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Yeah. That's all gone. Everything that was in the policy that we adopted is gone. Yeah. And this one we revert back to this one. Okay. Question. We got more questions. Starting to resent the time. All right. We did spend a lot of time with that play was like a lot of us doing it. like for me it's like the last seven years. God, you you've ridden this roller coaster before. Yeah. So, and then that was the last item we had on the agenda. So, really after all that, we're talking about moving this guy forward. Oh, I'm sorry. Second. Second.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
I pulled up some scenarios. The average school bus life cycle is 12 to 15 years. Our last bond was 19 years ago. And I know a lot of the public says, "Well, we can repair them." But I don't think they understand the older they get, the higher the cost to repair if you can get the parts right. The average HVAC system in Phoenix, Arizona is uh 12 to 15 years as well. 29 we've got 19 years that we haven't had a bond and on top of that when you look at the fact that the HVAC systems 19 years ago or 15 years ago when they installed the energy efficiency of those now today would be higher in the energy efficiency which would reduce our operating cost as well. So, these are just things in my mind going between the bond and the override is I'm more concerned that people tend to focus more on the override and if we do both and we lose that bond, we're going to be really hurting.
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Gatewood. We're going to have to navigate it. So, why not dive in, right? And and the the balance is that from a macro ecosystem perspective is the world is not going to be concerned about that and will continue to run 100 miles per hour or even faster in regards to AI because AI is going to develop so much faster than um the in this information age than even the internet did. And so if we're if we're if one of our priorities is future ready um we absolutely have to consider the health and the the mental health of our students. But we also have to consider um what do we what must we and should we do in order to end the balance of it to make sure that they are future ready because the world's not slowing down. And and I appreciated both of our perspectives on that.
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Any discussion? All in favor? Did you get that? I did. Motion to move. Second. All in favor? Second. All in favor? Beautiful. We're good.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
So, that's my two cents. Anyone want to add? Just a a question. You you mentioned the comparable districts and I know I've seen those slides before as well. Um, but have we also done a comparison with comparable communities like with a comparable um ratio of um certain political parties that tend to vote certain ways, things like that? Madam President, I will say just for that purpose, um we just pulled our operational peer groups from the auditor general. And so that's those those uh the kind of the 10 um school districts. So they're all throughout the region in Maricopa County. So um we haven't drilled to that extent, but I will say within this operational peer group, there is a lot of our westside um you know districts like Deer Valley and Peoria, Glendel Union, ourselves. So we're at least kind of in the same geographical area.
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I did. I did too. I Anything else on that? All right. Finance and facilities. Um I could I could speak a bit to that. Um we went over the mass facility planning process. Um we're going into phase three. So um determining programmatic needs and so not not the uh the facilities, you know, and the improvements that we need to make there, but kind of what the students need, right? It's kind of you know, in those in those spaces for their that particular program or or um uh grade or whatever. Um then we are also talked about just a couple uh RFPs, the notebook or the Chromebook one. Um we talked about that last week and I think we're voting on that now. So you know again just a change in process um taking that extra effort and putting a little thought to it. I what was it?
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
So that gives a general context for local community at least. Okay. Thank you. And then um and I don't know if maybe I'm missing something, but you mentioned you know the arts and and kinder um you know for the override you also mentioned PE but it was my understanding that PE at least for K through eight maybe freshman year was a requirement. It's not something that we have as an option as a district to provide or not. Madam President that that's correct. So P is yes, those that are truly instructional required. A lot of these athletics would be um they're really the above and beyond athletic items that we offer within the district above those PE requirements. So when we see the music, arts, and athletics, it's really those additional above and beyond what our what our requirements are for instruction. So madam madam president, one an example of that would be like my son wy it's in baseball PE.
