every Wednesday students who are already remote can go up to the high school to receive um five grab and go breakfast and lunch meals that they can use for the week so that's for all remote students and um that's given at the high school uh at the high school driveway uh October 6th which on our calendar was originally designated as a staff and service day uh because of scheduling uh in speaking with um our administrative staff we've decided that October 6 will be a staff and service but just for grades prek through six uh the schedule for the middle school and the high school right now um doesn't really lend itself to a shorter day so what we're planning to do for o October 6 and I will communicate this to our parents through our app and post it to the website and the Swift reach uh October 6 will be an all remote day for students prek through six so students who are hybrid right now coming to school either morning or afternoon on that day only October 6 which is a Tuesday all students will be remote from 9:00 am to 12: pm and then staff will have lunch and then from 1 to 4 o'clock we will have a staff and service for um staff members from prek through six middle school students high school students the day will stay the same so there is a resolution on our agenda tonight to just revise that October 6 dat uh once we see how that day goes in terms of the schedule um I think the next staff and service is scheduled for I believe it's November and at that time we where we hope that we'll be able to phase in middle school and high school also um with the middle school and high school also their schedule is such that um staff finish every day at two o'clock and the two to three our time period is meant for meetings uh plc's uh extra help and things like that so they have a little bit more free time every week than our principals get to spend with our prek through six there so that will be October 6th uh the other thing that I'm in discussion with with our principles are parent visitation nights now as you know they can't be in person uh we were initially planning on having some kind of virtual night uh maybe a pre-recorded night and uh we're still speaking about that now as um uh through my principal discussions or principal's meetings we're trying to come up with what we feel is the best way to communicate this night to the parents whether it's um something that the principal records uh or it's something that each teacher records we're not really sure about that just yet so the dates that we have scheduled for October we will probably revise and come up with new dates and I will let the board know about um those dates and what we actually come up with and I will communicate that to our parents but right now uh we're also looking at what some other districts are doing in terms of how they're going about their nights and maybe we could steal some of their ideas and come up with something that we feel will work for our community just want to make mention that September 29th next week uh we are going to have a dress down scholarship fund in memory of uh Ben Luda who you know passed away last March he was a Ben was a dedicated special education teacher and baseball coach with us September 29th happens to be his birthday so we pick that day as a day where across the district all all staff will dress down and donate to a scholarship fund that we will uh give out later in the year so I did want to make mention of that um at this time uh any committee reports from our board Dr Pano sure I want to thank Mr Roman Gino Mrs martinat Mr bner and Mr Pinto for graciously allowing me to uh walk the buildings I had the opportunity to walk in elementary middle and high school and just to see what was going on and I just want to report to anyone out there who's listening I saw some very well organized very well uh maintained very safe buildings there were decals on the floor indicating uh the six- foot Mark so social distancing was taking place there was hand sanitizer readily accessible in all places uh I saw every teacher teaching a dynamic lesson I saw very few students designed so in the classrooms so social distancing was absolutely taking place within every classroom and most importantly I saw everyone wearing a mask so I know that many of you have had opportunity to see on nj.com the pictures and the video of school 5 but I'm happy to report that this was taking place all around the district and I was very impressed at how the teachers were able to teach both an in-person and a virtual lesson simultaneously without leaving any of the students out I'm very proud to be associated with the Cliffside Park School District and I was very happy to see all the good things that were going on and I would just say as a parent I am very comfortable sending my child in for in-person learning because as I said there were very few students in the room there was social distancing going on there were masks being worn and they were very quiet hallways so thank you for hosting me and I was very impressed with what I saw thank you very much thank you just a report on building in grounds we met via Zoom last Thursday in reference number three and number five School boiler uh everything is proceeding well uh we have some checklists and some goals that the contractor has to complete but we hope to have the the Keon relatively soon everything well before I look at the consent agenda does anybody have any questions in general about either report or anything else only thing Mr romanino is I know that the high school sports for the fall are on their way I know volleyball is take off in the spring hopefully I know the middle school was affected with a cancellation I know we had discussed as a board possibly doing something for the middle school kids Sports volleyball whatever track soccer ET whatever something sit down adist come up well I did speak to Mr Bogner about it we were trying we were going to see if we could organize something even for the fall before it really gets cold out where kids could be outside because as you know there are no Indoor Sports at this point allowed so we are going to try to put something together as quickly as possible and then we'll have more time to plan for the spring but we will we will make an effort to do that understood thank you footb October October 3rd October 3rd it's a Saturday Saturday yeah and some of the away games I know that I just got an email from uh Mr poro today uh just take note that there are some teams that we might be playing away where they do not allow Spectators so um it depends on the town and what guidelines they're following so if you do plan on going to any event just check our website first to make sure that they're allowing Spectators if it's an away game before I look at the consent agenda I just want to make mention as I did last week that each year we do run a um an SAT prep course for our seniors uh at no cost uh this year we are running a remote sat boot camp it's called an SAT boot camp uh in math and language arts uh that's underway and we'll also be running it again in the spring for students that take the SAT a little bit later on but that is something that although we're not able to do it in person we're doing it virtually and we do have a good number of students that are taking advantage of it uh in fact we are going to tonight you'll see in the resolution appoint uh two of the staff members that are involved in in delivering that that that instruction to our students so if you refer to the agenda um just a couple of items I'd like to point out on page two we are approving um staff members uh for tuition reimbursements as per the CPA agree uh agreement so these are staff members who are continuing their Graduate Studies who are putting in for tuition reimbursement uh that tuition would be in reimbursed at the end of the school year after they show evidence that they've completed the courses and received at least a grade of a big and there's a uh a fund which uh we have in the negotiated amount that we adhere to each year so the teachers listed on page two and the top of Page Three have submitted uh requests for tuition reimbursement so they'll be planning on taking classes either in the fall spring or next summer which is part of this of this school year uh we also have teachers as per CPA agreement agreement who move across the guide so we have a number of teachers who submitted evidence that they've gone from for example ma15 to ma30 so as per the contract uh we're adjusting their salary uh we are appointing some additional morning Duty staff members um this year because um School six originally had appointed one but with the schedule the way it is we felt that we needed a little bit more assistance and Supervision in the morning and midday for grades five and six so we are uh appointing three additional people to help out at school 6 uh Lise Farley who's a part-time title one teacher with us is temporary filling in as a full-time grade four maternity replacement at school five until December 7th and then L Louise will return to her part-time position as a title one teacher uh we're adjusting the annual salary of Rose fontania due to a u an error in um stien which has to do with longevity uh we are adjus the annual salary of for Claudia Hil secretary in the central office 242000 effective October 1st page four just a couple of items on page four I'd like to point out the second resolution um seyang Wang who was a who was teaching fifth grade at school number four uh has been transferred to the middle school and will take the place of a math teacher who uh resigned and say is certified as a middle school meth teacher so that position was effective two weeks ago when she started in that position uh we are approving unpaid leaves for this year for Jamie spotus our teacher in the Middle School Natalie Fontana a prek teacher at school 5 Sylvia young who was our math teacher in the Middle School uh resigned effective August 31st Mary Beth saor who's been with us for a few years as a resource room teacher is resigning to take a position in another District effective November 15th uh next one two down from there is Donna Dorset I would like to just uh commend Donna Donna's been a a special ed teacher with us for about 20 years and Don has really done a great job in both the middle school and uh also at times in the elementary school in number six and Donna has decided to retire effective January 1 and I wish Donna the best um like I said during her years with us she really did a fabulous job and uh was very very dedicated to our students and was really a um a sounding voice for for all of her students she she worked in our special ed program so Donna the best of luck uh Rachel ohanlan uh who's been with us a number of years as an Elementary art teacher is transferring to the middle school as an art teacher she's already started in that position uh due to the uh a vacancy top of page five Kristen scrimer uh is coming on board with with us as a middle school teacher filling in for a um a leave and when that leave finishes Kristen will switch over and uh become one of our special education teachers as she finishes up her certification in Special A at the very bottom of the page uh is where we are appointing uh Tiana Vasquez and chrisy P pampino as our SAT boot camp instructors at $30 per hour on page six we are appointing some co-curricular people for the 2020 21 school year uh as per contract um all of the um positions are the the compensation is contractual uh we haven't appointed all of the co-curricular positions because of the situation we're in this year uh as an example detention after school uh is something that we would not approve but all of these other activities and speaking with uh the principles uh and the advisers feel that either they can do these activities in person if possible or for the most part virtually uh and again um I think it's great that we're able to provide in this environment activities for the kids such as yearbook newspaper the band uh Honor Society things like that so and also um class advisors uh page seven is just re um appropriating funds from our Title One title two and title three accounts where we get Federal money and we are just uh reappropriate uh teachers who work in those programs and where their salaries or what accounts they're going to be drawn from so that's what's outlined in page seven so these are staff members who work in our title one two and three programs in our prek program uh for the most part page page eight and nine uh as per contract staff members who teach an additional class um re receive a stien of $5,000 for the year teachers who utilize dual certificates receive a compensation of $1,000 additional for the year so people listed on pages eight and nine are staff members and 10 that fit into that category page 11 we are approving the school nursing plan uh for this year which is a plan that proves that we are are adhering to all of the nursing guidelines for the state that was sent to the county for approval uh next resolution is the all remote day on no November I'm sorry October 6 which I just spoke about that K to six will be from 9:05 to 12 and then there'll be a stiff in service it should actually read prek through six I will Mr you can just make that adjustment prek through six not K to six uh graduation uh information for the 1920 school year as mandated by the department of Ed uh this information uh needs to be shared with the board and the public by September 30th of each school year so I'm just going to run down some of these um categories that the state requests that we uh share with the public total number of students graduated 273 number of students graduated Under The Substitute competency test process is 17 4 number of students graduated under portfolio is two uh number of students receiving State endorsed High School diplomas as a result of uh meeting all requirements specified in their IEPs is two total number of students denied graduation for 12th grade was two and the number of students denied graduation because of failure to pass the park was Zero our graduation rate uh for the 1920 school year was 85 .6% uh which is about a percent less than what it was the year before um so that's something that again I spoke to Mr Pinto it's something we have to work on um a lot of that is due to students that do not graduate within the five-year period Stu this is based on students that graduate within four years and because we have a pretty um High number of ESL students who come to us without any knowledge of the English language many of those students are successful but in five years so when they graduate within the five-year period we're actually penalized for that by not it actually low is our four-year rate so it's not that we're just graduating 85.6% each year it's 85.6% in a 4-year period if we look at a five-year graduation rate you'll notice that that is that is higher because a lot of our SL students us are successful but it takes them that extra year to kind of catch up as far as the English language is concerned uh policy and procedures on page 12 uh we're just changing the designation due to student enrollment of our elementary program at school number six uh it's designated as it was designated as an elementary autism program now it's going to be an elementary multiple disabilities SL ISM program and that's really due to a change in student enrollment but that has to be approved by the county and that's why we have a resolution tonight M Alan you have anything on finance just a couple items Mr Roman gin essentially we're working on three components three separate years business office we have 1920 which we're which we're looking to close out we're in our final Cycles the Auditors have been on site and remote the audit is about 90% complete finance committee and the board up to speed next time we meet in regard the results of of the audit the second item obviously is what's going on in 2021 the current budget year uh we have our challenges as everyone does with uh covid and Co related expenses but right now uh the budget is in pretty good shape and we're also had a meeting uh last week and started the early discussions on 2022 budget started looking at some early capital projects and we'll be engaging the finance committee again in the near future as well as the uh full board that's pretty much it Mr thank you uh before I take a uh ask for a vote on the consent agenda uh any questions I I had a question on on page 13 use of uh buildings uh what are penny wars and uh is it those two dates 11 12 and 11:25 or is it that whole month and it's all day that whole month I confused about that uh not 100% sure okay but I can find out okay okay um I'm not sure if it's if I believe it's an activity from I think from what occurred last year is it's an activity that occurs every day in the high school and I have to find out specifically what penny wars is all about okay but I I know it's a fundraiser that they went in the high school and I will find out and let the board know right I apologize for that yes yes I can get that I will email that information as soon as I do any else um we we can we can do it in October because it doesn't take place until November so we could strike it until I get more information on and then I'll just I'll just put it back on for that right I'll do that yes no problem uh to to any of the public that are watching our next uh board meeting is October 21st uh we have a work session the Wednesday before that but um October 21st is yes our open public to uh Dr Pano's question about the breakdown on a fiveyear I'm interested in that as well but I think we can if you look on page 11 where those numbers are number five the total number of students denied graduation 12th grade class 2 I think that's a good indication that the majority large large majority of students are graduating but as Mr Rino was saying it's different processes yeah which actually are Department of certified they're just Alternatives but I I will get more information right I agree okay okay um anyone else any questions on the consent agenda or anything else that we may have spoken about tonight okay so motion to accept I'll make that was Mr capano may I have a second please I'll second that was Mr Shell yeah take a vote if I may Mrs Abu yes Mr capano yes Mrs Fredo Mr Gara Dr Pano Mr rcor yes Mr shell yes but I'm staining twice for Kevin Shelly curricular page six and stien on page nine thank you Mr shakia so move Mr romanina okay um so again thank you very much uh at this time I'd like to call for a motion to adjourn Mr rine Court okay thank you thank you very much thank you
this award is being presented to valley vista high school's dance program under the direction of miss amy lane crow the award was announced at the azdeo virtual meeting so it is my honor to award the official plaque in person this evening i would like to read a statement from the president of azdeo miss andrea downing who was unable to be here this evening the arizona dance education organization is very pleased to award our very first dance program of excellence award for a high school program to valley vista high school this award honors a program that exhibits growth and inclusiveness addresses the needs of all students including additional learning outside of the classroom engage as parents and the larger community demonstrates a comprehensive curriculum aligned to the dance arizona dance standards and supports ongoing learning for teachers we know that this cannot be done without school district and community support valley vista's dance program under the direction of amy crow and with the support of the school and community exemplifies these qualities to honor this model dance program azdeo is presenting valley vista with a plaque and a monetary award of 500 to use to support the dance program thank you to amy principal lockhart superintendent kellis the dysart school board and the community for supporting dance at valley vista and dance education we are so proud of the extraordinary accomplishments hard work and dedication of this amy lane crow and her dance students thank you for always providing our students with an extraordinary art experience congratulations and then she has her company dance company board members here with her to help receive the award [Applause] wonderful good [Applause] and that concludes our awards and celebration for the evening um next we'll move on to audience with individuals next we'll move to audience with individuals i'm going to go ahead and read the statement this is a time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-41431 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for later consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a limit time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and tonight uh first person is tony simek dr kellis and members of the governing board and cabinet my name is tony simek dysart parent and i have a question for you what do you think your obligations are to the community it appears some members think the override is a political issue or a test of conservative versus liberal values it is not if the district truly needs funding from the override then you should need to be clear about your position and not change your message to pander solely to obtain political support our children are more important than your re-election whether your beliefs are left-wing or right-wing both wings are part of the same bird and right now some of you are making this bird look more like a turkey rather than an eagle genuine conservatives and liberals both know that investing in our own communities education is a long-term investment only short-term thinkers and politically fringe or bad actors make simplified conclusions that schools are not worth the investment and tax consequence as a conservative and believer in the free market i'd love to see lower taxes of course but as a parent and resident who is here for the long term i ask what kind of fool thinks education is not important enough to be fully funded those against the override are spineless and selfish and are acting victimized by the reasonable tax consequence it is a selfish and politically motivated act reconsider who you serve and the results of not properly funding the district the ones you serve will not be students forever i think you should feel accountable whatever your position you may feel justified and even proud but remember if you under fund the district that you serve you will own that outcome support the override do not be selfish doing the easy doing the right thing is not supposed to be easy thank you thank you for your comments the next person we have is beth simek dr kellis and members of the board and cabinet as well as honored guests tonight my name is beth simek and i am an active dysart parent for more than 15 years i am aware of the responsibilities of a school board and that is to be an advocate for the district this board voted unanimously to have another override election and approved the fiscal implications involved in putting the override back on the ballot board members then have a responsibility to advocate for the passage of the override by actively participating in the yes campaign so imagine my disappointment when i find that there are members of the board two of whom are on record as being part of the unanimous vote to put this measure out and they're out photographed actively campaigning against the override one member has a conflict of interest according to section 2.8 bullet 10 of the board policy by participating actively in a vote with a local political group to be against the override another member has joined her as they both violate board policy section 2.2 bullets 5 and 7 by actively passing out political groups propaganda to vote against the override while claiming to be fiscally conservative how is it fiscally conservative to vote in favor of a very expensive override election only to then go out of your way to sabotage the messaging it is the ethical responsibility of every member of the board to actively support and own their part of this board's unanimous decision all board members are bound to uphold that position that's part of basic governing board training how are we as a community supposed to trust board members to make decisions in the best interests of the district when the first instinct is to sabotage what this board unanimously voted in favor of supporting there are members of this community who are owed an apology for this so instead of shaking pans of the graduates on graduation day i hope you look into their eyes and apologize to each and every one of the children for this gross betrayal of their trust in you the people you are hurting are our children and for that you should be truly ashamed thank you for your comments the next person is john medina good evening board members my name is john medina i am a substitute here in the dysart district as well as some other districts locally and i'm a professor at grand canyon university as well so obviously i love teaching and um a question i don't know if i'm allowed to post questions to you if you're allowed to respond or not um the question that i'm just gonna i guess rhetorically is are teachers allowed to make up their own curriculum as they go along or is there a process by which they run it by you folks or somebody in the district that approves the curriculum the reason why i ask is my understanding is that we're here to teach our kids the basics of reading writing arithmetic technology how to be good citizens how to treat each other with respect maybe some pe arts if they still have it and i was really shocked the other day on friday when i was substituting at asante school first graders who just came in from a quick recess break they were having fun socializing getting to know each other and they come inside and they have a snack time and i open up the the sheet that the teacher the homeroom teacher left for me and there was a book for me to read and some of the kids were playing and i didn't start reading the book because they wouldn't settle down so i opened the book and i started thumbing through it and you have a copy of it in front of you just to cover in a page or two and i it was a book it's a book called the masked ninja and i look at the cover and it looked like the ninja turtles back when my older daughter was growing up with raphael and those folks and i start scrolling through the book and it talks about how the uh coronavirus uh is racist and if you see that the picture that's on that attachment that i gave to you i was taken aback and i was actually really angry and frustrated because these are little kids they don't need to be indoctrinated and even going to 12th 11th and 12th grade the high schoolers i don't feel that politics should be involved i saw a meme the other day on facebook and it said about if you know a teacher's politics then the teacher something along those you should know what a teacher's politics are and these cute little six-year-old kids shouldn't be taught that a virus has racist tendencies they don't even know what the concept is until we teach them that and i was extremely frustrated and angry and actually i didn't even read the book we played and i asked them what was special about them and they had a blast answering that question as opposed to us teaching them what racist is so later on when they get older and also one other thing too i know my time is running out they talk to in the book it talks about how uh the virus and how to um that you should listen to your doctor the cdc and the world health organization which all of these have been politicized and i thought to myself why don't you say talk to your parents what's the first thing that should be you ask your parents so i know my time is running out but i just i was taken aback and it makes me wonder if i still want to teach at this school and in this school district and it's only racist if you want it to be especially in this regard so i appreciate your time thank you for your comments miss denmark that was the last comment dr kellis can you please make sure that um this is followed up madam chairman sawyers think about yes we will follow up next we'll move to e1 superintendent update sorry we'll move to e1 superintendent update thank you madam chair and members of the board members of cabinet we are celebrating again our first week of school i think this is our third time that we have been able to celebrate our back to school back in august again last monday and then this monday where we brought back the rest of our students and it's very exciting as many of us have been into the classrooms um there's live instruction there's kids in the hallways again there's you know there's that love of learning happening face to face and there are still a few who are still online but we are just excited to to have started the school year in person again also i don't know if you notice right here on the front of the dice is a temporary emblem of our 100th anniversary and the the celebrations are continuing in a very different manner than perhaps we would have in a normal year but no they're continuing nonetheless and we're excited to celebrate 100 years of extraordinary learning for dysert and that's all i have to report excellent to governing board update i don't have anything just a couple of quick ones just to reiterate the congratulations for miss hawari it's it's a great thing to know computers it's an even greater thing to understand them and the fact that you have received such a grand uh certification um and you're here with us um we're the one that's uh reaping the rewards that uh all the all your hard work and everything so again congratulations miss hilary and i just wanted to let those board candidates for this year whether they're streaming or right on the diocese that asba is having their maricopa county meeting and i would invite [Music] the candidates to attend it's virtually it's october 29th and it is a great way to [Music] especially those that have not served on the board it's a great way to further your knowledge about boards and board values and the whole gambit and so this is put on by the asba it's in each county all the counties across the state and maricopas this year is on october 29th myself and jill humphries who's the co-director for maricopa county will be hosting it so it should be a lot of fun but all the board