so why don't we start with that we'll uh try to close up uh fiscal 20 and then talk about uh the current year so it'll be i think it's page five in the packet so it's uh one after that that one right there that's the one so for all of the um you know uh difficulties to sort of close out last year hold on one second i'm sorry for the people who uh are on the call this product has a new feature if you hover over the bottom right of the screen and click on that box that has or kind of that it'll make a whole screen view of it which i think when we're looking at slides in the future now and in the future piece of information it makes it much more viewable so um mr menino's shaking nodding his head that he's able to see that but i just wanted to offer that for people who are viewing certainly if you're viewing in the public you're on youtube and the same kind of uh box is there to share full screen whether you're in your phone or a device questions just one get back to the original screen uh you do the same thing it's in the bottom right of your large screen if you hover over it it'll say exit full screen and it'll get back to this thank you doug sorry i just wanted to give people an opportunity to follow along a little better than they would have otherwise you know that's perfectly fine um so i think what i'll draw your attention to here is is the rightmost column which talks about available budget which isn't really truly available now because the fiscal year is closed but but what i want to point out is how our spending ended the year relative to what our budget was like and so what we see in this is that the special education and the and a little bit of payroll were over uh what we had budgeted for the year um and both are kind of related in the fact that uh the the overage in payroll was was related to some needs for for some students and uh and likewise other uh expenditures for those those students increased our special education costs um however not to such an extent we couldn't uh you know uh come out with a a balanced budget or quite frankly a little bit of a surplus and if you notice the bottom right corner is about 67 000 in surplus uh that's primarily because uh under the student or the support services line which is right in the middle of the of the page there uh there's about 69 of of um unspent available budget and that's primarily related to uh charter and choice tuition uh that we didn't end up owing so we had budgeted uh anticipating uh some students that were going to be in charter school that had been in the previous year likewise with choice and in both circumstances uh well in charter we didn't end up having any uh tuition charges and in choice less than what was budgeted and so both of those contribute to a little uh residual that will be returned to the town when we sort of put a bow on the end of fiscal 20.
if these enrollment trends continue as predicted we will end this calendar year with more students than we did this time last year flexibility evidence-based research is at the core of what we do in the early learning program while it takes an extraordinary amount of flexibility to conduct research during a global pandemic doing so is still critical to the future success of our students i'm excited to share that after a visit to tucson and phoenix the week prior to thanksgiving haley broadway pro tactile expert and education specialist was successful in recruiting families for her study haley will return to tucson next week for three to four months during which time she will work with infants and toddlers who are deafblind and their families educating them on protactile sign language willingness the willingness of early learning providers to better themselves at their craft never stops even during a global pandemic join me in congratulating marlea jacobson morgan's gadden caitlyn empee and soren mickelson as they embark on their journeys to become listening and spoken language specialists i want to thank amanda benecke who will be providing over 120 hours of mentorship to these candidates over the next three to five years thank you amanda collaboration arizona uses a team-based approach to early intervention services this collaboration has never been more important to our birth to three providers than it is now we're working closely with our azip partners and developing recommendations for safely resuming limited in-person services although given recent metrics it does not appear we will be resuming in-person services soon included in azip's recommendations our guidance is guidance on providing compensatory services what that will look like has yet to be determined in the meantime our birth to three teachers continue to provide tele-intervention to 307 families around the state they provide alternative services meaning email phone text to 42 additional families thanks to our partnership with the ear foundation and arizona hands and voices we are currently providing 43 families with devices in order for them to receive services in closing i want to share just a few more statistics with you as well as a short story behind those statistics after months of collaboration with azit we are moving forward with serving children birth to age 3 with unilateral hearing loss this is a first for asdb and will add significantly to our teachers caseloads over the coming months the hearing screening and follow-up survey published annually by the office of newborn hearing screening and submitted to the cdc recently uh released preliminary 2019 data on bilateral and unilateral hearing loss in 2019 in arizona out of 80 454 births screened 184 children were identified with hearing loss of those 84 were identified with permanent bilateral hearing loss and 68 with permanent unilateral loss behind each one of those numbers is a child a family and a story recently one of our new teachers amber received a referral for a little one weeks after she started with us this summer her supervising teacher worked the case with her for for the first couple of weeks and then backed out the child was multiply involved and medically fragile so much so he was not able to go home to be with his family during amber's first three months on the job she advocated for the family and made sure they had access to their child via teleservices the child had a surgical procedure from which he did not regain consciousness during the last meeting amber had with the family and the medical team the parents were given an extremely difficult decision to make and they decided to remove the life support in place for their sweet child amber spent the day getting car seats for the family so the siblings could join their parents on what would be this little one's last day of life this was the first family ever placed on amber's caseload with us as an early intervention teacher the following day we received this letter from the lead social worker at the hospital i am writing in regard to amber whom i've had the pleasure of working with this past week with our mutual patient amber not only facilitated multiple conversations with parents and the hospital staff but she assisted the family with transportation ensured that their children had safe car seats to sit in and was president at the and was present at the hospital throughout the day yesterday during the child's withdrawal of life support she truly went above and beyond her role and we are forever grateful for her advocacy support and engagement with this family during the 15 years i have worked as a social worker in the intensive care unit i have never met someone that was so willing to assist the hospital and the family this much during this time of crisis and despair our gratitude for amber's help is immeasurable and we wanted to share just how grateful we are for her support so in closing i too want to share my gratitude for not only amber but for all early learning teachers instructional assistants speech language therapists audiologists administrative assistants even during a global pandemic they don't lose sight of the importance of caring for each individual they serve parents and children alike by meeting them where they are and with what they need that's all i have for you this afternoon if you have any questions i'm happy to take them thank you dr benedict for that report i did have a question about the transition from uh to preschool those transitions are always difficult in in normal times in terms of uh being able to usher families to go from the early adventure program into the preschool of you know their choosing uh and i i would assume that that's a lot more difficult now that our early intervention is is mostly or all online so uh can you speak to how that how those transition meetings have been occurring in the last few months um and if we're keeping track of you know the destinations uh uh for these children um you know in terms of where they're going uh and how the parents are making those decisions and are we making sure that the parents feel feel that they have appropriate guidance as to where they should place their child yes yes i can definitely speak to that thank you um in just looking at our preschool numbers they they are higher than i anticipated that they would be going into this school year but like i said in my report we're on track to end this calendar year with more students than we had this time last year i don't have any scientific evidence to prove this but one of my guesses is that a lot of families are choosing charter schools smaller type programs that allow for fewer students in a class which not only typically results in you know good things all around for kids but at this period of time allows for social distancing things like that so i think that could be one reason um there are parts of the state where we're having more difficulty in reaching districts um to assist with that transition and azip is helping us with that um but everything the the transition is continuing to occur within the timelines that it's supposed to occur our biggest challenge right now is our late identifications we are getting