'd also like to add by adding when I was at Anu most of our honic came from the West Coast by adding positions this allows us to add more sights so thatana don't have to wake up at 5:00 a.m.

May I have a motion thank you Felicia thank you Peggy any any conversation about that so all those in favor I okay it passes we will go off recording now Kira

[Music] thank you and Welcome to our senate committee on education today is Wednesday January 31 it is 3:00 p.m. and we are in room hearing room 229 this meeting including the audio and video of remote participants is being streamed live on YouTube you will find links to reviewing options for all Senate meetings on the live and On Demand video page of the legislator's website this Zoom meeting and YouTube live stream will include the 3:00 agenda for this committee on education in the unlikely event that we must abruptly end this hearing due to Major technical difficulties the committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on Wednesday Wednesday or or Wednesday February 2nd Friday sorry okay I was wondering you have Wednesday and Friday on Friday February 2nd 2024 at 3:01 p.m.

and come into school to and tell the kumu kumu I had to I only got four hours of sleep last night I couldn't do the homework this is something that would help H in so many different ways Mahal members questions so you said you were formerly a teacher or you still teaching now yes no I'm in the Air National Guard um I uh make a lot more money in the Air Force okay um and you know it's just a temporary thing I think my job is supposed to be on hold um but I um I've enjoyed a really cushy lifestyle with the Air Force um and the kumu have to juggle that know know that they're having all of this you know taking on all this burden but they could be making so much more money having a much easier time outside right right so you you essenti did you go through the certification or you just you said you were casual so you were just casual the whole time no I'm sorry I should have clarified I um got my certification with goola the uhila program um so I was full-time at kamoko um when I was a casual hire an I supported the science teacher who had to do all those four topics I see all right very good thanks thanks for your passionate testimony thank you so you taught what what levels oh I'm sorry High School secondary so when I was at Anway I taught 9 to 12 when I was at kamoko I was I'm sorry when I was on casual H uh I helped the 9th to 12 teacher teach the 10th grade when I was at Koko as a one teacher I taught all of seventh to 12th grade science okay so and you teach you said four subjects they do only four subjects um so ninth grade biology 10th grade chemistry 11th grade physics but they teach the whole curriculum uh at an when I was there that's how it went yes okay so so do they teach like um um fiscal fiscal literacy financial literacy classes as well in home you know way um I'm not too sure about what I I'm sure they must have had something but you know that wasn't my area so okay thank you thank you K signed up to testify is also assess is she here uh Kanani no Mak moku no anyone else here wishing to testify hello chair Vice chair members of the committee good to be here to pres president of hsta uh sorry I submitted late testimony hopefully you received it um we've started up what's called a Hawaiian education special committee at hsta because the issues that are affecting our hawaian emersion teachers and teachers that teach all the Hawaiian studies courses are just getting worse and worse as um they're not getting the support that they need a lot of times what they see is that the doe continues to get support support staff to help them but as kapuni has grown grown awesomely they have not grown in their support staff to be able to support the teachers who are struggling as you just heard to make sure that our students have all the lessons they need and so forth and so on so we strongly support this bill uh to have more support staff and more teachers in the classes that is growing throughout the state thank you members questions be I'm not sure if this is directed to you but for put um you know the positions that would you know give them to have the capacity to deliver instructions and you know just having more uh ways of uh helping out with the kids um in my district we don't have but we know that n one of the only schools in the webite that has Hawaiian emergency um program this something that would help other areas or just Mahala for the question um the requests for the positions that we have in place now are to um uh be able to fill positions that already exist um in schools that do not have enough uh resources to be able to establish permanent positions at the CL at this in the classroom level um I will add that in your District specific specifically um we opened a middle school haai language immersion program coule Middle School um last year and so they started seventh grade H yeah seventh grade H language immersion in Cap Middle School one of the positions would be to sustain that teaching line and then to add a second line um because they do intend to expand to grade eight next year thank you J thank you yes do they teach a c compliment of everything that's taught at doe the the intention is to be able to provide a educational um platform that addresses all of the content area of the Department of Education um but that also is done differently depending on the resources that are available at a school like you heard um from previous testifier or the um Charter School kamak um they are a full K12 Hawaiian language immersion site and so the intention is that every all of the teachers on staff can Oli in order to deliver the full so like financial literacy is that something that is being taught it's a requirement I I it's not being taught as a requirement in our coin language emerging schools however in a personal experience because my both of my children graduated from Kay an as a part of their personal transition plan they did have assignments embedded in that program that uh had them address how how they would make plans for funding a college degree moving forward or moving into their career I do know that that happened as in their in their personal transition plan work so they get a understanding about student loans and and interests and all kinds of stuff so they can survive in in financially I I know that's something that we're looking at the schools have it as an elective as well so um it's concerning because a lot of kids come out and don't understand what the impacts are to some of their loans that they're taking out and saddled they they my son definitely had to plan for how he would fund um his college education within the program within the transition plan program okay how how many students are graduating in the Hawaiian imersion program right now anywhere between 75 and 100 students a year um graduate from grade 12 in um how many of them go go and further it into uh the university I don't have that data I can um get back to you later on with that data if I can that be interesting and then and then the next step would be um are there jobs out there for those that graduate with in those degrees Yeah I I I don't know specifically around what kinds of um preparations have been made for students um specifically for graduates of Kon education I do know that our students are um entering into careers across the Spectrum um one of our early graduates is a doctor at stob um we have lawyers that have graduated from so it's not isolated sort of as a if you speak Hawaiian and you have to do a Hawaiian language U employment more than preparing them with the mindset and the language basis to be able to do whatever they choose to do we graduate be interested to find out when what areas they go into because as we heard from um our our um instructor that they can go out and make a lot more money and be more at ease um in in another in another um profession and of course teaching is one of the areas that you know you would think that they would want to go into as well so appreciate you can get that information at a future date thank you k um your um kopon teachers are there some on the neighbor Islands also there are Ki um teachers across all 22 of our schools and across five Islands good and so right now there are 10 full-time equivalent teachers or are there more than that there are more than that right now we have oh I might have that number here we have I think 152 um yeah 152 um teachers that are teaching in h language immersion classrooms in the Department of Education 152 152 so this bill is asking for 10 more full-time positions but also asking for um three full-time equivalent curriculum Specialists so how many curriculum Specialists do you have now I currently have um one I have I currently have four um curriculum specialists um who are doing a bunch of different things across the system the three of those positions are were um fortunately funded by um Esser um During the covid period um and a lot of the work that they did given the resources that were made available have really helped to um put uh much needed supports in the classrooms and um for three for 10 full-time equivalent teacher positions and three full-time um specialist three positions what is the cost to provide this I believe the number is around approximately $1.4 million thank you co members further questions yeah you um question since still on this topic um you know um 19 19 I guess 78 or 1977 share this with my colleagues and I just wanted to get you guys put since we have you here in the superintendent here um it was put in there in the Constitution that high language should be a um subject not as elective or after school program that you needed two credits to uh in Hawaiian to to graduate from high school and I understand what was being told to me by not only colleagues that I love and Trust here on the aspect of their view but I would want to know from the Doe's view if something like that would happen in the high schools from 9th to 12th and there's an opportunity for having Hawaiian studies as a not as an elective but as a requirement to take I would they looking into entertaining that as a credit graduate high school and I I understand some of the questions that came up about kids transferring from the continent here and not being able to accomplish that and I can think that we can probably figure out one way to do some kind of waiver in that but only reason why I say that is because when I listen to what you saying and and you know we all have the great intentions of doing this but if we don't pull a trigger that was there from 1970 something and start to move it along we'll never have it what what do you feel about that um Mahala for your question I understand that there is a bill um that's currently being proposed asking the same question about two credit requirement for graduation for olova students I do want to defer to our um Deputy of superintendent um of academics particularly to the issue of graduation credit requirements um but I would also like to offer that as part of the work of the office of O education um and specifically Board of Education policy 105.7 it is the charge of our the Department of Education to ensure that all students have access to opportunities to in to uh um learn ol hav as a part of as a part of um their educational experience and we are currently working um within the system to be able to um promote um proficiencies K12 um that's a huge um sort of lift to make um but we're looking for opportunities where schools can introduce um ol Havi as a part of the general curriculum either through context um and or through curriculum when students are um experiencing some of the materials that they have with some markers um hopefully in the future around identifying the proficiencies that students might be able to achieve across that K12 experience again that's the work that we are currently working on in the office of wi education um that would help us to address I think what the intention was of back in 1978 to ensure that all student staff and faculty um have access to learning opportunities for ol was the recognition back then was that the two um for two languages um was English and Hawaiian and English is to this stay in our schools but not on and that's the reason why it was brought thank you appreciate it thank you thank you chair col how many um teachers are there that can teach the Hawaiian language um within the K within the um kapuni classrooms um the one of the sort of proficiencies assessments is that the the teacher can um instruct provide instruction in um given the content that they're in charge of um and so while we have 152 teachers that are in um kapuni schools right now um there are a handful of those teachers that deliver instruction in English um in our two campuses that are full immersion campuses K or and Kino um as it relates to teachers that can teach ol Havi as a Content area in our non kapuni schools um I am not sure about that number I would have to give back to you I believe that um the department does have a number of the schools that do provide currently fine language courses um in year 1 to year four um at the different high schools yeah I'd appreciate that question forther questions thankk you Coe thank you okay I'm sorry I missed kopu relitz teacher H chair Vice chair kopu relit with the office of hne Affairs we stand in support of this measure um and I feel like the folks who are the experts in this room are much more equipped to tell you why but I did want to let you know that the office of wine Affairs stands in strong support of this meure follow thank you those questions thank you if no further testimony on this Senate Bill we will move on Senate Bill 20 69 relating to the Department of Education just do this one yes Senate Bill 2070 relating to the Department of Education exempts Career and Technical education goods and service Services purchases by the doe for the state procurement code I guess that would be you Mr superintendent thank you chair kidani Vice chair Kim members of the committee Kashi superintendent testifying on behalf of the Department of Education the department stands on its written written testimony in strong support of this measure thank you very much for the opportunity to testify members questions strong testimony thank you we felt it strongly questions thank you superintendent that was so strong no one [Music] questions also to testify Georgia Skinner what he said um aloha aloha Georgia Skinner or uh James toyoka Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism we do stand in strong support of this anything to help our teachers to face future also with technology changing this will really help them and as being part of a department that abides by the procurement code I know that this can help delay unfortunately sometimes our students being able to be uh being taught on the actual equipment that they can get jobs with so thank you very much for the measure and we stand in strong support thank you Georgia members questions than you next to testify Mark Glick Chief energy officer good afternoon chair Vice chair Senators Cameron black on behalf of the Hawaii state energy office we also are in support strong support of this measure our primary interest in this bill is that the uh there is an energy career pathway um that's been set up by the Department of Education so we appreciate that and that again is why we're supporting this measure this would help exempt some of the equipment uh particularly the welding that was called out so thank you thank you Cameron members questions yeah I have a question so some of these equipment can they go into hundreds and thousands of dollars or I'm sorry Senator I don't have the answer to that question I can find out so you folks deal with these equipment or I mean not myself personally um I have not personally dealt with the welding equipment okay so I don't want to misquote what what that might cost okay well yeah I mean to support a bill like this knowing that there's money implications possibly um would be helpful when you come and testifying support that you folks have information to give the committee understood and we'll uh we'll find that out okay thank you any more questions members thank you thank you wait there yeah she I'm good good afternoon chair Vice chair members of the committee Bonnie Kakui acting administrator and chief procurement officer we stand on our written testimony and all we're actually asking is that the the language be changed to mirror the language that is currently in house in Senate bill 3086 and it's companion bill 239 seven our recommendation is to tighten up the language a little bit so that there is no loow pools in between thank you thank you Bonnie members questions questions Senator Kim thank you Bonnie so can you explain what some of the loopholes are oops uh yes the way it was originally written um I we