candidates i would suggest coming to it or virtually tuning in and seeing the great stuff that asb has to offer that's it and i just want to say um i haven't like i don't have kids in school anymore but um i've heard from friends who've their kids have gone back and we're super excited too that um their first week went really well um that you could definitely tell the classroom and schools look different just for all the um you know the um precautions put in place but i just wanted to thank all those within our within our school buildings and of course administration for all the hard work to try and make this as a best experience as possible and like i said from what i've the the feedback i got was very positive and everybody's just happy to be i heard from one kid who said i will never complain about school ever again so they're actually very excited to be back so thank you again do you have it on tape [Laughter] that's all i'll go agenda item f1 motion two approved consent agenda items as presented second okay go ahead and vote motion all right thank you and then we'll move on to information item uh one and this is regarding uh policy governance board monitoring of an adopted policy section for executive limitations thank you madame desmore um this evening we present uh our regular monitoring uh board policies and this night we uh we have reached section number four and mr credo will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent callison cabinet tonight we present to you section four for our normal monitoring process section four is our executive limitations and we have no changes for this section any questions i have a question and i don't know if the gentleman who spoke is still here i don't see him but ironically we were going to be discussing this tonight i just uh dr kellis just wanted some clarification just can you explain a little bit about the process the district goes through as far as how supplemental materials are approved before they get to the classroom be able to share some of that thank you miss pritchard members of the board i'm not sure this is the agenda item that covers that 4.12 instructional so the executive limitations um we can since it does cover that but that's it's not the the instruction section but yes that that is there so very generally generically instructional materials are presented to the board for approval ahead of time that being said if there are ancillary materials say a teacher is presenting something on dinosaurs and there's a fantastic website that talks about dinosaurs um not every single website every single reference every single um worksheet is brought to the board for approval the general curriculum and the standards are and if there are textbooks novels those types of things that are directly related to the curriculum those titles are often brought to the board a teacher could say this is the topic you can go to the library and pick a book that's related to this and not every book that a student selects either from a public or district library comes to the board for approval but if the district adopts a reading list of suggested titles those titles are brought to the board interestingly there was a bill this last spring in the legislature didn't go anywhere because the legislature ended early but that bill would have required every website every worksheet a teacher could not create their own study guide without it being board approved there was a lot of discussion statewide about that proposed bill just because of how tightly that would tie the hands of of teachers but generally if there are titles that are related to curriculum it can be researched by the curriculum department and if we have a new curriculum adoption like a whole math curriculum adoption those materials are posted publicly for a period of time where the public can come and look at all the books there's usually five folding tables long full of of a potential curriculum that could be adopted for the public to view and to give feedback on but generally that's a quick overview so um if a list is brought like of novels or whatever for the board as supplemental materials is it safe to assume that that someone at district level or the teachers have read someone's read them to make sure that they're appropriate and relevant prior to coming to the board for approval um mountain chair miss richard generally yes thank you i did i had one um for dr kellis and uh it was on 4.1 which is emergency superintendent succession and um i know we have four very capable assistant superintendents um do we have a plan or do you have one that is designated to the one that is the designated as this executive staff member let's succeed madam chairman sorry sink bell the policy reads that the superintendent shall not fail to develop a plan of succession in case the superintendent becomes for whatever reason incapacitated or unable to continue fulfilling the position so the policy makes reference to a procedure and the procedure which is well nothing personal against anybody it identifies which positions are in sequence and it's not something that is a judgment of a person per se other than its job titles so according to the procedure the first person would be the assistant superintendent of support services if that person is unable to fulfill their responsibility that goes to the second person is the assistant superintendent of academic services followed by the assistant superintendent of of human relations followed by the assistant superintendent of business services again there's no judgment of why one person is last and one person is first it is just um how the poli the procedure was established many years ago that has carried through correct and not that i'm wishing any ill on you dr kellis but um i just wanted to know if there was an actual procedure on hand we are in compliance with policy thank you very much that's what i need to know and that was it for me thank you all right so [Music] we will move to item h2 yes uh update on the future performance classification for the 2019 to 2020 school year dr ellis thank you madam chair members of the board and members of cabinet each year administration presents to the board information regarding the previous year's teacher performance ratings and mr croto will present this information thank you dr kels madam madam chair members of the board superintendent kellis and cabinet tonight we have our director of human relations mr steve mattingly here to present this report mr mattingly governor ward members dr carlos cabinet thanks for having me today as uh dr kellis was saying this presentation tonight is a requirement by the state that all districts in the state of arizona provide aggregate data to the governing board members on state classification for qualified teachers when it comes to their four different classifications so last year the uh well i got to turn this on i think excuse me don't laugh at me this is not working i apologize you have to stand on your left leg very good i actually did that all right so change slide please next slide so um so for the sake of time classification for qualified teachers comes in two ways one of them is the performance evaluation which acts as 65 percent of the equation and the other one is 35 percent which is tied to student growth those two combined with an equation uh basically drives a classification for the teacher annually and that happens at the end of every school year so with that the data is we have this past year 1 300.
so what we have is we have a budget balance of eight we have a cash balance of 14. so we collected more monies we started the year with six in excess of what we actually would have levied for so there's a positive balance in that fund and that's where you should be so that you have a positive cash flow and you don't have to worry about paying the county treasurer money interest on checks that you've written but there's not a sufficient balance so that's that's that's a good thing and the bad thing is you can't spend it it's there to honor expenditures but it's not there to offer to you additional money to spend and it's hard concept to understand i remember i'm working off of a budget control fund i just simply have cash that either exceeds that amount or is less than that amount and what controls how much i spend is the budget so because these columns when it says ending fund balance in that far right hand column that's not budget balance that's cash balance and this this this last column is especially applicable to the majority of the funds because there's only six of them that are budget controlled everything else operates off of cash so that column then becomes important after you pass those six budget control funds because that determines then i've switched from budget to cash now it determines how much i can spend so uh if you took an example i took one of community education community schools it's down about eight or ten from the top a fairly large one it provides tuition for preschool full-day kindergarten those kinds of programs where they're fee based this particular program started the year with 1.6 million dollars in cash it received revenues of 4.1 it spent 4.4 so it spent slightly more than it collected and so therefore the balance declined from 1.6 to 1.3 so this is a fun like most of them on this page it's controlled by that far right handle that says fund balance that's the that's going to be the beginning number for the new year for the year that we're in now and uh and these are stand-alone funds food service would be a big one these are stand-alone funds that collect fees from participants and whatever your expenses are are projected to be covered by the revenue that you receive through that tuition amount if that doesn't happen and this fund goes negative on on fund balance then there's an issue the issue is how do you correct that kind of put deficit we don't have it here fortunately we don't have any here with any of these funds but that's what you kind of look for is that you're operating at break even or better and you don't have a financial issue with not having cash in which to support the expenditure so um i think that's uh yeah where we're at with questions i know that this can be a fairly confusing subject it's a start on making sure that you have some idea of how that whole subject of school finance functions it's very complicated one of the most complicated in the country that a district would have 50 or 60 different funds to administer individually with different purposes is probably more than you would have in any state other states i'm aware of maybe five to ten and all of the things are grouped together in one of those five to ten funds here they're very segregated and and that again then applies rules as to how you can spend the money so that's just adds to the complexity of the subject but i hopefully as we as we progress during the year we'll be talking with you about next year's budget and some of this year's budget and i hope to make those sessions informative for you educational for you i want you to ask questions because that's how you know everybody learns and and hopefully at the end of the year you'll get some understanding of what this whole subject's all about and you can make decisions in a better um enlightened way so with that any questions that you or the board might have i'm hoping to answer thank you mr gatt i do have a question you said on the for on the ending fund cash balance column six 14 million you can't spend it for this year correct but that is our carryover and we have always used those funds then for our middle school lease you correct no doctor thomas is that no no you can you carry over the 14 million in your bank account that helps you with paying bills that you have cash then you don't go deficit you don't go to insufficient funds okay just like your checkbook okay so this is different than our end of year carryover that we carry over the difficulty with this particular fund is up until a couple years ago whatever amounts you didn't think you needed could be applied to reduce the tax rate okay that got changed legislatively so that those monies cannot be used any longer and they should be but they can't be used so that amount may continue to grow until people realize that instead of just counting money we should have a plan to do something with it and at least benefit most of the revenue which came from property tax benefit those type of property taxpayers by reducing their tax bill but unfortunately that's not in our control at this point but it carries over for 14 it collects another 70 or 80 million it winds up this year with some dollar amount but it's not spendable it's there just to be able to cover our bills what is controlling is that original budget amount that was based upon adm that controls you throughout the year and that's where the eight million came from the difference between how much you budgeted how much you spent so that really is the important subject to understand because that governs your salary schedules your class size all of those things that typically would be paid from them thank you for that clarification i appreciate that any other questions for mr gad tonight okay so we are going to move the thank you again thank you um we have a motion on the floor then can you slide that up thank you mr curtis i move that the governing board still not there there it is i move that the governing board accepts the annual financial report and authorizes its publication any other questions or concerns uh mr gad do you do you foresee any changes coming to this between now and it's i know you've had like four days with this documents and all these finances i just want to make sure that there's not going to be something that you foresee [Music] changing or we don't see anything at this point okay we've been over it enough that i think we've taken care of whatever minor kinds of things might occur very good thank you sir we will need to be talking with you routinely about the status of this year's budget and even more importantly next year's budget because it's so affected by the economy right so that's something that and we'll have a revised budget coming as well yeah mid year yes okay very good all those in favor aye aye did i hear everybody motion passes five zero thank you all right next we are going to have a gifted and talented and h pal update kaler members of the board i am excited tonight to have to have dr dodds do a beautiful presentation we could not be more proud of the work that dr dodds mrs richards the administrators our amazing gifted teachers and specialists have done there's been a lot of work that happened this past year and dr dodds is going to do a nice presentation tonight to show showcase the work and to highlight our programs that we're real proud of dr dodds and thank you everybody for their patience on this coming to us i'm sure that dr dodds has had this um you know planned for months and because of covid it kept getting pushed back so we're happy to have you tonight good evening president kaler members of the board dr thomason dr foley and cabinet i am so um proud to share with you tonight um just the really exceptional work that our teachers our site-based gifted coaches and administrators have done for the past several years their commitment to our gifted and talented students is exceptional and i think you'll see that tonight i do want you to know that each of the slides for the most part has pictures in it and i want you to know that the pictures i've included have been the gifted program over time to kind of show you the theory in practice so these pictures were mainly taken pre-covered so when you see our cute students and our happy teachers they likely won't have a mask on you'll see a few selfies but other than that just know that these pictures were all taken pre-coded so with that maybe mr gad we both have problems with the clicker there we go all right um i want to show you this picture of a virtual small group classroom instruction believe it or not our gifted coach is sitting in the middle of that small group she looks like one of our students and i show you this not to just show you a microsoft teams lecture style room but instead to help you think about what we think about all the time and that is who is sitting in our classrooms so when you go visit classrooms you know do you wonder who's in the room because we wonder do we have the next screenwriter sitting in our classroom do we have the next scientific innovator or astronaut sitting in our classroom perhaps that avid reader that you can't stop from reading all day long or that writer who is so creative maybe they're the next children's literature classic author or maybe they're entrepreneurs who are going to be household names that are going to inspire all of us through hgtv maybe it's the next architect perhaps it's the leader in our classroom who's going to become a motivational speaker and an expert on leadership thinking about who our kids might be is really what drives our passion and fuels our decisions for curriculum and instruction we want to honor who our kids are what they love right now and foster that so that being said from what i've studied in higley gifted education has been important in our community and from the records that i can access i can see that in the past decade gifted programming has been important and when i look to when centennial first opened about a decade ago an important part of our community was to create a self-contained gifted program at centennial and that flourished for many many years at the time that centennial opened as well as our other schools were also serving children we had pull-out programs so from what i understand families had a choice to apply to the self-contained gifted program at centennial or keep their children at home at their home school in a pull-out model over time i've learned that the schools began to realize this pedagogy is important for all of our kids and they started working more carefully at the school sites so as people began keeping their children at their neighborhood school the self-contained gifted program waned at centennial ironically at that same time that it was closing a new school opened when bridges opened as a cornerstone in our community again recognizing just this boutique niche philosophy h-pal was created when bridges opened as a program not just for gifted kids but those kids who wanted to work hard wanted to maybe be participating in an accelerated curriculum so that they could be on a more advanced pathway for academic rigor at the same time the site-based programs changed and from what i understand with some staffing reductions the pull-out program became two teachers serving the other schools in the district well that lasted for a short period of time because then we hit the gas pedal and we realized we need more people on our campuses so i know when i arrived here in the 2017 school year we were fortunate enough to have seven site-based gifted specialists who did a pull-out model on the campus h-pal was still thriving in its second year at bridges but we also started something different we started a program that was the third grade accelerated model so we began identifying kids for a gifted and talented program using an initial cohort of third graders and we targeted certain classrooms where we've placed children into classrooms that i'll elaborate on in a little bit so at this time in our district we have pull-out programs we have an accelerated model we have the hpalp program and we realized our little list of learners are missing out so we opened a highly gifted academy for our kinder prep students so a lot happened in that 2017 school year for our gifted and talented students the following year our programs continued we expanded that third grade accelerated model to be third and fourth grade h paul continued in grades three through six and as this was happening the pull out model on the campuses wasn't as necessary because third and fourth grade was being serviced in the classroom all day every day with the support of gifted coaches so fifth grade was the only class really having pull out so third and fourth grade was daily in the classroom fifth grade was having pull out sixth grade has always been a consult for us at the same time our think academy that started the previous year in kinder prep those students now rolled up into kindergarten so we added a kindergarten class so the gifted academy expanded to have kinder prep and kindergarten then in 2019 we had h pal at bridges for grades three through six we had third grade fourth grade and fifth grade now for our accelerated model for gifted and talented and we began to shift that role of that gifted specialist from doing any type of pull-out to solely being push in co-teach model curriculum support for the third fourth and fifth grade teachers at the same time the think academy expanded so we now have kinder prep kindergarten and first grade then last year um as we added a new cohort to our third fourth and fifth grade accelerated model we realized that our accelerated model and h-pal were running parallel to each other and it was causing a lot of confusion in the community because the programs had different names but were very very very similar in terms of curriculum pacing expectations for professional development for teachers in terms of gifted endorsements and continued training and the pacing for curriculum was very similar so mr bickle mrs richards and i started having conversations about what what could we do to help alleviate the confusion in our community and we realized it would be important for us to kind of rebrand kind of close down the store and reopen with the new name and we brought the teams together and we decided to call it gate gifted and talented education and that's what we now have so um we have for third fourth fifth and now sixth grade on all of our campuses a gate program and we also have expanded our think academy to include kinder prep kindergarten first grade and second grade so these initial cohorts have really been a driving force for us to expand the program within our district so now any school that you visit will all have the same opportunity for children identified as gifted or talented i'll elaborate in a minute on how we identify and why these models look the way they do but in k2 we cluster group our kids in grades 3 6 we cluster group and or have a self-contained or a walk to math program and then we have our highly gifted academy of think that is kinder prep through second grade something that was a blessing in disguise as we merged h powell with our accelerated program is it allowed us to put stakeholders around the table and really talk about what do we believe about gifted and talented education and what do we want for our students so as you see on this slide we were able to create two belief statements that we believe every child that is gifted talented or academically high achieving should have the same opportunities to learn at their appropriate level at any of our higley schools and we also want to make sure that there is the opportunity for rigorous learning in a continuum right now we have it in our elementary we want to support it and build it in our middle schools and think about our high school services too so in order to have programs we have to identify kids so here in the state of arizona we have a mandate to offer gifted and talented education and we are fortunate that we now have a funded mandate although it's on the floor right now it hasn't been funded for this year yet but i do hope it will be funded again this year uh so our mandate includes a few things that we must offer services for gifted kids and we must utilize some form of assessment to identify kids as gifted or talented so very common in the valley is an assessment called the kogat it's a cognitive abilities test it is group administered in k1 we give the kogat we also give the kogat in grades 2-6 but in grades 2-6 we also utilize a sea bass and a renzoli scale for gifted characteristics and then in our highly gifted academy we use intelligence testing iq test called the whip c it's the preschool version of a whisk we also use the kogat with renzoli scales as well as an alternative assessment that was the um was birthed out of the pandemic and school being closed and so when we administered the tests our site-gifted coaches are the ones who administer this we collaborate with our student assessment department for all of our uploads with riverside publishing but this is an online test children are in a computer lab and it's completely organized through our gifted coaches on campuses so in order to be eligible for our gifted program there's a few different ways that we are identifying kids we recognize that some kids are going to do really well when it comes time for that cogat this test looks very different than a typical academic achievement test so when children see it they'll say maybe to the teacher i've never seen this before my teacher didn't teach me this because it's measuring problem solving it's measuring critical thinking deductive reasoning so children are identified as gifted if they score 95th percentile or higher on the cogat either the verbal the quantitative or the nonverbal battery we also identify kids as talented if they score between the 84th and 94th percentile on the verbal and the quantitative batteries and then we also look at kids based on their academic achievement the kids who are our high flyers in our classroom who just miss it on the kogat you know they're that 82nd percentile student and they just missed the cut but maybe they're our most highly proficient ati galileo benchmark kids so with the wonderful support of our gifted coaches again because of the pandemic we were able to add another layer where we used our seabass testing but then our coaches conferenced with every second grade teacher who had a child who was highly proficient and used a renzuli characteristic scale about mathematical giftedness and verbal giftedness and they talked with the teacher to understand how does this child demonstrate critical thinking and problem solving how do they find alternative solutions in mathematics and so that was a really neat opportunity the second grade teachers felt like they had a say as well as to who could go into our program as a talented student so k2 is a cluster model and this picture illustrates what we often see in our k2 classrooms curriculum differentiation more than likely is going to happen in small groups through learning centers or choice menus the best that we can we group our kids together so for our k1 and 2 students these are kids who are identified early in the year in their years of school i should say so there might be a few of them we might have one or two kindergartners on one campus or two or three second graders somewhere until we do a blanket test so our principles are wonderful in working with our gifted coaches to try to target those kids together in a teacher's classroom who is passionate about differentiation or maybe already has or is willing to work toward their gifted endorsement in grades three through six this is where if you will our formal services begin our kids are going to be cluster grouped in a mixed stability classroom for their homeroom depending on if they are quantitatively gifted or not they may walk to math with a designated teacher who is gifted endorsed or is working toward their gifted endorsement and this becomes more of a self-contained homogeneous grouping of gifted and talented kids who are mathematically identified based on the kogat or that sea bass regardless if it is the cluster or the self-contained there are some important components to our curriculum we believe greatly in curriculum compacting we recognize that our gifted kids and our talented kids are going to learn at a more rapid rate so they don't need maybe the five to seven repetitions that a typical child needs they need one to two so as a teacher the pace for instruction can go quicker so we can compact and teach more standards we also are very fortunate to have created curriculum maps for our gate teachers to use for math and english language arts and i'll highlight those in a minute as i mentioned we have teachers teaching in our classrooms who are either gifted endorsed or they are working toward their gifted endorsement and then daily they have their gifted coach support i do want to draw your attention to the picture so when i look at this picture it's an example to me of how a teacher has thought about her curriculum a little bit differently so on the whiteboard i see that she has some icons you see a flower and you see a mouth and you see a circle a triangle and a square these are parts of differentiation known as the prompts of depth and complexity so we can use these iconic prompts as a way to extend the thinking of children with critical reasoning so in this classroom the teacher wants the students to be thinking about the topic noting details they want them to look at specific vocabulary for the discipline and then they want to look across disciplines on the very bottom there's three pictures of little people so this teacher is going to ask the students to be thinking about the skeletal system not just from the point of view of a biologist but from an astronomer and also an archaeologist so instead of just looking at bones for the sake of knowing the skeletal system they're going to maybe pretend to be someone else and how would that expert view the skeletal system okay so while we work really hard to group our children we recognize that the grouping alone isn't the answer it's what we do for our kids so for us we want to be sure that we work real hard every single day to foster that love for learning that our gifted kids have believe it or not gifted kids don't always love school but they really love to learn so it's our job to figure out what makes them tick and how can we make our curriculum relevant to them so we want to make sure that everything we do is based on their readiness as well as their interest to the best that we can and to do this we utilize a variety of resources i was mentioning to dr foley that it would be so perfect if we just had a textbook that we could just open up and it would be perfect for all of our children especially for our gifted kids we can't just open up our textbook and teach from page 1 to page 50.