children especially down in the southwest area that are have not been identified and they're over two years old with profound hearing loss and i and you know courtney was very frank in in her speaking with you and i can be very frank insane i'm very concerned as to how ready these kiddos are going to be for kindergarten um we're getting kids that are identified so late right now with significant hearing loss and significant language delays and it's going to have a tremendous impact in the next few years on the kids we have entering kindergarten thank you thank you mike did you have a question yeah just a quick question um first of all that mid 2 is way too late for identification that's stark my question was um in looking at uh and meeting with the finance team yesterday it looks like we have um a lot of uh infants and toddlers that are identified as deafblind i think it was like 98 and i was just surprised that there's that seems to be a it felt like a very large number are we prepared with the resources that um those kiddos are gonna are gonna necessarily take it when they transition both into into preschool and then possibly into into brick and mortar i just kind of taken aback by the number of students in that category i'm so glad you asked that's a great question um i might have mentioned in one of my previous reports last spring but that seems like 10 years ago that we were in the process of planning to open a preschool classroom in tucson for our deaf-blind population we have a critical mass of kiddos down there and that is where this whole conversation of the research that we're now bringing here um uh it was the week before the world changed forever uh jennifer hensley um and i were at gallaudet met with some researchers who knew of this critical mass of kiddos we had and wanted to offer us their not only their support but a mutual relationship that could develop where they could help to educate us our families and and we had these kiddos that they wanted to take a look at and um and yet the program didn't open we couldn't move forward with it because of covey but we were still able to move forward with the research it's looking very different now than it had originally planned to look but um they're still moving forward with it so we still have those contacts to assist us we have lisa giancarelli and her group we work closely with um megan and and others in in her group amy at supporting our preschool teachers as they get these kiddos in it's a little bit easier in birth to three for our teachers of the deaf and our teachers of the blind to work together in that fashion comes a little more challenging with with preschool but we're working on that as well so i appreciate the question thank you very much can i can i follow up are we anticipating a big cohort um because i know when at the birthday of three is when that happens are we anticipating more this year or next year based on just that big group of kids ages do we need to curse it out or so if if i'm understanding your question correctly this time last year we had a group of kiddos that over the course of this school year the 1920 school year if we would have started a classroom we would have ended this may of 2020 with about 12 kids of deafblind kids in a preschool classroom which is a big number and sadly enough we did lose a few of those children a few of them passed away many of them have severe medical needs a couple of them moved back to mexico when the pandemic hits um so those numbers went down which made it even more difficult for our researchers to find families um to participate um so that's been a challenge so we're working really hard to identify these babies keep track of them and make sure they have resources um i think it that brings me to you know one perhaps notable point is that birth to three tele intervention has been an amazing tool it's we probably had an easier time at transitioning to it than preschool did most certainly because you're working with parents you're coaching parents um however for our for our blind and vi families it has been a little challenging more so than with deaf and hard of hearing because with those kiddos you do do so much more manipulation there's physical needs that children have and it's hard to point you know use the camera strategically to model and show how to do all of those things then certainly i know lisa can speak probably better to that than i can not being a blind bi teacher myself but um they are facing more challenges and really hope to get back in the homes as soon as they possibly can does that help yes thank you so much any further questions for kendra nice job kendrick that that's your spiel you're good thank you and next we have our director of statewide itinerant services and that would be jay johnson he's going to come on and share some information with how our amazing teachers and everyone is doing pushing into multiple districts with multiple different protocols and making it work thank you dr rex and you're right we do have an amazing team and the entire co-ops together and i'm pleased to report to the board again some amazing numbers that we have as well as the work that we've been doing as it relates to the redesign before i get to the information i wanted to provide on the work that we've been doing statewide i wanted to share a little bit beyond that work and i wanted to share my coveted story with the board so my covet story actually starts just around friday november 13th up to that point i had traveled over 7 000 miles within our state visiting sites campuses staff visiting with special education directors and whatnot and then on saturday november 14th i tested positive for covid i quickly contacted our hr department to let them know about my test and through contact tracing they were able to connect with all staff that i had been around on sunday november 15th to this date no other staff members tested positive to the interaction with me this goes back to the leadership this board has really enhanced as it looks to the redesign and the cooperatives underneath the topics of consistency sustainability quality assurance managing and changing and timing and vision and philosophy because those are been the indicators that we've had within the co-ops i'm going to pick a couple of those and report to the board how we are working on consistency quality assurance and managing change and timing along with vision and philosophy so under consistency first to give you a picture of the work that we're doing statewide we have 214 school districts and charters that we currently have agreements with statewide this brings to us just over a thousand students 1002 to be exact of those students the primary disabilities we have 189 students that are mdssi 210 students that their primary labels md 127 that their primary label is vi and 476 of their primary label hi consider that our staff has been putting in about 594 897 minutes a month for those students this comes out to just over 9 000 hours a month that our staff is providing services statewide to make sure that we're consistent within that statewide effort we meet weekly with our co-op directors to discuss different topics that arrange from audiology to vi services to hi services along with developing forms to align our work first the directors and i meet each week to talk about audiology scenarios these may be scenarios that do not fit into the boxes that we have for our referral form so we can be accurate with what we're saying to each one of the audiology teams and making sure that we are sending them out at the right time with the right scenario with the right protection in addition to that one of the things that the co-op directors and i did is we've started to design documentation for statewide services the docs of service page that was designed by our directors did come with a few hiccups which we needed to provide overall training for staff and we were able to connect experts in-house to support staff members that may have struggled using the google forms one comment that came from a staff member was thanking us for that particular form she stated it's good to see that the agency is starting to use the same forms inventory and policies uniformly throughout the agency under quality assurance we've been working hard with our region one and the part of the redesign as you know dr fay miller left us during the summer and this brought dvr along as part of that redesign process because in addition to my responsibilities statewide i've also been acting as the director for dvr so we plan next year to bring ser to be embedded into the work we've done this year going into next academic year so with that work between dvr and region 1 we've started to look at the audiology referral forms dvr designed an audiology referral form that is one hundred percent online as did region one the directors and i meet together each week to discuss the cases as it relates to those referral forms and how we're evaluating appropriate students just to give you a sn snapshot of dvr our two audiologists have received over 115 referrals this academic year that is possibly 115 more students added into the dvr site than there were before some of those students may not qualify for specially designed instruction that's why we can't say that all of those students are receiving services from us at this time in addition to that we've been tracking direct services versus consult only in region 1 we know that 92 percent of our services are direct services in region 2 which is our dvr location 97 percent of the services we provide are direct communication and direct work with students the other thing that we've done internally is asking the question what is itinerant teaching at asdb in order to answer that question we've surveyed our lead teachers and supervisor teachers as it relates to job duties of all teachers statewide the leads have been meeting this month in december to discuss that survey and look at consistencies that we have statewide also we've met with the university of arizona and their dhh department and