thought that it could be open up to any kinds of training and direct student instruction what what we did was we oh did I'm here um what we did was tighten up the language to specify that these equipment that they're purchasing or training that is unique to that particular career path and we called out different things like the welding the anatomy tables and those can cost tens of thousands of dollars as well as those flight simulators which can be very very expensive so when you say called them out that they would not be part of this no they would be but we said that it would be things like um well what we did was we took out such things as supplies implements tools Machinery because that could have a very broad definition especially supplies are we talking uh books and paper and pencils so we narrowed that scope to say that these equipment and supplies that they need are unique and specific to that particular career path like the welding and the flight simulators and not be so broad as to include may include any kind of equipment okay I guess when I read this measure I thought that it would be these small supplies and so forth that can be cumbersome going through procurement um but also the the concern that I had is that because it was broad to but some of this equipment uh like flight simulators and so forth runs into like you said hundreds and thousands of dollars and if if it's not uh competitive as far as checking out the bids and stuff is there room for um some kind of fall play at some point or not giving equal opportunity to the vendors uh to be able to provide um be part of the procurement process and providing this equipment to the schools uh yes there could be uh that is certainly a possibility but from what I also understand from the doe the people that Supply some of these uh equipment Anatomy tables flight simuls the market is very very um limited and additionally we ask that the doe put in guard rail guard rails to ensure transparency and standard processes of checks and balances so there is not this going to just one vendor uh without doing their due diligence to see what other vendors are out there that may be able to provide uh the services and goods that they need and who monitors this that would be the doe okay so you folks wouldn't be monitoring it so how would we know that there was safeguards we would not but we would ask that the do we provide that information to us so that we can you know double check to make sure what they are buying how they're buying it uh what methods they're using to obtain these uh goods and services okay thank you um question for doe if nobody has questions for Bonnie anybody else have questions for Bonnie superintendent superintendent so superintendent was that your intent that this measure be for these specific equipment or um thank you uh senator for the question um yes definitely we um in helping as previous testifiers have shared um it's very important that we provide authentic learning as much as authentic learning experiences for students to connect to Career Pathways um I think as we were able to provide as um um State procurement office has shared for example uh she did mention the anatomage table and that is a a piece of equipment that is rather expensive um but it is state of Thee art it provides our students with the most current experiences in terms of uh uh really looking at at Anatomy being able to identify um a a healthy tissue versus a cancerous tissue in fact there was just an uh the competition was yesterday at the convention center uh where all of our Korean technical student organizations got together to compete and the anatom much table actually was a um was one of the many highlights of of that event uh it it so what's the problem now how did you get the tables now uh we we did have it was an extensive process uh we definitely always be ensure that we F in procurement code uh we do our due diligence and so we did have to go out to bid because it was over the $25,000 threshold that 25,000 then your folks can go to three bers right to get under 25,000 we're able to um to we can go to uh um both written quotes and um verbal verbal and written quotes anything over 25,000 we have to go out to Bid And as was shared currently uh when we have equipment and we're looking for authentic opportunities for students those equ much if not all of that equipment that we're looking at exceeds the $25,000 give you didn't we raise that level no um it build it uh it did pass um unfortunately it it um it it didn't make it through though so the house um I I I believe um I believe it made another conference um but it was um there was a vet at the end okay yeah so what about 3D printers stuff like that is that fall under unique or um well 3D printers definitely again um if it if it did go over uh 25,000 um you know again we we need to go out to bid um as SPO had shared it's important for us to have thresholds in place and and real uh safeguards and so um some of the safeguards that we established last year that we're ready to implement uh for example is um a tiered system so rather than go from $25 to $100,000 right away we would incrementally increase those uh that threshold within the department so that we're able to um uh ensure that we're we're following the right procedures and as well as having U complex area superintendents review uh any of those those purchases that exceed those amounts uh just to ensure that uh we're complying with u the proper procedures but something like 3D printers isn't that common to more not specific to a career path um 3D printers could be depends what kind of 3D printers um and what the intent of the 3D printer is that's my concern on how that gets all lumped in and then get around the the process in some way um you mean the large 3D printers or the the smaller ones that whatever I'm just saying that you know certainly you could make a case that it's General and then you can make a case well depending on what the printers are but nobody's there going to be checking up on you or you know safeguards in there so we would have to depend upon you folks to be able to police yourselves right yeah most definitely and and and it is important for us to ensure that we're following those procedures and again the uh complex area superintendent um are will be charged with helping to monitor that um to get with their principles we have training that's ready to go out to be sure that our principles are aware of and and follow um the proper procedures understand but as you know and I know that there are often time um many violations and it gets reported to us and I know there's some concerns just the fact that there are um well not so much on the doe campuses but on the uh campuses where these small maintenance projects are going out to the same people over and over again because they don't have to go out to did so they use friends or stuff like that so I'm just don't want to get those kinds of calls yes I understand thank you thank you so superintendent there's a um you used the doe uses hands the Hawaii award and notices data systems for some of your for posting some of your um notices that that you're looking for special equipment or whatever do you still use that um let me S one one um Senator we can get back to you on that um I can check withfo H he wasn't able to make it today thank you thank you super superintendent sorry so superintendent just just going off of Senator Kim's line of questioning I I think I just got a little confused U maybe you can clarify for me so you said if it's over 25,000 you're still going to go out to bid no no if if should this should this pass right it would raise a threshold to to $100,000 okay and so um it we we wouldn't need to go out to bid currently anything over 25,000 we need to go out to bid which um uh as we are securing different kinds of equipment that's in that range it do take it does take um a lot of time right so anything over 100 you're still going to go up to bid I'm I believe that um this bill um would if if it's in CT in the CTE area uh that would exempt right totally from going out to there's no cap it's exemp it would be exemp totally so there is there is no parameters any anything you don't have to go to bid then so so so I know you you in terms of your for within the CT area yeah for that specific exemption so so I guess currently and I know you're talking about how you're going to kind of regulate this how much does the Cass have a say in purchasing right now if any the the cazes have the authority over the School principles in terms of purchasing they're able to within their area um monitor purchasing they're able to stop uh purchases that happen or they're able to question um purchases each complex area superintendent has a complex area business manager got it and the complex area business manager helps assist the area superintend so is there any internal sign offs right now over over search amount that the Cass has to to to see or check there's no threshold amount it's just up to their jur you know currently up to 25,000 it goes no there is none not from the so it's only if they choose to check it out they'll they'll see it there so there's no automatic go to the Cass if it's over a certain amount right now not currently so what is what is your thought process then to keep this in check but we do currently uh there are internal controls within the school within the complex area that they they are able to pull purchases and purchase orders if need be that's one thing um in terms of the controls moving forward should this bill pass um those uh those purchases that are over if there are any purchases that are over $100,000 we'll be monitoring those definitely only over $100 only over over 100,000 but that's the internal policy or is that in the bill no that would be internal to us okay yeah and but any any of those purchases um uh up to 100,000 would be would be um checked by the complex superintendent okay but they currently don't necessarily regularly look right I I think it's just it's just to me I think it's a good practice that they're probably looking at some of these purchases just to be aware so I think we do have U periodic audits um of the schools and uh by internal internal audit section uh and so both of uh appropriated funds as well as non-appropriated funds so those are some of the checks that regularly happen um and we'll continue those yeah and no I I get it I I think you have to have the internal controls I I I think for for the doe especially because it's like every school is their own little entity it's just you know you give them so much leeway it really I think to me you got to have very specific parameters cuzz there's just so many different variations from school to school so I I I think you know we're open but it's just you got to be able to prove that you know everything is going right so thank you thank you for that so within your internal internal check checks and balances would you then Institute that they could do like a a three bid written or verbal for these um I I think um chair thank you for the question Senator thank you for the question um the intent of the bill is to help us to explorate the process following within those parameters um and being sure that we're following within what parameters um procurement and that we are checking and providing opportunities for students to engage in those uh in in the kinds of equipment that we need right um and so it it okay because let me clarify my question so right now you have to if it's over under 25 5,000 you can do three written or verbal bits anything over you got to go to a full procurement so I'm just saying this bill passes would you still Institute at least the three three quotes either by by uh verbal or written would you still Institute that we would still do that we could still do that yes okay I'd like to see that in there because it has to be you know can't just go to one you got to check and see because you know you could so the the the verbal and then three so like like it was a 25,000 25 but it would raise that threshold right yes thank you the um what it called autonomy that stuff you guys was talking about you guys just had autonomy thing you guys talking about buying the table is that what it's called anage an table is that a table it it's a table Center yes so I just wanted to give one example so get five schools I'm not going to name any schools but I usually name Campell sometimes and let's get the 40 School away K so what of these two schools or the one school and five other schools on this table yes how is that going to be prioritized um thank you for the question Senator we uh currently um have gone through the procurement process uh which was was very extensive um and so we reach did reach out to schools that were interested in um securing the Anam watch tables so several of our high schools currently have them um and then uh they have actually been very excited in in working with them uh for Campbell High School um I believe their table is coming they they did order one uh which is which is uh we're excited about it and I think uh principal Le to so we have a flight simulator to C um you know I'm not sure on the flight simulator I can get back on that we see playings every day from NOA C so we just we have a Similator coming to our school I do know Senator that um we are engaged in U um aeronautical pathway uh that there are um we've engaged with um with the airlines uh they are in in need of not only Pilots but of with mechanics so any time that we can uh provide these opportunities for students so they get really excited about the learning um you know I I really believe that sometimes you know we need to put uh a little more expense in the cost up front to get students engaged and that's the hook for them right and then you know they'll really see the value of education and and uh education being relevant for them yeah I was I was blessed to be a fact of uh seeing some of our students at Campbell is actually right now pilots and you know they got into it and they they love it not because the planes was going over the head but that's what they got into because it was a pathway for them to go to Barber's point and flight simulation the time and got into and now they're vience was pretty good this was figuring the ass thank you s thank you thank you shair one more quick question can you give us an idea how long it took you to procure the tables and our watch one second over over here um Senator came ask one one um so just to be sure that I'm clear your question that you asked me earlier was about um the uh uh verbal quote the written quote and then the procurement threshold of 25,000 now we would raise that but the we would still Institute the the verbal and the written quote as is yeah should this bill pass for for these equipments that in this bill that you would at least have the three quotes whether it be written in verbal at at those thresholds no at whatever whatever thresholds you do but that you would have at least some comparison instead of just going to one vendor and say oh we like your equipment but without getting like another it could be only one but there may be opper times where as you just shared um there may be only because of the advancement of Technology yeah there might be only one right but when there are more than one then yeah you know because we want the best price right to I mean the cheapest is not always the best but we want to compare I mean you know whenever I buy anything I check Amazon I check eBay I check Teo I check them all before I buy and so we we would be able to compare that um and um as you said Senator sometimes the the cheapest might not be the best for students I got to check the reviews you know they get five star for okay thank you thank you and how often do you return never mind not too awful thank you superintendent thank you is Bonnie still on she is not on oh yes I'm here oh thank you Bonnie um last year you indicated that um SPO would be moving to um a electronic uh procurement system has that been done we are in the process now of that we've already signed the contract we've had we have weekly meetings with the vendor the actual e-procurement portion of that is still a little ways off as we're working with the the marketplace first thank you so can you uh give us an update a written update and um on on when you expect that to be finished oh yes I can uh we can provide you with a timeline uh we're working with the vendor on a timeline right now and hopefully we can stick to that depending on you know if all the all the players fall in place thank you appreciate it okay are we done with this issue moving on to where are we2 Senate Bill 2052 did you guys have question oh engagement program superintendent are you testifying Senate Bill Public Access room okay good afternoon chair kidani Vice chair Kim and members of the committee I'm Heidi Armstrong Deputy superintendent of academics I'm speaking on behalf of