I. Anyone opposed or abstaining? All right. On to the substitute pay rate on top of it. Sure. Yes. So, currently we have daily subs in both buildings. We don't do a subservice any longer. We have um subs that are assigned to the buildings and we're currently paying them $1846 $1846 an hour. We're recommending that we increase that to $20 an hour just to be a little bit more competitive with surrounding towns. Um so that's we have put that in the budget for that place and we're asking for that to be approved. So can we Oh, I'm sorry. Make a vote. Can we have a motion to increase the substitute pay rate to $20 per hour for the fiscal year 20 six school year? I'll second. All right. Questions or comments? So my question is how many you're saying that uh we have a certain number of full-time subs, correct?
ACE will do their graduation on June 10th, uh, which is Tuesday, but it will be in advance of the board of education meeting. You will receive copies of all this information with the exact times and locations and details, but I just wanted to overview that for you.
No matter what, when I come in your class at 10:13, I better see you on this page. That's not teaching. Um, so I I don't looking at it's a very effective program from what the research tells us. Uh, during the last year's um the year before, excuse me, when they when this was vetted through some of the other uh districts that were using it, it received uh pretty high reviews. But again, much like every other program, it it has, you know, uh areas where the kids still don't have and our district has engaged in other professional learning around the science of reading and cultural literacy, which is giving them the overall understanding of reading development and so that they can make the instructional choices that would be outside the program that best meet the needs of students. The fact that the students are reading about science and making making it fun at an early level where they're reading about reptiles and really the expository text is really exciting.
I still get a similar question like, "No, which one of your schools is at Bass Lake again?" Same sort of thing. And just a reminder, um, we have nothing to do with the funding and all that. You guys take it, your board takes care of that. There's no financial burden on us. We receive for their ADA, we receive the tax appropriations and then just in transfer directly to the charter um, every month. I approve the transfer and then they send to them. It's very minimal. Um, it's such a small school and the the funding that they received this year, I think it was 135,000 based on the ADA. In our budget, it's about 220,000. The community up there is extremely supportive. Uh last year we went to DC and the community paid for plane tickets for kids and their families because it's just it again it's part of the community out there and uh and so they are extremely supportive financially and so we get a grant from the use foundation um that is not a part of it goes to all the schools in that gives us a nice bump.
Thank you very much. Any comments from the board? If not, could I have a motion, please, for approval? To approve. Second. It's been It's been moved and seconded. All in favor, say, "I oppose." All right. Motion is carried. Roman numeral number three is board policy 2121, superintendent contract. Dr. Fuentes. So, this is also language that's being updated. Um, as we've had the practice that salary compensation for superintendent must be reported out in public session. So, it's adjusting that language um in our policy to ensure that that's in alignment. It also is adding language with new law SB494, which prohibits a governing board from taking action uh to terminate a superintendent under very specific um conditions. Thank you very much. Any comments from the board? Motion. Move to approve board policy 2121. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. All right.
Any opposed? Motion carries four to zero. purchase it. Mr. President, members of the board, attached to the draft calendar for the 2526 school year as mandated by ARS 15-1042B. All local education agencies must create an instructional calendar for each school site. As a K12 school district, all unifies is required to submit a 180 calendar to 80 SIS power school. It is recommended that the building board approve the attached 2025 to 2026 academic calendar. Sir, I'll second. If there is no discussion call, all those in favor say I. I.
We tell a little bit about where the district is, what area it covers, how many students are served in general, how would you rate the overall performance in offering education to the students in the community. You can see about a quarter of respondents give it an excellent or very good. Uh another quarter or so give it an okay. And then you have about 15% or so saying poor or failing. Uh and then un 30% undecided and 3% that didn't know. The younger electorate under the age of 29 most inclined to think it was excellent or very good. Um 30 to 39 was at 24% and then you can see 65 and older actually creeps back up uh back up to about 28%. This is the first instance of a mean score. And what I mean by mean score is it's the average, right? So, uh, uh, if one is failing and five is excellent, on a scale of 1 to five, it's also called the Liyker scale, we're going to look at mean scores a lot because it lets us see and measure things against one another.