the bi department we've also met with asu's vi department we've also met with an out of state university with the university of california their vi department and we've been highly connected with cac and azks we've had opportunities to collaborate with other dhh teachers in the phoenix area under managing change and timing one of the goals we had within the co-ops was to utilize our adot services more this academic year adot provides our services for all vehicles and they also have fueling stations around the state of arizona before focusing on this we had about 33 percent of our staff utilizing a dot as fueling stations that has risen to 66 percent and 52 percent of those staff members are using adot 100 of the time this cost savings can be hundreds of dollars each month the other thing the directors and i have done is built the culture of professionalism and support the work that we've done this year have enabled our staff to understand email norms meeting norms and upholding the same norms for all staff members statewide the other part that the directors and i talk about consistently is this idea of total support total support to our staff is meeting their needs in their location and what they need from us i have to give a shout out not only to our two directors paya and michelle but also all of our lead teachers supervisor teachers and staff that support each other on a daily basis it truly is a total support community under vision and philosophy we're getting to the idea of thinking as one co-op a couple examples of this is we had audiology equipment that was shared between region one and the ser office our audiologist even shared today it gave the opportunity opportunity for a student in the tucson area to access curriculum and without that communication between the two regions the student would not have been able to access the curriculum because the technology would have to be ordered for them that's one example that we've done statewide also we've closed the holbrook office and in closing that office we've sent materials to the sedona office as well as the tucson office we had staff that drove from sedona to holbrook to make sure that we had the right materials going up to the northwest side of arizona and then we also had a moving company support us to move all other materials down to the tucson office as part of that process we also evaluated our vehicles we had vehicles that moved from the holbrook office down to our dvr office to make sure we met the needs of our staff down there and putting them in the right types of vehicles with the lowest amount of mileage we've also had interpreters who have traveled between regions one example was we had a dvr interpreter that traveled to region one to support a student when an interpreter was ill the other part of our vision and philosophy is we send out weekly amazing co-op emails through these emails we provide resources support and connections to other community members as well as resources that are statewide and even out of state some of the topics that have come across through those emails were the post-school outcomes survey that's done through ade what was amazing through that we connected that work to student referrals to project search we actually had an interpreter that was very surprised that we collect that data every year and was able to refer one of her students to project search as a young adult we've also been able to connect to northern florida university and the virtual job fair this year and connecting our hr department we've also had the dvr interpreters sharing resources statewide with the entire co-op we've started an event called a cup of joe with jay where i've simply set up either virtual copy talks or in-person copy and sitting down and just talking about the roles that our staff plays statewide one of the comments that's come out through those amazing emails is i admire your compassion and acknowledging how difficult this year has been on so many many families you're so uplifting and positive you inspire me we continue to inspire not only our fellow staff members but our school districts and charters our students and even our family members knowing that we're putting their student needs first statewide with that said the last thing i'll share with you we've also been connecting our work with the statewide cder program and ed rising through that work we'll be presenting at the national cec conference under a teacher empowerment project that we've been working hand in hand with our cder counterparts and we want to make sure that we continue the ed rising connection because they are our future teachers ed rising is the high school program that falls under cte and for students that are interested in becoming educators not only are we connecting with the high school program but the ed rising programming that's at the community college and the university so new teachers know all about asdb and coming to work for the co-ops or our ground campuses thank you for your time today and please let me know if you have any questions this is mike manley uh just a quick question um i know that uh over the last year we've transitioned somewhat to online delivery of services um has that primarily um affected kids in the north and do we how do we go about determining which um which kiddos would do better with that kind of a format you know mike that's a great question thank you for asking that what's interesting is we're finding statewide the same type of work that's happening so our schools as you guys all know are opening in person one day and the next day they're closing and going virtual and we're seeing that pattern statewide we've been in close contact with our special education directors because way back in august we had about 50 percent of our staff that was providing services in person while schools was still remained on a virtual format so we probably have right around that same number still however more and more schools due to the rise in cova cases are going virtual but our communication between the fed directors and case managers have really driven that type of procedure would you anticipate the need for that going up if as we find efficiencies and um student outcomes or it's probably too early to ask that it's actually not too early to ask that and one of the other parts that i did prepared but i didn't i was going to try to stay within my six minutes was the work that we've done with our distance learning distance has actually expanded and these are distance students that are 100 virtual not because of covid but that they're moving the direction of saying i want my child to be in a distance learning format and we've watched that grow through distance where simply two years ago we had two students and one school now we have 91 students and 55 schools statewide and these are students that are not in distance because of covet and we continue to see that rise of numbers we actually have a new district that just signed on with us that they were 100 interested in distance learning and we're going to provide services for all students there on the distance format thank you any other questions all right with that thank you jay oh david's back sorry uh no just just anticipating taking over uh thank you jay um thank you dr rex um dr x is there anything uh more to add well you have i have also jennifer hensley lisa incarelli and anita i think we're going to call up jennifer hensley sorry jennifer is not able to join us this afternoon okay my apologies move on to the next report please thank you i'm going to go to lisa yancarelli then hi everyone um so as you know i'm the director of blind programs and blind programs are our team works to support the instructional programming statewide so since the beginning of the school year we've provided assistance training and equipment to anyone who's requested assistance because of the unique nature of this school year we um our assistance has been adapted to meet the needs of the students so what i you know i commend my team for their flexibility and their hard work and their willingness to jump in and do things um a little differently from the way we have in the past to really ensure that our students families and teachers are getting what they need we really most um all the areas of blind programs really focus a lot on equipment and access so it is our priority to make sure that students and teachers have what they need so the students can access no matter where they are and as we know um it changes daily so we we continue to get requests for um for equipment on a daily basis so i'm going to highlight some of the things that are happening with all the different areas that i support so the first is the arizona deafblind project we're a feathery funded grant that provides technical assistance and training to schools and families statewide it is a federal program so that means we also support families that are not within the asdb system at this time we have seen an increase in requests to provide support and guidance to our school-based teams to navigate the implementation of iep services in that remote setting as well as the typical requests that we that we get for assistance on communication systems access to the general education curriculum and specific deafblind strategies um we do have a strong partnership with um the elp team um too and that is part you know her team is so wonderful and that's why you see so many numbers of of our infants the burst of three with um the combined vision and hearing loss is because our teachers are diligent about it and works so closely together and then bring us bring us in so we work closely with them they meet on a bi-monthly basis to have trainings um that are specific to that birth to three environment uh the deafblind project we also provide training to um to staff through for inter specifically for interveners but it's open to anyone that wants to take it through the open hands open ask access modules and we do that that statewide and currently we are providing that training to 42 people statewide braille production