the Department of Education and we stand on our written testimony offering comments on this bill and I will be available to answer any questions we have someone on Zoom waiting to testify uh they're not present on Zoom chair thank you attorney general she here attorney general good afternoon uh Cher kidani Vice chair Kim members of the committee Deputy attorney general CIS Park just uh requesting that um we amend the language in the bill to include that the matter is a issue of Statewide concern in according to an article 6 article 10 section 6 of The Constitution thank you questions you is there Deborah helbert here good afternoon chair Vice chair members of the committee Deborah Halbert vice president for academic strategy also a member of the pace commission though I'm here testify for the University and not the pace commission we stand in support with some modification we defer to the PACE commission's recommendations for the edits to the bill as outlined both in their testimony on our own thanks I'm available for questions if you have any thank you members question do we have to pce should have been submitted do you remember seeing that testimony commission got you got it okay great she has it thank you cace Candace Park she just testified just testified okay that's it anyone else here wishing to testify on Senate Bill sure well good two minutes clock says one proceed only one minute okay Angela Melody young testifying on behalf of cares Aloha chair Vice chair and the committee um so I think this is a good policy I'm not sure how busy the public access room office is and it's not my purview to represent that office but it's a good idea um and an example of a fun interactive Civic engagement program the policy could copy is a Hawaii Children and Youth Summit made possible by Susie Chan Oakland and Uncle Dennis they dedicated a lot of work they do to providing resources and to supporting our generation and I'm super blessed to get to help to plan with the team it's an event sanctioned by the hu Vice statue chapter 8 in October 2022 the Kiki caucus held the summit to bring children together to prioritize issues and find strategies to Solutions which require statutory changes to be implemented at the county state and federal level and they declared that smoking as a priority of the Hawaii Public Health Institute is also an important subject matter to debate during the legislative process this season and the findings were from the summit that they'd like the middle middle school and high school programs to have peer-to-peer support therapy and counseling to emphasize the consequences of smoking while raising awareness about health education so Caris thinks it's very appropriate to assign this kind of program to the office and to create more Civic action opportunities for Hawaii's CES thank you thank you OA are you thank you OA hello chair Vice chair also to president HST apologize again for our late testimony uh HST stands in support for this uh we want to stress the importance of expanding civic education in our public schools to prepare students to participate in the public and political lives of their communities civic education helps develop critical thinking skills in our students students that are vital to the functioning of a democratic Nation including how to recognize social problems evaluate possible solutions to problems separate evidence-based claims from opinions and to take action H is among the 10 states with the lowest voter turnout in the nation cultivating social and political engagement among students through civic education is an important strategy available to increase voter turnout and citizen engagement over the long term so than just be for increasing voter turnout though but also to educate on how to be more involved in community issues as they arrive arise civic education helps to learn how to evaluate what others have tried what has worked and make a plan of action for creating change needed to solve problems together HS ask for your support model thank you members questions thank you is there anyone else here wishing to testify on this issue sure I just I guess do you can be doe so um first of all I just you like support the bill even though I never had a chance to sign on to him because I don't see my name here um but that's okay I really support the bill you know what I'm getting told is that why wasn't it done sooner I know you probably don't have that answer but I know you probably would have wanted sooner but the question is like why wasn't this done sooner I'm not sure why what was it St Staffing the public access room um I don't know I don't know and and the department does support the positions we would just um we don't they're they're not part of our board approved budget requests so we would appreciate the positions and the additional resources um but not supplanting anything that we've already submitted and civic education is at the Forefront just growing larger than the public access room um the board of education has asked the department to put together a civic education task force that has members from the pace commission P20 um the Judiciary we have some um nonprofits and our doe Personnel looking at how do we enhance and Elevate civic education in our school we do have newly adopted um social studies standards that include civic education K12 Anor standard five is a standard that's in every grade level and then in the High School courses but what the department currently um does not have a a mechanism to do so is how do we um keep track of or is it necessary to keep track of what are our students doing um in the areas of civic education and so this task force is looking at how do we record or do we need to record what our students are doing what opportunities they've had to participate in experiences that promote their engagement in civic education and learning um we recently just recognized two high schools in a newly created program called the Hawaii um schools of democracy and Maui high school and Milly Lani High School were recognized as schools who are doing um extensive and schoolwide or participating in extensive and schoolwide efforts and provide opportunities for their students to engage in Civic activities such as volunteering learning about the um more in inate int intricate um operations of government um policy legislation and so this task force that is currently um in place um is looking at ways where the department can expand and Elevate opportunities so that our students do leave us and participate in the Democratic process of voting they do participate in volunteerism they do participate in um opportunities to help support and um nurture the communities where they live thank you so just being good citizens yes okay thank you that's a good way to put it questions so Heidi you did answer one of my questions about how is civic education being taught now in the school so it is part of the social studies yes it's part of the social studies standards um K12 we also have a graduation requirement um in high school it's a half credit of course participation in democracy um and so all students have to go through there when you look at our social studies standards every single grade level has civic education embedded in the different strands of the social studies because you know according to the testimony and I tend to agree with lrb in the sense that um that the bureau does not believe that the primary responsibility for this effort should lie with part the public access room um um and they also felt that that they would be more than willing to share information par has already developed U regarding engagement with the legislature and the legislative process um but the bureau suggests that rather than stepping into teachers role be more effective and appropriate for part to offer workshops directly to appropriate teachers in order for them to expand their understanding and including in a part of their um curriculum so yeah to to get people from part to then step into the schools to me seems to be you know a reach in that sense so is that something that you cuz you supporting this right this measure we're supporting when when um I read the bill it was the department would assist in the efforts that par um currently offers um I I remember from previous testimonies Staffing the room so that it would be available to provide the services um that you just spoke of was very limited and so my understanding when I read this is the bill would provide a position um of would provide a full-time full-time position within the public access room and that's on page six line one and two in addition to two positions to support the advancement of civic education and funding so so the bill is saying that par should now be having people in their Department that's going to promote civic education is that what you're saying no I'm saying I I read the bill to say that it it would provide a full-time equivalent position within the public access room and then would provide two POS two full-time equivalent permanent civic education resource teacher positions within the department and that's on page four lines 78 and N page Department shall assign one appropriate staff the department meaning the DOE that was the department referred to as the as doe that correct department shall assign appropriate staff to coordinate with the public access room respects to outreach and engagement program okay because I'm reading lrb's testimony and um I guess there's a lot of concerns what they raise okay thank you thank you thank you hii members further questions if not move on to our final bill 2071 superintendent did you have testimony on this you good afternoon Cher kadani Vice chair Kim I'm Heidi Armstrong again from the Department of Education thank you for allowing us the opportunity to testify and we appreciate this bill and stand in um strong support um of this measure I'll be available for any questions thank you members questions um do we have the resources right now to hire people or can f fill these positions that would might be needed for this enhancement we we currently have the um Panorama social emotional learning student survey and we also have the trust Circle app and those are the two items included in this bill what we're asking for these are currently funded with Sr funds and we're asking for funding to continue um having these opportunities and resources after the 2425 school year when we will no longer be able to fund them with user got it thank you other questions thank you heid thank you is there anyone else wishing to provide testimony on this issue closer to we chair chair wou hsta president I would just want to say anything that we can do to uh we're in support anything we can do to um help with mental health and student emotional health is a positive uh this is about digital devices and things though we want to emphasize also that counselors are extremely important in this this process and we want to make sure that we try and staff our schools with as many counselors as possible especially coming from post pandemic and Po Folks in Lina they need all the support they can get Personnel wise and our counselors are are well equipped but we just need more of them thank you thank you also members questions thank you we did have a brad kusunoki wanting to testify thank you Brad good afternoon chair Vice chair Hashimoto um when I should followa I am a school counselor um my actual title is student services coordinator but I'm school counselor and teacher by heart at alvas Scott Elementary School uh I'm here to support this bill because I use both programs uh mainly the trust Circle app um we have a tool that will greatly help school counselors if if they choose to use it that it's it's easy to use for both kids uh teachers teachers and School staff and especially counselors um we I I have a student population of about 440 uh only school counselor I do not have the ability to ask every single kid every day how they are feeling and I can't measure how happy sad mad or or scared they are but with uh the trust tal app that helps us to give give the kids the opportunity to give us uh their voices where they stand as far as social or emotional well-being on a daily basis and it gives us a tool to go out and do something about it every day um my time up thank you br um questions so when you say you have a tool it's the it's the trust Circle app trust Circle app and yes I've been using it for two years uh I believe our school was the first one of the state to get it I got it on my own um I did the research and got the Grant and paid for it through um I got I think I believe it was a state Grant um for three years and I worked with the de developer to make to tailor it based on my needs as a school but also as the needs for school counselors across the state should they choose to use it um it is it is really good uh we we continue to use it and it the requirement for teachers it's minimal they just need to let kids to do it U at least for a couple minutes every day they just go on a lot of the kids they'll follow up and they'll use it as home on the on the weekends as well uh all they have to do is check in and just just share what how they are feeling it's kind of like a journal and then it in turn it gives us data as far as where our kids as a whole and even individually where they stand on different emotional levels and we can see that every day on a real time um real time so I can go out and and do what I need to do as a school counselor to help these kids that need it or as a as a whole school and do General programs um to support our school counseling program thank you so this app is online and made available to all school counselors uh I believe that's the intent right now I speak for just my school um it's available for all students at and staff at my school so what this bill cover that being offer to all the schools I think it's see it's okay thank you good thank you work how how much is it just for your school for the license I'm just curious well the Grant I got was um 36,000 for 3 years for just one your school for how many users uh it cover all students and staff there was no Max Max no okay so that that's about uh I guess 500 maybe 600 people total that could use it if they choose you have all these annexes of other schools great thank you thank you chair thank you superintendent or Heidi you guys have any testimony on this do you have any testimony on this issue we we support this issue and um are requesting the funding so that we can continue on after next school year so do you have a specific app in mind we do so the the trust circle is going to be is the app that we're currently using and we want to be able to continue to use it in the future okay um I don't recall what the funding requirement was 850 850,000 it's blank in the bill yeah in the bill pretty clear. the bill section three is 1.7 but page three is right so so the trust circle is 850 and then the Panorama seal survey which is also included in this bill um would bring the total to 1.7 1.7 million for both so one is a survey and one is an app and so that can be used for all the de schools yes and currently we're doing the Panorama seal survey it's mandatory twice a year um beginning of the year and end of the year and it's optional for schools to um offer a midyear survey how long would this be good for currently it's funded through school year 2425 so it's going to be a reoccurring yearly we that that's what we're we that's what we are requesting 1.7 occurring every year yes for for about 170,000 students yes so if you don't get this then in theory a school could go off on their own and pay it out of wsf funds correct but we would not for the secl survey we would not have department-wide longitudinal data on um our students social emotional learning competencies okay so for for these programs though have you so so is there some type of um really good platform that you found that we we cannot do internal you know have some of our CTE students go figure out how to make a program and it's our own proprietary program I'm I'm sure they could um but um we don't have that yet but what the Panorama um SEO platform also does for us it gives us a dashboard where um teachers can have longitudinal data on their students academic Behavior attendance social emotional competencies it also has A playbook attached which is a resource that teachers can use if a child is showing that he or she needs support and one of these areas there are a series of lessons or interventions that the teacher can pull from and to date we have I have the numbers here sorry I have we we've had over 40,000 hits um or um entries from teachers accessing information um and it's a way that schools can log interventions track the success of the interventions and um give it gives us valuable not only information but also support and tools for teachers to use so so when you were using SRA funds this was deployed this was required