It makes sense to align city and district boundaries so that those students can go to a neighborhood school in Maricopa Unified School District. Take a look at the distance from the midpoint of that area under consideration and that's over there in the red figure. Students would travel 16 miles to the nearest Kasa Grande High School, but Desert Sunrise is only about a mile away. And you can see by this slide they could travel 15 miles to the nearest elementary school in Kasa Grand Kasa Grande. The K8 school that we just heard about is only three miles away in the Sarrento neighborhood. So toward the district's achievement of goal four and creating the physical and financial capacity for growth as stated in our strategic plan. this endeavor is right on track. Moving into the statutory requirements of what is legally termed a minor boundary adjustment, you can see that by statute, a minor boundary adjustment is limited to just two two opportunities ever by district.
So I think you have to be very clear and let them understand you know this is the way it's going to be and there's a penalty for you to step out. [Music] I agree. We'll keep you posted on that as we continue to work through it. Okay.
We need to have a petition signed by a majority of electors in that identified area. We have to have approval of all three governing boards and we have to submit documents to state and county agencies. We've outlined the next six months of work toward achieving this ending with tonight's work study. Then we have a community forum to be conducted through Zoom on May 6th. So that's like a couple weeks away. Um and then we have we will have resolutions approved individually by the three governing boards. Then we gather signatures and then there will be additional board action to approve the petition and authorize the change and then the submittal of documents to those state and county agencies that must be completed by November 1st. If all goes according to plan, this boundary adjustment would go into effect in July of 2026, timed perfectly with the opening of our K8 uh in the Sarrento neighborhood.
And also continue to happy to answer any questions on um AIS. So we have some our AIS staff that are here in the back and we just spoke with them on Tuesday. Uh we did travel up to AIS to kind of give them an update as far as where we are with the the status of um AS operating as a magnet school. I'm happy to report that after working with the state um we are going to continue to operate as a magnet. we're going to be able to um and I may have provided this update a little bit in earlier but um we'll be able to um continue to to accept students although uh even if it's at a reduced out of district rate that could um interfere a little bit with some of our percentages we would still receive magnet funding for the number that we don't receive.
And again, that's only three miles away. So, subject to your questions, that concludes my presentation. Sorry, Dr. Lman, just for clarity. Um, at one point you said it's Maricopa Unified School District and Kasag Grand School District, but there's actually three school districts just for the community at large. Could you explain why it's three school districts and not just two? All three school districts have to agree on this. There's Kusan has two school districts. That's my point. Right. So for um just for common understanding, there's three kinds of school districts in Arizona. There's a unified school district like Maricopa Unified that h serves students in K12. There's elementary school districts like Kasa Grande Elementary stu serving students in K8. And then there's union or high school districts who serve students in uh grades 9 through 12. So one one city of Kasa Grande but two school districts.
Um we might be on a corrective action plan indefinitely um but there's no penalty. Several years ago, there was a penalty if you stepped out of that that ratio. Um, they removed the penalty and it's really more just about the work that you have to do and and paperwork. So, we can continue to do that. Um, but the school still is underenrolled. Um, and we anticipate that if we would keep moving forward that it would continue to be underenrolled. Um we talked with the AIS staff uh just Tuesday um about um potentially moving some special programs into the school, maximize the space that is there. Um and pending enrollment um needs. We have a big uh enrollment meeting coming up uh next next week uh in the middle of the week. Um we have enrollment meetings uh several times a year to check in on where we are with uh you know schools that may be experiencing an increase or a de decrease.
Yes. Have to agree. Um I want to thank you. Um, I remember going through this process when we were selecting the land for Desert Sunrise, how we wanted it to have it in the city of Maricopa. Um, and the fact that the boundaries of Kasagran came in and there was literally at that time, I'm sure it was just land, farmland. So, um I appreciate all the work that you've done, um the meetings that you've had talking to the other districts and getting all of us on board so that we can provide our Maricopa residents with MUSD schools. So, thank you so much. And then just for a little background, um there if you go back to when we started building Desert Sunrise, we had a lot of discussions around where this that property lied or is um being it was in the Kasa Grand School District and we did have legal precedences to be able to to build our school in someone else's within someone else's district boundaries.