is another area of blind programs as you know we've been working to um scale up the braille production system that was started in ser and we are in our um second year of that scale up so um we have transferred supervision of staff under blind programs for some the final will will be next year but um our statewide our production staff has been working nonstop so all of our braille technicians and brayliss are working to provide those accessible materials to all of our students so that includes formatting documents for use with screen readers or braille devices our tactile graphics and emboss braille as well as providing recordings we keep track of the the requests that come in and as i was updating the data today i saw that there is a a student who is now also receiving some recorded stories and i hadn't seen that before so kudos to that team and to that braille staff that is now recording stories um that may not be available in another audio format that's why they're doing that so i provided data on the the numbers but that was submitted november 5th and the numbers have changed so i want to give you an update so since the beginning of the school year braille production have completed 534 documents to use on devices and completed 1955 requests for embossed braille and tactile graphics i just want to make note that tactile graphics take a very long time and there's no way for us to capture that at this moment but there was a there is a significant increase in um tactual graphics and the need for um helping to add audio description to things because of schools being in that virtual system classroom teachers are relying very heavily on powerpoints and slides so that is causing our braille staff and our teachers our teachers also provide that same support um so we are we're having an increase for that moving on to my low vision team so low vision our office provides equipment support and training statewide we've been uh assisting teachers in selecting the appropriate low vision devices assisting in conducting functional vision assessments and learning media assessments which is a challenge in the remote environment so our low vision specialist has been exploring options and providing guidance because some of these things do need to happen in person and so what's the best way to gather the information if you can't be there in person and we also provide training on the use of those devices so um during this time we're really trying to work we're working with the teachers and the families to make sure that students have whatever device they need to access their instruction no matter where they are um we're also you know we're working with our teachers to make sure that they understand um for our students with low vision and like example my background is far too cluttered it should be um a blank background talking about lighting what is best for our kids with low vision um and cortical visual impairment so she works hard on that in talking with teachers about that to date our office has distributed 186 devices that includes our handheld magnifiers portable cctvs regular cctvs and monoculars moving on to my other section the american printing house for the blind repository and our assistive technology equipment um so asdb receives that's those specialized materials and equipment from the american printing house for the blind and we have a repository that sends out that equipment statewide so it's items like slant boards can be specialized equipment for science um an abacus for math special braille stickers other braille materials and any other adapted equipment from aph in addition to doing that my aph staff also distributes the assistive technology equipment that is not provided by aph so um most of our braille refreshable braille displays embossers large print keyboards so the data for that we have distributed 179 braille writers of all kinds statewide 54 refreshable braille displays and devices 33 embossers and 10 large print keyboards and finally the other area that i support is assistive technology and equipment statewide so um part of that is the tablets chromebooks and laptops so we have met the need of every request so far um and we have had um an increase of course um and we work very closely with with iet to make sure that that we have the equipment that we need and that we can get it out to um to the staff um so at the beginning of the school and we gave a total of 61 devices specifically from the assistive technology and so those devices are considered assistive technology in addition to the equipment we started a new activity to support our teachers with assistive technology so we began at the beginning of the school year holding weekly zoom drop-in calls and so the purpose of the call was to allow teachers to come together with our more experienced assistive technology people so they could ask questions and problem solve and get the support they needed as they were trying to navigate remote learning um many of these platforms that uh school districts were choosing were not accessible and so um we had to work work with that and figure out what is accessible so um the structure of the call is that we usually spend about 10 to 15 minutes with somebody demonstrating um either a device or resources that we found and then the remaining part of the call we it's it's time for teachers to to ask questions and brainstorm about um their specific needs so at the beginning of the year we had a heavy need we were meeting weekly as the attendance started to drop i surveyed teachers and they chose to go monthly so we are now on a monthly zoom call um and so we'll we'll keep that up if the needs do increase i will increase the time in the call but it really is their time to to ask ask for help we brainstorm we look at equipment um and then finally something that's um very exciting that we've been talking about and i know that i brought it up at a previous board meeting about that all-in-one system that i'm dreaming of um so this may it may actually become a reality that thank you i.t um to work with us uh blind programs is going to work to have their own similar email request and ticketing system that will that mirrors the the i t request system so i really i thank it for um helping us um and guiding us through this so we're gonna pilot with a couple of key staff some of our staff that request a lot so that my staff can work out how it works and and we anticipate that then any request for support or equipment that comes through blind programs will be through this one email system so that the entire team can look at it um and so that we can meet the needs of everyone more efficiently and so we're hoping that will be able to imp full implementation of that system for the 2021 school year and i'm available for any questions uh thank you uh that was a excellent presentation um i did have a couple questions on the uh the statewide braille production um and in terms of the requests uh you talked about a number of requests and a certain number of documents coming through um are those requests uh quizzes or tests that are a few pages or are they you know textbooks which are you know much a much different animal than just a few pages so in our system we do not do entire textbooks we only do pages that are required so it varies um sometimes they are quizzes and assignments um we do we have the textbooks but we don't braille the entire textbook we follow the scope and sequence whatever the teacher whatever the teacher has requested um i think you'll find that in most classrooms they never use the entire textbook so um there are there are cases where we will purchase a textbook if we feel that is needed as opposed to having our braille production staff do that we also um do the bench any benchmark testing that the district may be doing um you know we're really trying to make sure that any piece of paper that comes across a sided child's desk our blind child also receives and um we work really hard at that again the requests are are all over the place depend because it depends on the individual child we have some students that are in advanced placement courses so of course the load of reading and um requires more braille um there some are in some very advanced science and math courses which increases the number of tactile graphics that are required and then of course when you go down to the elementary level the the assignments are shorter the the text is um not as robust and um there the tactual graphics are are not as intensive so we have the full range right and that's really more what i was getting to is is what's the the right metric to to talk about um what the real production is producing um because there is that that gamut of you know a high school calculus book uh is a lot more content labor intensive or again not just the book but pages of it uh it's a lot more time intensive than what you might have in your second grade or or a you know a short powerpoint or something like that so um but you know yeah i'm not sure if there's a better metric to help us get a better idea of the you know the work that's that's being done other than just the number of requests because they they can be you know they can vary in size and complexity uh you know quite a bit yes i agree and we're open to any suggestions okay um and in terms of the uh the the turnaround time for that i know we heard some reports uh in last spring you know late march early april uh there were some delays which i think were understandable at the time given the you know the covet situation that that evolved um you know but from the beginning of the year can you give us a sense of um you know what the turnaround time is typically like from the time a request is made to the time uh that uh that material is delivered to a student so for it it's typically just a couple of days um we do ask that schools give us their request five days in advance and let us know the due date a lot of times it's the very next day or the same day you know once we have like the the students that have very intense work they have a dedicated