of everyone or this was just a nice to have for everyone no this this is the seal um survey is required of everyone um the dashboard is a resource that um most of our teachers are using and the interventions have had have been viewed um or accessed 42,000 times so far this year so it is a tool that teachers are using um to help address the needs that are identified through the survey and through the dashboard okay all right thank you chair can I just add a comment you know I support all of these um enhanced ways to support our teachers and support our students but at some point you know we keep adding on and the cost keeps growing and so you know while I agree that we we want all of these tools at some point the pi is only so big so um you know we need to look at maybe old programs that maybe is not as efficient and how we can save because the reoccurring cost will kill us in in the long run and where we take the money out because you we want to make sure teachers are getting paid appropriately teacher housing all of that there's so much costs and so I I hope that you know we start off with things because we had federal funds and S funds and then we want to add it into the base reoccurring but um that's a huge huge expense and and then it gets higher and higher the cost becomes higher and higher so um that's something that I hope you FKS will consider and think about as we move forward right and and I I appreciate that and I agree with that um one thing that um there wasn't a lot of good that came out of covid but one thing that was is it really highlighted the importance of social emotional competencies and mental health and we didn't have the department didn't have things to fall back on and so now we have been able to build up a robust system of support reports and um we would like that to continue um social emotional learning competencies are just what make up a good learner so they will always be um necessary to focus said I support that but again you know there's only so much funds at some point and so the P you have to start to prioritize what it is we're going to be focusing in as we go forward because a lot of stuff end up in your base budget and then we don't know what the effectiveness are in some of these programs because it's not evaluated as far as we know um and so you keep adding and and you know the education budget keeps growing and yet we still get complaints about we're not paying our teachers enough and we don't have enough supplies in the classroom and so forth so um we have to start to look at these things and you know and I point to like the kindergarten assessments you know some of these costs can be um more efficient so I'll rest my case on that thank you thank you thank you um we're going to recess for reconvening the committee on education members have discussed the U bills at hand and the recommendation for Senate Bill 2072 is to pass with amendments the Amendments is to adopt the testimony of the Department of Attorney General with reference to avoiding any potential family educational rights and Privacy Act MERS so Senate Bill 2072 passed with amendments okay so recommendation is to amend Senate Bill 2072 um with set amendments chair votes I I Vice chair votes I Senator Hashimoto I I Senator Richards excuse Senator flla excuse to three members present your recommendations adopted thank you for Senate Bill 2069 relating to the Department of Education to appropriate funds for three full-time equivalent curriculum Specialists two positions and 10 full-time classroom teacher positions for KA papahana kapuni schools recommendation of the chair yeah pass was to pass as is and this [Music] is with a cost of about 1.4 million I think we talked about for 10 full-time equivalent classroom teacher positions and three full-time equivalent curriculum specialist two positions questions members recommendation is to pass as is okay recommendation is to pass Senate Bill 2069 unamended chair votes I Vice chair votes i simoto i two members excuse recommendations adopted thank you for Senate Bill 27 20 70 relating to Department of Education to exempt Career and Technical education goods and services purchases by the doe from the state procurement code repeals um we were going to amend this that would include three uh verbal or written quotes to procurement process for under 25,000 yeah so we can get language with the that language Outlet or would apply to all right so are we going to yeah apply it to the the the entities that are covered under the measure right so pass with that Amendment Senate bill of 2070 pass with an amendment to include three verbal or rtin FS for all no for all but using the under 25,000 process okay recommendation is to pass sb270 with amendments the chair votes I Vice chair votes I Senator Hashimoto I three members voting in favor measure is adopted thank you Senate Bill 2052 def recommendation is to defer Senate Bill 2071 recommendation was to pass pass as is did we have technical Amendments of this pass passes it yeah 2071 pass as is okay recommendation to pass Senate Bill 2071 unamended chair v z Vice chair v z has your moto I was I two members excuse the recommendations adopted thank you members that concludes this hearing

Terry's on Terry Terry you have notes tonight right so you're good so I don't if Kim joins later that's fine is Kim on no okay so I I called order the hello hello oh I'm sorry you're you're you're good okay so I called a meeting the uh the January 23rd Board of Education meeting uh in this virtual um virtual content only tonight which means that we'll probably be eliminating some of the things that you see on the general agenda and we'll move thing through uh this pretty quickly um one of the things that we're going to bypass because we don't have a flag is uh unless somebody wants to hold one I think I'll I'll just I'll pass on the pledge tonight and uh nobody send in a letter to the editor that I passed on the pledge so um so we'll pass on the pledge and we'll go right to the administrative report which is the Chairman's Corner which the only things that I want to uh mention to this board is and we'll get into it a little bit more with our reps is um we met with the board of Finance last night and we alerted them to some changes that may be occurring in this year's budget due to some um some funding that maybe we were counting on that we won't get and we probably won't get at the level that we budgeted for which is only going to increase our our deficit to some extent so uh we did report that the board of finance and the board of Finance understands uh where we're coming from um so that was uh that was pretty good and then uh the other thing is that um that uh we are going to be talking more about CIP that the board of Finance is coming up with more of a long range plan towards CIP I don't know uh if if it'll take place this year or next year but they're certainly focused on trying to solve some of the town's Financial shortfalls that we have on a more of a long-term basis and and some of that has to do with the capital Improvement plan so I'm I'm very pleased with the direction and and the um uh future thinking of our Board of Finance uh so I I I'm expecting very good things out of that group going forward so Ju Just to let you know so um and then the final thing I wanted to mention is we are out to RFQ on the on the modular and um we're expecting something back probably in February according to Bob Skinner and when we hear more on that we'll get back to you so those are the three items that really I wanted to mention uh in this in this month's chairman report any questions for me for the chair okay hearing none we'll go right to the superint just a quick question any update on possible reimbursement on the modulus so we we are we're we're looking into that there's some thought that we may be available what might be available is about 38% Jordan we're thinking 38 39% correct we won't we don't we won't know that for a while we submitted our Grant application in we'll find out um excuse me let me step back we have to go out to um bid for our architect first put plans together and then we have to go through the whole uh process of applying so we're we're not there yet Joe but we're gonna be we will aggressively look at that so you're muted Joe sorry it's still a possibility well the the the possibility is is we we need to we're going through all the processes right now we're going through um the RFP for an architect and then the architect we'll have to put plans together and then we'll have to go through the the process with the Department of administrative Services thank you any other questions before I move to the superintendent report okay uh we'll go to the superintendent's report announcements super thank you thank you Mr uh Daniels it's great to see everyone I wish we were in person uh tough call today by the superintendent of schools but what I will tell you it is very slick um I just actually came in a little while ago and the the roads are starting to Slick up so um this this is the best that we could do it's great to see state senator seminer and representative deot with us this evening I'm glad state senator I I know you were in the waiting room and now we uh got you in so thank you for getting for in it it will be a great conversation uh later in the the evening in the meeting I'll be sharing my responses to the board of ed questions on our open Choice memo proposed forecast budget that I presented at our last meeting and then the administration will be here to answer any questions that you may have regarding what you've seen relative to the forecast of budget and the open Choice with the the privilege to present the administration Budget on February 13th which is our next meeting I had the privilege and I don't know if anybody else did to attend the Middle School play th this past weekend Phantom toll booth what did what a great effort that our middle school students put in this play it was entertaining and the the crowd on Friday night was very large crowd and I believe the the the Saturday uh crowd was was just as large so congratulations to our Middle School also congratulations to our high school seniors since our last meeting our high school seniors presented their K Mastery projects and what a what a great event when when you walk in and the first thing that you see is a big boat it it realize that there's really not a boat in our school but when you walked in on that night once you walked in there was a boat of one of the students seniors built a a Mastery project with um building a boat and it was well done I was very impressed I know there was a few board members that were able to walk around that evening so very impressive great job to the the high school the there are a lot of events that are that are coming up that I would encourage the the board in the community to get involved in we have our course selection an info session for the class of 28 that's our current eighth graders on January 31st on February 3rd get your ticket now because I can promise it'll be sold out it will be the prisms concert on February 3rd 7:30 we have an early release professional development February 13th and then we have our board meeting and finance committee meeting and policy committee meeting on the 13th of February and we have a short break February 19th in February 20th so that that's really exciting that we of all the things that are happening in the camp Public Schools so I I'll take any questions at a superintendent's office at this time just want to say the senior projects were really terrific it was a great night it's all you Mr Daniels you're muted again you're muted uh you're muted there now you're good the host muted me who is the host Tonight Kira fooling around all right uh we have uh Simone Maggie and Juliana on who wants to go first I can start for the high school and middle school I was gonna say go ahead okay so um along with what Dr Gman was just speaking on um we had our senior Camp projects and they turned out amazing including Lyla Brower who made a real rowboat from scratch which was very very cool like he mentioned uh Julia Cogan sewed her own ice skating costumes Nikolai marinin wrote and performed a standup comedy act Darien Camaro wrote a weightlifting guide for beginners Katie Harrington upcycled her old clothing Cole Edwards created his own language and I wrote and produced the song um and then the middle school had their play The Phantom toe Booth which went fantastic so congratulations and good job to everyone who was involved finally the new semester started today congratulations to all the students for working so hard to do well and to all the teachers who worked so hard to make sure we have the best education possible that's great SAR thank you very much Maggie you want to go next yeah I'll follow up with the CIS report so tomorrow is their PTO sponsored family paint night they have 33 families attending and will be using a fraction of the Slate they saved from last Summer's roofing project as their canvases and they're excited to reuse pieces of the building in this way their last advisory meeting focused on responsibility what it looks like at school at home and in the community and during their February advisory they will be striving to show gratitude by making Valentine's Day cards for the community's Frontline workers and their bus and van drivers in anticipation of bus driver appreciation month a bus driver appreciation day at the end of the month great thank you anything else Juliana okay so I'll be doing uh Cherrybrook uh cherb students will be participating in the kids heart challenge um Jump Rope for Heart um from January 16th to February 2nd during their PE classes um they have been active participants in this program for many years and have raised thousands of dollars for the American Heart Association uh School culture and climate uh honey the Cherrybrook mascot has been busy uh visiting classrooms who have earned uh 50 positive cards uh Cherrybrook students are doing a great job at modeling being safe kind and responsible and uh to the state they have 2,423 positive cards uh additionally Unified sports at Cherrybrook is now up and running uh since 2009 Cherrybrook students have been participating in Unified sports right now there are 40 uhk through third grade students participating this year and uh Unified sports joins people with and without disabilities on the same team so it's a great way to have some school spirit and to um have people meet each other thank you great report so uh Maggie Juliana and Simone anybody have any questions for our studart reps on anything you just heard tonight good reports lot of activities going uh as we break through January into February looking forward to the spring I think everybody is but uh okay good report we'll turn to Mr Bishop on the assistant superintendent's report please thank you Mr Daniels excuse me a couple elements out of the uh assistant superintendent's office kindergarten registration information did go out to our uh Community uh and we look forward to a a strong process c um in particular in connection with the recent State legislation uh we continue to work uh closely with the school on the uh planning for the implementation of the new reading program uh uh required by State Statute this uh upcoming year and then additionally I wanted to be able to share as well that I had an opportunity to speak with several Community constituents on uh safe walk to school and safe route to schools and and had the opportunity to connect with representatives from the uh state to discuss uh opportunities to um work with our municipality to evaluate um routs to school and make possible recommendations on uh improvements within the community to be able to support uh fund acquisition for the town and to be able to support our schools as well uh but those were a few highlights for me and I look forward to being able to connect with uh our curriculum committee at our next meeting John what's our what's our exception rate up to on the uh on the kindergarten side reest for no new no news yet no news okay no news yet great okay uh that closes out the reports Mr Dan can I just can I just interrupt for a sec uh Mr Bishop can you give a a quick update of your uh first Equity team meeting yesterday please oh thank you Dr Grossman absolutely uh we had our first Equity team meeting uh yesterday with our district Equity team so thrilled to be able to have uh uh representatives from each of our schools come together and working in in collaboration with uh the partners for educational leadership Carrie Lord and Patrice Nelson uh Carrie and Patrice worked with us to be able to develop our uh Equity statement a few years ago and we're thrilled to be able to have them back to help bring uh action and Direction into our Equity action plan so we have a wonderful team that has assembled and really looking forward to uh the the coordinated work with this