We've also had a lot of conversations about standardsbased instruction and making sure that the instruction students are being provided whether it be in enrichment or in their classroom is rigorous and challenging to their needs. And so we really need to focus on that area because this is again while they were here doing those observations 50% sorry 57% of our classes demonstrated a lack of higher order thinking strategies. Again I made sure I put this this is during the observation period. So that does not mean every single day when you walk in our classrooms that we see 50% of that. It was at this moment. So again, I equate this to if I walked in and took a Polaroid picture and that Polaroid picture could talk, but that's all I got in that moment. That's really what what these do. It gives us multiple data points.
Potter saying it would give the community the opportunity to hear the presentations, the discussion of the board and then be able to weigh in or have conversation or discussion thereafter once they have that collective information. And by doing it at the cow meeting, we're not voting on anything at a cow. We vote at the regular board of ed meeting. So it's still whatever the community input is on whatever topics we're discussing, they'll still be considered at our regular board meeting before we vote. Can I just add one comment? The the only disadvantage of moving it just to the end is sometimes the meetings are long and if somebody wanted to make a comment about the custodial bid, they have to wait now till we're done with policy before they can have their comments known which keeps an audience member here for a very long time when they really just wanted to come in and say something.
It is an assessment that students can complete within a quick 20 minutes. um the text the passages aren't as rigorous as let's say for example they would see an I or that they see within the classroom and so that's why I preface at the very beginning this is one data point right um because if we looked at other data points let's say I it tells a different narrative all of these though together give us a big picture not one of them can give us the complete picture of our students we have to use them all in tandem together all All right. So, next we have math. Um math again, as you see, all of our um grade levels have either remained relatively um I'm missing out. I'm missing my words right now. Uh remain steady, right? So, second grade we see a 1% drop, but they they remain steady.
Teachers are not doing this alone. We are walking the journey together. So, I have some interesting data that I will share with you. The first this is our referral frequency and it just highlights the growing impact accessibility the restart program has had. As you can see since August we had 138 interactions. We've seen a steady increase over time. This upward trend reflects not just a rise in referrals but the positive interactions that we're providing as well. November onward suggests that restart is becoming a trusted and embedded part of our school cult culture. a positive momentum we're seeing in a testament to the strong collaboration between staff, students, and our team. Here you'll see a referral frequency in terms of grade level supports. So, as you can see, it's very important that we provide early intervention. And you can see with first and second grade, those are developmentally appropriate times to teach students the skills they need to practice in real time in the classroom.
We're heavily relying upon building rentals, uh, international tuition, school bus revolving, and school choice. And I'll just talk to these a little bit. circuit breaker for those who um are listening. Uh this is a reimbursement that the state sends to districts for their special education students who are educated outside of your community. Uh and and I try to keep it really simple uh in terms of of the formula, but let's assume a student uh costs $100,000 um to educate outside of the town of Ashlin. And the the per pupil cost according to the state is say 10,000. And so at four times that 10,000. So 40,000 of the first 40,000 the district is responsible for. So that leaves a delta of 60,000. Well the state that's the piece that the state would reimburse and sometimes they fully fund it. Well, fully funded in reimbursement is 75% under Mass General law.
And I hope that's because of the fleet of vans because the original plan was for those to be self, you know, they were supposed to save us money or at least have us break even in transportation. And then there's also ESSER money that still exists um that hasn't been spent. And so we met with the superintendent, we heard about cuts and I guess there's this money. Why are we which is $25,000 when there's all this money sitting here and cutting things that teachers need? I would say that in the past three years, I know things have been cut from our schools that this money could have paid for. I like to think of my tax money going to the children and the teachers in the classroom the year I pay it, not three, five years down the road. So, I guess I'm asking this this money has been sitting there for the last three years not being used and if it's a rainy day fund, the rain has come is what I'm saying.