Most often we're dealing with the increase um opening up another section and determining how to divert students if a grade or a school is full. Um and so as we do that process, we often uh that when when we so for example when we formed the budget um we added three elementary teachers in there kind of TBD um because at the time that we had our enrollment meeting earlier in the year there was some indication that we would likely need that. Um that changes rapidly in this district. we our enrollment tends to fluctu. Um so we're going to have one more meeting which really kind of dictates sort of what we end up deciding um that we need to do for this for the fall of next year. We also take things like that in like with our budget. Um but then also um things like uh the fact that we may be overcrowded in some places or in some programming and we need to disperse and so there's a potential that we would do uh move programs over AIS.
So, um I just wanted to throw that out there, too, that we we made sure from the get-go that everything was Yeah. legal. Legal. Absolutely. I think that's it. Thank you very much. I want to thank Mr. Harmon for his assistance as well and um lots of collaboration with the other districts. Thank you. Thank you. I move on item 6 CFT and emergency preparedness. Miss Pastor Good evening, President Downey, um board members, Dr. Thman, and community members. Thank you for the opportunity to provide this safety and emergency preparedness update. Uh tonight I'll be sharing how our efforts align with district priorities. And I'm pleased to be joined by um Captain Steven Jud who will share more about our partnership with Maropa Police Department. And I'd also like to thank Chief Mark Goodman for his leadership and for being here tonight um to support as well.
There's another school that we're looking at as well. next week's meeting um when we put all of those moving parts together, program need, overcrowding, uh the staffing requirements and budget, uh we make final decisions and lock that in. We'll come back to the board with those decisions and communicate that and we'll also be communicating with AIS. I know that they're very concerned. Uh they lost a grade level last year, they lost a staff member and they're very concerned about losing more family members at the school. Um and it is very much a family and so we are very conscientious of that. At the end of the day, we'll make the best decision that we can for the for the students, for the district, uh, as a way forward. So, and again, thank you for coming. Okay. Um, the budget update. Okay. So, this week was a big budget week for us here, as many of our board members already know.
Our district's focus on safety is grounded in our strategic plan and our portrait of a graduate. A safe and secure environment is foundational to student success. It's only when students feel um physically and emotionally safe that they can fully engage in learning and development. So, the initiatives we'll discuss tonight directly support these long-term goals. Safety and prevention are essential to ensuring that we realize the portrait of a graduate for all of our learners. This school year, we launched several foundational safety initiatives. We implemented the standard response protocol or SRP across all campuses. This created a common language and a clear set of procedures for emergency situations. I'll go more into SRP uh later. We introduced visitor aare to strengthen visitor volunteer management, our anonymous tip line and drill accountability. This allowed us to effectively track who's on campus, execute our drills, and as well manage our anonymous tips.
Um we I did get an opportunity to present uh our school budget for the most part last night at the uh at the council. Um and why I say for the most part um that is because we spent a good amount of time talking about the audit. Um the status of the audit, the 23 audit and potential for another surplus in 24. Um as soon as we um started to realize, you know, that there that could be another repeat issue during the 23 and 24, we wanted to bring that to the attention and kind of tackle that head on. Um as a district, you know, this is this has been challenging for us. Um, you know, we took uh over at a challenging time of fiscal uh challenge and um we're working our best um as city collaboration, board collaboration and also our administration here to correct some of the issues that we're now seeing that plagued us in terms of um our ability to accurately forecast and to maintain up.
We began offering active intruder training to administrators, security guards, and our officers. an important shift towards proactive preparation and confidence during these very high stress events. In terms of transportation, we're currently piloting Zonar. Zonar is a school bus tracking system that enhances student safety and allows families to monitor bus locations in real time. The pilot will continue in the fall and we'll learn more about that as we advance the pilot. Facility upgrades were also prioritized. So, we're upgrading security systems and cameras. We are now 100% implementing Verata, which is a very uh sophisticated uh camera system at all of our sites and schools. And at our secondary, that includes a vape sensors. We redesigned front offices to better control access. This uh past fiscal year, we completed Saddleback and Santa Cruz. And um as Mr. Harmon mentioned earlier, the redesigns for Pimabute, Butterfield, and Santa Rosa are what we have projected for our next year.