team with our instructional coaches and with our administrative team as well thank you Dr grman any questions for the assistant superintendent anything you heard okay we're moving right along this normally doesn't happen like this but we are moving right along um so this comes up to the public comment side of things Kira um do we have anybody that would like to make a public comment tonight and we just ask you to uh I understand that we're virtual but if you can keep your comments to three minutes we'd appreciate that so any Body online that would like to say anything if you're joining us online and you would like to make public comment go ahead and use that raise hand feature zoom and I will call on you by your Zoom name and then you'll be allowed to talk I have uh Andrew Lavery with a raised hand I'm gonna allow Andrew to talk great good afternoon uh good evening Andrew how are you how you doing L can everybody hear me yep we can hear you fine perfect perfect yeah I just want just real quick uh Andrew La for pineacres Drive just two for for the record um when we give the like the the subcommittee reports Mr Bishop just gave a report on that on that Equity meeting um a little more detail if we could like okay you had the equity meeting for example Mr Bishop but what specifically did you talk about is there a way for me to look that up a little more detail all you basically gave is what I what I basically heard is that you had a meeting you met with some partners he gave some names and that was it like what specifically happened what specifically happens at the and what specifically talked about in some detail about the subcommittee meetings I've looked at some of the minutes for the subcommittee meetings and they're very very vague the reports that are given by the board of members who sit in those subcommittees again the reports are very vague we talked about this we discussed that no specific detail at all really ever given in my experience and the handful of Board of Ed meetings that I've attended here recently so if there could be some more some more substance to these reports and uh better minutes taken that would be great for uh for more information for the public thank you good good suggestions Andrew I sometimes my myself I think we're we're a little bit light in favor of trying to uh move through the meeting but I hear you um Mr Bishop do we have minutes on on that are there minutes that are going to be published from that meeting that that's not a subcommittee meeting uh Mr Daniels that's a a representative uh group from our district but uh we were going to be able to provide an update to the uh the board of education curriculum subcommittee so we can have information via that mechanism we should um if we're participating on it then I think the board members should get some type of minutes or something along those lines and along with the Andrew's points U maybe we do need to go into a deeper dive sometimes when we Mak reports so let me uh let me jump in there Lou that the equity team meeting is a a teacher meeting uh but what is um in great detail that that would um possibly answer that question and is that um the assistant superintendent through the curriculum committee gives an assistant superintendent report that really has detailed activities of what this assist superintendent is doing within his office and details of what these committees are doing and what they're specifically uh working on so we'll take what you said Mr Daniels and we'll make sure that um our subcommittee uh minutes that we're keeping within the the finance committee the policy committee and the the curriculum committee or more detailed that Equity team that that's a a school-based team but we'll we'll make sure that we'll have to work with if this is a priority to yours Mr Daniel we'll we'll make sure that we work with the chairs of um Mrs Hayes with the curriculum committee Mr Bush with uh the the finance committee and Mr shiler with the policy to make uh the minutes more detailed thank you and I recognize the limitations on this because we don't necessarily have recording secretaries at every one of these meetings so somebody's volunteering or somebody on the staff is doing that but uh um May maybe we should um try to get a little bit of a deeper dive into what's being uh what we're going over and what we're trying to accomplish so that'd be great thank you thank you for that question Andrew appreciate it any other questions online Kira I don't have any other raised hands um if anybody else would like to comment now's your now's your time no other raised hands okay thank you very much Kira okay tonight we were going to we were going to and this will be one of the things that are tabled uh we were going to be recognizing the um the shops at Farmington Valley for uh the uh their contributions to education primarily school education but the monies that they give to our town are are significant as a matter of fact over the last 20 years and I was going to comment on some of the projects but I'll save that but it's in excess of $100,000 which I consider to be a good neighbor uh that they've given to Canton Education Foundation in turn Canton Foundation has given that mostly I would say 98% of that goes to our schools uh for projects that are unbudgeted and uh there is a Canton Education Foundation committee the committee uh there's an apption process that's reviewed and those dollars are given out so uh Liz arrian who is the uh the general manager over at the shops who's going to attend tonight we have a a couple um uh citations proclamations for her but we're gon to we're going to move that out to February so we we'll table that any questions on that guys so it gives me a great pleasure and I'm very thankful and appreciative that both our state representatives can make it tonight Senator Lisa seminer and state representative uh elany carbos de gr are both with us tonight it would have been nice to have them in person uh it's always great to see them and I would just say from this board's pect perspective we're very appreciative of what you both do uh for us in the way you represent our town and um always uh you know looking for ways that we can uh maybe there's a a grant here or some influence there to help out camp so we appreciate that tonight um I'd like each to you know spend a few minutes just bringing us up to date in your respective offices but um you know the the question that's going to be on everybody's mind to some extent and we realize you're probably just as upset as we are is the uh excess cost sharing that uh those dollars that um have seemed to be reduced maybe maybe not maybe there's an opportunity there and then and then of course some of the grants that are that are sunsetting and of course we're going to have some questions about how we can work jointly together on those unfunded mandates and maybe getting it funded down the line so uh wi with that why don't we start with uh state senator Lisa seminer and then we'll turn over to state representative elany caros de So Lisa do you mind going first uh no not at all um so good good evening everybody thank you for having me tonight um I I uh was I'm prepared to talk to you a little bit about the um excessive Co cost Grant I wasn't sure if you um lost a significant amount or you're feeling that you're you you're not my only Town that's discussing this with me so some people felt that their um amount that they were quoted they are not receiving so is that the case in the in your situation it is we we budgeted there there was a pretty good indication that the we were going to get 88 there was supposedly 88% was going to be funded potentially on its way somewhere down the line to maybe 100% which is where it should be but um we uh we budgeted 88% and uh it's it's a six figure hit to us uh with not without getting that money and you're talking about the excessive cost Grant correct So Lisa we're talking about the excess cost which is the special education uh funding we're not talking about the education cost share okay education cost share uh kon's actually expected to receive the the same amount this year and uh getting uh an increase next year of $398,000 so we're specifically talking about the excess cost that the the state came up with a new formula uh for this year and a a tiered uh system and canton's rate was supposed to be at 88% and so we I worked with the board of Finance in September and actually adjusted our budget from 80 to 88% to to meet that uh not not thinking that would be an issue and about a month ago we started receiving word that it it it may be below 7 % and then yesterday we received some information from uh the Connecticut Association of public school superintendants and in other groups that it could be as low as 70% for us so that's about for Canton right now and now we're looking at it about $140,000 yeah and from what I was told um the uh formula that they use used was that didn't take didn't take into account the amount of special ed students I'm not exactly sure uh why that happened I can tell you that I did um propose some legislation for this upcoming session to take a look at that excessive cost Grant formula because my understanding is that it hasn't been looked at in quite a while so I don't know if that was part of the um of the reasoning be behind why the amount of money that was uh appropriated to each Town isn't isn't happening but and I also asked um for some information in terms of is this affecting every single one of my towns and I haven't received that answer yet and I don't know if um rep degra has any further Insight on it than I do sure I'm I'm happy to pop in um I've been speaking with the chair about this because we had also heard that this might be a challenge and I do believe that it's actually going to be across the state as of now I will say that um the first thing the chair said to me was please have your superintendent and your board of ed chair reach out he's happy to have a meeting je this is Jeff Curry I'm speaking of who is the house board uh ofed chair he's happy to have a meeting anytime um he knows that Cap's put out that information um and he understands why they put out that information but he would like to meet with you one-on-one if if you would so desire um he is going to be doing that with Avon as well because they had similar concerns um the the challenge is yes the wrong we think it was the wrong numbers were used it was data from a previous year so of course that would skew the numbers in terms of U numbers being off for how many special ed students we actually have and so um that number is unfortunately off but I will tell you that um I have seen in the last week um that the chair is very adamant that he gets back to what we what we you know a bipartisan way agreed to have the funding be because we know how important it is to the towns and that um you know your budgets it's really hard to come up with even an extra $140,000 um and you know I think one of my very first meetings as a State Rep was with Canton to talk about the fact that sometimes you have four or five students move into the district where decisions had been made about special ed in other districts and then you could be looking at a half a million or more extra costs that you were not expecting that lands in your budget so um while I can unfortunately make no guarantees I will tell you that we are just as upset about it as you are because that is not what we voted on and that is not what we were expecting and so it it's you know we're here to be your voice and I know Senator seminara feels the same way about that and and so it's our job to continue to Advocate and but but believe me when I tell you it is every single legislator that is hearing this and is going to the chairs and saying so what are we going to do to fix this um because that is again not what we agreed to so we're going to keep fighting for that and um and and moving forward as best we can on that so I hate to tell you to stay tuned but that's where we are and this is why we have you know a short session which makes budget adjustments because we're going to have to hopefully do one here that's great um so we'll keep our fingers closed just to add while we're looking at I also put in legislation or put in you know plan not only to look at the formula but to also consider the time ing that's associated and I know that this has sort of been done many times before but um I hear it from every one of my school districts that the timing of it doesn't allow for for school districts to prepare with their budgets so um I'm hoping we can take a look at that this session and and see if we can make some appropriate changes or you think the towns would just saying tough so so the question the question is that um you know this the state made Lisa as you pointed out the state made a mistake that there was more special education costs so they make the mistake don't they have to find I mean they make this commitment don't they have to go out and find I I know I'm I'm preaching to the choir here but shouldn't they be responsible just like we would be responsible if our Board of Finance said you know you made a mistake now go find your cut go find where you're going to get the money that you need to offset whatever it is I don't know why the state gets a free pass on this I I don't think we do that that's that's I I I I think Senator semire I don't want to speak for you but I I mean I don't think we do um I I think that that's exactly what the chair is saying too it's like no this is not what we said what we said and what we said and what we I don't want to use the word promise but kind of um you know that that was what we were putting forward was that you would get that 88% even potentially up to 100 so I you know and and that is the challenge when we put in legislation that has a fiscal note is that we as your legislators and even as you know a lesson I'm learning as a chair you still have to chase those dollars even after you've passed it because you have to make sure that it is appropriately awarded the way that it was intended so I I agree with you I think the state is responsible for it because we said so thank you I I agree wholeheartedly I just I wish I can tell you you that it's going to be remedied but I I along with uh rep de gr cannot make that sort of promise we certainly every one of us is advocating for our entire districts and um and also hearing from everybody so it's not a you're not a so which I think you already know a soul case so it's an unfortunate circumstance for sure well what are some of the other things that are coming down the pike legislatively that either may be of concern to us or have helped us any any thoughts any ideas um well if you're asking me I think um there's going to be a lot of um I think legislation that's going to talk about or look at engagement of students who have um who don't show up to school uh that's been it's a huge issue it's a growing issue and I think there it is something that is concerning to everybody so I think that is going to be looked at uh coming up I also in addition think is going to be what's going to be looked at is um you know as you know we changed the age for kindergarten and uh some people are super happy about that some people are not so happy about that at all um but I think as a result of that we're going to have to take a look at child care issues and I know Child Care issues is is going to be big this session for many many reasons but I think it it's also going to be taken into consideration um because of the changing of the age of the kindergarten enrollment Lisa can I just add something about the kindergarden yeah I think it would be important for the the legislators to just take a stand um on that issue because even though it it it says uh and Mr Bishop correct me if I'm wrong a September one date um there is flexibility within that and it's putting parents and Guardians in a tough position and it's putting schools uh districts in a a tough position regarding waivers and you're you're getting different responses in in in different districts across the state some just coming out right out of the gate saying everybody's coming in some coming out um and I haven't heard this one but could say uh nobody's coming in um that doesn't meet the the waiver and then you're getting the the the ability of when do you bring a four-year-old into assess them um closer to when they're five or later in the year so I I I think there's got to be some piece and I don't know if that's going to be done in this session um that may be a larger discussion but I I I could appreciate that we went in um after the September one date um but realistically it just th through the ownership right on the districts and every district is doing um something a little bit different so I I I just think that that's something that I'm pretty confident that you're you're all going to hear during the the session is the