i feel my back is to a wall as i do not see what is being offered as a legitimate compromise but as a needless and unwise choice i would welcome justification and an explanation on the position i am being put in so that i can make a truly informed and intelligent vote ben dodo i want to talk to you about danbury just doing check-ins on columbus day as we won't be in physical school that day that way we can have no school on may 28th for a pd day dana o'rourke i have always supported the teachers and staff in danbury i feel that they work very hard i would also like to complement the administration at dhs for an amazing virtual open house at the dhs open house this week flex time was explained and highly suggested for the students to participate in has it been considered that if the students were in class time for more than three and a half hours a day four days a week that maybe so much flex time might not be needed if they were in the building they would not be getting that much flex time we are also informed by the administration that too much screen time is not good for the kids they can't play sports or gather so they get on their phones or video games more screens also why does school start for dhs almost almost 30 minutes after it normally will start if they were in the building if the goal is to eventually get the students back into the building shouldn't they be starting school at their regular start time so they will be used used to it when they go back to school shouldn't the distance learning model mirror the hybrid model parents have been told that this school year is different than any other and we need to be flexible and understanding we have also been told that the situation changes all the time maybe it is time for the dhs schedule to be reviewed to see if it works for all students we ask that the administration also be flexible and consider that maybe the schedule as it is now does not work for all students tina pote has the board of ed considered allowing teachers or staff members allowance to bring their children into the building to complete their distance learning kathy snow i would like to commend the administration and teachers on the open house monday night they all did a great job considering the circumstances my request to the superintendent and any other decision maker is to please revisit the time high school students are with their teachers in a synchronous mode these students are only learning from their teachers three and a half hours a day for four days four days a week for a total of 14 hours a week this does not seem like enough time in front of their teachers this was made very clear at the open house when almost all the teachers i met made some comment about everything taking longer online and running out of time i understand younger students cannot handle a lot of screen time but high schoolers can screen time high school students can handle versus an elementary student are very different and should be treated as such as it is there is the potential that high school students are done with their day in front of their teachers at 11 30 a.m if they are not scheduled for any flex time as the only only mandatory flex time is from 8 to 8 25 a.m on wednesdays i am just refreshing the public participation email and that is it for public participation tonight thank you so very much right on time we're going to use a half an hour 773 for public participation so we can move right into the business part of our meeting um thank you again senator so very much the constant calendar um i'll make a motion that the board of education approves the items on the consent calendar exhibit 20-95 through exhibit 20-97 as recommended second month by case seconded by joe and a question concerning consent calendar seeing none all the favorite cake roll please of course uh rachel celestia hi kate canetta hi gladys al russo hi amy spelina hi motion passes unanimously promotion so careful thanks again very much uh do we have a employee representative here tonight no are any of our students uh online tonight with us yes um i think jake goodwin and i from dhs are here okay go ahead yeah um um good to see you and welcome to i haven't seen you in a while um i just have a couple things to share with the start of the school year and just give a little introduction um so my name is becca decilio you probably have seen me before i was the um treasurer for the board of governors last year and jake goodwin who's with me tonight was the secretary so now i'm the president he's the vice president for um the board of governors for our senior year um so we're very happy to move into our senior year this year and i don't think as a freshman we would have expected it to be this way but um we are trying to work with our administrators and teachers to make it um a successful year for the students because that's our job as um student government so i'm just going to give a couple things that we've done this year and then jake's gonna take over and finish so we started off the year i think pretty great we had a couple um internet issues but that's to be expected with online learning and everything um from what i have heard from the teachers the attendance has actually been really good from what i hear it's only about a one percent difference from what it was um in school so we have had really good attendance and almost every single one of the classes i've been in has had um almost every single student there every every time which is really good um we've also had you've probably heard some people were crashing our google meets but now teachers have more like hosting privileges that they can use and as we go um teachers are going to learn how to use the technology a lot better so i think it's going really well um but hopefully them having more hosting privileges will deter this from happening and so we won't see it again so i'm going to leave it to jake and jake's going to take over for me so at the as distance learning started all dhs students were given a free dell laptop to keep which we're very grateful for and so many more kids now have access to technology at home which is great we are looking for ways to connect with students over the internet it's proving pretty difficult um we are planning a spirit week or something related to that for some time in october which will most likely be held virtually we did something similar last year so we're also getting the club fair and works for some time in october we're hoping that this will get more kids engaged with the school especially freshmen we're really trying to um pull engagement so and lastly the bog and peer leaders are working with an organization offering scholarship opportunities to students who register to vote very cool there will also be an opportunity to have parents and families register as well in school with the most registrations by election day will receive a ten thousand dollar grant and that's all i have for you guys thank you thank you folks very much would you mind if i ask a question thank you jake or rebecca we're we're hearing you know from a lot a lot of folks in terms of um time in front of screen and um the technology challenges just from your perspective and which are how is it going in terms of time uh and and the activities that you're doing you're finding this year can you give us a little thumbnail um yeah i think jake and i jake and i are actually just having a conversation about this and we we as students i know for myself it's really hard for me to sit in front of like a screen for a really long period of time and i know if i was on the screen from 7 30 to 2 which is what a normal school day would be i would be exhausted by the end there's no way i could hold focus for that long um so that i think the times for the classes are actually like perfect i know teachers are feeling slightly rushed i'm in a lot of ap classes so there is a time crunch a little bit um with ap classes because we have to take those tests in may but the teachers are like utilizing the flex time that we're given and either offering instruction during that time um or they're just either reiterating what we were already taught to students who may have been absent during that time um but i personally like the time jake can speak on it too if you you won't i also like the time um although it does um feel like we're not doing as much as if we were in building but i also feel like we're still working out um or teachers are still working out like the kinks and stuff so i agree i think i think it's a good time a good a a good amount of time and the technology has been okay i'm just yeah nope okay thank you very much of course it's been iffy like at times but that's to be expected with technology i have a question very interesting question for students um how is your how is your homework load or your um you know your independent workload how does that compare to in person do you feel like it's more or less same jake do you want to go i feel like it's um i'm like becca i'm also taking mostly aps so it seems like a bit more work but i'm pretty sure that's just um like in my honors class i'm not really getting much homework um i just think that teachers are being very smart with like how much um like how much they're giving the kids like how much they think that kids can do with respect to this situation that we're in right now i think they're doing like a good job like i wouldn't say my workload is too much okay i i personally think i have more than than last year but i think that's also because we have less time to do class work in class so we're doing that but we also have more time after school to do to do work like i would have gotten out at you know two and now i have two hours less so now i have two hours more time to do work than normal so i think it balances out yeah so you feel like you have a good balance there yeah yeah thank you for that are there any other questions that board member would like any other board members would like to ask our two students a question saying that uh thank you guys yes um okay thank you guys okay of course so um as you know as we talked about going into this the pandemic and the research that we've had with the medical field that we'll be reviewing that um particularly this week we have a meeting on friday with all of the medical folks we felt the timing would be right given labor day and the possible surgery in the numbers if any of you read the paper today as i did with the federal report on the states that can they were highlighting connecticut and they explicitly talked about danbury's impact on the state in terms of the numbers um you know i i will tell you um personally and talking to parents that there there's there's quite a um number of folks who would like to see youngsters back but we have been tracking uh the medical um doctrine we've been looking at that daily if not weekly um and so i thought tonight would be good to have an initial kind of review talk about some of the things we'll be looking at on friday as we start looking at our goal which was to be returning here towards the you know middle to the end of october here so um i have with us tonight uh kara and kathy i will have kathy begin um cathy o'dowd who's been just tremendous and helping not just us but by the way guys she's been working with the non-pubs as well uh and that has been because those youngsters have been in school or out of school she's really uh burning the candle on both ends kathy thank you dr sal um so before we talk about moving forward i would like to just offer a brief review of where we've been and how we got to the decision to do the distance learning as a return to school and the information and the guidance that we're using to move forward so if you recall in july the governor had stated that all districts should be back in the fall full time in person learning for school and there is a metrics that the state of connecticut uses its three tiers that um outlines what is a low risk for returning what is moderate risk in terms of needing the hybrid model and then what is high risk in terms of recommending distance learning and the way that's calculated is we look at what we call the seven-day rolling average of positive cases now when the state puts out that metrics they are doing it on a county-wide level however we have had to look at just danbury alone um because of the uptick that we've had and our space constraints so in july um according to that metrics uh the district would have been considered at low risk for transmission and therefore we could have returned under that metrics to a full-time model however with our building constraints and the overcrowded conditions that we have we did not feel that we could safely have everyone in the building at all times five days a week and that is when dr sal appealed to the state to the governor to have us move to a hybrid model and that was our plan at the time then in early august we started to see an uptick in the number of positive cases in danbury and that has continued and by mid-august we had to make a decision and based on that's what we call that seven day rolling average so what the health department does is they look at cases the number over seven days and that is averaged and then based on a population of a hundred thousand and we get excuse me a percentage um average cases a day um and cara will speak to those you know specific numbers but um at that time we felt that it would not be safe for us to return to a hybrid model and that's why we chose to go with distance learning and that recommendation was given to dr sal by the medical team which is myself cara prunty uh dr fong who's the district's medical advisor and dr begg who was the medical advisor for the city health department so that's what moved us toward the decision to go with distance learning um in the meantime um you know we still have an excellent partnership with the department of health cara has been very accessible to us and she's participated in all of our district meetings and she's been a very valued resource so we we speak probably daily sometimes more and we we meet as needed and we're continuing to review those numbers so what we're seeing in the community right now um is still what we consider to be a concerning transmission rate of cobit um and right now what we're seeing is a result of the labor day weekend um you know we're two weeks out and with that incubation period of covid being two to 14 days um it's being with through contact tracing we're seeing that there were large gatherings um people are not wearing masks they're not social distancing so we're still seeing some numbers of positive cases that are very concerning to us in addition to the fact that many of them are children while we see some positives at the elementary level we're seeing a more significant number at the secondary level so for that reason um you know at this time we're still very concerned about being able to open with a hybrid model however we'll continue to look at the data as dr sal had mentioned we are meeting on friday kathy we lost your voice if you could hear me can't hear you oh yeah hold on yes yeah we lost me okay i got you back you got me back okay um i'm sorry i don't know where i left off so i'll just go back um you know we are prepared to open as far as a safe plan um the district as you know we've talked about many times this has been an amazing team um it's been a great effort in putting together you know the mitigation strategies uh the ventilation's been addressed um you know we have all of the schools now have you know markers and arrows on the floor for safe distancing we have all the ppe that we need we were very fortunate to find a vendor that enabled us to get everything that we needed in a very short period of time so we are prepared on that level as well we lost your voice again we launched your voice kathy can you hear me now yeah yes okay um i'm sorry i guess i'm having some connection issues here as i said our issue now is the community transmission so you know i strongly encourage everyone to continue to wear your masks frequent hand washing please avoid large gatherings where you can't wear a mask and safely distance because that's where you know we're finding the the increased cases that we're seeing um and in terms of returning you know we have a very detailed plan in place as to how we will address whether we have a possible case of covid whether we have a confirmed case of covid we have looked very closely at how we can manage it on the elementary and secondary levels it will be a little different just because of the scheduling and the ability to cohort at the elementary level will make things easier but you know as i said we're prepared it's just a matter of the community numbers trending down and we're not seeing that yet kara hi everyone and i just i just want to say thank you to kathy i know how hard she's been working so i just want to let everyone know that she has been doing such a fantastic job and i really appreciate all of the work that she does and the work that she does with me so thank you kathy for that um and she covered a lot of it i just want to piggyback off that and mention some specifics of what's going on right now um so right now as she referenced our seven day rolling average per 100 000 is uh 14 a little over 14 uh which would you know on the scale put us in the moderate level um our numbers have stabilized since august 21st um we've trended down a little bit but we have not seen a consistent trend down we're still seeing uh positivity rates between five and six percent um consistently every week so that's a concerning level for us we're seeing community transmission as kathy mentioned through our contact racing we're still seeing a lot of spread through small parties family gatherings things like that so we just we really want to stress and and say that this is still out there we're really doing our best to to do targeted testing and messaging and but you know i think that people have been hearing this message over and over again it's kind of background noise at this point so i just want to urge you all to take it very seriously so that way we can get this our numbers down and have the ability to open safely so that's that's all i have um the board had asked for uh you know some information and i i think cara what i'm asked the time is when you disaggregate the numbers you do take out certain categories correct and and then look at it to a different lens so it's focusing in on um you know our town folks is that correct yeah so i i separated out for danbury residents so when i'm looking and i'm discussing positivity rates and seven day rolling averages i'm talking about danbury residents people with danbury addresses so the pre-op and the nursing and all that is some removed that is if they are danbury residents it is included it's hard to hear oh sorry if they're danbury residents some of that is included um when we do more targeted testing through groups in areas where we know that there's a lot of community spread we are seeing higher positivity rates so when you incorporate the pre-op testing uh just the routine testing that's when we still get that between five and six positivity rate so i don't know maybe the board may have some questions i will just stop right now so okay so the positivity rate is the people that you that have actually been tested and and the hospitalizations have gone down actual people who are admitted to the hospital so these people are not showing symptoms they they are asymptomatic i can't hear you there's a combination of symptomatic and symptomatic and asymptomatic so there's both we're seeing both people um we're just not seeing that translate into hospitalizations at this time okay and what percentage are do we need to be in order for the children to attend school where do you want that percentage rate to be it's a combination i can't hear you sorry there's there's a combination of all of the metrics it's not just the positivity rate it's that combined that's the one that that's the one that you're focused in on right now well it's a combination of all of them so it's the seven day rolling average it's the positivity rate and it's also whether our numbers are trending in the right direction so um it's it's all of those things working together okay care care i have a question if kathy's done yes thank you joe yep cara hospitalizations are down because i was looking at the state numbers and they look like they're up in fact their daily report today showed i think it was like three more hospitalizations we're back up to like 70. are our local hospitalizations down uh at this point yes good okay thank you that's what i wanted to check that's that's really good news obviously the rest of it's bad but that's good thank you so so cathy one of the things that we're i think it was you know we're learning a lot going through this and the conversations we're having uh these indicators and and one of the things that uh for us anyway uh you know we're challenged with the the spacing the social there's a crowding issue oh yeah exactly and in the moderate level on i think i had said to cara the same question where where on this on this scale and if i did one of the things we were looking at it if we're attending on the bottom of this moderate level which is this the the second the second category the state looks like that's something that would indicate to us that um although it's not as good as it may have been you know in august it might be appropriate for us to do um uh look at the the in in school learning and i think that's on friday we're going to try to disaggregate through all of that um i will just set a seat out there for the entire board because i we've been reading and i've been asking and talking and you know there there's some merit to phasing things in as possibilities there's also conversations from things that i've been reading from our our parents and others that our early students k one and two and three um very difficult for them to sustain the time so looking at that in a differentiated fashion i don't think you can have uh one size fits all here is what i'm saying to everybody and um we're diligent to find the opportunity um to bring youngsters back friday that's our goal but i thought they should give you at least a thumbnail sketch of what they're seeing as the professionals and we'll have the medical doctors in with us on friday and um have some better numbers because they do collect them every day to make some decision because as you know we were our goal was um you know the mid-october just towards the third week or so of october to return um when we're going to be talking about the real reality of doing something for that on friday and um that's where we're at um gladys that's all i i support members have a question of the of the medical folks are they have questions okay thank you i'll start with action item a i'll make a motion at the bottom okay sir can you hear me i can hear you i'm okay can you hear us okay thank you i'll make a motion at the board of education to prove the june 2020 operating results and analysis in accordance with exhibit 20-99 okay i'm not sure if gladys might be frozen that looks like so i'll just ask if there are any questions second second okay motion made by uh are there uh courtney do you have anything to add to this emotion oh no thank you though gladys this is just the year-end result courtney it's hard to hear you okay um i'm sorry can you hear me better now okay oh no gladys thank you it's just the year-end results from the last fiscal year showing what funds we can carry over into our reserves as we had discussed at the last board meeting so thank you um okay it is certainly i'll start with uh rachel scholeski hi kate canetta aye gladys cooper lauren daley aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson hi rich jannelli hi kathy molinaro hi el russo hi amy spelino hi motion provenance okay emotional care thank you all very much astronaut item d rachel yes i move that the board of education except for second reading and adoption policy 2150 visits to the schools as accepted by the policy committee uh exhibit 20-100 i'll second that moment by ready to stay for that are they in questions very much joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich genelli hi catherine sorry kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy hi 10 nice mission fans emotions don't care thank you very much uh i'm sorry but i still i didn't admit um action item c policy 5141.8 face masking coverings make a motion that we accept the board of education except for the second reading and adoption 5141.8 face mask coverings is accepted by the policy committee any questions committed by and segmented by amy yes i just have um one small thing um i thought we had this in the first paragraph that we would omit the last two words full time um again the first paragraph last sentence last two words remove um full time i would like this to be brought for a third reading if if possible uh where is um can we hear that adjustment again i i didn't hear that i'm not i didn't the first paragraph um this policy pertains to students faculty staff and visitors it has been developed to fulfill the guiding principles contained in the framework for connecticut schools specifically to safeguard the health and safety of students and staff and to allow all students opportunity to return into classrooms period i'd like um full time to be heated does that make sense yes i mean is that is that the adjustment that is that the only adjustment that needs to be made that we're seeing yes okay can can we approve with and with the understanding that we will make that adjustment if i think so yeah i think it makes it it it's applicable in every case so i think it's it clarifies it yeah i don't want it to be taken out of context it doesn't change it so i would i would agree point of order manager do we need a do we need an amendment for that or can we just do that based on the understanding we're doing it i think we can make it understand that mr law may have chair i i would say it's more a clarifying change than anything it's not changing just a clarification amendment so i would just make it now okay so we can go ahead and prove it tonight without bringing it to a third reading okay i understand yes okay okay sure i'll do that now uh rachel chaleski hi canetta i gladys cooper i'm lauren daley i joe da silva hi catherine hodgson aye rich gennelly kathy molinaro al-rusa hi amy spelino aye that's 10 muslims thank you again rachel i move that the board of education accepts reading as amended and adoption emergency suspension of policy as accepted by the policy committee exhibit 20-102 second promotion made by religious action by joe are there any questions in certain emotions any corrections that need to be made c9 uh uh kate we have to wait for local please rachel celeski i kate canetta aye gladys cooper hi lauren aye georgia silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich genelli aye cathy molinaro aye al russo hi amy spolino hi motion carries unanimously okay we're gonna move on to uh e i'll make a motion that the board of education except for the second reading adoption policy 6114.82 coveted emergency measures as accepted by the policy committee in exhibit 20-103 second policy made my case my job any corrections and the question of concern is thank you all for taking the opportunity uh as our last meeting put them on for this reading and hope everyone had opportunities to go through them so seeing now they will use um dude roll call of course rachel celeski i key canada i gladys cooper hi lauren daley aye joe da silva aye catherine hodgson aye rich genelli aye cathy molinaro hi thank you all uh thank you mr lawson there's a lot of extra noise tonight i don't know if someone has a phone and a computer on but it's like there's just a lot of feedback for maybe it's me maybe i should back on no i'm hearing it as well it's not i thought the tv was all in the living room i can't hear this noise and i know my tv was not on in the living room so i don't know where it's coming from okay what's that yeah we're ready okay yes let's start with ais um and um courtney do you want to bring it up courtney i'll start if you'd like oh thanks kevin okay okay so so dr sal courtney and i both gonna speak uh so so one i i just wanted to update the board on our ais magnet school enrollment um the difference between october 1st 2019 and to date where we are with enrollment um and then courtney is going to help help me and help us clarify um so that we can understand the impact on that has on us financially so so last year we had as of october 1st we had 504 students um at ai um in our from our i'm sorry we had 99 students from our partner towns at ais and 34 students from our non-partners non-partner student schools and for a total of 133 kids last year and in this year we are down in our partner towns partner school districts from 99 to 81 and our non-partner districts from 34 to 33 so for a total or a difference of negative 19. so we are down 19 students from the 9th 2019 school year to 2020 2021 um and so um dr sal is is working with the other superintendents to make sure those partner districts um still honor their commitment to pay for those students um although you know those those families have chosen to remain back at their home schools as you might imagine um our neighboring towns or our partner towns uh are still in school um you know we are only the only school in the area that is in the hybrid i'm sorry in virtual learning distance learning and so a lot of those families have chosen to keep their kids in their home school district and have not and have chosen not to send them to ais this year and so certainly you know uh dr sal as you might imagine was concerned about the financial impact and had uh courtney you know courtney and i both investigate um and investigate where we are and so i provided some data enrollment updates to courtney and then she began to further investigate what this meant locally you know between us and the towns and then uh look further into how we might be able to get some relief from the state uh courtney oh thanks kevin yeah so as kevin mentioned that that decline related to the virus results in a loss of revenue to the district from the state because we get rid of courtney it's very difficult to hear you i'm sorry um is that better can you hear me better now i can hear you a little bit i'm sorry i don't know what's going on um i'll talk loudly um so basically the state reimburses us about seven thousand seven hundred dollars per pupil so we with that loss in enrollment we would lose about 86 000 from the state so dr sal did ask that we um we draft a letter that he sent to our legislators asking us to keep us whole and continue with what we had for fiscal year 1920s appropriation so that we don't lose that funding and he's also as kevin mentioned working with the partner districts because there's a small portion that they contribute on behalf of their students for tuition and we're asking them to continue to maintain that commitment so he wanted me to make you aware of that um that i think at this point um without the tuition we're about i mean roughly just under 90 000 delta correct that's correct yep about 86 000.