braille staff um and have a relationship with that teacher and so they get things in advance when we try to work his head ahead as much as possible so there is not a delay um we really don't like it um and really ask that that our teachers um our class the general classroom teachers consider the production time when they're making a request because it it is difficult to produce something that is heavy tactile graphics within a day um so we we typically it's a two to three day turnaround okay great uh yeah i just want to get a better idea that we're being consistent on that and uh you know it's and it's not unreasonably long great that was all i had okay mike hi lisa hi mike um you talked about distributing uh a lot of the equipment uh chromebooks laptops etc stuff that doesn't come through printing house um is that for generally for staff use or students use and particularly when jay was talking about 90 students working remotely in distance learning how how are you connecting those equipment requirements with with i mean that's that's a daunting task particularly when you're talking about the north country so yeah why are you doing that and and how are you making that connectivity in that a lot of collaboration um and cooperation and so it's a mix our devices are a mix of teachers and students um to it depend you know again it depends on the request we need our teachers to have the tools that they need in order to provide instruction likewise the student needs their device in order to receive that instruction so we would do work closely with our partner districts um and and you know if they don't have what is needed typically it is something so specialized that it's something that we are providing so we do have you know our our laptops that are loaded with um fusion which is jaws and zoom text and you know any other sometimes it's talking type or whatever specialty um software that needs to be on there likewise with the tablets um we you know put the specialty apps that are needed on there but it does take a lot of collaboration between the the teacher the the t our teachers the classroom teachers the families and the students and um and we just you know we've had it i thank everyone for being flexible and we problem solve and we get it you know the i.t department from our asdb also worked closely with the i.t department from the districts to make sure that we have that connectivity um you know whatever issues we may have we all have to communicate and work together okay um one just follow up to that um um now i lost my train of thought um oh i got it i'm sorry um i was trying to be quick and i slowed myself down um when you talk about accessibility in the classroom and that some of the platforms that the schools are are using aren't accessible and i i do applaud you when you say that you don't want any that there's no material that would go across the desk uh that wouldn't in some way be accessible to a blind student uh that that is uh is not necessarily a well accepted position so i i i'm impressed by you saying that for sure um how and i know you know it's collaboration between families uh teachers etc but that's a another pretty daunting task when you you have uh people that aren't familiar with accessibility issues and then they have platforms that are just i mean it's hard enough getting accessibility within the field without having people that really are new to the field and don't aren't even really that well versed in in teaching uh people with cognitive disabilities so how do you address that or how how do you solve that as best you can i know it's unique and and again i that's not not an easy question to answer quickly and i don't want to run on so whatever we work with working with the team and then um we do have staff who are well-versed in accessibility and so relying on them to assist the team and work with the schools i know that we rely heavily on julie jones is works for the ser co-op and she is very experienced um and we rely on her a lot on our questions she from the moment school started picking what they wanted she started working on accessibility and finding ways for it to be accessible and then if it's not accessible then talking with that team um to to figure out what would be a better platform i know i heard a story about one school district started with one platform when they discovered that it wasn't accessible they actually switched so that it would be accessible to all their students so that that was really good again it's that same thing mike where we have to you know not everything is accessible and the more um the more we can educate and the the more these companies realize that it should be accessible to all the better off we're going to be because it'll make our jobs easier thank you sure any other questions for lisa hearing none um thank you lisa thank you hearing none annette had asked to add anita payette for our final presentation to give you guys kind of a pulse of what's happening here at asdb and hr has been busy adjusting and adapting and attempting to support our staff and student good afternoon board president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman and assistant superintendent dr rex our goal and role in human resources is to provide quality customer service support guidance and resources to assist our staff members i'd like to bring you up to date on the covet activities happening in hr since march we were able to transition over to remote work rather quickly due to our previous experience in working at different work sites where we provided support to our staff in their respective locations we are available to assist staff members through phone email google chat video and in person at the onset of covit we helped develop a consistent structure to implement administrative leave with pay for our staff members this entailed developing procedures for principals and directors to manage staff attendance reporting and remote work in addition we assisted with implementing and adapting processes to support and guide the completion of hiring performance evaluations probationary status reviews and the processing of human resources paperwork on april 1st 2020 the family's first coronavirus response act went into effect this act expanded the use of family medical leave and added emergency leave sick leave to those who are being impacted by cobit 19.
and a great pass just lost control of it and madison will take possession morgan jarvis mishandled that one looks like they're going to give some high ball pressure here two madison a great pass into number 10. she takes a layup and off the mark and northside has the numbers two on two and gets to the right hand block and leif was off the mark and number four julia davis passed it to number 12 and the layup is up in good for first points of tonight goes to madison a great offensive set there by madison as madison cubs 4 29 left to go here in the first 2-0 is our score madison is staying in with that man two-man look and a hesitation gets to the baseline and blocked but retained by north side and a bunch of bodies are on the floor jump ball possession here to north side north side will retain possession here and we have a timeout taken by madison so 4 14 left to go here in the first 2-0 is our ball game all right we are back live here at north side after the timeout madison took northside has the ball and gets it down to the low block and we have another jump ball possession arrow is to madison 4 12 left to go here in the first quarter 2-0 is our score as julia davis passed it off to number 31 addison rourke and is trapped at the top and out of bounds north side that was number 31 with great defense rachel tinsley gets her hand on that one as number 10 melee skinner takes the ball out pass it to number 20.
um other than that i think you know all things considered uh you know the fact that we kind of most of the budgets came out pretty close to what we anticipated is is quite frankly uh somewhat amazing to me uh to given the sort of uh unexpected nature of the second uh the last quarter of the year um but nonetheless i think it put us in decent shape we did end up utilizing the the full uh amount of school choice funds that we're anticipating which the last time we spoke and i presented information to you i had indicated that we would and i did uh in that circumstance you use the full uh 315 000 worth of school choice for for fiscal 20.
we implemented new leaf forms provided training to our supervisors provided notification to all our staff members of the act which started on april 1st in which will end december 31st in july we published agency communications about mask requirements self-care and self-checks as our staff came in and out of the workplace covered resources and covid testing locations throughout our time navigating this new landscape we still continued with our recruitment efforts for the school year before covid we were able to attend eight in person recruitment events and after covid there were many of these events transitioned to virtual formats in which we attended eight after after cove at the onset of covet at these events we're able to continue to feed our current talent pipeline with internships and practicums for this school year currently we have six interns that started in the fall and we hope to look to start four more this upcoming spring once the school year kicked off human resources continued to collect information from staff members who were reporting out sick this may entail assigning quarantine periods informing staff members of their resources so they may return back to work safely this information is being reported to maricopa and pima county health departments as well as to the arizona department of health services in order to stop the spread and keep students and staff safe and healthy we have seen an increase in request for medical leave and reasonable accommodations due to the pandemic typically each school year we have on average 60 medical leave cases that we see throughout the year currently for this school year we're at 67.