Um, and I want to thank um, you know, I want to thank the current finance team that's in place for the hard work um, that's ongoing um, as well as our city partners. Um, our ability to be able to see the bottom as I've been saying um, is only uh, as a result of the acceleration around the audits which were outstanding since I believe 201 um and that are only now being caught up. Um, as a district, we have a lot of work to do to continue to correct um, systems and structures that uh, have not been uh, done have not been implemented with fidelity and we'll continue to to work on those. um as of today and as of the the um the proposed budget that the mayor um has indicated and where we believe will end up landing um the mayor has proposed for us um against our $34 million ask a $12 million increase um as well as our ability to continue to use the ARPA funds $4 million worth of ARA funds uh heading into next year.
So, as we look back on our uh 24-25 school year, safety and security investments totaled over $2.6 million. These funds were allocated across several areas. We have them highlighted here. um a significant investment is salary and benefits of staff. I want to highlight that we have it broken down uh into two categories towards the end of the table. There you see the school resource officers and the school safety officers um total around 74 741,000 that is uh entirely grantf funded through a couple of different uh school safety program grants and then our security guards is uh funding is is part of our M budget. We continue to upgrade access control systems with an investment of nearly um $500,000 that helps us better manage who is um uh and monitor who's coming in and out of our buildings. The front office renovations uh budget is is highlighted there around $420,000.
We also believe that we're going to be able to take a percentage of some of the surpluses that do exist because we now are able to withhold um we have something called a 2% account and the 2% account is um allows us to uh withhold any surpluses on the board of ed side versus the city side. So for example, when there is a surplus um that money that money stays on the city side and then the town council and the mayor decides what they will do with that money. So, we don't hold the money here. That that goes that goes back to the city or remains with the city, I should say. Um, however, um, as of last year, legislation was passed so that the boards of ed may withhold 2% of any surplus, um, 2% of the of our budget max. And so those numbers um, could be should be around 3 million and 2 potentially 2.4 million.
We also uh continued to invest in in upgrading our security camera systems in the vapes and you see uh around $100,000 for that. Communication tools are important for safety. So we continuously upgrade our radios and designate um some uh budget for that. And um we spent dollars on visitor aware continuing our commitment to secure visitor management and trill and drill tracking. So, one of the important tools that we have in our safety toolkit is the standard response protocol. What SRP does is give us clear, consistent language during these emergency protocols. And you see them highlighted here. We have a hold, a secure, a lockdown, evacuate, shelter. So, staff and students were trained and um and we have these posters in all classrooms and uh large learning spaces. We also use the standard reunification method. So this is planning for controlled student release during emergencies. This might happen at a school site, but it also might involve transportation and going to another location.
And um so we'll be using those onetime funds to help us offset and responsibly close down the budget that we will um that we'll need to operate effectively next year. Um those combination of one-time funds and the funding that the mayor um and his team has has proposed would bring us to about $190.5 million. And our original ask was 1945. So, um, you know, we're pretty close and we'll make some decisions about how to close that gap. Um, we will have to, you know, be concerned with, of course, with onetime funds and that leaves us for 26,27. Um, but we're going to be exploring every opportunity to increase um increase revenue, to pursue grants, to continue to work with the city. There's a lot of folks working behind the scenes to increase uh some of our numbers. In fact, um Oh, I missed the 9.1 million in Alliance.
All of these systems help to ensure safe, predictable responses and strengthen our readiness across all of the schools. BASE is another safety uh initiative I'd like to highlight briefly. It's a secondary edition digital curriculum where modules can be assigned to students on a variety of topics such as for example ecigarettes and vaping or triggers and coping strategies and they can be assigned either as a preventative measure or after certain discipline incidents. Students and families are presented with an option of in-person school counseling or to be assigned modules which are most frequently completed during ISS or in school suspension or out of school suspension. Since this requirement, we have had a 66 67% increase in our base participation, a decrease in repeat offenses of the same uh type of discipline incident. And another thing that we like about BASE is that parents can be assigned modules.
um that's how we that's how we get to the 190. So um you know that funding in particular the alliance grant was originally set to be $5.7 million and there's been a lot of talk and advocacy around uh changing that formula. Um some of which our own legislators here in Danberry were part and parcel to helping to get those formulas changed. Um along with many numerous superintendents who were through their advocacy as well. Um, and so I think I believe that the formula included increases for the accounting of multi- language learners, special education, and high need students. Um, so with that, our number shot up to 9.1, which helps us out tremendously. Those are sustainable funds as opposed to onetime funds. So we can continue to rely on that moving forward so long as that alliance grant remains in place. Um, but that is our carve out of ECS.