like i reported last time that's only down a few but it is about two percent lower than about the same time or rather when we closed officially in may so we're down a little bit um we also are noticing that um we're at the first um academic morning notice for high school and and grades are lower than they were at this time last year so this we and we know this we know that this has been um a difficult time and it's not ideal however the county public health data has allowed us to move forward with some conversations that have just been wonderful in planning for return to some form of in-person instruction or as we've been calling it lately at least an enhancement to the distance learning so we've met three times with the group that includes classified certificated um bargaining unit members and and managers very productive very unified meetings about our process and so we started with just defining all the terms looking at data making sure that we all understood the guidance documents and what the target was to be able to return students we then asked them for input concerns ideas comments that they felt we ought to address as a team and they did that we got almost 100 comments some of them overlapping so we took them we organized them and packaged them up and then asked them then to begin to brainstorm ideas to answer these concerns which they took very seriously outstanding input right lots of ideas and and generally i'll tell you characterized by a can do attitude to bring um the system closer to a safe and appropriate reopening of in-person construction so the most recent meeting was excellent we were able to get the groups together and once again um kind of push those items to the experts where they belong we took their input and said okay now that we know for example what transportation needs to come up with for a plan they will work on that food service nutrition services rather we'll work on that maths department has a huge part of this of course risk management and that division will be working hard to make sure that our plans comply with the guidelines put forward but this group worked hard yesterday or yesterday evening on schedules and a calendar and so we have kind of a template for schedules and they're going to be in essentially three different kinds of groups one a cohort which is allowed at this time was for special education or high knee groups of students in a stable cohort of not more than 16 total people um and i think the guidelines for the number of students is no more than 14.
that's correct that that's my right because i i do believe that this board has regardless of the people who've come and gone has served very well as a body and i think staff and everybody else but like when when matt and i got on the board because the board had been in the news so often we kind of made a pact with each other that our goal was to see how long we could go without the district of being um thank you for that you know and so um that's that's just what i you know if it's not an issue it's not an issue and whatever is easiest is is fine with me i just i would i would hate to see the november meeting seven that would be mr monday i i would hey how are you um i would just hate to see that become a faction battle so jeremy um let me catch you up a little bit um we are on business item b about the resolution to for the vacancy that will be there by october 1st so we already passed the resolution to say we're going to fill it and then nancy and delray are going to be the subcommittee members and then so the last thing to decide is on the timeline option one means we go to fill it in the october meeting option two is to fill it in the november meeting the vote right now is two to two um there's there's a there's one opinion that says hey you know what let's take care of it in in november and then the election is over and we can figure out what the boards make up of the board's gonna be um and then there's the other side is well will there be is that a good idea to be filling two seats after there's been an election or should we fill one of the seats in october so um hopefully i i summarize that fairly people think i can summarize that fairly yes is there a motion or is it just we're picking up what was the motion so so the motion was the motion in the second was to wait until november to fill the vacancy that will come open on october 1st and that motion at this point has failed to gather the necessary three votes because there's two votes four and two votes against would you like me to vote on that motion or do you want me to make a different motion uh you know either one if it's i mean you can either say vote on that motion or if you don't like that motion and want to do a substitute motion either one would be in order well i guess we should finish voting on this but right but if you voted no on this you could make a substitute motion or a new motion it wouldn't even be a substitute motion or if you voted yes then it would pass okay so i would vote no on that motion and make a motion to feel to see at the october meeting i'll second that motion all right so we have a motion by mr hunt to fill it at october we have a second by mrs pope um just in the interest of fairness any discussion on this from any of them hey sorry all right i'm not hearing carol do we have any public input on this item all right so the motion is to go with option one to fill the vacancy in october so um we have a motion a second discussion is over mrs anderson mrs anderson votes no mrs pope hi mrs pope votes yes uh mr bruno i will vote now mr bruno votes no mr hunt mr hunt votes i and the chair boat size so three two it is option one at the october meeting all right that brings us to future meeting dates um regular meeting will be wednesday october 21st at 6 p.m here at riles but in the multi-purpose room not in this room are there any suggested agenda items other than the one we just put on do you have any mr bruno no i do not you have any parting ones mr hunt all right okay so um that brings us to um the last item which is a tournament do we have a motion to adjourn we have a motion to adjourn by mrs anderson do we have a second we have a second by mrs pope only because we can't see everybody i'll do roll call mrs anderson on the journey mrs anderson votes i'm mrs pope aye ms pope bow time mr bruno mr bruno votes i'm mr hunt all right mr hunt vote side chair vote say we are adjourned at 6 29.
it's up there no it was all right so this past year we have a total of qualified teachers 1 300 teachers that qualify for state classification and so with that if we can go to the next slide one more please there we go uh well i skipped one so the cut score for the teachers to understand exactly how their score is derived from the equation you can see here for a highly effective score you have to score between 77 and 100 for effective 63 to 76 and for developing 0 to 62.
so we need to utilize a variety of curricular resources to ensure we are maximizing the learning for our kids we work real hard in our program to develop who we call scholars we want our students to recognize that they are scholars but we also want them to recognize these behaviors in other people so we want them to realize that when they come to the classroom they might know a lot but we try to teach them academic humility so we have an icon that is a glass that's half full to help them realize there's still more to learn or maybe that perfectionistic gifted child is really afraid to take a risk we work to help the child learn how to take an academic risk so these are some of our scholarly behaviors um utilizing those prompts of depth and complexity that i brought to your attention a minute ago um these do help us with critical thinking and creative thinking uh they allow us to differentiate our content really easily in the classroom so it's not always evident to the parent volunteer who might be in the room it might not be evident to you when you walk in a room but a teacher is able to very purposefully assign different prompts to children to push their thinking in ways that are just right for them so this picture here is a first grade math class and they're learning about money and i know when i learned about money i learned about a nickel and a quarter and i got to make different combinations of money this teacher is saying yep mathematicians learn about money but so do his story and how would a historian look at money so again we're adding that critical thinking while teaching math something else that is a lot of fun for our students is this concept of thinking like a disciplinarian and that's not like i'm going to get you in trouble as a disciplinarian but instead a disciplinarian as an expert in a field of study so i love the picture of this little boy on the right hand side christopher he's a one of he was a kinder prepper he's now a kindergartner and he was pretending to be an archaeologist and he's on a dig and he's in his classroom with his field journal so that he can begin conducting his research as a kinder prepper he's learning the tools and the methods and the work of an expert you can also see on these other pictures the different ways that teachers integrate the idea of thinking like a physicist in one of our elementary school classrooms so linking our science integrating the academic vocabulary the tools that would be used by an expert the methods so we layer this into our grade level curriculum and it allows us to bring multiple standards together something else that is important in our gifted and talented program is this idea of independent study the process of non-fiction research that can be either standards driven or interest based by based on a student's interest of course all somehow connected to reading writing and technology standards but here you see that there are children who have completed the independent study process which includes creating a driving question or a set of driving questions gathering a variety of resources learning how to synthesize their information and then present what they've learned to answer their questions something that i love about independent study when i get to go to schools and they have showcases is the pride that the kids have so they sometimes dress up you see this little girl who studied galaxies in her nasa t-shirt or you see queen elizabeth on the bottom right and that was a hoot to see her and her high heels stumbling around the classroom and so she was so proud though to be queen elizabeth and teach all about queen elizabeth we utilize technology and high interest like bruno mars through a computer presentation and on the top you can certainly see that guy was excited about tesla what i do want to highlight the bottom left and the bottom right pictures were the same grade level and the concept was space but because it's so broad with independent study it didn't just have to be planets this student studied innovation within space and connected it with elon musk so all of this happens because of our incredible team of gifted coaches i cannot begin to tell you how proud i am of this team this bitmoji illustration is us on our bitmoji craze as every teacher in america i think has hopped on every year we have a theme last year we were team all-star because we were going to hit it out of the park and somehow this year we became team awesome which the team is and two of them are in the room tonight so i want you to know i'm forever grateful for their expertise their passion their patience their flexibility they serve our children they serve our teachers they do whatever their principal asks of them they bring vision that i have to life and you know i'm very grateful for them so that being said they work tirelessly every day to bring goals that we have for teachers to life uh they provide classroom support for this differentiated instruction differentiated instruction is not easy it requires a lot of time and a lot of thought and our coaches are right by their side to help a teacher feel successful with differentiated curriculum and instruction they work to develop curricular resources that a teacher might need to use in her classroom or his classroom they also engage in ongoing professional development for our teachers it's really important for our teachers there's a lot of collaboration now that our program has expanded so much we're able to bring our groups together so they realize they aren't the only one on a campus anymore so we work to support our teachers and then we also want to provide mentorship for our teachers we want them to become mentors within their different teams but we also want our coaches to be mentors to them so i want to show you just really briefly some faces of the gifted team to think that we've gone from you know seven of them to two of them back to seven of them to nine gifted coaches to now grade three through six a lot of teachers they aren't all pictured i asked for selfies and some snapshots but we have teachers at bridges we have teachers at centennial more at centennial gateway point chaparral more at chaparral coronado portina power ranch higley traditional academy all of these people are the boots on the ground for our third fourth fifth and sixth grade classrooms um santan and a bridges teacher so all of these teachers get support from our gifted coaches one thing we realized was missing in our program was consistent curriculum mapping so with the expertise of our gifted coaches and with our teachers and our literacy coaches last spring we brought people together via microsoft teams and we pow-wowed we analyzed standards and the teams created curriculum maps something that i'm proud of is that the teams were so thoughtful in looking at third grade standards for example fourth grade standards that complement the third grade standards but because of school closure they also thought about the previous year standards so because we were closed what might we have missed and how do we need to align that so using some gifted grant money gifted coaches grade level gate teachers and our literacy coaches all came together and they brought different points of view the classroom teachers brought the point of view of the teacher doing the teaching the lit coach is our literacy expert and our gifted coach understands what can we do for gifted kids so working together they've created unit maps for our hoot mifflin heart court based on standards as well as pulling in additional resources every single map also integrates tenants of our gifted programs such as those prompts of depth and complexity thinking like a disciplinarian etc so that a teacher can choose do they want to use the hmh story do they want to use a paired newsela resource a novel it's all right there with the click of a button or a download we've done the same for math we've had math maps in place now for um three years now will be our fourth but we have revised them and the gifted coaches reached out to our teachers to find out what do you think you taught the kids well what do you think we didn't quite get to and we need to revisit so in these maps every unit there's a reminder they should have learned this but we might need to re revisit whatever the concept might i want you to know that when we opened up school virtually our model did not stop so i have a couple screenshots here just to show you when we were online mrs mcbride a teacher over at gateway point she's our third grade accelerated math teacher let's say i'm not in mrs mcbride's homeroom i'm in jutil's homeroom but i need to go to mcbride for my advanced math class my teacher would have a button on the canvas page that would pop me right into mcbride's room when it came time for that walk to math it became a virtual walk to math so our our teachers were so receptive to changing things up and making it happen even in the virtual setting so um again to support all part of me to support all of this we need a lot of professional development we have a gifted endorsement program we have early release wednesdays daily site-based coaching we take advantage of every free webinar or podcast that we can get our hands on and we participate in conferences either in person or virtually so gifted endorsement in the state of arizona you can earn it a few different ways but the way that we support our teachers in earning it for zero financial cost it's just a lot of man hour time cost is 135 hours of verified in-service training and three years of teaching where you have gifted kids in your classroom in our district we do this as a two-year cohort commitment so our teachers meet with me every other month from 3 30 to 5 30 or 3 30 to 6 30 depending on the class and then they implement what they learn in theory into practice into their classroom over the past three years we've had 85 participants the teachers who have completed their coursework have earned a provisional and then they earn their full by doing their extra hours through a myriad of ways and so this illustration in the background is jessica d'ambrosio she's a teacher over at hickley traditional academy who came through gifted endorsement and it kind of set her on fire again with teaching and i chose this picture because jessica's actually teaching our principles about differentiation and we visited her classroom to highlight what jessica was doing to differentiate in her mixed ability classroom early release wednesdays this was actually the brainchild of dr t we were trying to offer training after school and we weren't getting the participation that we really wanted so he said why are you offering it after school let's integrate it into our early release wednesday so two years ago we started offering the third wednesday of the month where our gifted coaches meet with the grade level teachers and we based on what their needs are offer professional development it's designed to support all of our goals we have but it also provides an opportunity for that collaboration i mentioned so they aren't that only person teaching third grade gifted kids math or reading a certain novel in an english language arts class as i also mentioned before site-based coaching happens daily so carla and cindy who are here today or any of the other coaches who are streaming online they are in classrooms every day they are either co-teaching or modeling something for a teacher they might be running a small group that they've planned out with the teacher or maybe they are hunkered down working on creating resources for a teacher to use on their own in the classroom they offer enrichment for kids especially now that we've gone online they're adding buttons onto the online teachers classrooms for enrichment so if a child is gifted but has stayed home for whatever reason may be they can have online resources for enrichment just as they would if they were on ground we have a dare to differentiate newsletter that we push out for our teachers and again that daily coaching provides mentorship i added a screenshot of a classroom um tanya waddell over at cortina this the white circle you see has a star and those little bit emojis are marissa modio and daniel waddell and that is a button that the gate kids can click on for small group instruction 9 30 to 10 that is a co-teach online between mrs samodio and mrs waddell for gate math so again i just want to highlight that children can be online and we're still doing our best to differentiate and provide that appropriate instruction for them conferences i am so so honored to have a team that wants to learn wants to attend conferences is willing to give up weekends to learn out of state in-state so two years ago i was asked to present at a state conference about our early childhood program because it's kind of rare to have a k2 program and i said i'm happy to present but i need my teacher to be with me can i do a film presentation so they said absolutely so the bottom left picture shows me with heather brown when we presented about the think academy well what was super neat was the next year heather brown said i want to present on my own so she wrote her own proposal and she got accepted and she presented at the california association for the gifted conference to talk about how do we balance differentiation with the social emotional needs of young children so i'm very proud of heather for doing that on the top left shows a team that we were able to take to a conference and then we've done some virtual conferences where we've hunkered down in a conference room here at the district office we've masked up and we've learned together taking advantage of that and an a wonderful consequence of these opportunities is a lot of team building you know the relationships are so important in our classrooms as they are among our team and by trusting each other we're all willing to really kind of put ourselves out there and take those risks to try new things for our classrooms so the last thing i want to tell you a little bit about is our think academy we opened this in 2017 it was um the idea to begin a kinder prep program to capture those really bright kids at the very beginning of their school career and patti gleason susie markosi and i started in with a book study we analyzed quality first expectations patty's early childhood goals and gifted program goals and we read a book about early childhood gifted education and every chapter we used a graphic organizer to see how do these things all align does it align with the regio emilio philosophy you know what are the mixes and that led to a wonderful first year as we knew that first year would roll up to kindergarten we went over to bridges we met with mr bickle and we identified heather brown as our new kindergarten teacher and we sat down in a room with our gifted coach as well and we created that belief statement and figured out what could we put on paper that we could put in a classroom so as a consequence we wanted to really provide that personalized learning for these exceptionally bright kids iq 130 or higher i think we have um kids ranging from a 130 to a 145 in our highly gifted academy with that we knew we needed to do a lot of conceptual exploration that these kids would be really interested in unusual things that might not just be aligned to the grade level standards and we felt that a steam focus would be appropriate for um very much a project-based learning for these kids so as i mentioned we use the an iq test the whipsi to identify kids iq 130 or higher we also utilize the cogat 97th percentile across the board or higher we've added that so that when we now have kids coming in to us for second grade they don't have to have an iq test we can use something for art from our district and then this this school year when we were closed we created an alternative assessment to try to identify kids based on their creativity their unusual ways of thinking and learning and communicating as we created our highly gifted academy that first year we realized a lot of really bright kids together in a classroom means there's going to be some social challenges and so we responded to that very quickly we were fortunate enough to use some gifted grant money and we purchased a social emotional curriculum we thinkers over time we've added to our social emotional curriculum as we are doing on all of our schools and we use gifted grant money to buy all sorts of children's literature so that we can help teach the behaviors we'd like to see help a child develop the behaviors but not by pointing out in them but instead relating it maybe to characters we have puppets we have all sorts of fun tools that are age-appropriate for kids we also have created individualized learning plans so this continued from preschool where they have portfolios but these are a little bit more specific we write them for an english language arts goal a math goal and a social emotional goal we align them with the renzuli scales and we conference with families in the think academy four times per year and we are constantly in communication as well but the four targeted ilp conferences have been really helpful in a partnership between the parent and the teacher so our think team starting on the right is a picture of anna stoll i was sad when the computer cut out the picture but she's there with a puppet cosmo who visits her kinder prep classroom often in the middle we have alyssa turner and heather brown who are our kinder and first grade teachers and then we have emily buzzard who cheri and i had an opportunity to meet last fall and she was going to be moving here and she mentioned that she had experience with gifted kids so we kept her name and we contacted her again in the spring when we knew we were expanding think we interviewed her and she's amazing so she's relocated from indiana and we are so grateful to have her on our team as well so that's our kinder prep kinder first and second grade think team incredible incredible teachers uh all of this also happens because of parent support we realize that raising a gifted child can be difficult and that parents need a network as well so we do a few things here in our district parent nights are held here in our board room every time we do an identification process we welcome our families and we teach them about what's available now that their children are identified as gifted or talented we bring guest speakers in we brought in psychologists to come talk about different things related to gifted kids i host something called coffee with kim i know board member wilson has attended one before they're just informal sit around a table in a conference room typically with dunkin donuts coffee and some donuts this year we'll do them virtually but it's just a time to talk about what are you hearing about our gifted program what questions do you have you know truth rumor and a lot of celebration on our website we have a library of resources books podcasts links to websites that can be helpful to families and then the arizona association for gifted and talented the parent institute that's where this picture comes from we joke that we always have a small budget maybe mr gad can help me with that um but we make our own things and so there we were just highlighting our program and letting our community know what we offer for gifted and talented kids here in our district lastly i want you to know collaboration is the key to what i really believe is the success of our gifted program we've grown very quickly but we've done it well i think that our students are thriving our families are happy but you can see here some virtual images of our teachers working together they never stop working when we went online we realized real quickly that things that we normally do needed to change and so a typical learning center or a typical extension menu couldn't just happen on a piece of paper and make a poster things had to go digital and so carla who's in the room she became our canvas guru and she uploads everything for us but we have created a canvas resource page that is available to all of our gate teachers that stores all of the resources that they would just need to click a button and download and these resources oh thank you curtis this is an example of that canvas page these resources are real time this is a a working page for us so just the other day we had a sixth grade science teacher say i need things for my gifted kids so a gifted coach started creating things for sixth grade science uh we have a first grade kiddo who needs some enrichment and online we're gathering some resources and preparing them so these are all downloadable so this is a storehouse for our teachers they can contact our gifted coaches if you scroll a little more curtis a teacher can download resources by clicking on any of those gate resource pages pdfs of a variety of things a list of social emotional picture books that we have in our district are available so they can check them out they also can download content specific resources if they didn't for some reason get a curriculum map they can download that if they want to download a marcy cook tile they can download a marcy cook tile for math whatever it might be it's available here for them and our teachers are just constantly adding to it to try to make the process of curriculum differentiation less daunting for our teachers thank you curtis and now our last um slide for you whoopsie is going to be what we hope to do in the future our next steps will be expansion into middle school right now we have the elast program that's over at soseman and that has been a wonderful pipeline from this kids from bridges who have been in h pal to go into that accelerated program but now we have nine schools with sixth grade kids who have been in a cohort since third grade with curriculum compacting who are going to be ready for rigorous middle school sections so we're really excited to begin working with mr dolan and mr varner of course mr l um to begin thinking about what are our courses going to be and how do we continue the momentum that we have created in our elementary schools so with that what questions do you have i don't know if it's questions per se so our our think for sure is kindergarten or kindergarten pre-k kinder prep kinder first second and second so and then they just go right into they're tested in second grade all across the board that's a great question so think academy is a little bit different they won't need to retest because we already know they have iq 130.