gets it down to the low block to number 10 and we have a foul looks like it will be on the floor so one team foul for the spartans here as the spartans are staying in 2-3 zone that ball is stolen away by number 31 rachel tinsley excuse me 35. braylon poole as she took too many steps on that one great idea just got carried away with that one as we have our first sub melee perry and for number 10. spartan singing that zone looking looks like they're going to pick up the ball the point guard at the half court line great ball movement there by madison the bank shot is off the mark and off the hands of a cub as north side will get the ball back as it looks like madison will stay in a press here giving a spartans a different look as that is into number 12 morgan jarvis she spins back to her left and spins back to her right great defense there by madison that is down to the paint kicked out for an 18-foot jump shot is up in no good but rebounded and kept alive by 21 alison kolhaus 42 takes her shot and is good that is a three made by number 42 miley mccallen as that ball is loose and will be north side basketball we have our first sub for tonight number cassaday flourish is in for number 21.
um so that is included in here and and has in a sense reduced some of the payroll costs and and some of the other costs to keep them on budget but that's why we have school choice money to help us uh support our school and the programs that we offer through it um i think i'll pause at this point and see if anybody has any questions relative to what they see on this on this chart mike can you stop sharing oh thank you all right good any questions for dr slaughter no okay you want to move on to talk about quarter one and while mike brings that up it's just the previous uh page or so on that um you know as you glance at that grid at the top uh it's a it it seems as though you know by and large it's pretty uneventful and yet i still have two areas that are highlighted in red i'll i'll get into that a little bit as i go through this um but in general you know our spending to date um in in fiscal uh fiscal 21 and again quarter one ended on 9 30 which was very very early in the school year especially with the 10-day delay in students starting school but nonetheless you know things are generally on track if you if you look at the percent of budget used you'll notice that payroll is is at 10.7 that's very low i mean it's uh it's typically about 15 so we're a little um i'd say ahead of what we expected in in that regard if you look further down and you see like administrative services which is 62 which might be concerning normally because you're hoping that a quarter of the way through the year you'd be at about 25 percent on the on the sort of uh use of your budget uh in that in that area and likewise with facilities management you see this to some extent uh there's some purchasing we do at the beginning of the year or encumbering of money that we do at the beginning of the year so we do our software licenses at the beginning of the year a lot of like in facilities we will open and encumber money for our heating oil and our electric bills and some of that sort of stuff and so that tends to sort of boost that number and make it look a little bit higher than is is perhaps uh what you'd expect in that regard um but you know so far i think our budget's generally you know doing pretty well um all things considered we will see you know we've not done much transportation so our transportation costs which are showing zero right now is mostly because at that point they had the bus and company hadn't billed us yet um uh so that's why it's actually a zero but but uh there will be bills coming but uh we will have some savings there because the the cost for transportation is less because we're we've done uh very little in-person schooling um it won't be zero uh but it will be uh somewhat less than than what we perhaps budgeted and that will probably help us out in some of the other areas of of this budget the reason i mark the two areas of special education and facilities management in red is mostly uh because you know while we have uh some support from the federal government regarding uh you know the things we need to do for uh the pandemic and and to uh operate and and function well within the within the pandemic both from a safety standpoint and an educational standpoint there's a lot of unknowns there and we have a number of things that we're going to apply to be reimbursed for through the the cares act and through fema not all of that will be uh considered eligible expense and so those types of things will end up being uh end up hitting our budget those two areas are the areas where that's most likely to show up and so that's why i've highlighted them with a color of red we're hopeful that there'll be a second cares act that comes through uh hopefully soon but you know fairly soon just because uh it will it will help us to continue to support the school's operation and the programming that we need to do to support our students through the spring if that if that doesn't happen things are going to get very very difficult as we go through the year because there'll be expenses that we're going to need to take on uh you know to to meet our obligations uh both moral and and uh legal relative to our students and and and so that'll put a real strain on the budget if there's not um some additional support to help us out with that there are going to be some savings throughout the budget as we go through the year and so those will help mitigate those extra expenses in other areas but but you know if there's not additional support from from outside it it will get difficult as we go through the year and as a result of being prepared for that uh you know we have frozen our budgets um obviously we're still spending on essential things so if if you know we need uh materials to to teach the students you know so if we need art supplies or we need uh you know textbooks or or books for a particular class or or a unit that's happening we're certainly going to buy those things so we haven't froze the budget to that level but but we certainly any any spinning that at all discretionary uh or optional we're looking at other ways to to to uh support our our students and our faculty in that regard but we're taking a cautious approach at the moment and hopefully we'll get some news um you know from the federal government about a potential additional uh you know stimulus package that might support our school as as we go along um i think it at this point i'm trying to think if there's any other thing i want to mention i think i've hit most of the real critical things um oh one small thing i will mention here uh at the bottom of the page there is is a note about the health insurance uh you know due to low usage especially especially during the last quarter of last fiscal year our insurer has uh has given us a uh a 50 premium discount in the month of november so both our our staff that have health insurance got half off their premium and so did the district that'll create a little bit of savings and help support our budget as we go through the rest of the year um and so i just want to mention that as an explicit uh plus relative to our to our budget um but i think at this point i'll stop and see if there are questions relative to what i've been talking about all right thank you any questions yeah margaret um i actually have a couple questions um are do we currently have any out of district placements for special ed or any in-house you know in in-home support that we're doing um on the second question i'm not sure if we have any in home uh i don't think we do um uh there is a student that is placed in the amherst district for some support for special education which we budgeted for last spring so as far as our budget is concerned it should be supported fairly well in that regard okay so the second question is do we know yet whether we have any charter school students i mean i assume we probably won't because they'll want to be in person but well no i forget that do we have any do we know if we have any charter students i was looking at that today but i was looking at the the regional schools uh estimates from so they they put out an estimate in in uh i want to say late september i look specifically at pelham i don't think we do i don't have i don't have any indication that we we do but i haven't looked at it specifically maybe dr morris might have okay usually just if i could add to what dr slaughter said i usually get that right before the winter break is the the fall counting and recording so i have it on my calendar to check in with doug to take a look at that um holiday gift that we sometimes get um at that time of year but uh the the early report is really speculative this is the december typically the one where um they've done account at all the charter schools they've cross-referenced it on addresses and that's letting you know so that's we get to january i mean like i have in the past if we if we get that information for the the break then i'll send that electronically to you otherwise i'll bring it to our january meeting okay and the third question i have um is about rural aid because i was reading an article that adam hines his proposing pretty significant increase in the rural schools aid does palin too if you want dr slaughter so um no uh well we do get rural federal rural reap grant aid but in terms of what you're talking about from the state their formula it's it's a little surreal so in the past couple years none of the four towns of the region uh get it but the region does um that makes any sense a compilation of percent rural and there's a calculation of what rural means in a school and poverty