We conducted the survey for this district uh February 25th through the 27th. It's a 300 sample. So that means it's a live caller survey which means we conducted it via telephone to both home phones and direct dialed cell phones as required by law. These were all conducted by live operators which is the gold standard when it comes to survey research. Uh we balance it based on voter turnout. And here's what we mean by that. So um about 70% of the adult population in the state of Arizona is registered to vote. So, three out of every 10 of the folks that say, "Oh, yeah, I'm registered vote. I vote. I vote." They're lying to you. So, uh, we start with registered voters, number one. And then number two, we look at people who have a history of voting in our elections. Because when you talk about the record high voter turnout in say 2020 or even 2024, when you're talking about 78% turnout, you're talking about 78% of that 70%.
Any discussion? Can we take a vote, please? Stacy Salt, yes. Julie Jetty, yes. Katherine Potter, yes. Mindy Hartman, yes. Jason Jansik, yes. Darling, yes. And Sanucci, okay, this will be motion. This motion to table until next month's cow meeting is approved. Next up, we have topics for discussion. 9.1 schoolworks program evaluation presentation. Good evening once again. So this has been um a long time coming but some work that I think is valuable um and also represents the transparency that not only the board but administration wants to provide to our educators and to the community. Um when we when I came um in to become uh or when I first started as the superintendent, we had a lot of conversations um across the district from teachers to parents and really wanting us to take a deep look at those services um that we provide outside of the classroom tier one services.
But going back to what you were saying about this being board directive under heading number two, um I am okay with the redundancy at that point and therefore I don't have a problem with it. I was just saying they they do sound alike, but to your point, the heading is different. It's giving us guidance, not the public guidance. So, I can I can certainly back off on that one, but I don't think the goal is below. But I think that a link to the strategic plan should be in here so that the public is seeing that the last time that it was that we did do it so that they see that we're staying on schedule with our five to seven years. Just a link. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That no that I could go with. It's going like this is the last time we did it.
So, we're trying to find that balance where I think we've been on one side, now we've got to swing it, find that balance. Thank you. So, um to me, this doesn't re I mean, it's not your fault. This is the test, but it's not really telling us of our students, how many of them are like where are they at? Like, we're saying that they're meeting the third 30% that's the national average, but maybe our kids are at 60%. We don't know. Right. So I hear what you're saying. Let me see if I can answer that. So when we look at assessments like this, they are nationally normed. So it is about comparing across the nation. Um so in that sense, but if we're looking to delve deeper individually, that's where branching minds and then the actual data platform come into play. Because if you have an individual student, let's say they're performing at the 15th percentile, right?
And that is one thing that we felt was very important, strengthening our school culture and coming together. So whether it was the Christmas parade, Cubfest, Fall Fest, or the other activities, everyone has pulled together, and that's been a a very important part of of our school culture. Um, another piece that we're very proud of is our house program at Anderson. Um, and the house program was there before and we felt that was important to continue that. Um, you can see in these pictures we have our whole school assembly um, and staff working with students and then we also have our breakout sessions. Um, and those um, are the the breakout groups within the house where we get into uh, groups for kindergarten through fourth grade. We talk, we uh do TBRI activities um and then we do nurture groups there. So, it's just a great opportunity for us.
Um increase in technology, um you know, we have site licenses for many of our our buildings and and student software, etc. uh that goes up every year. The next big line item is that $776,000 transportation. Last year to balance the budget, we looked at our transportation uh revolving account and we decided we needed to to utilize those funds to help um in the end balance our budget. We're trying to put that money back into the uh overall uh operating budget. Uh so that's what that's doing here is less reliance on uh revolving funds. So in the end it's the $44,350,743 is what we're looking for in terms of the budget. I think it's important to talk about student enrollment and where we are. Um, and we've we're flat right now and we're projected to be flat over the next couple years. We had a 12% increase over the first um, six years of my superintendency and we're still wondering, Pete still says to me all the time, where are all the kindergarten kids?
So moved. Second. Um, okay. I heard a motion from member Ston and a second from member Goodwin and appreciate member Childs as well. Any discussion? Um, Secretary Den, will you call the vote? Yes. Chair Johnson Mousad? Yes. Vice Chair Ston? Yes. Secretary Den, yes. Member Goodwin, yes. Member Childs, yes. Mayor Disorger, yes. Member Martini, yes. Passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll move on to the reports of the administration, starting with Andy, our business manager.