yeah that's all right so i just want to make the board aware i was concerned it was be much greater but that's where we are right now and we can't just admit our students we still have to stay with our split which um you know in in 70 30 we're usually you know 60 40 but so we just we can only admit x amount of students that are non-contributing students and everything is done as of october 1. so this is just rough numbers unofficial until october 1. but i did want to make you aware of that so thank you um district enrollment with district learning attendance and connectivity we have that is yep hi everyone i'm i'm here dr sal um so i'll share the district and district enrollment um right now overall we have 11 907 students um enrolled and and um as compared to october 1st of last year we were at 11 927 so that's a difference of 20 minus 20 kids um the big biggest uh factor that i see is the kindergarten enrollment um typically we shoot for about 9 20 is the number that we look for um as enrollment uh ramps up in october right now we're at 829.
and so that could be a configuration of say students who are typically with the same teacher all day in a special education setting if that number is appropriate and we can make that work we can schedule those to begin and so those families have actually been contacted and we know who's planning to come and who isn't and so we're looking at a potential start date all works well of that program uh when we return from october of october 19th how will they get to school that's that's part of the transportation process it's possible though mr bender because that group already gets transportation and if we are only starting that group there is some capacity to do this okay there is some capacity what plans do you have for lunch for this good question um that was a whole host of the commentary had to do with that and so um maybe i'll pause here and let mr schulenberg just tell you what we're we're just we're gathering ideas and information now so yeah yeah as as pat said we're gathering some ideas and information and we're trying to get clarification from our consultant up at cde as to how we're we're currently serving meals and if that fulfills the requirement if we reopen and bring students on campus what is the minimum amount of time when they're on campus are we required to serve a meal so we're seeking clarification in that that aspect because in our current serving model where we are serving every wednesday under the seamless summer program to any child ages 2 to 18 a week's worth of meals that is five full breakfasts and five full lunches so we are fulfilling the requirement to feed our students every wednesday if if the students returned to campus for possibly a short time and i know we talked about for a minimum 240 minutes or less that's where we're seeking clarification is if we have to provide a meal for them at school so i don't have an exact answer but we are seeking information thank you mr smith can i have you yes no i it always my understanding that when we provide the meal to a student we provide up to five days of breakfast by day for lunch because a lot of these kids really need this supply right support that's what we're providing every wednesday okay five breakfasts and five lunch to every child that presents whether they're a student or not okay but what you're saying is that if they're there physically at school maybe there'll be one day that we yeah yes physically that meal at the school if they're physically at school we may not have to provide meals while they're physically at school if they're not there for a full school day because we are providing all the meals on wednesday that's the clarification we're seeking from our consultant up at cde we we certainly want to follow the rules and regulations um we want to provide food to our students but we we have to have a system in place where we're not providing multiple lunches multiple lunches to a student so we can't provide them more than one breakfast and one lunch a day so we have to have a system in place where we're ensuring we're not providing excess meals i had the time in these meetings as well and one of the things that i indicated yesterday was this is a phased-in approach when mr schillenberg stated that this is an enhancement to distance learning we are going to have to take some step to get kids back into seats for some capacity during a day in order to to validate our cleaning protocols the minute we add food to this we are then talking about other areas that we have to sanitize and deal with where there could be students that would converge from other classrooms so limiting and making it short periods of time to start getting kids back engaged with their teachers and meeting them face to face not through a computer and supporting our families to have some in-seat time is really what we're desiring to start with it will mimic what some of our neighboring districts have through a waiver process and we are utilizing the guidelines in the waiver process to um put the plan together period because that is the most stringent right a waiver is we are still in the red we must therefore have the most stringent requirements and again it includes testing of employees if we have to um quarantine anybody because of a positive test we have to have those systems in place so small numbers um transitioned in and when somebody asked me how many phases we might have i said i have no crystal ball to know that because each time we add something such as lunch or an extended period of a day that is a phase and so each of those will create its own hurdles and obstacles as we move forward so getting something happening so that then we can move forward with other options i have a question though and this is to you pat if a teacher is having the let's say the group this cohort is having their group of 16 students is that teacher still doing the online instruction for the group of students that are not coming and so that means they are preparing two kinds of lessons going on at the same time because they are going to meet the needs of the students who are at home and the needs of the students who are on campus is that is that what you're looking at we are hoping not to have that be the case but that might mean some restructuring of classes so those classes are typically um no around 12 students so if all the students were to return we could accomplish this of course in not every case do all the families feel yet comfortable to send their children so we may have to take the teachers on that campus and have the students who are returning assigned to one group and it may be that there's a group of students who do not plan to return we're going to carefully look at that data next i propose because what we don't want to have that have happening in that particular case is that sort of teacher having to do both roles however i will say that in not in the non-cohort model in the waiver model the template the schedule template that the teachers and and the staff in the meeting yesterday talked about was a hybrid and in a hybrid students would be at school for a couple of days a week monday tuesday group a wednesday kind of a cleaning day and students check in online thursday friday group b and group a and b are simply half of your class at a time which then means yes in some way shape or form the group who's at home does still require per senate bill 98 a live daily live check-in with the teacher and so that's part of why we're talking about this day being shorter because the day there's no there's no um minimum number of on-campus minutes if you follow that that day does not have to be any particular length other than what the logistics of our system require and what information we get back and if that day is somewhat shortened it allows us to get them in front of us so we can connect to them at least partial part of a couple of days but also leave time for the teacher to be able to check in with that other half and the teachers were aware of this and they understood that and they actually came up with some proposals for the number of minutes was excellent and we'll be bringing some of those back to you as we continue to roll out through the process of the actual schedules now there are maybe some who don't return at all and those would have to be in assigned in a different place the logistics of that are going to be complicated but they're worth undertaking the the challenge that you probably run into with all of this is that you will hear um parents that have complained that the teacher is now returning their call but the teacher has a responsibility to this group of students in the morning and then also has a responsibility to the students who are at home and and do you allow your teachers to uh have office hours that says from this window to this window i'm available if you call me outside of that i will contact you tomorrow during my next window some do you have that some do that they all solve that in a myriad of different ways but yes some do have a office hours but remember they do have to have a daily live check-in correct but outside of that like you said for getting those questions answered some do have an office hours kind of set up okay um so that they can say either by email or by phone um they're available to answer questions because that's really nice on a grade level we we hear a lot of that with teachers and saying we're working longer yeah and we're working harder because we are now on money you know working with technology and working with real life situations and not having to deal with the questions that come at us in between so we need to be able to pull it so that the teachers um will still be able to work there seven hours and 11 minutes right as opposed to nine hour day or ten 10-hour day because we're hearing a lot of that yeah and i think that's a good argument for why this might not be a full school day in any shape or form it might be a limited time and i think if our parents understand that that's our first phase that this is our first phase and if we do this well and keep everyone healthy and safe but that will allow us to then talk about the next phase okay so it was very productive i have a follow-up question basically maria just asked let me share i was talking to my oldest daughter and uh my grandkids are from the toronto school district she was able to even even access the what they put up store on the their computer the sort of zooming process that they the kids got connected to the lesson plan is such technology available to us they connected to the what to what they they're able to access the lesson that they recorded for from a particular teacher oh yeah some teachers are recording either parts or or whole independent sentences so anywhere tolerance school district allow my daughter to access for a computer code yeah yeah yeah yeah that's that's the reason why i asked that yeah from from within the same district yes yeah we we have students i mean zoom kind of gives us some information or the google classroom product so that students can log in in any way if they have the appropriate code and they're able to get this information from all over the world right and then my of course my daughter jennifer being a lawyer and then she has full computer knowledge she were able to work with the kids and then once they finish the lesson they call her in the yeah we submitted this lesson submitted yeah okay i just want to ask that it's astounding what they're doing the innovation and the ways they're solving this is this distance learning puzzle i'm not going to claim that it's ideal for kids but what teachers have done is unbelievable you you have to have some parents to have the capability yes to work with the kids that's right true i think one other point to this is there was a big question amongst the group both meeting one and meaning two about our technology the chromebooks coming back and forth with students and at this point the conversation was if we have them in a reduced scheduled day our intent is not for them to bring their technology where they've been behind a screen all this time but rather be present in a classroom not assigned more work on a computer the afternoon could be access to the computer but for the brain development and all of the things that are so important right now social emotional getting in a seat and having direct contact with other people is what needs to happen trinity how close is san bernardino you know san reno county to get into the purple from purple to red yeah yesterday um we had some positive the day before we had some positive news but then we moved back into purple yesterday so we're um we're waiting some more information about that so plugging along we do have a newsletter that we plan to put out tomorrow afternoon um that's why it was important to update you with pat today because we need the information out to families about the fact that we are going to continue the process for the waiver with the target date of getting that waiver to the county next week they are turning them around fairly quickly but our our district would then go on the list either next friday or tuesday as to have been put a waiver in and we will put a date that we would like to begin but no sooner than that date so that if the delay from the county on our waiver happens we we're not trying to anticipate a start date that we might not be able to pull off it would be tk through sixth grade um and we would in fact at the next board meeting you will hear some information regarding preschool having to do with a public hearing because our state preschool program has to be in conjunction with our elementary program so that and it needs to happen in october as far as the the public hearing so that will happen as well so most likely a phased-in approach with preschool um that doesn't open the entire preschool system but a couple classrooms to get kids in um process the access that all the things that we're we're trying to get done so we're going to the county we that's our goal is that by the end of next week we have filed our waiver okay and and it will be in a newsletter that the teachers and the administrators and classified staff that were on the planning group and continue to work with us they'll be in a meeting with us on tuesday next week um they have the tentative dates with the timeline of what we're trying to target and hit um and they asked can we share that with people we said well you you can share it but we have no definitive set in stone until we get that approval from the waiver because right now we are still considered red so it takes the 14 days of good data to be from purple to red we're still purple to go from purple to red now while we are planning the coming back or return to school what conversations are you holding with your certificated and classified employees who may have compromised health conditions that may not come back are you having those conversations to know what you're going to do with them when it's time to return yeah yes um we that obviously is a concern that comes up that that will be a task at the negotiation table with both units currently we do have um an mou in place with teachers that talks about a protocol on how we will prioritize the teachers assigned to the remote learning uh positions that will remain so right now that's our that's our fallback and it seems to be a fair um you know we agreed to it at the negotiation table and it really did uh do a good job at putting people with the health needs uh first and recognizing that uh as a priority thank you thank you okay um comments kylie do we have any public comments we do um this comment came in from melissa wetzel to all parties we expect your full honest timely transparent public participation in course correcting on the covid19 response immediately we will continue to stay in touch to ensure this occurs there is five attachments i have printed on those attachments and i have a set for each of the board members before you leave that i will provide you today thank you okay under superintendent comments um i just would like to bring back to your attention that at the last board meeting we did have a request to have public comments done um through a phone call in approach we have done that research and if with some direction from you i would like to pilot that for the next board meeting on october 1st with this information stated on the board agenda beginning on october 1st 2020 the district will pilot an additional method to receive public comment be beyond the current method of receiving written comments which are then read aloud members of the public may in in alternative email their intent to speak up to one hour prior to the opening of the board meeting to awsd underscore board awsd.org along with their telephone number at the appointed time for the public comment the clerk will telephone the requester who may then comment telephonically with the parameters of the board bylaws 9323 and government code section 54954.2 so if i have direction to do that we will add that as the um other option and it would require them to email a minimum of an hour ahead of time um so that we can organize the the call-in ones let me ask you today what what would be the difficulty it seems that that may be a little bit more complicated than actually just having somebody if they wanted to speak to come in and speak you know wait outside and because usually we do public comments well before the meeting and then at certain times is that out of the question i mean is there uh some type i know that san bernardino county does that i know civil city councils are allowing people to come in and speak in person you know like one at a time not not milling and around in the building but yeah um it just means more staff to be assisting in that process whereas if we have a phone here we can do that that could be the next phase in but um trying to manage if you had a lot of public comments they'd all be potentially standing outside um asking them to to separate you have no um no knowledge of where they've been and what contact they have had so it was more about your safety and um you know where could we do it in a separate room potentially but then it's an attachment to how do i video that's complicated i mean we all go to the grocery store we all go places where there's plenty of that i mean as far as me personally i don't feel that it's endangering myself absolutely to have somebody come and speak but uh just an idea just throwing it out there okay um i agree with rick i think because we're in this in close situation it's important to get uh other people's viewpoints and our viewpoints out so the more communication we have the better is the way i look at it it's a goal we ought to have exactly right exactly we'll start this phase let's do the phase one and then see how it goes okay yeah i'm good i just you know this is an important um this this school issue is probably the number one issue with many people in the community his kids not going to school and you know it falls down it falls back on the school boards too and um obviously we're we can't move forward until the gov the state allows us to but people have to have a voice and uh you know i don't blame people for wanting to come and and give their opinion with it because it is such a contentious topic and everybody is just chomping at the bit to to get this so might i suggest that in a phased-in approach the first is the phone call in and then when we move to students on campus we move our setting to the board room we still cannot have large gatherings in the room that doesn't still allow for that school opening would be one but we may be able to reset in the large room where there could be distancing with a maximum number of people that could be in and we can we can do some research on that as well but that could be the next phase and those would go to a um evening meeting the minute we have kids we would then adjust our meetings back to 5 30 at night oh i'm good with that miss nelson can and what you just said exactly we move in the room but what we want to do is if people want to come into the board have them call our support sector ahead of time we can only allow maybe we said we only restricted so many per meeting initially yeah we'll do some research on how people are doing it the best but some best practices along with our i'll put i'll put colette actually on that as the risk manager um she's probably hearing it right now for the first time that i'm going to do that but um between she and kylie and some of our neighboring districts we can check in on that as well as how living good's office is doing it and see um how the board of supervisors are getting people in to make those public comments yeah if you can bring that back to the next board meeting or not if you need more time to the following meeting after that would be great sure i'll update you and we will go ahead and put this as the first phase and so this will be on the agenda and we'll have phone in for at least this next one okay okay next week a lot of people don't realize the constraints that are on the board they think we're the reason we're not opening the schools that it comes from a higher god well i will tell you that your public comment um from um melissa wetzel is actually in support of our district moving forward the their the paperwork that the paper that has been passed out is more about putting pressure on higher levels of government that actually are mitigating your ability to do your work so um i just i want you to know that um we spent some time out in front with with the group last time and they they just want to know the next step so i have some phone calls to make this evening because i committed to doing that regarding waiver process and where we were and so um they're really out there fighting for their kids and we appreciate that um i have no further comments mr so any comments no comment mr bender i'd like to point out that long time teacher principal at granite hill high school member of the school board dick sauers was diagnosed with cope at 19.