so none of the three at least in the past i know pelham has not ever received it but the real school did because between the combination of pelham shoots very leveraged students at the region and then the poverty frankly that mostly resides in the town of amherst it actually hits the metrics so to speak but the pelham from a wealth perspective does not because there are not enough students who qualify as low income if i could just follow up on the previous question i just fortunately because it was something i worked on today i just checked in pelham the estimate from the basically the end of september uh had no stu the state didn't predict any students from pelham being in charter school this year so that's good news in that regard whether it'll hold and will will be determined um the other thing i would suggest is that's that end-of-year sort of uh accounting that the state does that's a little more accurate has to do with the sims or student reporting it's in october that all got delayed a little bit this year because of the complications of in person not in person how do you do attendance all these other sort of aspects of that so so while i'm hopeful they'll still be able to generate those numbers for us at the typical time it may get delayed just a little bit or i'm concerned that it might because they had to push back the deadlines on that can i just ask one question doug on the support services and facilities management where we're hoping for some cares act money or other money what what what's the scale there what types of amounts are we thinking that's a really good question um so part of the so part of the difficulty is you know there are things that uh so for example in in the facilities management so some of what's in there are things like we bought ppe so we bought uh mass and gowns and hand sanitizer and that sort of stuff and so you know they said go out buy this stuff and charge it this way and then they kind of changed the rules after the game started uh so it's a little difficult as to exactly what will or won't get reimbursed or not reimbursed which is you know kind of horrible but everybody's in the same boat but the difficulty is we sort of are going to sit on some costs we don't know how big that number is and so that may be one of those things where a second stimulus package they are better at articulating rules on the front end uh so we we can you know sort of identify more clearly what uh things that we're currently doing we can continue to support that way what things we can shift to that et cetera so it's it's a little difficult um you know it's you know it could get really bad i don't want to be you know i don't want to sugarcoat things um i'm hopeful that that won't be the case i mean you know so i'll i'll say that but i won't get more specific i think it's a little bit too speculative too it's okay to be blunt in this meeting we've already established that it's fine i'm hoping it doesn't look really bad but you know you'll know uh you know if we know it's going to be really really horrible we'll we'll be in touch yes please do yes yeah understood okay thank you any other questions on the budget update no okay all right thank you dr slaughter um all right next up is capital planning and so on on this one might if you want to i think that the excel sheet is probably a little too much to look at right now the memo so traditionally um you know we sort of create a memo from from the chair to the finance committee in the select board relative to some asks that we have um unfortunately at the moment i'm i'm still chasing down some details which will probably change this request list a little bit um it may eliminate some items and or change dollar amounts a little bit um you know from a technology standpoint the the network switches uh is one that that relates to uh the potential to connect in with amherst is expanding its uh we're actually creating and replacing a high-speed fiber network throughout the town uh and then they're going to ultimately uh because they have some you know water uh resources in in pelham they're gonna run some of that high speed network into pelham which allows the palm school to potentially you know connect into that and uh but the the timeline on that's a little unclear at the moment which will change whether or not it's imminent that we need the network switches or not and so i need to have a another conversation with uh uh our is director jerry champagne a little bit about uh how we might want to approach that and then uh and so that may change how that looks in this list versus uh you know how the computer replacements look um the other two items the school security upgrades uh there's a there's a door on the on the library side of the building uh that the you know sort of physical mechanism that opens it with the card swipe is not working properly and additionally just uh that system is is showing its age it was secondhand when we got it um and so there's a control panel uh for the school that we we need to replace that's what the school security upgrades are um and then the interior renovations and upgrades uh we had previously uh we i say we you guys and and the town of film had and authorized some spending to do some painting and some uh some some other uh uh i believe furniture purchasing uh the remaining amount of funds that had already been appropriate are not quite enough to do the paint uh work that we need to do and so there's an additional ask this year for for some additional paint um so i'm thinking the priorities two and four will likely stay unchanged they may change which priority they are once i get a little more information from from the information systems director but but the other two are likely to change given a little bit of information i got this afternoon uh regarding the the timing of the town of amherst plans relative to their uh installation and implementation of their high-speed fiber network um so as a result that's why i wrote the memo to you guys to inform you and start to have you thinking about these things but i think we're going to probably have to follow up with the finance committee and and potentially select board in pelham perhaps just a touch later we'll we'll share this information with them obviously and and and move ahead once we have a little clearer um a little clearer picture um i'm happy to take any questions people have about those those four items um and i'm hoping to discussion about how we might want to proceed relative to uh informing this finance committee and select board about our request um if i could add one thing before we get to questions uh that priority one um is a really large priority from a teaching and learning perspective uh i think one of the challenges that we're facing uh is that in many of our other school buildings in the town of amherst uh we have many teachers coming in and staff members coming in to teach from the building for a whole host of reasons some people it's because it's a better environment than their home in terms of distractions but a lot of it's because the wi-fi or they're in a wired network that's much faster than what they have at home and that's not true at pelham it's actually the opposite is true where you know pelham teachers see coming to work coming to come in to do distance learning as a last resort because even the wired network is slower than many people's home network so um you know i think as dr slaughter said that's something we have to that's connected to the town of amherst i'm not going to get into the long history but essentially uh there was an agreement that the town of amherst had that they were going to replace and do their own fiber loop instead of using an existing one from a utility company and this is getting that online and because of the proximity due to the town line uh that the town of amherst where the school is located this would have a huge impact not just in this distance learning era but actually in general for pelham i've been countless uh not not recently obviously but countless um faculty meetings over the last five years where i'll go in either to check in or i'm presenting something with either dr slaughter or formerly you know with mr mangano when we come and talk about budget with the staff and it really is a problem um so i just want to note that it's network switches the title of it which is appropriate and accurate doesn't really tell the full story of the importance of that uh from a teaching and learning perspective but yeah that's all i wanted to do if i may just add one other little thing about that just to that point it also you know when that uh network is available and and we can potentially connect to it connect to it um it it changes the infrastructure needs of the school um so you know there's some things uh that are either ongoing operational costs that we have relative to the current setup or uh hardware that we have that changes in a way that's ultimately uh more cost effective so it's it's kind of a uh but it but it is going to be dependent upon the town of amherst and their timeline for implementation so that's uh you know gonna kind of shape this it'd be nice if we could do it sooner but it may it may have to get pushed a little bit depending on the town of ammers uh time horizon and timeline to get their work done all right thank you yeah ron go ahead i understand that currently every pelham student has a chromebook when we go back to normal really normal and all students are in person would that uh eliminate the need for chromebook cards so i think that um no not really um uh so in in going to one to one with everyone having a chromebook i mean what we've traditionally done in the younger grades is the the machinery like the chromebook