I hear there's going to be a master of ceremonies. Uh, the first grade is taking a field trip to the Beardsley Zoo on the 29th. Um, then we have our community meeting on the 30th. Our drama club, we are doing U Moana Jr. Uh we're super excited for that. Uh we're doing our night performance on the 30th and then the afternoon performance on the 1st. Um there we go. Sixth grade is going to Camp Getaway on the 2nd of June. Now we're into June. Um and then um we've got our field day scheduled for the 4th. Um and this is shout outs to like none of this stuff happens without humans. Ron DeFazio and Laura Stokes came to me and they were like, "Hey, we don't have a PE teacher right now as we're trying to fill that position for Joe. She's coming in um on um on the 21st.
Any opposed or abstaining? All right. On to the computers. Could we have a motion, please, to approve the bid waiver to award CDW the bid for the 84 computers and 20 monitors for the amount of $86,500. I think that changed, but it's $94,350. Sorry. That was I think Monica got a late late afternoon transferring. We're okay with the transfer. There's money for the transfer because also we didn't need to make any more transfer. We just need to Okay. to do this for the the bid. Okay. So, we don't need to transfer more money, but um I'll just reate that. We have a motion to approve the bid waiver to award CDW the bid for 84 computers and 20 monitors in the amount of $94,350. Make a motion. Second.
Where's the money come from? Um, so we did have a significant increase in our budget this year and I'll pass it over to our chair Jen Toino to explain that. Um, and then here's just an expense breakdown. Of course, most of our um, expenses are program related. Um, so I'm general administrative and then we have a small fundraising as well. I just wanted to update everybody on our transition. We had a little bit of a structural change. So for the first 34 years or so, we had a somewhat informal agreement with the schools that um they the schools provided the executive director salary as an um donation in kind donation along with office space and then um we obviously rely on our grants from our um organizational partners um to supply the rest of our funding. So this year we transitioned to a trans um technical service provider.
This is where the coaches um and department heads at the second grade level really push in and help principles and help teachers really hone their craft and to be um you know more specialized in what they're doing. uh the professional learning piece. We're currently working on a calendar right now and we're trying to really personalize and and provide some choice and flexibility in the professional learning. Um often times in the past was more where to implement something in terms of our programs that require a year-long type initiative. But what we're finding is the best professional learning is learning from your colleagues, learning from other schools. Where is something working at such a level that we should replicate? We're going to go there. We're going to think about it. What is Ian doing in his classroom to get the highest growth in the district? Well, let's learn from him.
Um and they've provided me this lengthy questionnaire um to prepare for the round table. They want to hear all of our feedback. It's the first time where they've talked about that legislation and actually done something other than just talk about it. Yeah. And they're getting some feedback from all the districts and they wanted to include um on my round table there's a small district like us. There's big districts. So they're doing that right now. They had about 12 different roundts set up. And so I think it's making more traction in terms of the funding being based on the enrollment um not the not the average attendance because you still have to um have the lights on and have people here. So you should make a flyer and take it. I did one flyer today. get some t-shirts printed every day. So, we're picking up students from the new apartments.
Um projects out to bid again we have the security alarm projects for Brook Tree, Majestic Way, Ruskin. We also, since I did this, we have the warehouse project, warehouse replacement project out to bid and the paving improvements at the uh old district office. Um, things that we're working on right now, again, they're finishing up the HVAC for the old district office. I think they're still waiting for some heaters to install into the duct work. We should get that within the next, what is this, April, by the end of May. Um, Pedmont Windows over break, they're going to install all the windows in wings H and I, and then they'll do the remainder of the windows during the summer. Um, the field project at Northwood, we're actually that's on hold until we actually install the asphalt for Northwood portables because that changed a little bit once we did that, but they'll finish that sometime after break.
Any questions or discussion? If not, I'll call for the vote. Okay. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries four to zero. Next item is the approval of the 2025 recruitment stipen. Mr. President, members of board May 2024 governing board approved the recruitment and retention siphon for new teachers from title 2 monies. New teachers currently certified are eligible in December and May of their first year. Mr. Antonio Roman agrees is now eligible to receive half of the stipen of pay 2021 and half of pay 2425 recommended issuance of the 2025 recurren retention stipen to Antonio Romano Rodriguez and paid half in April and the remainder in June. Okay, may I have a motion? I'll make the motion. I discussion. All those in favor say I. I. Any oppos? Motion carries four to zero. Next item we have is the certified resation. Mr.