now ineffective doesn't have a score attached to it because the ratings of the actual evaluation that a teacher receives from their administrative administrators drives that label meaning if you're a teacher in this school district if you receive one or more unsatisfactories in your evaluation ratings then you're deemed ineffective by policy any continuing teachers that receive four or more basics and or one or more you they would be deemed ineffective on that those standards and policy alone all right next slide please there you go so uh we're presenting some data this year to allow you to do some comparison from last year to this year as you can see uh you see red and blue red indicates school year 1819 and the blue indicates 19 the school year 1920 the highly effective will start at the top about a seven percent increase from from 750 last year to 8 51 this year all right and then our effective uh numbers for our teachers uh last year was 504 dropped down to 408 and then are developing from 31 rising up to 35 and then our ineffective we had five uh teachers that received the ineffective status and this year six so based on the requirements of the state this aggregate data i'm presenting to you tonight is meeting the requirements of the state at this time i believe that ends the presentation in closing i will say this it's a time to celebrate our teachers and our site administrators did a fantastic job with the unprecedented times that we dealt with dealing with this specific expectation so i just want to take a moment and recognize our great teachers we have in this district as well as our site administrators questions from the board i'll start off mr mattingly thank you for the presentation looking at the count from 1819 to 1920 we increased by 101 teachers which is is fantastic and they they came from effective to highly effective uh what do you account for that seven percent uh change i think there's a lot of variables that could account for that one i think i think of is experience as our younger teachers that we hire come in every year they get better as well as our principals and assistant principals as well as the resources they maximize that potential to make themselves better so i think that's one of the reasons uh also the commitment that we have from our academic side with our professional development and different things that they provide on a annual or monthly basis for our teachers i think there's a lot of different ways that that can answer the question here i don't think it's one specific thing but i think it's a credit to the hard work of our teachers as well as our principals and assistant principals because i know we didn't do evaluation since for spring because of you know covet but evaluations were done prior as in december or before february so this is really true information that our teachers have gone from effective to highly effective and it's a it's a great shot in the arm for us um uh there was another question i had um madam chairman mr st bill that just as a follow-up to that question something else that i would add to that is over the last couple of years we've added additional supports for our teachers these instructional supports have included teaching and learning specialists um that were not in place uh prior to a couple years ago and we would hope that if we are providing additional resources that not only would we see an increase in teacher effectiveness in their evaluations but also clearly in student performance last year we were saddened that with all the extraordinary work that teachers did to help students prepare for state assessments there were no state assessments and we're looking forward to hopefully this year being able to show the board evidence that these teaching and learning specialists had a positive impact both in teacher quality of instruction but also in their student performance on their achievement and just what you said that that's a clear indication that the teacher learning specialists are effective they they are helping in the classrooms they're helping the teachers and um hopefully that that count will be even higher for next year we would hope so i will hope so so i can't remember the other question i have for you mr mattingly so that's it for me anyone else okay thank you all right next we'll go to information item h3 information on the middle school dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board and members of cabinet we are super excited to be able to present a quick update on the status of our readiness to open middle schools in august mr dean will provide this presentation madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening it is my pleasure to provide the board a brief update on the work of our middle school committee and our progress towards transitioning some of our schools to middle schools next school year next slide please a middle school committee was put together consisting of teachers and administrators in the school district with the sole intent of looking at the designing the framework for the middle school program and so this committee's task is really to come up with a thirty thousand foot view of what our middle school program will look like in that process meetings have been held from may through september some of the meetings were pushed back due to covet 19 quarantine times especially in the early summer but the committee is very close to finishing its work part of what the committee has done is we've looked at structures in other school districts that have middle schools at this point in time we've looked at structures from litchfield we've looked at structures from saharita and we looked at structures from paradise valley the original intent of this committee was to go and tour middle schools in the valley that obviously has not manifested and we do not anticipate that that will be the case next slide please so the committee's work which will conclude next week the general framework that the committee has established for the middle school model will include a six or seven period school day that is still being discussed within that school period or within that school day there will be two elective periods what the committee envisions is that one of the elective one of the electives will be a year-long elective and then um the other one will be semester-long electives so students that participate in the middle school elective piece will have the opportunity to have three electives each year additionally within the school day we will be using an advisory period and an advisory structure which provides an opportunity for students to check in with their teacher on a myriad of topics advisory periods are typically 10 to 15 minutes more a long line of 15 minutes long that will be included in there we are looking to build tier 2 intervention time into the school day schedule um what that means is that the structure that we're currently looking at is that lunch will um consist of two components one will be the the regular school lunch that everyone has and then will be another time frame that is added on to lunch in which those students who need additional assistance in classes will attend those classes to get extra help during the school day each day and so those students who do not need additional assistance will have it extra lunch time every day the house approach will be used for core subjects meaning that the core subject teachers will have the same group of students they will rotate mostly together through the core subject classes and then they will pop corn out into the elective classes high school credit opportunities will be provided for sure in eighth grade and possibly earlier and that depends right now on information that we uh found today dr sci found information related to the ncaa clearinghouse and information related to credits provided to to students prior to entering high school and whether they count towards ncaa clearinghouse for those athletes who will move forward and play at the college level so we're continuing to map that out eighth grade students there's no problem with them earning high school credit we do that currently in some of our schools now and we're looking at expanding that in our middle schools next slide please along with the middle school committee and i stated that they will complete their recommendations next week in our final meeting on september 30th yesterday we began our logistical committee we pulled together a logistical committee composed mostly of district directors who will begin the very tedious work and will work very quickly on things such as special ed details details with laying out what electives look like the exact school day piece the demographic components as it relates to transportation start times those types of things and so all of those components have begun they started yesterday with our logistical committee i would like to add that we are looking at and i apologize for not adding this on the last slide but part of the semester-long electives that we're looking at are cte-generated and cte-based we believe that providing intro very intro level courses for our students in the 7th and 8th grade in cte will provide them opportunities to explore additional cte components in high school and we'll continue to build our cte programs providing students additional pathways beyond our high school experience so we're very excited about that next slide please with that i'd be happy to take any questions madam chair members of the board as you're thinking of questions if i could just interject a comment here that one of the greatest motivations of opening middle schools in dysert is to best prepare students for the next stage in their academic progress being high school there will still be some k-8s in the district but this offers a choice and some opportunity for mr dean mentioned cte but it also extends into the arts into the athletics and definitely the academics that students would have more advanced opportunities at the middle school that would help them be prepared to enter high school at a higher level having had that greater experience so right now we don't we don't know exactly you probably that's probably part of the logistics committee as far as where the locations for some of these schools right i'm assuming but madam president member pritchard we are certainly looking at a few different models um and we are running those through mr hick's department to take a look at what logistically would fall best within our neighborhoods and within our plans as well i really like the idea i mean way way back in the day not super late in the day but we had in seventh and eighth grade it was like home eq or wood shop so it's kind of like going back to that as far as that ct i mean i know ct is way more um expansive now but it's kind of reminds me of that of how you kind of get your foot in the door and give students a flavor of some possibilities that await them especially in our high schools with all the wonderful cte programs that we have so i i like that piece of it and i also like um dr kelsey you just mentioned that we're still going to maintain some of our k-8s so then that way for for those that feel like the middle school experience isn't their thing they still have that option and it just reminds me of how just it seems like in general we offer that choice whether it be the coveted piece you know how we've been working out choice and comfort with our families even with this parents have the choice of traditional k-8 middle school and then we also even offer our our form of a traditional type model at freedom so i think we're going down the right path as far as maintaining that those options for families and i'm really excited about that thank you ms pritchard for those comments and i would just add one more component that some have have inquired about the cost of this and it is now a good time to be imposing extra cost on the district when we'll be going out for an override right now we are not anticipating any new costs we have the same number of students the same number of teachers and the staffing isn't going to magically require a significant more amount of of teachers is just shuffling them to different locations based on whether it's a middle school or an elementary to uh to match the great configurations of that school growing a middle school long term obviously we want to have an extraordinary experience for our students at each of those grade configuration schools and so we would be looking to identify opportunities for maximizing the experience but at this point we're not looking at um at cost increases by switching to middle schools it wouldn't sound like it it would sound like it is just restructuring really what we already have do we know um and again might be too far ahead of the game but how we're going to determine like enrollment and that process because obviously i'm assuming we're not going to be able to necessarily allow every student who may want middle school we might not have the room initially right president member pritchard um the answer to your question is we will utilize our open enrollment process um for those students who wish to attend the middle schools who do not reside in boundaries that we would um request the board to approve later in the process um so what we anticipate doing is pairing schools up um and one school would become a k-4 a primary school and the other school would become a middle school within that pair and then the students would would attend appropriately to the grade range of that particular school we would request the board to approve new boundaries for those pairs of schools and then open each school for open enrollment we may have stu we may have parents um who desire for their children to to attend more of a primary school as well um you know which would be created in the pairing process but we will utilize the open enrollment process to assure um that we have staff to meet the demand of our of our community thank you uh mr dean do we know if um what grades are going to be targeted as a middle school will they be sixth seventh and eighth will it be seventh and eighth i mean i know i know the team the committee has been discussing this but what are we looking towards madam president member sawyer st pilla i i almost let the cat out of the bag a minute ago um and and may have unintentionally done so um but we are still looking at at um we are either looking at a 5 8 model or a 6 8 model um and you know within that in either structure there will be frameworks designed for the appropriateness of the grade level for example if a 5 8 model is is utilized fifth grade will look different than sixth grade within a middle school yet it will remain a middle school concept but we um we have not completely finalized that conversation um and continue to to do so but we're getting very close okay and i'm just like ms pritchard said i'm excited about cte and i know mr grishaver is just foaming at the mouth over there behind that mask but um to add give our students even younger a little bit of flavor of what cte is all about so the fact that they're going to get you know immersed with it that's good we believe that to be a great opportunity for our students to explore early in their school careers opportunities that may pique their interest and become completers in those areas in in the high school piece and homeek and woodshop have been replaced with things like architecture and engineering and you know medical professions and and and and and so we're very excited to be working with mr greece saber and the cte components that will benefit our students um for many grades because it was kind of funny you were talking about homeek and shop and back in eighth grade that was all i had to choose from a little box a little box and yep okay thank you mr dean um our foreign languages being considered as well for the middle school madam president thank you for asking that question and and um that's a component that i should have added to the presentation yes is the answer to your question um it's a very important component to the middle school model for several reasons number one it provides an opportunity for our middle school students to gain a high school credit um in foreign language it provides the opportunity every time they earn a high school credit that frees up a high school credit for another elective for them and that's a very important component additionally each time our students complete a credit of foreign language it assists with their abort points for our high school labels and so it's very important that we provide language opportunities for many many reasons and the most important is that it provides our students the opportunity to acquire an additional language right thank you very much gives them a little bit more flexibility when they get to high school and which is key right so we have we have so many tremendous opportunities for our students in high school that if we can free some of those opportunities up in a middle school component then that benefits them down the road thank you um one more question you mentioned you touched on just briefly about some advisory time they may have is that in similar to like a guidance counselor madam president somewhat similar although advisory is typically and in this case will be handled by the classroom teachers and so there will be a great amount of professional development that will be provided to our middle school teachers on many subjects of which advisory will be won it is a very specific component related to middle schools that has proven very successful and one in which that we want to make sure that we our our students benefit from okay so it's just kind of like a check in making sure that they're on track okay perfect thank you cool beans did you have something else no okay i'm just saying cool beans moving on to information item 4 2019 to 2020 high school student data update dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board members of cabinet each year administration provides the board with data points related to our our board goals or our strategic plan so in furthering the data that you provide that you receive um toward our our district goals um miss dr polling will introduce this item yes thank you madam president member of the board dr kellis it's my pleasure to to call dr assassin dr wifritch up and they'll be presenting on this item good evening madam president board members dr kellis and cabinet thank you for allowing us to present tonight the first slide that we are going to look at is our graduation rate graduation rate is posted on the ade website and fluctuates often it is a four year adjusted cohort graduation rate the number of students who graduate within the four years with a regular high school diploma it fluctuates often often and it does run a little bit behind so for instance many people wonder why we don't have the 1920 up there it's because actually we still post graduates until august 31st and then we usually take the month of september all districts it's not just dysart but all through the valley all through the state to clean and make sure the data is accurate so graduation rate will run a little bit behind and they post it half about half a year later so next slide so tonight i'm sharing with you numbers that are submitted to ade without specific discussion we have submitted ccri to ade for our label component for this past year these scores are due to be audited and they're not final this component is worth 20 percent of the labeling system at this time we do not know how the scores are going to be utilized this year but each district did have to submit their ccri even though there was not state mandated testing last year and then the next spe meeting it is on the agenda to have discussion about how they're going to use this in the system this year when they talk about labeling for last year on a positive note we're looking good with our totals that we have submitted we feel pretty good about the rise of the high schools there and not to panic about high school if you look back into the 2016 measure you'll notice that when we first started ccri it's a very slow intricate process and this is the first time that ischool has been posted with a number so it's not going to be utilized they won't be receiving a label but it's to get everyone started with their aois and get them under the system moving forward so that's why you see the 11.4 there i don't want anybody to panic so next slide this is our dropout rate by fiscal year ade continuously updates this dropout rate and they fluctuate greatly the district average is based on the 7 grade level so a lot of you may look at that and say that math doesn't work but it's because the actual district average is based on 712 and the high schools obviously are their individual totals so when a student drops out or leaves the system certain things count against us so it doesn't make a lot of sense but we actually work very hard to clean our withdrawal codes as a district and each school does that but things like students getting their ged or students going to homeschooling actually count against us so we work very hard to ensure that students that do leave us um we are aware and we can report that they've reported to another school environment and that way they wouldn't count against us so it's always we're always looking for ways to ensure that students stay in a system obviously we believe deizert is the best system but we can't always mandate that so we want to make sure that they are going to a system so we continue to have a good average rate even with our kobe kovitz situations our high schools reduced and then again just so you realize that the overall district average is based on 7 12 instead of 9 12. and with that i'm going to turn it over to dr acai and i get to do all the exciting testing data uh for those of you who know me you know i i love numbers so we're going to go through a couple of different sets of numbers uh tonight and i really appreciate that jane is here to kind of get all our numbers because i think they've been a really full picture for us i was a little bit nervous when they came out because we know that covid really affected our kids our families how we taught in the spring it was much different in august but i think you'll be pleasantly surprised to see some of the results uh the first data set we'll look at is cambridge as you can see uh we track our course enrollments how many kids are sitting in the class how many exams were given the percent tested and those passing the exams and you'll see these referred to throughout the presentation i'm not used to presenting in a mask with glasses this is interesting um you will see that we didn't have as many kids that tested we do think that's because of the covet situation they would have had to come to the testing center for all of these tests um and initially you would look and say wow but look at how well they did we increased our passing rate on the exam from 51 to 90.