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$320,000 or something like that. The savings. Yeah. 300. Sorry. 344,000. When you say change a process, could do you mean? Well, instead of just renewing, we instead of just doing what we always did, we went through an RFP process. Um, so and then same thing with the copy machines. I don't know what the outcome of that is, but um it sounds like that's going to be promising as well. That and it is looking promising. We have uh three top people that we're interviewing and uh even our current provider dropped their prices considerably. We've been with them for 60 years and they all they've done these 16 years all they did was raise price and change. Yeah. I you know I I love attending our finance and operation committee meetings now you know um just because we get a lot of that type of good news.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Right. So, it's above and beyond regular PE, but it's a very competitive class. And it, at least at Shadow Ridge, I'm sure a lot of the high schools are similar, they have programs set up where they can cater to the needs of those athletes and those programs. Understood. I just wanted to make sure I understood the difference. Um, and I I know that we are are going to have future talks about this and you're going to present this in April. Um, I am wondering if we I I'm not sure if the question I asked originally about a comparable community is that um data that that we could obtain without running out and paying for a political consultant. Is that something that we have access to? Uh, Madame President, so if the question is, do we have access to their most recent election history or what their break a breakdown of what that really looks like?
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
I mean there's also you know there's also challenges but we all you know we're trying to overcome them. Um, so that's that was pretty much it. I I Jen Jen, did you have No. Okay. Okay. All right. Now, we'll move on to board member comments. Any board member comments? I I have one. Um, and I know Dr. Dr. Kelatti, you talked about um and I do I also reiterate uh congratulations to uh to those newly elected board members and I've I have faith that the the community has has made right decisions and and and they will do well. But I also like hey listen it's me. So I'm also going to say thank you to um those who ran um even if they were not elected I I I thank them. An election is supposed to be a conversation. It's supposed to be dialogue. We're supposed to we're supposed to debate.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
I think we'd be able to to access that information. We do have provided we we have at least what the passing rate was. Um, I'd have to look by political party, by precinct. Do we have I I can I personally don't know where that what that would be. But that being said, we do have consultants and professional we can reach out to them. I'm sure they have um faster access to that. That was the and and I would I would say to that, Madam President, is that there was some specific information right after the election. We started to look at by precinct to see the breakdown. We have been told that you can look at it by you can get breakdowns by political party, by gender, and some other things. So that can be that information can be found. Okay. I have a question. Um so we have 17 million for buses.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
We're supposed to not agree. We're supposed to hear voices. Like that's that's the point of all of this. And I applaud the community uh for how far we have come just in my time here. We had students who ran a forum with candidates in our schools. We had multiple parent organizations who ran forums with our candidates. Like that doesn't happen everywhere. Believe it or not, there are school districts out there that and communities that are afraid to have those conversations. And what I'm most proud of is that won't be tolerated here. We will continue to have those conversations. We will continue to have positive dialogue and we will continue to listen to voices here in this community. And for that, I'm in awe and I am very proud of this community for the things that they do. and they should all be proud of themselves and especially those who showed up and had their voices heard.