So, you're really talking about 60% or so of the adult population. When we go to a midterm election where turnout is somewhere between 55 and 65% you're talking about half the adults in the state of Arizona or in any given election. For an off cycle or midterm election like this when we're talking about when without president or governor at the top of the ticket if you go in an oddnumbered year turnout is closer to about 30%. So it's much lower. What that does for a couple of things is it's it skews the demographic significantly older. older folks show up to vote no matter what and it just comes down to who shows up around them. So we've we've balanced this data to look like about 60 about twothirds 66% or so over the age of 50. It's also balanced based on partic partisan participation. So one of the other things to note is if if you live in the state here about a third of folks are registered as Republicans, about a third are registered as Democrats and about a third is registered as other or independent.
So, we've talked a lot about MTSS in the last few months. Um, and now we're here this evening to talk about two additional um services that support our students um improve I mean achievement and that being special education and gifted programming. I am not going to try to bore you all this evening, but I will say this is probably the most wordy presentation I've done. And it's because honestly I wanted to be clear and I did not want anyone to feel that we left portions of the report out or that we were not being fully transparent on what the findings were. So we can then also talk about what are those beginning steps so we can begin to make improvements. So this evening I do hope to achieve as well as um Dr. Thomas and Miss um Rivera will be helping me with this presentation because they are leading um forward a lot of this work but we want to give just an overview of what the evaluation process looked like.
If you want to hold us accountable or we want to hold ourselves accountable 5 to seven years on this date and then we know that we're staying within that 5 to seven years and then that link I'm not opposed to right would that that would be under 222 and not 130. Correct. Not opposed. Just to show that we as a board are staying on track with the expectation of a strategic plan every 5 to seven years. Is that possible? Sure. And and yeah, that's no problem. And did you want the the language change at all to say strategic plan or just leave the language add the link and a comment that um you know, click here for strategic plan adopted such and such date? So, are we just adding a line like that or was there anything in the text of 222 you wanted? Yeah, I think you'd have to refer to it as a strategic plan at some point because it doesn't say it anywhere in this policy.
Um we can then go into currently Star Renaissance and figure out, okay, in Star Renaissance, what category of literacy or math are they struggling in and really try to narrow it down to the specific skill or standard that they're struggling. So, this data is a district-wide general data, but we could sit down and delve into very deep data on individual students. Our buildings do that. Um, we actually met with our principles and did school improvement plan meetings where they were able to delve more specifically into what specific standards are you noticing within your data that need to be addressed at your schools? And then the teachers are able to drill down even further and see okay within my classroom what am I noticing trendwise you know where are students performing above grade level on particular standards or where are they performing below and then that's where wind time comes in because if you narrow down for a particular student using the star renaissance platform what they need then that becomes the focal point during that win time of what I need.
Another thing that House has done that we're really proud of is that um they had a penny war and they raised over $1,400 and our students gave a portion of this money to a house school in North Carolina that was affected by Hurricane Helen. We really wanted to um teach our children how to give to others and that was just an important and fun event. You can see they got to celebrate by pie in the face. All of us, we had a fun day that day. Um, and then the other thing we'd like to celebrate as part of strengthening our school culture is just a lot the engaging activities and opportunities that we have for our students both inside and outside the classroom. So whether it's the egg drop associated with the novel study um or our K through four that went to the movie theater and our preschoolers got to have a big screen uh movie as well at school or the STEM project, we are really we're committed to providing those activities for our students.
Where are the first grade kids? Because we're we have low numbers, 183. Uh, we're projecting similarly that those numbers for next year. We initially about two years ago were expecting 205 to 210. So we don't know what's happening um to be honest and when we use projections from this company NASDAQ um they're they're not perfect um but you can see coming out of COVID we increased a lot. We had one more big year in 23 24 and this matters to us because the state aid uh is tied into enrollment but it's also tied into uh how we identify our students are the English language learner students special education students low-income students um and it matters in terms of our funding. Can I just go back a paragraph for a second? I'm looking at the increased personnel number we talking about in the Mendes um band position.