our plan is to add third grade add fourth grade as that self-contained highly gifted academy so our families will end up with a choice let's say um you have a second grade student who is identified as gifted during our blanket testing maybe you want to apply to the think academy you could apply to the think academy or you could keep your child at their home school and they would have the clustered english language arts science social studies and then they would have that walk to math and so by the time they catch up to sixth grade and on to seven they would be those gate kids yeah basically correct so they're kind of running on the same freeway yes just called different yes and no so so within think we don't actually have set next grade level standards so in our gate program starting in third grade for math for example they learn all of the third grade math standards and 14 of the fourth grade standards so as they're learning multiplication in third grade and there's fourth grade multiplication standards that are a good match they're going to integrate those in think it's more thematic interdisciplinary where they're learning about a topic and the teachers really respond to the kids for example last year they were learning about the human body the next thing you know the kids are obsessed with blood they're learning about blood and they planned a blood drive because they learned that there was a blood shortage and they wanted to help the community so kindergartners and first graders learned that they couldn't give blood they didn't weigh enough and they weren't old enough but they worked they had experts come in they had a hematologist come in the classroom they could tell you if you were o positive and somebody was a negative and you had children what their blood type would be they could tell you all about it they were obsessed and then the community came and gave blood and they made the signs it was all them at five and six years old so that's a little bit different the flexibility they have in that self-contained setting is a little bit different than in our gait program where we're not necessarily self-contained we're more of a homogeneous heterogeneous grouping of mixed ability unless it's that walk-to-math so it's a little bit different in terms of faster and above grade level standards versus really authentic interdisciplinary grade level standards and yet they meet they will meet okay um and then the other thing i was going to say is that there's a difference between um equal and and equitable and i find that now this is equitable in higley unified school district we are not going to have just this group that is getting these services but this is across the board and giving all of our students no matter where they live the opportunity for these more challenging classes i am so thankful for that so thank you for the hard work and making sure that our whole district has this opportunity i agree with you wholeheartedly i have a gifted kiddo she was in the centennial self-contained back in the day and she was very difficult to raise to be very honest because it doesn't just mean smarter it doesn't mean that it means so much more a gifted child they have so many idiosyncrasies about them and things and they process differently so i'm thankful that we have a support system for our parents i think that's huge i'm grateful for that um i think those are my comments so thank you president kaler members of the board i wanted to add on to what you said one of the things that we really are proud of is the work that kim and dr dodds and her team did this year to expand access and equity to these programs across all of our elementary schools we have a continuum of programs here you heard a little bit about the thing but now you're looking at the ability for more students to have access to these programs i think the other thing that you also heard and that we're really proud of and we need to highlight the work that dr dodds has done with her gifted coaches in professional development for our teachers and inspiring those to continue their gifted endorsement and learn about differentiation is so powerful and impacts all of our students and so that work there when you you heard about also that another highlight is the work that happened that evolved even in the middle of covid you saw that canvas became a hub a resource for us to communicate and collaborate and create resources with that we hadn't had before and her and and under her leadership and work and her amazing team huge strides were made with tools and resources to look at it a little bit differently so again lots to celebrate here in the continuum of great work here so something we're real proud of and i'm excited to see this head more north and see our coulee friends and our go on to our williams williams field friends so i'm really excited to see how this program is just going to be so much better across the board so anybody have any questions for mrs dr dodd sorry see i don't i give doctor names to those that don't and i take away those that have it so uh shame on me thank you so much dr daz we appreciate you so much thank you all right we are going to move on to our next agenda item i move that the governing board approves the purchase of technology for the media centers at williamsfield high school and higley high school this is part of our finishing up hopefully the rest of our media centers as far as getting all the technology the gaming part of the room and things like that so you can read about that any questions concerns comments i'll second that thank you for that mr witovech um i just have some questions in reference to this um say the gaming room i'm disability concerned as far as the educational uh this is the the esports dr fowler's here so maybe he can address the esports for us because i know that's brand new to us and in addition to that um the program is only as good as the leadership and who is going to be the gatekeeper that's going to be overseeing all of this technology in this one room i mean is this somebody that's going to be there all the time and those type of things so if you could answer some questions as well then president keller board member with i i know that we have very extensive esport teams that have flourished just this past year on both campuses the numbers that um i have been given of 100 students at each campus that participated in the esports and uh we were proud this year higley high school actually made the championship round with one of the competitions and and i know that the technology that's in there is going to service those facilities really well in terms of specifics related to the technology i know mr shope's able to answer that and i'll pass the mic because the other one's not working president taylor the technology in there it's gaming computers that they're using as esports and so from the aia they're playing clash of clans and league of legends against other high schools at other districts sorry rocket league what did i say oh sorry i take it you're a really gamer right i wish i had time for that right um so yeah they play against other high schools at uh other districts president kaler members of the board one of the purposes of this room is really to legitimize a place for this team okay and i think it's a stretch for us we have a basketball team who competes in a gym right we have the football team that's on a field we now have this esports team led by the esports clubs that are on our campuses uh there's high very high interest in this the the teams are already set or excuse me the clubs are already formed right now when you talk about who's going to be watching this room who's going to be taking care of this room when talking in the discussion with the principals about how we're going to maintain because that was exactly my question too we got to make sure that these rooms are going to have the ability to be locked they're not an open free-for-all room it's going to be a space where kids and teams can go in and compete and so there will be the management of flow within and out of it but i think it was brought to that this legitimizes the space for these teams just like the other teams on our campus have a legitimate space where they practice and compete so the answer to my question who's going to be the gatekeeper so in in terms of safety and security within the media centers is coming from the security team that's going to be in the media centers including our media specialists as well as then the coaches and the sponsors when we're having the practices after school these are the specific for the gaming room looking at it so the gatekeeper and that uh security piece is already built in place uh staffing it with the members that are already on campus so the media specialist is going to be overseeing this as well because it's in the media room i'm naturally the media specialist be a part of it and talking with both principals there will also be security in there for instance if it's open at lunch just to make sure kids aren't in there posting security guards in there but then when we come in after school it's going to be the responsibility of that coach working with their kids while they're in there president taylor um dr fowler i got to go back to my question now we have more for our new media centers do we have a total cost on the whole revision of our media centers yes and and i can put that in the superintendent's report and bring that but this was the the price just on the technology the other numbers were ones that we had previously added i can total those up for you because i believe this is the third cost if i'm not mistaking the first one was the construction we were asked to approve an additional cost a month or two ago here's another additional cost so we still we still don't have a total cost of a project that was approved through multiple so if we can make sure we get that total cost president keller board member reese yes i will have that for you include the construction the furniture and then now the technology those three together would be the total and do we have a date that this will actually be open to our students yeah so we we were delayed with with coveted with some of our furniture i'm gonna bring a report back on in october i believe the 21st board meeting and so we're looking at that date we have some of the furniture installed but we're waiting for the remainder which we should have mid-october as well as the technology that if approved tonight would order tomorrow that takes about six weeks to arrive okay thank you any other questions all those in favor aye those opposed name motion carries 4-1 so this is going to wrap up our uh our board meeting this evening any other future items we still have a athletic handbook coming media center update from dr fowler in october and yes end of october then we start our textbook adoption process we're going to have a course guide coming up in november you can see a couple more things still headed our way some of those might be into the spring anything else you'd like to bring forward tonight mr mitovic i mentioned before we talked about be kind and things like that and i was really disturbed by your discussion under board comments my concern was that how important it is that we need to have a be kind program in this school district because from what i'm hearing from you um mrs kaler is is um i'm quite appalled about the self-centered behavior that some people are sick and it's it's like it's i'm looking at this and it's just like common sense as an adult maybe it's my generation common sense um but i'm seeing people that that like if a child has a peanut allergy classroom these people are sending their children to school with peanut butter sandwich okay so so our school district has to take the leadership parent role here and i see this so much more important i'm i'm ashamed of these people for their behavior and i hope our district is is addressing these people and stepping up the plate and showing that there are consequences for this type of behavior but it just shows me the need for i know the community it's 99.9 it's wonderful people here but it's just that one percent that we need to really take it addressing and really encourage this be kind to each other and respect each other and be thoughtful of each other don't just had to continue my rant with that thank you mister president kayla before you yes mr glover um if i i know i'm probably out of order so you all can stop me but i i uh board comments you kind of moved on i just wanted to piggyback on something you said if that's okay and it is uh you mentioned about testing and people going to get tested that feel like they were exposed or are showing symptoms but i would just like to say to the community you don't have to wait you know sometimes by the time you're showing symptoms it's too late and not too late but i mean it would have been better if you've done it before so um i think i said it at the last the last meeting you know that they're still open 24 hours a day you know i think your teachers their employees would feel a lot better if they knew that x number of percent of people in this community got tested so it's free it's easy i don't think i mentioned that i didn't even have to get out of my car it didn't hurt at all and so i would encourage that as well and i don't know if it's a future thing but it seems like these coveted data dashboards are starting to spread beyond chandler so perhaps that's something we talk about or it comes up or we can talk later but uh the community i think is interested in that as as am i yes mr glover and belt mr witovich reach out to me this week with um our gilbert and chandler friends making a dashboard for each so i guess that would be something that cabinet can definitely um chat about and that was brought to her attention as well this week mr glover on the testing didn't you say you went to uh gilbert community college just down the street i did they're open 24 hours a day and it's free and if you have insurance they'll bill your insurance but if you have a co-pay or anything you'll you won't see anything if you don't have it they'll take you so it's easy is that on our website this can we add it to our kobit website that link would be wonderful i think okay so with that we are going to move into i move that we move into our executive session for discussion and or consultation for legal advice with the governor board's attorney pursuant to ars 38-431 and a4 second all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries and we will return hopefully in just a few minutes thank you we are going to reconvene now in regular session and i'm going to make a motion on 11.1 i that that's the only thing that's written here right i move oh i see okay i move that the governing board approves the decision to participate in litigation decision to approve legal counsel to represent higley unified school district an electronic cigarette vaping litigation with legal and with i think i need to use the name wagstaff and cartmel i'm so sorry um and to approve engagement agreement of legal counsel to represent hillary unified school district and electric electronic cigarette vaping litigation and i should have written that out sooner and better than i just read it second any questions or comments mrs reach did you get that do i need to repeat this please tell me no thank you so much because that was terrible that was the worst motion i've ever made all those in favor aye all those in favor say aye motion carries 5-0 i move that we adjourn second all those in favor aye aye aye thank you good evening and have a great safe fall break you
so that's a um significant drop uh but overall we believe that's you know people are maybe holding their kids back um this year uh and you know gonna send their kids next year to kindergarten um that's the biggest jump that i see and um but we have a hundred more middle schoolers than we did last year at this time um so that's the that's where we are with enrollment down down a little bit from where we normally would be and again official numbers will be on october 1st so we still have another week of some movement happening um and this these numbers include all of our kids that are currently enrolling so they were as of two o'clock this afternoon so they also include anybody who um just filled out an enrollment today so we haven't seen the board has been concerned about the influx we have not seen that man i just we have not seen that um again we're just watching uh you know on the national level when borders start to open and more travel starts to happen uh you know we anticipate that we'll see a little bit of a surge there um as well so um with the distance learning i have been meeting with the state with their everybody learns initiative at the end of the week they are supposed to be sending the vouchers for comcast the program is such that uh we will provide a voucher number to families who are in need of internet comcast will provide high-speed internet to them for one year with the voucher um and i anticipate that next week we will be able to start rolling that out so i'm very excited about that ann and i are going to work together to um have a kind of help desk at the face center so that we can help families navigate and any problems that they have with connectivity the state has been more than willing they said if any family really runs into an issue um maybe you know they don't quite qualify under comcast rules things like that just to reach out to them they're they're really pushing for you know everybody to have a strong connectivity and they said they would you know work with us to help those families as well so that should be coming next week um and i am really excited about that on attendance yep good evening everyone um i just wanted to report we're very positive um trends with our attendance as reported by the students and and the teachers that you heard in a dota anecdotally from our attendance is exactly in line with where it was last year in fact it was up 0.2 percent from this time last year one of the things that i spoke about our last board meeting was the increased reporting that we're doing for the state in tracking disconnected students as they're calling it um so each week it's public data we are collecting um the number of students in each instructional model which for us is obviously all fully remote at all grade levels and including a reporting number for um including a reporting number for students who are disconnected that are fully remote last year they had um last year they've had across the state a trend that was um finding that students who were fully remote and just kind of fell off from the district and did not report it at all so um they are trying to prevent that from happening so each school is actually tracking students who are not reporting in so have a week that is completely absent the administrators school counselors teachers are all following up with those families to ensure that everybody knows where they are so our report from last week of disconnected students was 121 um that's across all school buildings so that's about one percent um and so you know considering our population um it is also um being so large 121 is not an incredibly high number um in addition um the the the amount of um effort that's being um done by the school level to follow up with these families is absolutely tremendous it is also not unlike other school years where students have dropped or moved out of the district and we are we are looking for them so we can't drop students until we have confirmation of their enrollment in a new district so um that's pretty much all i have thank you i have a question go ahead yeah um across the schools is there a big um uh difference or is it pretty even across all schools there is a concentrated in one or you know obviously the high school is our our largest school that that has the highest numbers but but i would say it's comparable across the middle schools um they're all about the same and most elementary schools the pocket here and there may be the highest with eight kids but sometimes that can be just with kids moving in high rental areas um and and we just haven't touched space yet so i would say it's pretty well dispersed and the similar trend across the district thank you thanks cara you're welcome we've got we're going to talk a little bit about let me just start with uh c osborne ellsworth i will say summit uh that's still negotiations um and um we should be hearing more hopefully pretty soon on that so um right now i don't have much to report except that they're still in some negotiations about uh language and things that may be in a bill so i'm still very helpful um osborne ellsworth um we've got um ellsworth uh an osborne project uh do you have anything on that to update the board courtney yeah we're on track um there were i think seven um architects invited and i think um four did the walk through and they've selected an architect so we're on track in the design phase um and still you know on schedule to be opening when we anticipated which would be next year so um you know i'm looking forward to having another update at the next board meeting um but we're on schedule as of this point uh if there's no question if there's no question i'll move to uh kelly granville yeah so um granville is coming along um my last conversation with the builder they hope to complete the project within the for around the first week of october um and then it will be the final approvals and building permits from the city so um our timeline is hopefully matching up with the return for students to come into the building um and as soon as we um are able to do a walk through uh we will certainly reach out to you and let you know but overall um things are progressing along um it is taking a little bit longer than anticipated there have definitely been some hurdles that the builder has run into um things like getting the windows um in supply the factory we had originally ordered from was shut down due to covid um then there was a delay with something else and i think we're on our third order but uh things are installed they're moving along and it's really a lot of the finishing touches at this point in time um and just a big thank you to um you know rich albert rich torres they have been instrumental in kind of advising on different um safety features security features um our tech team gina and lack have been wonderful in making sure that all of our bandwidth and all that has been set up so it's truly a team effort on and courtney and kim uh you know all of their uh whether it's food services or the legal nature of things it truly is a team effort so i just thank this board i'm really excited about the opportunity to have officially an early childhood center and i think it'll be wonderful for our kids i'm not sure would covert but at some point we could probably take a tour of the board members and small groups um i think you can even maybe do a video or a picture so thank you kelly very much um i i we weren't at the pto meeting because we had negotiations that night but i know a few board members were there but um kevin would you want to update the rest of the board on that sure sure um so on friday uh september 11 11 dr mead and i met with the new citywide pto president tim moroney and his team at that time he had shared just under 40 q a's questions and answers that parents were seeking and wanted clarification on i had we had taken those questions put them into google doc the cabinet and i and other members of the district began to answer them um and we'll uh we'll share them i believe uh dr mead has a place on the website uh where we they have been posted already or we will post them um but but some of the highlights from that even in terms of the questions um you'll you'll you'll note this evening that you may have heard uh some feedback about some of those questions this evening because we incorporated them immediately and began to try to find ways to make sure we were answering those questions and in many ways i feel like uh the feedback from these in-person citywide pto meetings are really a reflection of the questions that all of our parents have and so some of the questions that resonated from the evening can we have our kids engage in more online learning uh some families were saying that there wasn't enough time attributed to online learning um i it's also important for me to pause and just say the families and the pto members and representatives applauded the opening of online learning in our first couple weeks of school um and talked about you know how how how well um the launch of it was during the first couple of weeks um which was certainly um you know well received when i brought that information back to the team and hopefully all of our teachers are hearing this as well and our principles are hearing this as well um there was also a question and request can the district take a closer look to make sure we are fully engaging all students on wednesdays and so that's something we've also taken into consideration and we'll begin to um you know as we continue to get better at our delivery we'll be looking at all these things um and then there were questions um that evening about how is the decision made to return to schools and so you heard some feedback this evening officially from uh cara prunty and kathy o'dow along with dr sal and then there was also a question is it true that we will require a vaccine before we return to in-person learning and and frankly um that question carried over to monday as dr sal mentioned um we were in a negotiations that evening so all of us were not able to attend um but this question in particular required some clarification and i imagine if it required clarification from the people in attendance it probably required clarification for people in the community uh so we made sure we included uh some clarification in dr sal's letter that went out on friday uh but i think it's also important to just further clarify here this evening um and so and so it was apparent that even quite frankly that there was a need to address any misconceptions that may have existed and just so i just want to provide some now so over the summer due to our school space issues the district appealed to the state to have in-person learning in the hybrid model at a maximum of 50 capacity um and then and so our hope and plan is not our hope but our plan is when we return to in-person learning it will be in the hybrid model and until the board of ed is advised by the district medical advisors and state and local health officials that is it safe to return to full in-person learning we will remain when we do go back to school and hybrid i'm sorry when we do back to go back to school in in-person learning it will be in hybrid until local health officials etc tell us that it's safe for 100 capacity all kids can return back to school so i just wanted to provide that clarification for the community i hope that's clear um because there there was some confusion that evening there were several questions in a q a document um i i guess i don't know if i mentioned it or dr saleh had mentioned in the previous board meeting that we would need a vaccine before we can fully return to school um and and it's not that clear cut and so you know again the plan is when we can when the numbers are reduced in the town and in the local health officials carol punty who i believe is still on his call say it is safe to return back in hybrid we will do so and we will remain in that model um and and go back to 100 in person learning when the health advisors tell us that it's safe to do so again so you know that evening uh was a great evening quite frankly um it was it was great number one to see parents and see folks in person again we sat socially distanced at the pow at the powell building in the parking lot here in danbury uh there was probably 20 to 25 uh city-wide i'm sorry pto representatives from the from the city and and again many of the questions that we heard uh from our parents this evening um mirrored what we heard that evening um on that monday night so you know look forward to seeing them again next month uh but that's kind of an overview of the fourth of the meeting on the 14th and as you can see you know many of the responses and presentations for this evening was in direct response to what we heard that evening thank you um the next area has been uh yeoman task and her department to come through uh accommodations and um kim do you want to review that with the board right so um as we sort of start to think about a return to a hybrid model where um there will be students in the buildings one of the things that um one of the the valleys we've had to cross is what happens to those of our employees who have serious health conditions that preclude them from being able to report to in-person um teaching or work of some kind we had requests for accommodation from over 125 people and the way the process works is for them to provide medical support of a serious health condition to my office and then each one of those 125 people has had at least one sometimes more than one um in person me live meeting with either myself or with jen gonzalez to talk about um the scope and nature of the condition and to start to explore what kinds of accommodations we could provide as the employer that would enable these people to return to to full duty so those conversations have been ongoing in some cases we've saw additional medical information in some cases it's just been a dialogue back and forth and the accommodations to give you some idea range anywhere from additional ppe or plexiglass or a room assignment to complete work from home model um so each one of these requires kind of individual conversation individual attention and and the goal is to find um the sweet spot of the accommodation that we can provide without an undue hardship so we're rounding the bend we've got kind of a handful of them left mostly special teachers um but also a handful of others that we're just making our way through the last ones now um so what that means then is with that list armed with that information um then i transitioned to what is this going to look like if we have um staff who need to work from home and so as a team we've been working with elementary organizers planners principals we've been working with middle school principals as a group and we've been working with the high school on what a modified model for that for those staff members could look like um in addition i've had to spend a lot of time working with rich gilbert and his team on what kinds of accommodations we can put in terms of physical changes um physical space provision of supplies that also involved talking with kathy o'dowd at length on each of these individual cases so i'm happy to say we're coming to the end um i will say from my perspective it has been wonderful to meet individually with so many of these people it's really given me a good idea of what people are struggling with what's going well what's not going well i will tell you that uniformly all of them start with a big smile and when they say how's it going they'll say i'm exhausted i'm exhausted um it's just from our most junior folks to our most veteran people across all bargaining units i think people have really dug in to make this um successful to sort of learn and make changes from the spring um and so that's been a really good window for for me and for my team to see kind of how people are are handling all this out in the field um so that's been great what's on the horizon for us um i believe i've mentioned for you before um two real pressure points we're going to have one is that if you read the newspaper at all you see that surrounding districts are having trouble attracting retaining and keeping substitutes we are not going to be alone in that we are trying right now to kind of keep our toe in the water with them but because we aren't really using any of them they're kind of slipping away so we're trying to kind of keep them engaged we're trying to put together some training particularly on the um technology that we're using so that they will have something in their some arrows in their quiver when they come on board finally um so that's one big concern and and we're going to continue to kind of look at options for what substituting might look like for us the other big um challenge that i think we may face is we've seen some folks request the intermittent leave for child care purposes under the family's first coronavirus act um that means in kind of easy terms if i have children in my district in my house that are distance learning monday and tuesday and their young children for whom i have no other child care i can request under the family's first coronavirus act a leave of absence to care for those children it's a pretty reduced pay and it's for a limited period of time but it's designed as kind of a stop gap until people can find an alternative we haven't seen a lot of those yet but i think we will as we continue to march toward the hybrid model and that's going to create some real challenges for us in terms of staffing um so those are the two areas that kind of keep me awake at night as we're just finalizing the accommodations process and moving to this other really significant um staff issue for us um but i'm confident well as we usually do we'll figure something out absolutely just so the board understands the dimension just at the elementary level the need is somewhere about 72 faculty and we have accommodations to make but we're going to have to make other selections obviously and i think the point we've made to the board and i would like you to hear when we started in september we kept the assigned teachers this what we're speaking to for those online learners which exceed 4 000 will probably have a different teacher and we've we we've um we've said that the folks and i don't see any change in that at this point it's been a yeoman test of trying to line them up and with the going back and forth just further exacerbates our challenges and um so as kim says are working through it but it has been um very difficult to say the least because of the size of the district so uh thank you kim man i'm sure i have a question go ahead joe i don't know whether this is for him for dr sal maybe this is just a crazy notion in terms of the problems with subs and i can imagine that is going to be an enormous problem for everybody because we ask our subs to do a lot and they don't get paid a lot and there's a lot of challenges this year i know our schools all have building subs would we would it be a solution would it be possible would it help if we added a second building sub in some of our build you know our buildings or a third if you're talking to high schoolers in middle school i don't know whether that the model works the costs work but maybe that's an easy way to get somebody in yeah for sure and i think you know that's one that we're looking at not just for kind of incidental subs but also if we have to cobble together for these intermittent leave oh we want to have the same person in if we can um the high school i want to say has three or four building subs and a whole cadre of interns that we also use for that in that capacity um the middle schools at least rogers parking is going to have some of these nyu interns as well um and i i do think we have looked at that model and will continue to do so of putting in some more at the elementary level because we're certainly going to be able to keep them busy going to be a question of finding and retaining so if you know anybody you have a little free time actually yeah thank you uh i just i did just mention i was asked to produce um a document for the board and i have a draft uh for you and also we're hoping at the next meeting uh cara who's and her team who have just been i just can't tell you the work that they're doing i'm just so proud of them um we're gonna do a presentation on the dl for us and uh it'll take some time but she's working on that for for the next meeting um with that that's all i have at this point thank you madam chairman do you want me to move into the cisc yes okay thank you i have chip here um you know i think you've gotten some questions from some community members and you've been reading the papers i have sent the letter uh to i'll let chip talk about it uh today but chip would you update the board what's going on with this cic particularly the sports that um are in question yeah um thank you dr good evening good evening board um it's been quite interesting from a athletic high school athletic standpoint for us uh if you've followed along the newspaper or the governor everybody up to the governor uh his uh his right-hand person uh the dph all talking about football uh ultimately football in the state of connecticut has been canceled as we know it for the fall uh and there is a movement right now to try to move football to the spring in a reduced schedule in the meantime football for us football for local schools uh they're they're allowing what's called seven v seven which is a low risk immediate risk activity with games there's no really no contact involved with that but it would give our coaches and kids the opportunity to remain with having some instruction and keeping moving forward along with the football program as far as our other sports uh we have all other sports moving in the right direction uh as cara and kathy mentioned uh there was a time in march i'm sorry in august where we were uh we had to shut down the athletic program we shut it down for about 25 days uh we were allowed to restart it uh on friday september 11th and we've been going every day since we have somewhere around the neighborhood of 400 to 450 athletes training every day this week is the first week we're allowed to train athletes in full teams prior to that we could only train in cohorts of 10.