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How many how many buses do we actually have in our fleet right now running? I want to start there. Madam President, um members, I believe we have 121. Is that correct? I believe it's 121 that are running. We have I believe the fleet might be a total ofund might be 128 um total and then 134 is the actual all of them but some of those are not working. They're used for parts or other things like that and then some don't run very well but they're used as backups. Okay. What's um the average price of a new school bus? the top of the line uh uh Madame President uh members Kavara, the average price of a brand new uh school bus ranges from 200 to 250,000. Uh the last time that we did our research on this, we were we were right in that range is what we were seeing.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Yeah. You know, I I I did a you know, just as far as the the forums that were held by the parent organizations and the students, um you know, I kind of looked through to see how effective these were, you know, you know, particularly online. And I think there was, if you kind of added them all up, you know, probably six, seven,000 views. Um, so it was, you know, well worth it. Um, really great way to get the information out and that probably didn't include people that are attending on, you know, in person and, um, asking questions afterwards and stuff like that. So, um, yeah. No, I I loved it. So, I want to I want to tag on that as well. Um, I I as Mr. Plo said, I I genuinely want to thank everyone that made the effort to come out and vote.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
You can buy a little bit smaller on the number of seats in the larger buses and you can reduce that by, you know, certain number of rows of seats and get it down to about 200,000 if if you're trying to go on the low end. All right. So, if we proceed with that number, we're asking to pretty much replace half of our working buses. So, I want to make sure we understand and I asked um that we go back to the committee with this and we we think about what the average taxpayer would, you know, consider looking at as well. um make sure that we know um we get the mindset that we there's also there's there's got to be a mindset of I can I can understand the the the argument that we need all of this but you got to understand that when people look at something when it be it starts to look like a wish list that's that's where you get the negativity and sometimes um even if you can sit down with someone and you can convince them um like I could sit with my neighbors and I can convince them to go one way or when it comes to a bond override or just sports or whatever.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Um, it's a process. It's a chance. Local elections are extremely important. It's a chance for your voice to be heard. So, to those who did, congratulations. And again, I I applaud everyone who ran for office. Um I'd like to congratulate the four uh soon to be new board members. And um I've I've spoken to them all, but I do want to offer them a challenge because they are going to have some really big shoes to fill by the board members that are leaving. Um, I think they're up for the job, but I do want to acknowledge all of the um everything. Well, it's not the end of the It's not the end of your term yet, but let's just let's just say let's just say that they do in fact have big shoes to fill. So, thank you. I would like to add on that.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Um, but I want to make sure I mean if something like this ends up going out, we need to pass it. Um, so we need to be smart and strategic with what's going to come back to the board, please. That's all I ask for. Thank you. I'm going to add on to that because Steve brings up a good point. Um with regards to the school buses, right? How we have 121 operational right now. What is the average age of those? You know, can we make sure that we get that kind of information to understand because we don't want to go out and get a bond for 17 million, replace half of the fleet, and then in another three years the other half has to be looked at, right? So, let's that would be kind of nice to know. So, when we're talking to people, we could give them that information to help them out.
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It is a very bittersweet uh moment, but I actually really did me and Callie both she'll probably speak about it, but we really did like hosting and talking to the candidates that ran. It was really like engaging. I just loved asking the questions and I loved getting the answer and I loved getting the answer. It was just so like fun to see how adults interact differently with questions asked by students and kids at that. And then seeing them have questions on the spot was just like I liked seeing the reaction time. I loved seeing how they answered and some questions from students were so difficult. Like I don't know how an adult can really think of answering such difficult questions, but I liked how every candidate was open.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
And we do have that information. Um, if Craig, you do you have that in front of you or you want to get it to them after? I the the numbers I was going to refer to, Madam President, member Destitch, uh, Dr. Cronto. Um I the numbers I'm looking at when we talk about those those 120 plus buses you're you've got to uh 75% of those buses within that number is 15 years or older. So you're going to have and you gave a statistic earlier on that. So when you start to talk about those particular buses um when we when we looked at those and we said which ones were bought within less than that so less than 15 years old. Well, some of those are in the 10 to 15 year range and we do have those items for you, but they're all they're all aging to that point and I and I, you know, I understand the information that the board needs if you want each year broken down of each by bus, but I can tell you that yeah, 75% of them are 15 years or older, which is 91 buses out of the 121.
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None of them skipped any questions. That was really good. Um, and I loved it. It was so fun. It was scary, but it was really fun. And also, I really liked how it was student based questions because it really involves the students into what's going to be happening around this district and getting just getting them involved. And even though they're going to be coming into office, I'm really going to miss you guys. Um, so thank you. Well, I just want to say I loved how you you as students and Dr. Waller leveled up this year even more like the way that you structured it. I appreciated the fact that there were only students in the room and everyone else was either you know virtual. Um I think that really set a different tone for for the environment in which you you know you had the forum and I really I really thought that was genius.
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