It's not well I shouldn't say it's not state per se. This is just an organ it's an organization that just loves to get kids reading and so they have kind of a so it's not part of the department of ed or anything. No, this is a thing outside. It's outside of um and there's this kooky guy who wears this big top hat and asks all kinds of kooky questions and the kids love it. Um and then you have a a national uh like national semi-finalists and then national winners and international winners. Um a couple of a couple of groups from Cedric Middle School uh and West Hartford. I only know because they some of them were former students of mine. Um went on to like the national competitions and stuff. That's how I found out about it. And then we did it um in my previous school.
Daily subs. Does that cover what our needs are? For the most part, it it does. Yep. We have I think we try for five at the center school. Five. Uh and then we have either two or three depending um at the high school. Uh do you know what other towns are paying? I think when we looked at this they were right around 20. I think a couple were a little bit more than that. So, we kind of went into like a a middle of the road increase. And for long-term subs, what's that's like if you had someone hired for a long-term position, they get a portion of the uh a bach the bachelor's position. So, we're able to cover now because we don't have to get a um long-term sub if you're here for it used to be 40 days, but now it's 60 days.
Any questions? Next up is Family University. Um, I want to remind everyone, um, that Ann me and her group are doing the family university on April 26th. It's going to run from 9:30 in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon and will occur at Rogers Park Middle School. Um, we are going to work to have a table set up. I spoke to um, floor chair Cooper earlier today. A table set up for the board of education members for those of you that choose to go there um, just like we did last year. and we'd invite you to come and check out the wonderful activities that we'll have going on there for students and families. There's a flyer also included with a QR code if you'd like to look at the details of it. Saturday, it will be on this Saturday. Saturday, that's correct. Um, next I'm going to ask Mike Weaver to do a budget update for us.
So hi, I'm Linda Christian. I'm the curriculum assessment specialist for ELA. I didn't think I needed that. So I agree with what everyone said about there's no perfect program. Um, and what we want to do is build teacher capacity and teacher expertise. So, we're doing that with ARC with Hill. And one of the things that came out of the work this year was a teacher need. They needed um to, you know, they have so much coming at them right now. So, they really needed more clarity around learning targets, standards. So, one of the things that my role did along with SCOP and my ELA team is we put together a companion doc for teachers to go along with each unit um actually units and consume in the in the works right now, but um that companion doc is helping them. It's a clip version if you will for when they need something really quickly to pull out of it.
We get a grant from we hope next year from the Department of Education because we're a necess we're we're a rural school with just a small number of kids. So um we don't have a whole lot of money to throw around. We do good things with what we got and we're renewing uh this is the um hearing to renew the petition. So it expires uh end of this school year. So it'll go from um July through till 2029 end of June. And the process is to do the public hearing tonight, kind of like what we do with the LCAP in the budget. And then the next meeting, we would approve the charter petition. And of course, there's criteria from CDE that needs to be followed and they need to be performing at a certain level and all of those things. And they meet all of those requirements, of course.
Motion is carried. Um item number Roman numeral number four, board bylaw 9220, governing board elections. Dr. Fuentes, please. Thank you. It's recommended the board review and approve board bylaw 9220. Governing board elections also for a first reading. Um this policy is also updating with new laws AB764 um as well as um the the attached exhibit which is the next item that talks about um the various offenses a person may not have in order to run for board. So your eligibility requirements. Yes. Thank you very much. Any comments or could I have a motion unless you have a comment first? Just quick question. It says about talks about fair and inclusive redistricting. So that's the AB764, right? What are So that's a set of set of rules for local governments um including school districts regarding the redistric redistricting process. Isn't that handled by the county usually?
Any opposed? Motion carries four to zero. Next item is approval of the J10. Mr. President, members of the board, the Alma Unifi School District received grant approval for Puma County Jed in the amount of $25,000. Notice of this approval was sent the day of the March board meeting could not be added to the agenda. JT requests a signou before March 18th and the district lawyer approved the superintendent getting assigning theou and the board retroactively approving theou at the April board meeting. It is recommended that the governing board retroactively approve the attached J10U. Sir second discussion. All those in favor say I.