kindergarten and and then the next one um is the reading legislation um that that just came out and relative to where Canton is on that we're actually excited we're we're our our waiver um wasn't accepted in in one area there were two areas that we were accepted in but our team's excited to do the work get their hands um really looking at what's uh best for our kids and what's best for our community um but I I I I think the the legislators have to look at it a little bit different um because it is math next it is science next is social studies next and the the the question that um I'm sure this board will have is where's the local control related to um curriculum and it reading was passed is math next um and there really needs to be some more guiding conversations with that because at times uh I felt in being in two districts over the course of the year I actually felt that the goal post were moving uh with um how the reading legislation was was put in so th those are uh two big ones and I know you mentioned the the kindergarten so I wanted to add the reading and and this board has been actively updated by our assistant superintendent where we are with the reading and we'll have a board member on our committee really looking at what's the best um program for the the cim public schools to you so thank you Senator I would also just add add to that um the right to read in terms of the waiver they did I was told that if you were denied any piece of your waiver that you should schedule a meeting with SD and sit down with them and have that conversation I was also recently U made aware that there are additional reading programs listed on the SD website I think they originally started with 12 I think there's 19 now um certainly I hear you on local control um I would pause it because you brought it up kindergarten age is local control that's that was why that was put in the way it was so that individual towns could make individual decisions and individual Boards of Education could perhaps look at what their capacity would be for accepting X number of children you know to move them up so to speak or to keep them where they needed to be um and is developmentally appropriate so that's that's the challenge at some point we had to change it 40 odd other states you know have have it that way I I will just tell you a personal story my birthday is September 7th the cut off in Virginia was August 31st they put me in with the two-year-olds and guess what I talked this much when I was that age so they immediately moved me with the three-y olds because my birthday was a week later so I mean I I think that that was part of that flexibility and local control that we were trying to put in there for towns and cities the other thing I would say um you know I know there is a lot of concern about what could be next and about especially unfunded mandates a mandate relief um again speaking to the chair you know some of the notes he sent me um there is going to be a mandate relief working group and that is to review recommended mandates that are unnecessary that need amendment that need to uh that maybe need to be provided less frequently Etc so there will be an opportunity and my understanding is everything is on the table so there will be an to provide feedback on all of that yeah so the kindergarten legislation I'm not going to disagree at all with what you said the the the piece that is difficult for the the district is how the legislation was written relative to the type of a assessment or um guidelines that that we are using that it says that the state should develop some CSD csde should develop something to guide um districts and that just didn't really happen at a level with the the the read to write the biggest concern that this board um has and this Administration has is is is not so much that it started with four or five programs and now it's grown to this many it's this could be a a $600,000 cost to the the the town of Canton and a $600,000 cost to the town C of Canton in the current budget is almost a 1.75 increase on top of what we already have and when we we did meet with the the state the we we got our letter on a Friday night I think we were meeting with the state on a a Monday or a Tuesday um and you know we just had some questions relative to we we we needed to move on and do what was best for our district but that $600,000 what I I did share with csde at that time was okay this is where we're going to have to move uh how much are we getting and Mr Bishop correct me if I'm wrong it's $50,000 towards professional development and professional learning that that that that's that's a tough one that this board's going to have to to sell to the community and the question that's going to come out from the community is well why do you need to do this and the answer by this board and this Administration is going to be well the it's a state mandate and it's a state Mandate of a a 600 00 for us it'll probably be about a $600,000 um cost yeah um rep cavos beat me to it in saying that uh I do agree with her that we did um pass the legislation with the idea of local control so um I agree with her there you seem to be um I have many many towns who are complaining to me about the right to read in the cost that is associated with it and some of the towns um are also coming to me saying that their Town um reading level is above what was required for this and that is why they are upset if if they feel if their students are performing and they are performing to what the expected level or above why should they be penalized and having it obviously what they're doing is working and is successful so why do they need to spend the money to um get a box program that's the other thing that I've heard too that this is like a boxed up program and it's all prepared with um very little um leeway for the teaching for the teachers so um I think that the right to read there there needs to be we need to further look at it at this point and and see if there's any adjustments that can be made um because I I do feel that it's a piece of legislation that is quite frankly costing many districts a lot of money and possibly unnecessarily and it's a piece of legislation that's with good intent right because for some districts it's really necessary um and that's the challenge and I think that it may even be one of the mandates that's examined by this mandate working group because I think that they're even think they're even talking about standing up like a committee that would look at legislation prior to being enacted and I wish that we already had that because that is where exactly somebody could have looked at this and said you know if it's this percentage of kids that aren't you know then this these districts should put this in place but if they're up here these districts don't need to do this so that that's the frustrating thing is because we know with good intent but it's the implementation and then the lack of funding that goes with that implementation that believe me when I say we hear you and it again that's another one we are hearing across the state it's not just here yeah so the the interesting thing about that legislation um Senator rep is is that you can correct me if I'm wrong the legislation really has nothing to do about data there there's no data there was no uh student achievement um relative to that legis legislation um it it it had nothing to do with if your district is performing at an 80% level or 90% level like many of the districts that didn't get the waiver are performing at an 80 or 90% so the legislation really had nothing to do with uh student performance it had to do with all kids need to to read and I I agree with that wholeheartedly um we when we met with the state it wasn't about um arguing or anything like that was about okay what are our next steps where do we need to go and can you help us fund um this changing can you help us work and make sure that we choose the the the best program for our kids but by my understanding um the leg legislation really has nothing to do with student achievement and that's not how um any District was scored relative to they um getting it so I want our board to uh understand that when we submitted the waiver it had nothing to do with uh student achievement it had to do with they assessed you on the program that you currently had um but they did not look at uh student achievement am I correct on that Mr Bishop yeah but thank you those are two hard questions and and I know you're getting hit all over the the the state and in your constituents with reading in kindergarten and unfunded mandates so Mr Jango I thank you for letting me uh jump in there on a couple of those because those are big ones from the superintendent's chair right you know when when you talk about um and I know you both mention it that you're hearing it across the state or you're hearing across your District what's it take to to get these things to change I mean h how does it how does it work legislatively I mean you both seem to be very much in favor and you want to help and support and why doesn't it happen faster if in fact others are feeling the same way Senator you want to go first or no no I'll let you take that one okay uh you know it it there's a couple reasons so first of all um you know obviously for years the state was in bad financial shape right so now we have more money and and that was one of the other things I was going to mention you know we secured an extra $150 million on top of the $90 million for the continuation of the ECS you know the education cost savings and that's 96% funded as of fiscal year 25 so like you know there is good news um there is good news that you know you'll be paying um I did go and look up the numbers today after I spoke with you um Jordan and the numbers are going to be um 52% of magnet tuition instead of what it used to be um so I think it's important that we you do see there is progress and we're making that progress the challenge is if we're not all sort of rowing the boat in the same direction ction and I think you can hear there's bipartisan agreement here right there's actually a lot of that with some of these things in the building that doesn't necessarily mean we get it done fast that's the challenge is that I think that had we looked at the bill and unfortunately I wish I was on education I'm not on education um it's not one of the Committees I serve on but I think that it would have been nice and I'm sure some people probably mentioned why aren't we tying this to data on these reading programs or why aren't we tying this to what existing student success is versus our students who maybe have more challenges um I think it's you know some of it is the process um in a short session I can guarantee you I hope we if we just accomplish getting the money secured that you were supposed to have that will be a huge win um SE change like we had in a long session last year where more got done in Education than has been done in probably a decade or more that's probably not going to happen you know it's bureaucracy it's which direction the boats getting Road it's a lot of those things sure um and I will say based on how many people are calling the chairs about right to read perhaps there will be something done sooner than later um because it it you know it's it's a cost that some towns just are gonna really struggle to bear I mean $600,000 is nothing to sneeze that right so um Senator I'm sure you have other thoughts as well um well I I I really do think that um sometimes it it also comes down to it sometimes it is bipartisan and I'll just be honest with you sometimes it it it comes down to as rep degra said that not everybody's rowing in the same D Direction This legislation was passed before I was there just so you know so I I was very concerned when it was passed that it it didn't take into account um you know looking at again student achievement and how the districts are meeting that and I I still I'm still hopeful that that will be taken into account and that because I think many many districts expected and anticipated that when they applied for that waiver that that was going to be taken into consideration and that they were going to be getting that waiver and that didn't happen and there are again many many districts with very high achieving students and I think very sound curriculums and um because it doesn't meet the quote unquote criteria that um was set out you know you you didn't get the waiver um so I'm still hopeful there's enough people again that are um concerned about this that are complaining about it so I'm still very hopeful that the chairs will listen and that and I think they agree I think they they feel they are concerned about it and they've heard enough about it not only from the legis the legislators on education but all the legislators and I think they're hearing it from their constituents as well because every one of their districts are getting whacked with unexpected um expenses that they didn't think they had and I will say that even if we do are not able to reverse policy we maybe can change policy or at the very least again pursue funding for towns because the unexpected hit of $600,000 I don't think was considered I don't think it was considered how much these programs might cost ultimately so so so along those lines and Kim suin raised a good question she she submitted to to me was um so we see we see these what's seems to be not even across the board or towns are being penalized what can individual board members or generally Boards of educations do other than to pick up the phone and harass you two to say come on we got to do better what what can we do where where can we go should we be uh you know at the capital is there chances for Testimony is there what what should we be doing to be more active proactive on the state level to try to fight for some of these things with you arm in-arm with you uh not certainly not against you so what would you recommend for us well and I I wouldn't even say not listen if if it's against that's okay too I mean I you know we're not gonna always be right either so I I I would say please come please testify or at least testify on Zoom submit written testimony if you're not comfortable testifying in person or on Zoom um definitely call us definitely pick up the phone make sure that you know you're reaching out to both of us because that's you know if you hear something at least if it's really bunk we can sort of say oh that's never going to happen or if it's something really critical we can say yeah we really need you to testify we want you there we we can certainly keep you AB breast or I can certainly keep you AB breast I am on the education committee I can keep you a breast and knowing that this is a concern of yours but you said something earlier that I just wanted to touch upon and you said what we what can we do other than harassing you I I can only speak for myself but I think cat rep de gr feels the same you're not harassing me this is what I was elected to do I represent you if if you have a concern you should certainly be coming to me and you should be coming to me over and over for whatever it is that you have take issue with because that's what I'm here for I'm here to represent you and and all of the towns that I represent so I don't I want you if I can leave you with anything don't ever think that you're harassing either one of us because I we I don't think either one of us take it that way no and I had a great conversation with Kim Sullivan for about 20 minutes get in the line at at Ulta right before the holidays about all kinds of stuff so I I mean the more you know call us it's I don't I don't think we neither of us look at it that way because if we didn't want to talk to you we wouldn't have run for office um and and we're you know we're not always going to agree on everything and that's okay too but I I certainly I I I think I can speak for both of us we take into account what our constituents what our elected officials in town said we we do take that into account and like I said doesn't mean we're going to agree 100% of the time but we are you know we do we have to look to you you're the experts on the town and and the and your board of bed I mean that that is where local control or whatever you want to call it that that does come into play because we are supposed to be there fighting for our TS so so Lisa Lisa I we we will take you if you wouldn't mind let us know when that education committee meeting we'll circulate it there maybe one or two of our members want to go and listen in at least and uh at least be there in support or or to voice our our our concern so that would be great if you could pass that on to me and I'll make sure it gets it's it's provided in our our monthly agenda when yeah I mean if if this is the issue if this issue is going to be heard and I can't guar but I can't guarantee you that it is but I can guarantee you that it will certainly be raised um to be heard uh