oh no and he's slowly coming out of it he's taking that hydroxide but i talked to him the other day yeah i don't know so he's never had anything like getting run over by a train yeah that's what we can do mr raleigh uh no nothing thanks mr parr yeah um i would like to know if we it is possible for us to schedule um uh uh some kind of ceremony for those students who were not able to graduate on a weekend so we do a s two two saturday so that we can meet the needs of these uh families that are still out there complaining that they never got a real uh graduation even if we have to do a drive up but where the students can actually come out and get a photograph with their families i just want to see you know so we don't hear this rumbling in the background that they never really got a graduation i do realize that the superintendent did put out that she was going to do everything in her power to make this uh give them a graduation they'll be you know that is worth it um i think we need to as soon as we begin to have the conversation to return that we begin to really think about how we're going to celebrate those students the reason i brought up a weekend a saturday is probably because some of them are ready in college and that may be the they may come out come come home on a friday and do the celebration on a saturday and return back to college um but just so that they'll have some something they can share show that they did graduate in covid era as soon as we get some permission to do um any kind of gathering um we will absolutely put a plan together that we can bring back to the board i will um let you know that um in my own thoughts we have kids that will from clear across the country that if they wanted to participate um a holiday period of time where their winter semester break where some might be coming home we could maybe do several options so that we could get as many of them as as we can get so i will bring back a plan um not next board meeting but hopefully by our november board meeting with some more information thank you okay um miss davis well maybe if you have several plans can you speak to we can't hear oh maybe if you have several plans uh option one option two because these kids if they're far away at college that's not going to fit unless it falls on a day so we might have to have several plans to fit several needs absolutely and i don't think we need to be the one way thank you sure discussion action session it is recommended that the board of trustees discuss and take action on the following items adopt the learning continuity and attendance plan l cap for the 2020-2021 school year do i have a motion i'll check on it um all those go ahead donna all those in favor aye aye any opposed no um consent agenda it is recommended that the board of trustees consider approving a number of agenda items as a consensus consent items are routine in nature and can be enacted in one motion without further discussion this procedure conserves meeting time for a full discussion of significant issues consent items to be approved in one motion one through three do i have a motion second all those in favor aye any opposed okay kylie do we have any other public comments we do not i have no comment either um mr cell i don't have any of those [Music] mrs davis i would like to say that this has been probably the toughest time for kids in our country a lot the whole time i was growing up it was never ever anything like this where school got pretty much you couldn't go there in person so this is a i i hope it i hope and pray it never happens again there's no need for a second closed session session um so if we can have a motion to adjourn and then you can sign all of the documents any opposed mission carries can we adjourn you
there was a problem with the cambridge analytics where they resorted to going back to how some of the teachers had scored them so why i'm proud of our average going up i do think it's a false positive i think we would have been around 70 i think our percent would have gone up but not this high so i just want to be very transparent about that next slide please rib data you can see the number of course enrollments went up this is great um kids that earn an ib exam can get a full-ride scholarship to almost any school of their choice um any university which is a wonderful thing the percent tested went down a little bit however we gave more exams because we had more students sitting in seats the number passing the exam went down and we're really trying to go back and look at that um it's hard to track we're talking to some kids it could be you know that it changed and march april may the instruction changed our teachers said they couldn't review the same or kids didn't always show up virtually to the reviews so that could have impacted those scores we do have a goal set for this year for 84 percent of our kids to pass the ib exam so we plan to bring that number up next slide please our act uh so act data is presented for the last four years you will notice a great discrepancy between the 2017-18 number of test takers and those that took in 1819 and 1920.
so teams now are training together uh if you come up to see us our team's working out we are required to wear masks to and from the activity uh we are required to social distance when the kids are not actively involved in in the activity um you know for for the most part outside seeing the mask it's uh the mass on the kids and the coaches it's really great to see the kids having some fun and getting along like in some type of normalcy we are scheduled we follow what's called ciac guidance uh medical guidance working closely with kathy and kara on that so we follow exactly what they're telling us we're allowed this week to scrimmage which is saturday uh we play we're going to be playing games in what's called regions so we're going to play in a small region instead of playing across the county in 18 schools we reduce that to five in the event there's a issue with covid we can contact trace much quicker all schedules have been reduced as an example girls sucker may play 16 games normally uh this year they're playing 10.
we received a grant from the governor's office in 1718 and we were able to test all of our students which tells us we realize not all of our kids are going to go to college or university and that's okay but we want to make sure they're prepared to if that's the door they choose to go through so i i'm very grateful that this year we will be able to test all of our kids again we're actually testing all of our seniors for free they don't have to pay for it in october we will be testing all of our juniors um in april our score at 21 is above the national average in fact for the past two years we've been above the national average so that's a source of pride for us we'll see how we do when we test all of our kids again we were a little bit below the national average the year we tested all we put some things in place through my office we've been able to purchase ect prep for all of our for all of our high schools so they've been practicing using that we've trained our teachers better and what the act actually looks like not everybody was as familiar with the format as they could so just knowing the test format preparing kids and getting them there so we hope to maintain at least a 22-21 with more kids going and our goal is to get to 24 within the next two years dr sai could you explain very quickly you said that the test will be for free these college entrance exam tests can you explain how that i'm sorry there's a grant from the governor's office it's the same grant we received in 1718 the governor's office once again was offering it it's an important initiative on his part so we are very thankful for that and we don't have to pay for it it's paid for by the state so it's a great thing that the state's doing for us next we have our ap exams uh so for the ap exam we are excited that our percent passing went up almost 11 um however our kids taking ap courses went down we would like to see that number go back up and we're holding some focus groups with kids to find out why they aren't taking it is it because it's so much extra work is it because it's so rigorous i have to tell you we haven't come to that conclusion yet but we're looking at it but we hope we get more students in seats and we maintain a high passing average because those are college credits that our kids are earning we know that once a kid earns a college credit they're more inclined to do well in college because they've already they really have an increased sense of efficacy they believe they can do it so they're more inclined to do so next slide please and our dual enrollment numbers so we didn't have as many students enrolled however we had 600 more kids get college credit so those that were in the class we got found ways for them through financial aid or other ways for them to pay for the class and then get college credits so we had 600 more kids get college credit this year than last year and if you look at it compared to 1718 i mean we've we've grown exponentially in that so that's the source that we're really proud of one of the problems with dual enrollment is the community colleges changed what teachers need they almost need their master's to teach that so when we have a teacher that retires our newer teacher might not have that amount of credits at the 500 600 level or above so we're looking into ways that we can help our teachers get the classes they need to teach dual enrollment we're also working with finance to find ways that we can help offset the fees for students right now uh this year which we'll present on next year but our numbers are a little bit lower and we've heard from families it's really hard for me to commit i lost my job darren covid it's been really hard for me to commit to pay for the class and we don't want payment to be a barrier where we can prevent that so we would like to really work to make that a reality from our families next slide please arizona tech skills um you know we went down by 678 students um it wasn't given this uh last year due to covet so i have every confidence uh they hang at almost the the high 80s consistently um it would probably go to the 90s because of the great work that jim and his team are doing uh so just in summation i wrote down a few key points uh that make me very proud of the work our high schools are doing our graduation rate is consistently well above the state average and we've been above 92 graduation rate which is well above the national and state average our ccri points continue to rise and those are based on many things that the states deemed important in academics i would say the more academic side the more cte side which produces a more rounded kid our cambridge and ib numbers continue to rise as students rise to the challenge in those classes our ect continues to be above the national average and this year all students in the class of 20 and 21 cohorts will have that paid for and our students earned over 3 000 college credits last year that is so amazing to me as a mom to know that my kids if they choose to leave dysert with almost two years of college done if they get a four-year scholarship they can graduate with their masters to graduate in today's society with no debt i think is amazing so as you can see our high schools are doing extraordinary things that are happening and jane and i will now stand for questions she's the taller one i have a question thank you i do always look forward to your presentations i like all the data and you always have a way of explaining it in a in a way that's easy to understand so thank you um just to actually it's a celebration but i just want to better understand it even though like with the cambridge scores so last just last year we scored 90 and i know you said probably 70 might be more accurate but still in 19 or in the previous year it we were at 51 so even still that would be almost a 20 increase if not you know almost a 40 increase and then same with the ap passing rate this year was 50 or i'm sorry 1920 was 15 and then the previous was 39 so just because of the challenges of covid and you know we which we heard you know again it wasn't that wasn't online school it was crisis teaching but that to gain you know in all the previous years our scores weren't as high is amazing um but i almost feel like we want to look more into how do we make that happen because that would be something that i would think we'd want to continue because we found a way to boost those scores so you know i think lots of the member pictured has been investing in our teachers for the last three summers we've sent teachers to ap institute which is taught by other you know by other people who are successful in the ap field who have taught it for a while we've also encouraged our teachers to apply to be ap graders if i know the intricacies of the test i tend to do better cambridge you know the more you teach it and go through the training the better you're going to get so i think teacher retention is really key in these programs and just to consistently introduce new things and ap has come up with a bunch of new resources they have ap classroom which has helped our students to go and do formative assessments so the ability to utilize to send teachers to training to utilize the free resources we love things that are free um and just to really commit to you know letting our students know that it's important that we want you to be proud to be a dysart student and this is why it's important for you that it's just not another test that it's about you know gaining something and pride in your school and pride you know and in your accomplishments really so was it just this last year then that we were sending teachers to this ap training no it's been the last three years um but i think it's with any training for it to get really ingrained in my practice we know from teacher training i mean research going back to early the 80s with joyce and showers 10 of what's taught in professional development actually transfers without support going into the classrooms and constantly monitoring it so our ap teachers that go to these trainings also are able to collaborate across schools um virtually even darren covid we had a lot of plc work i think our plc's almost got better darren coveted because teachers were constantly having to meet together and talk about new ways of doing things so i think training retraining and then ingraining it in practice and reflecting over time has been what's helped well hopefully they can definitely continue those because they seem to be effective what's really extraordinary about this and i don't know if you realize this as as a team but ap ib and dual compete against each other so the fact that we can have gains in all three of those areas they're really competitive credits they're all college credits but students sometimes we combine those sections but more than not these are programs that compete against each other for students wow putting to put it briefly i realize that thank you um and then just one of the you made a comment on the side dr sai about how students can go can leave our district with perhaps two years of college done and then you get that four year scholarship and you're already completing your theoretically could complete your master's is that information that our counselors are on board with and are pushing out to our students because that is such a key piece of information i i think they are but i think it's something we need to do a better job of and i think sometimes we think because we come in and i tell you the information in a board meeting and i think it's ingrained and you know it and i walk away so i think that's something that we could do a better job of really kind of drilling that in doing some kind of graphic and saying here's a pathway one of the problems with my duel is if jane leaves this year i no longer have a dual enrollment chemistry teacher she would have been a math teacher i'm sorry we don't touch them so i would no longer have a dual enrollment math teacher and going from there that could affect the pathway somewhat until we find a way to make sure all of our teachers have that certification to step into but i do think we need to do a better job of publicizing that in the lumberjack scholarship recently i was amazed how many kids don't know about the lumberjack scholarship at nau that if we your child graduates with all a's and b's they can go to nau for free and i think those are things that we can really really advertise in our community because some you know some of our kids really want to go to college and they can't because they don't have the money or they don't want to get straddled with debt which is very understandable so i think the more we can do to promote that the better well but that's more of a reason to make sure our students are getting this information from our guidance counselors because there could definitely be a student who who is assuming they can't afford to go to college and yet they have an opportunity to graduate with a master's for free if they get that scholarship and that might be just and i think not only our counselors but our teachers because sometimes when the counselors come in the kids are like okay but if i hear it repeatedly from my teacher multiple times i think that would help sink into so i think both pathways thank you i've got a couple of quick ones here um and i know that our sundown students are embedded uh with their particular cohort school um but quite honestly i would like to see um like on the graduation rate or um like the number of students or to see i don't want to say they're people too but i would like to see their growth from year to year as far as and and i don't know if they're taking the acts i don't know if they're i quite kind of doubt that they're in cambridge or anything like that but they say everything that's on the ccri all of those are offered to sundown also so because those students are automatically attached to the school as sundown is a program and not a school technically so everything they do the same thing we do for ccri and all of the data that we gather on all students we gather on sundown also okay but i don't see it and i would like to see it i would like to see sundown um just to know how they're doing and because i know that all of our students are special and everything but it seems like they're just a little bit more special more close to the heart i would say accumulate too would be good yes yes so um there was a was it willow canyon uh the dropout rate by fiscal year um from 2018 to 2019 willow canyons went from .69 to 1.33 why did it change so drastically um well and specifically i can give you some ideas but obviously that always happens when you have students that leave and if you remember that's a year that willow canyon did have a principal change so there was a lot of change all the way through that new things to learn i think they had a drt change and it has to do with cleaning codes okay it has to do with codes so if you have students who are in a detention center or choose to get their ged or choose to home school or that just drop out after 10 days and we can't find them that counts against you so working very hard with the state databases trying to make sure that we track very carefully all of those students and i will tell you that um willow canyon's administrative team did a phenomenal job to bring that back into focus and really get that back into play so i just think it was a speed bump in their road and they handled it well and really got back on track with that so you can see the great gains they made and yes that is but it just kind of stood out at me when i was looking through this board packet so um [Music] i'm glad that we got the grant again for act oh my gosh and so um the fact that the students will be able to take the test again and is totally awesome uh it's a feather my daughter was not as excited as you are remember seeing fell back as excited i'm excited i'm very excited that that the cost factor is not part of them taking the testing it really helps promote that equity we know there's inequity when it comes to testing that right along really the income of the family so it's nice to reduce that barrier in college for all it certainly is so thank you that was it okay thank you so much okay uh item j1 do we have any requests for future agenda items i do um and i had spoken with dr kellis on this as i was reviewing the agenda there was something that just kind of stuck out in my brain and it is our agenda form which is b1 and um i i guess i would just like to find out as to why we continually say approve this agenda form consistent with governing board policy and temporarily suspend any policy with which this agenda may be inconsistent so i guess i would like to know if there is any particular policy that is out there that is still dictating us to say this because attending other school board meetings around the state i don't see other school boards reciting this type of verbage or depending upon a policy so is there something that's out there that's still telling us to recite this so i guess i just wanted to see if there was some type of issue out there or policy pam chair mr sneak bill we will research that and bring it back as an information item thank you i knew that we had during the meeting second okay vote it's coming there it is yay meeting has adjourned thank you you
uh we anticipate starting all the fall games in the regular season uh october 10 october 1st it will go about approximately five weeks uh there is questions with the winter programs uh we don't know how that's gonna unfold but for this point we're kind of moving along at a nice steady pace uh we just knock on wood every day and we we were blessed every single day the kids get an opportunity to be out there so that's how we're looking at it and we're just going to keep moving forward thank you jib i just had one question for chip chip if um if football moves to spring what does that mean for other spring sports that they're going to be using the field where would other sports be using well the idea kathy behind that that's been part that's been part of the uh the debate but what they would like to do with football is place it in what's called an inner season it would start in late february in boulder okay and end in april and the idea was to push back the spring activities about two weeks so it would not impact any of the spring activities other than just moving some things around to make it uh equal great that would be great thank you yeah chip i have a question how about how many football players play another sport do we know the answer to that or specifically a spring sport you know in our program um we we probably have about 50 to 60 percent playing other sports the remaining kids are active they're conditioned they condition year-round do the whole thing but about 60 percent of those kids will plan on those thank you you're welcome okay thank you chip if there's no other questions madam chairman i can move to facilities information is that okay okay um um courtney sure yeah i'll be brief um so we've gone through all of the building reentry safety plans um as we mentioned in the last board meeting with each each of the buildings we're in the process of establishing a safety committee for the administrative buildings and staff is in the buildings we have administrators the custodial staff the safety advocates and and teachers have been invited to return back to the building um for this week um at their choice um and they're safely distanced they've all been trained in the safety of wellness and as kim mentioned thanks to you know her team's efforts at working with rich and making accommodations to the staff people from what we hear feedback are are feeling pretty comfortable with being in the schools right now and we also as kathy mentioned have the directional signage down and we plan to do some additional visits next week as we have a better picture of what it will look like with students returning for a hybrid whether it's a partial return as dr sal mentioned or something different so we can be just ready to go with everything we need um so that's a brief facility update and then in addition um dr salon rich ginelli asked that i put together for you a spending update on a covid related or pandemic related spending and that's um i'm not going to pull it up on the screen now you have that in your board packet and um unless somebody would like me to when we go through the q a but broadly speaking it's how i normally have been presenting things to you which shows on the top we're showing the expenses um which is the this is projected expenses so it's about seven million dollars and on the bottom we're showing the resources which are the different funding streams associated with um our in our coronavirus related spending and so what this is is the it's it doesn't include the alliance money so you'll recall before we shared with you like a braided funding that looked at what we were going to be spending overall for the whole budget this year and richard asked that i just focus for this purpose on the coronavirus spending and to break it down in categories so you can see what we spent last year or and then what we spent or are projected to spend this year in categories of you know online instruction for example social emotional supports uh adhering to health so all the extra sanitizer disinfectant that we had to buy what we're projecting to spend with custodial staff etc um so you know i just paused to see if anybody wants me to pull that up or if you have questions i see kate has one i just have a quick question courtney and it's it's just a point of clarification under the adhering to health category i noticed that the total is 700 110.
that's sorry 10 898. but there's 10 000 listed for one year and then that the full amount was listed for the 2021 school year is that just uh i corrected that and now i'll have carrots done that around yes is it just yeah the total is correct it's 710 and the amount in 2021 should have been 700 898.