and if there is a public uh hearing on it I will certainly make Canton aware of it and you and give you as much advanced notice as I can so that you can as you can testify either in person on Zoom or provide written testimony what whatever is most comfortable for you and just so you know the way our our system works when we have a public hearing you get five days notice and then the system closes at 3 o'clock pm the day before the hearing so you have to be signed up to testify by 3 pm the day before so that you can be heard the next day because it's you know say it's 10 o'clock the next day 11 o'clock the next day then you're assigned you know your number 10 to go speak now depending on how many agencies are speaking ahead of you that could mean you know everybody gets three minutes kind of like you gave three minutes tonight to Mr Lavery you know it's it's a three minute process and we can ask as many questions as we want um you know within reason um but sometimes you know if the commissioner of Education happens to be speaking that day they may take an hour because of all of our questions off of the top of the morning so it's not like oh you're number 10 you'll be 30 minutes in so just just to explain how that part of the process works the other thing is you can go to the CGA website and you can sign up for updates you know if you see a bill filed that you want to follow you can actually sign up so that way you're get you'll get emailed updates every time something changes with that bill U and that's that's an important part of the process too because bills change so dramatically from the time they are files and they're merely a title and a description until what we actually pass if it actually passes um there's some bills that I just automatically tell people that's never going to see the light of day so you don't need to get upset about that because you know thousands of bills are filed every year and we pass maybe 300 I'll just give you for my the committee that I chair Planning and Development I think we passed out 50 from committee but by the time the clock and everything else I think we passed we officially passed both houses and signed into legislation 10 bills and then there were maybe seven or eight Concepts that got tucked into other bills that got passed so just to give a more General Civics Lou I just want to add to that when I testified in the spring it was it was amazing to see that it wasn't limited to board members there was principales teachers superintendents language arts Consultants math coordinators so you know other districts are speaking up testifying advocating um from all over the all over the state so I don't you know I don't know how how Jordan feels about our teachers or language arts Consultants testifying but certainly that is going on thank you any any other board members just parents are also testifying and students by the way students come in and testify too and quite frankly they're usually very powerful just so you know and really smart uh board members any other questions for our reps Kim Erica I see a couple here Erica and then Joe I was just gonna ask um specifically about the excess cost um reimbursement what can individual board members do um in terms of advocating for it or right right because there's not a specific Bill where we can come and testify about it or anything so so there was last session um the bill that we passed basically held all districts harmless in terms of you won't see any less money than you were currently getting and you should be seeing more money than you were currently getting um I believe the amount that we are hoping the Canton will see is around $200,000 I think that was what was projected again that's something the chairs of of Education will be fighting for to make sure that those dollars actually go into effect um it will be 96% fully funded in in fiscal year 25 so you're welcome to send a a letter to the the chairs of of Education um and I would identify yourself as a board of AD member because I think that's important for them to see you know you're not technically their constituent but you could CC you know Senator seminara and myself um but you know there there could be a bill on ECS this year you know we don't know for sure so okay and the board chair is curry uh yes for the house side it's Curry and for the Senate side it is U mccy Doug mccy okay thank you and you you could also send in if if you have agreement amongst your board members you can send in a a letter or on behalf of your entire board so I I don't yeah yeah I'm just saying if if there's consensus and there's agreement and you're willing to do that um you can do that as well great Joe you had a question yes thank you both for being here appreciate it appreciate all you do for us uh and the additional ECS funding was was duly noted and it's been important to us as well uh the most uh important thing I heard tonight was the comment uh Alana you made about uh un unfunded mandates uh that they all or virtually all them they all sound great and they are great and they're all they all have a price tag uh a $600,000 price tag or a couple thousand price tag and maybe some of them have expired and and to uh to put that burden on local districts is really really difficult uh that that for example the additional ECS funding wouldn't two years of it wouldn't cover the new reading curriculum if we had to go that route uh so that that you're going to review all those maybe get rid of some and maybe consider more care carefully about the cost of them is really really important uh and probably something that should have been done a lot sooner just saying but we're here now we have to be grateful we're moving forward with the right thing so I just want you to know that unfortunately is not that report that uh it it's convening um 11 members of um it's an 11 member board and it's to to again look at mandates and review it's a working group to repeal or amend obsolete or dupli duplicative mandates but the report just so you know is not due until 1125 so I I just I don't want you to think that that report's coming out this session because it will not be we wouldn't want to rush into anything but at least it's progress in the right direction uh the uh uh just another quick comment regarding special education there have been study groups talking groups at the legislature uh for years uh because some of the issues are Universal funding surrounds them uh you mentioned Delani that you know we we get five youngsters move in that come with a half million dollar price take it's just not right uh that the funding ought to follow the student not become the burden of the of the town I don't know how to make that happen but that would seem to make more sense to me then there are out placements the uh regulations in the supervision of outplacement schools is lacking and I'm sure there are other special education issues do those task forces do they make reports is there any progress is it an unsolvable problem Senator I don't know specifically any task forces are you aware of anything recent that was done on special ed um I am not aware of anything recent that was done on Special Ed but I will tell you that I was at a meeting last night and someone asked if I would be willing to put forth legislation to to specifically look at outplacement and uh you know the cost of outplacement is excessive and could that at least be covered by the state if if they're not willing if we can't make the whole budget you know we can't make everything fully hole in the other way and I don't know how I feel about that I think that's kind of uh not the the direction in which I would like to go but I know that um a lot of people share your concern about the outplacement not only with the cost associated with it but um with the uh reciprocity between the district and the outplacement and the communication that that is between the two um in many situations districts feel like that is lacking and um so uh we might be taking a look at that in the future but as of right now I do not believe there is a a task force or a working group looking at special education I don't think it's unsolvable either and I think that you know conversations again that I've had with the chair because every sing single year that I've met with the Canton Board of Ed and the Avon Board of Ed they have brought up special education costs and so every year I go to him and I say when are we going to talk about special education and I think the plan was we need to figure out you know the I was actually surprised that excess cost sort of got taken care of somewhat last year and I think we'd be having a very different conversation if we were closer to 100% I mean that that was significant you know to have that Leap Forward frankly compared to previous years and again it's because we're in a better financial position than we previously have been but um you know I think the the desire to tackle that is there it's whether or not we do and again short session I hate to keep saying that if I had my way we would be a full-time legislature to be perfectly honest but there is a reality of a short session and having to follow the process of filing the bills having the public hearings going through the committee meetings and we all have very tight deadlines we start February 7th and my committee has to be finished by March 25th because we adjourn May 7th just to give you an idea of how fast this really goes in a short year so um My Hope Is maybe we tackle that in 25 um because it's really critical that we keep looking at that because you're right cost is way too high and those are private businesses that are doing a lot of that special education especially the out placements um and there there could be more oversite frankly that might be a but um but we hear you thank you any other questions from board members right now I I want to thank you both for spending the time and um I'm sorry we couldn't do this uh in in person it's always nice to see you and and um you know mingle a little bit but uh thank you for taking the time tonight and you will hear from us more often and thank you for that offer and uh you know you really do great work for us and I know it's a lot of time and we're very appreciative so thank you both thanks for having us yeah my pleasure and uh and again if I hear of something that through the education committee that I think directly affects you I certainly will reach out to you all and make you aware of it and and at the very least um encourage you to testify and and speak your peace thank you thank very much all right both you have a great evening you're welcome to stay as long as you'd like anyway further okay have a good evening thank you so much for having us good night bye bye uh next up on the on the agenda is the board of education budget Workshop Dr Gman thank you chair Daniels if we could um K if we could put up that uh slide deck so the community can see it and board members this was emailed to you you this afternoon and for anybody on the community in the community uh this is also on our website are you gonna put are you putting up the large Capital no she's putting up a a slide deck of the open Choice okay got it that you got it cure yep it's it's trying getting there it's trying to open give it one second here well I'm going to give it about 30 more seconds and I know all board members were asent this and I also know that it's on our uh website right and I very easily can talk to it okay so Ju Just A a reminder to the the Board of Education in the to the community that on December 12th I presented a forecasted budget to the board of education and to the town and a reminder that the the forecasted budget is not the final Administration budget it it's a budget at that moment in time with all the administrative requests and the department requests of where I was at that moment of time and then we did on December there we go on December 30th um I answered a whole bunch of questions uh to the board relative to questions that you had on the the forecasted budget and on January 9th um we asked for review of clarifications and then on January 9 I um January 9th I presented the open Choice budget to you which um I'll go over a little bit this evening and then on February 13th I'll be presenting the administrative Budget on February 27th we'll have a budget workshop on February 29th we'll have a budget workshop with a possible adoption of the board of education budget if we need more time the um we'll have another Board of workshop on March 5th with the board of education budget due to the board of finance of March 11th and then uh a budget the the budget presentation to the board of Finance on March 20th if we need to make any modifications to our budget the 26 will meet the board of finance will suggest revisions to the board of aded and then the annual budget hearing which was approved last night will actually be April 23rd and then the budget referendum will be May 9th so we have a very busy budget season as I've shared and we've been very transparent for the past few months with our budget process and once the Board of Education adopts their budget that's when we'll start going out into the community and sharing our budget through uh I I would recommend virtual meetings and some inperson meetings also the next slide just a reminder if you could go down here that this is um a chart of where we are where we were on December 8th and just a reminder if you take salaries Transportation health benefits liability oil natural gas and and electricity and contracted Services right out of the gate were a 4.20 above where we were last year you add in um special education at that moment in time it was 3.99 you take that's an 8.19 per increase right out of the the start of our budget and that's not including any of our dues supplies maintenance Furniture educational technology tech services and small Capital you add that in of what the administrators were giving me it's 3.54 and then that equals a 12.40 and just a reminder um we had some new staff that we answered at our our last meeting but then you look at the the bottom box what I really want to remind the board again is what I'm looking at is that the the the town will receive an increase of $398,000 in education cost share and what that was directed to do was it was directed to go right to the Board of Education even though it's Town Revenue it was directed to go to the Board of Education in the use of what we were using our our Esser funds for so that number that 398 if you remember from last time when I presented we actually having our budget that we're holding over that moved into our operational budget of over $300,000 so that's really an offset so we'll have to talk about that a little bit more and then the $850,000 for the the town re gets reimbursed for special education funds so if you take where we were that gives us when we're over in the right of 9.4 and then when you take away the 3.85 on December 8th I presented to you a 5.55 uh proposed budget forecast budget at that time I could tell you when I present to you on uh February 13th that that's not going to be my number we're still uh working on our budget um and I need to let you know there'll be some additions to the budget but there also will be some uh reductions uh to the budget so I look forward to explaining that to you on um February 13 the next slide if you go down regarding the open choice and the open Choice memo for all our community is on the the the website we'll be receiving 950 $50,000 for open Choice next year and um there were some questions relative to how some of our open Choice funds were being used the first question is how would the teacher minority recruitment work I want to remind everybody that the Connecticut teacher Residency program operated in partnership with CK it's focused on diversifying the teaching staff across the state of Connecticut the program partner with school districts in a grow their own model leading to Connecticut state certification the program works in support of legislative mandate Public Act 23-1 167 increasing educator diversity so this is really how it works the program works in conjunction with the district that Mr Bishop will form a team and people apply for the Connecticut teacher Residency program and Mr Bishop and his team will actually interview uh candidates and they will identify and support prospective candidates for parti for participation the program then supports the candidate in professional learning courses for 14 to 18 months while the candidate Works within the district so if you take a student teacher for example that's what it is so as someone is taking courses also within the C the Connecticut teacher Residency program they're also working in our district in one classroom it will be either at Cherrybrook or at kenon intermediate school and they're working in doing their student teaching the entire year candidates participate in depending on the program and work with their Mentor teachers for one school year receiving uh a a small pay um and benefits candidates are then eligible for a full-time teaching position in a partner District upon successful completion of program courses and certification checkpoints so after this person completes the year with us it is the goal that the second year of the program we will hire them as a teacher so what we anticipate is two years from now we do anticipate in elementary opening that the person that we are training for next year with our teachers within the Connecticut teaching Residency program would have a job for the 25 26 school year I'm going to stop right there because that's a big one if anybody has any questions board member questions okay the next one is a a lot of slides but I'm as you know I'm very transparent in in the the the budget process the question what was what would the technology funds be spent on so the following slid represent it items that will be paid for by the open Choice Grant totaling $533,000 so that's half of our open Choice funds is in dependent upon um technology is dependent upon half of our open Choice funds so you could see the the threat prevention that is our cyber security type of model Community messaging system copying support copying support electronic document archival system eate firewall keep going down Google for Education posting site for the arrow internet filter and annual renewal cyber security monitoring net watch printer support contract public performance movie site license School Erp support cost server battery cyber security training antivirus Solutions applicant uh tracking that's our Apple track Cloud hosting Library content management website curriculum support for teachers Mystery Science which I believe is educational technology freckles star smart and others Renaissance Learning that's some of our software ISL Learning Ally math data collection visualization for Bridges Microsoft licensing I know I'm going on and on but I I I want to answer the question Navan new news Ela paperless employee portal reading program Service Solutions science curriculum sixth grade math momx science simple video capture screen castify social Express cool school videos using animal characters Brain Pop we video cat laptop iPad for special ed students color laser printer with copying capacity monthly offline backups classroom techn technology staff and student desktop license server for the Wi-Fi network infrastructure firewall zero day threat prevention server infrastructure asset task for it equipment USB drive CD DVDs and Jewel cases Chromebook Parts classroom supplies desktop computers District badges for blanks District badges Inc stff laptop computer uh replacement student Chromebook that's AIG big one replacement for 99,000 smart score finale interact drawing math type mobile read right for Google backup software cyber security audit and compliance internet service providers earbuds for Smarter Balance earbuds for smarter balance for CIS and CMS infrastructure laptop office supplies tablet Replacements server desktop replacements for a total of $533,000 what you should be possibly thinking in your head right now is what I said is that if we didn't have open Choice funds all these things would have to be in the operational budget so that's important to know 533,000 that's about a 1.5% of our budget is earmarked for um technology so I know I had a board member that asked that I apologize for giving so much um but I wanted to make sure that I I was that we were clear in answering the the the board members question of what um technology funds would be spent on and and that's the entire list of what technology would be spent on using open Choice funds I'll answer any questions that you would like uh on that one any questions to the board I mean it's it's an extensive list who puts that together for you Jordan so Jeff deastro this is his budget so if he wanted to know what the technology budget is this is his budget and then with the help of Mrs mikowski she exported it out of um our vision software and and uh of course Mrs nardy put it in in nice slides for us and for the public um to view but as I said we could produce any line item of what's in the budget and what we're uh spending funds on um and I thought this was an important enough question to give you every dollar that that was in um that line item with open Choice funds I I think it's important for everybody to understand what we spend our open Choice funds on and that's about that's over 50 50% of what we spend our funds on have most of those dollars been expended I mean have we gotten these you know so much of this inventory well that's for next year this is for next this is next so I would suspect in last year's budget was fairly s it was it was did those dollars go out right almost right away or yeah so well we we don't receive open Choice funds um we receive open Choice funds Donna help me out here I think we receive open Choice funds two times a year one um in October and November and then one possibly in April or May okay great any questions about this how this all works the technology side poster by the way in April may say that again April May most most or April May yep so and then the the last slide those were the the the two questions that we had regarding o Open Choice um and I just wanted to to say that just reminder to all um board members that um you you received a really high level um forecast and memo back in in December and then we did the open choice and then I'll give you a um a real good administrative um Budget on February 13 that you you'll get um a presentation from me but you'll also get a a budget book that will have a lot of the materials that we discussed already but within that presentation my goal will be to share on three or four slides what is the difference between where I was was on December 12th and where I will be on February 13 I think it's important for you to understand um because there's definitely some things that have happened um additionally in in some of the things that we learned from December uh 12th to February 13th and and I had to make some uh adjustments so I I look forward to presenting to you on February 13th and having our budget um workshop and we did share this highlevel view with the the board of Finance last night great okay thank you Dr Gman okay uh we we move on to standing committee reports um nothing's really changed on finance Russell's way so we'll we'll let that go Joe you want to update on policy and what we're going to do at the next meeting sure quickly uh we didn't meet tonight it's it's a difficult work to do in a face- to-face meeting it's just it's too tedious to do in a a zoom meeting uh there are about half a dozen policies in the 4,000 series which is uh about personnel which we didn't get to we'll pick that up on February 13th and we'll start reviewing the 5,000 series which is a critical one as I put in an email to you after the last meeting because it deals with student policies so it's it mean all our policies are important these are probably the most important so I would ask the policies that you were assigned to uh please if you get your comments or questions to John H by the end of the month would be very helpful we we will not finish the 5,000 series at the next meeting but we should finish it in two meetings uh and John just a reminder uh we uh we didn't get minutes from last uh time's meeting so you know weever you can get to that I know it's only it's only been a couple of weeks and to the Mr Lavery and any else who's listening uh all of the proposed policies and current policies are on the school website and accessible to anybody in the public so there's no no secrets there and if we adopt uh new the drafting policies they'll all be provided to the public before we we vote on them right well thank you thank you Joe um I I meant to mention in my comments that I had lunch today with the uh chairman of the board of education for region 10 and uh we were talking about policy in they are they are mirroring us not on purpose but they they've chosen the same path that they are uh going to go and adopt the shipment policies uh probably about 85% of them they're going to just accept and 15% they're uh they're keeping and modifying in their own way and uh when I told them our method of going through this he said wow he said I don't think I could get our board members to read all those policies and I said well how do you how do you accept them if you haven't read them he says well he said that's what we're relying on shipment for so I said oh boy so they they flagged the ones that they wanted do uh to keep on their own so it was interesting thank you Joe thanks for that report Erica curriculum I think you meet tomorrow unless there's a delay I guess right yeah that's our plan um to meet tomorrow so I don't really have an update um until next meeting sure but um our plan is to discuss the kindergarten registration process and professional development and couple of other updates but I can share more at after our meeting so would you say if uh if tomorrow if there's a delayed opening if if we get that email then uh then curriculum is off for tomorrow correct yeah we decided um that I I think that's right Mr Bishop so we decided that we'd cancel it if there's a delay tomorrow and then we'll reschedule okay so anybody was planning just just FYI and then the the final is uh Communications and um Felicia do you want to give an update on that I know you guys are working on a is it a February um drop on that newsletter yes we don't have another update since the last board meeting but we I don't have the date in front of me but I think we'll have an update for the next meeting okay I think we meet right before our our next meeting we usually schedule our meeting uh the day the week before or a few days before so I'll have an update then great thank you thank you very much um calendar of events in in your uh board packet if you haven't printed it uh there's an updated of all the different uh meeting dates that are coming up in the next uh obviously the next board meeting and and all the budget workshops that are going on so I would just uh remind you to take a look at that Dr Gman is there anything you want to highlight there I know you did a few minutes ago but anything further that we need to know about no I think I think it says it all okay great um board member announcements anything the board wants to uh bring forward anything that we missed tonight or something that you saw or went to or you want to comment on I I I concur with uh I think it was Dr Gman that said that prism's on the 3 um we did we did submit a uh a basket no big deal but um that's a big fundraiser for everybody and hope you guys can make it and B on the baskets and and help the PTO the PTO is going to be at our next meeting with uh PTO update so and if you've never been to prisms it's really cool to work going okay uh board action items um is that a separate agenda item or is that uh well it's just uh it's the secretary um Kim I I don't think there were any action items uh tonight that no for for from tonight's meeting for us to uh to do uh the only thing that I um uh heard tonight um was Mr Daniels asked the the board to uh the administration and the committee chairs to look at our meeting minutes and make them a little bit more detailed so I I would say that that would be an an action item um that we want to look at okay so we move to the consent agenda uh and I'm looking for the uh for a motion that the board uh moveed that the camp board of education approved the consent agenda so approve which is the approval of the minutes of January 3rd through 24th and the minutes of the board walkth through of the special meeting on January 9th so can I have a motion to approve the uh consent agenda please thank you Felicia second thank you Erica first and second any questions on the consent agenda no now just just as a reminder I know we get these uh so the discussion that I would just mention I know we get these these uh these packets and the minutes are in there we and and I know that uh Claudia and Terry and Kim do a marvelous job but we're supposed to really proof those minutes so if you make sure you're reading the minutes and make sure they're accurate we have to rely on one another that those minutes are uh those are accurate so I have a first and second all those in favor I I one two three I think that's uh everybody what do we have one I three right four five six board members on yeah so six six okay thank you very much 60 all right um Dr Gman you want to give us the overview of the capital Improvement plan please yeah so um this was already presented to you um the the capital Improvement plan and if you recall from the capital Improvement plan when I presented in the forecasted budget um that if you remember I'm trying to forecast out five years out for planning purposes for the board planning purposes for the town and for the board of finance a reminder to the to the board that um we don't have Capital large Capital anything over $10,000 in our operational budget Capital within uh the the town of Canton it by Charter goes into the border of selectman budget so for next year our list totals 1,00 1 million excuse me1 m71 th000 included in that is the $500,000 of Portables modules that we got to work with the the board of Finance in the town of how that's going to work other than that um I just had a meeting the other day with uh Mr Skinner the town CEO and our director of facilities and our business official and our Director of Finance for the town to discuss the this list that uh we have put together and then the the CAO will put the list together of what they feel that could be put into the the the town budget so The The J the job of the Board of Education tonight is to um approve this list this is our um large Capital list and then um the the CAO will determine what is going to be put in h the the the town budget that's so so I I've had a problem with this method for a while I've talked to board of Finance members that we put together what our priorities are and then we we we allow and the way that the town Charter reads is that the board of Selectmen then will put forth a a CIP budget and they're responsible for and they'll tell us what what they feel like paying for so we're we're two-thirds of the budget but we may not be two-thirds of the CIP and and so that that's a problem and I think this is something that the board has to get behind it requires um it requires U Charter change and the way the charter change comes about is uh first of all there's a petition and then there's a vote and um I would really like to see after this budget's passed that I'd really like the board to get behind some type of Charter change that gives us better control of our own CIP and doesn't rely on the board on the board of Selectmen who by the way I think does a fabulous job but even with the arpa funds the arpa funds they they they were the gatekeeper on the arpa funds so we could put in what we wanted but the bo it was the board of Selectmen that decided what the Board of Education should get that's not the way it should be the tal shouldn't be wagging the dog here so I I would just like everybody to think about that I'm going to do a little bit more research on it but I'd really like to attack this problem going forward because I I don't see it as uh for whatever the past Charter revision committee saw to do this as a matter of fact back when I was a selectman the CIP L was was at the foot of the uh Board of Finance because they handled the pur strings they could tell you Board of Education what you could what what you can spend in Board of Selectmen what you can spend it shouldn't be the board of Selectmen taking that uh role on for uh for the Board of Education too so I I just mentioned that um so with that said need a a motion that the Canton Board of Education adopt the 2024 2025 Capital Improvement plan is presented by the superintended May the first Lou before you do that Jordan on the last page it says PPS $500 that can't be right thank you yeah it does Br classroom portable no windows no ventilation is the justification that must be 5,000 I bet you but actually it's oh I'm sorry it's actually uh in our small Capital plan I should have removed it from there so we'll take that one out all right the motion would read then uh that the move of the camp board of education adopted 2024 2025 Capital Improvement plan as amended correct may have the first thanks Joe second thanks Kim first and second any any discussion on that okay all those in favor that's six thank you very much pass okay the final the final piece and this won't take long uh I'd like a motion that the Canton Board of Education go on Executive session for the purposes of the superintendent of school's midyear valuation and we're inviting Dr Gman to attend and that will happen at um 8:35 p.m.