stayed in the building in the cart uh and they weren't something that kids would take home or take back and forth and so that model may return um because i think you know to to have you know first graders toting around a chromebook i mean physically they can generally do it but there are a lot of other factors involved with you know you know kindergarten persons and and second grade third grade even you know as far as uh attending to that piece of machinery getting it home and back and holding back that sort of thing so it's likely we'll probably return to a similar model that we had before where uh those types of devices are gonna stay at school most of the time but i'm sure there'll be times you know if if we have inclement weather and we decide you know let's say it's two years from now and it's inclement weather uh predicted and we decide to uh uh be prepared for them you know for remote learning for a day or so while a snowstorm goes through um you know that they could you know be something that the kids go home with on those days i i think that you know we've we've all gotten up the learning curve on how to do some of that sort of stuff um can i ask a question i've had conversations with john tricky on the finance committee um and he's asked about the um the ada report that was done i think two years ago now um and asked about whether or not any of those items could be ticked off this year have we looked at that to see if there's anything that would make sense to take care of certainly not you know a priority above say network switches but is that something that we could consider so in last uh at the annual town meeting in june one of the uh capital items was a ten thousand dollar ask and was was granted by the town of fallon 488 compliance and work uh so we do have a resource of ten thousand dollars um currently in capital spending and and uh that's part of the we didn't want to ask again this year just from the standpoint of can we uh yeah we don't want to stack up a bunch of money to have it just sit and not utilize it so uh ten thousand dollars in place um there's some some ada compliant uh uh tables or both inside and outside a picnic table outside and an interior table uh that have been purchased uh with those funds and and there are additional items like that that are on the facilities director's uh agenda to start you know using that that for um so we're we're gonna be making progress on those ada compliance uh topics and then uh if you look at the kind of grid you'll notice that the ada compliance uh in subsequent years it doesn't have something in in 22 uh but i believe in 23 24 25 it has a 5 ask each of those years um you know the out years 23 and on we haven't looked at as closely yet but but nonetheless we did keep those those subsequent years and the need for continued efforts in in improving the ada compliance and and facilities at the school you know are are in the plan for sure okay great thank you um and then the only other thing i would say is that we are having in town the capital planning meeting on december 16th um so you know i don't i don't think we have to have everything completely final by then but i know you're still waiting on some information is this is it the type of thing where it's like a matter of weeks or we're talking about like well no more in february no i think quite frankly um you know uh given what i learned today relative to the town of amherst plants uh i'm gonna have a conversation with the is director probably not tomorrow but probably early next week uh and then uh i can can sort of re-adjust this this memo and and send it to you the um the thing i will say is this is that the number of items you know those four are going to be the four and so it'll either be that or less so i may pull something off of this list uh from the standpoint of the the uh you know the network switches isn't something that's going to happen or or that we need to reserve the money at this moment because it you know the timing of the of the uh the work that the town of amherst is going to do that you know if that comes off then of course the everything else moves up one um you know obviously uh i'll have that conversation with the is director like i said probably early next week we'll try to get you know i'll get the results of that conversation kind of composed and sent to you it'll be i think the the thing i would share is that the committee can know that this is a is a fairly complete list and it may get smaller or dollar amounts may get smaller it won't get bigger as far as an ask of the town relative to these these capital items but i can get you a refined list prime middle of next week okay that's great thank you any other questions or comments on capital planning no okay all right next up health metrics and memorandum of agreement so we had put this on the agenda because we had one meeting where we couldn't really talk about it at all um and so i that i know if there's not an update to share although mike i don't know if there's any if you want to tee this up or if it's just if committee members have have questions yeah i think it's really just that um what i showed earlier that i did you know the only update is i got contacted by the state about this um and um yeah i think pelham does have uh you know checked well doctors thought i was talking and they come out on thursday so pelham has seven cases right now uh over the course of the pandemic um and so they inquired as to as i mentioned before why pelham wasn't didn't have in person happening and hasn't for a while i shared the information with them um and that's sort of where we are you know in the town of amherst they had a community chat today and then one thing i shared and it'll be uh repeat information for i think some people at the region because i think i might have mentioned this the other night is um i do definitely have gotten some community feedback of like can you just override the moa and so i respond that my job is to implement the policies of the school committee and the contracts that have been agreed on by the school committee and not just apa but all of our bargaining units and and from time to time they'll be disagreements of interpretation of those contracts that's not a unique to pelham or amherst thing that's everywhere right um i think the language is really clear on this particular topic about you know return to in-person um and uh so that that's sort of where i sit on it um but you know i think what i'm learning is i can't say that enough places to enough people it's i think i have to you know keep reminding folks that that's my job is to implement the contracts and by that i'm not absolving myself i was part of the negotiation process but uh the kind of the the idea of just ignoring that and saying forcing everyone to come back won't be a successful strategy legally um and it's also i think um got some real challenges ethically in terms of what was agreed to and implementing a contract that was agreed to in good faith um so uh you know i think my you know my thoughts on in person and the importance of it i've been well spoken anyone can go back and watch the plethora of meetings um starting in june uh the joint meetings um so i don't need to repeat myself there and i think people know where i sit on that question um but the reality is that that is the moa that governs this current year uh 2020 2020 to 2021.
reasonable accommodation requests have doubled from last year typically we average 10 to 15 per year we are 29 currently for this school year these increases are due to staff members who have a specific medical condition or disability that puts them at an increased risk for cobit 19.
allison cool house as madison is staying with that press as they break that one pretty well that's 35 gets to the right block and throws up a nice shot and is good 4-2 5-2 is our ball game your home team north side leads as that is into the corner to number 32 passes it back out to jarvis excuse me davis and that one's stone away by number 35 great hustle by julia davis and they have the numbers and number 12 was not ready for the ball great idea by number four that one was thrown out of bounds once again this is northside's second game of the season as they played on the first of december against seymour as a great move by number 42 she takes the jump shot off the mark and rebounded by 43 cassidy flourish and she's at the line for two team fouls are all tied up here one-on-one as flourish is at the line for two as her first one is up in a nothing but net see if she can go two for two here as she gets ready for her second and the second one is up and off the mark but rebounding and kept alive by north side great hustle there by number 42 as she takes the baseline jump shot and good she found nothing but ned on that one north side making a little run here as that is down low on the baseline throws it out of bounds and north side with great defense once again and they get the ball back with 214 left to go here in the first as morgan jarvis is has done most of the ball handling for the spartans tonight as that has taken to number 42 as she takes a step back three and off the back iron but kept alive and an offensive rebound once again and way too strong for madison there as number 43 cassidy flourish keeps getting rebounds as that is a three taken by north side and off the mark could not get the bank shot to fall and the spartans continue to get offensive rebounds but could not get a shot to fall in that possession as that one is stolen away by number 35 braylen poole as she's taking it down the left looks like she's gonna get to the low block and up and under for two braylon pool with the layup tender to our ball game as the floater is up and off the mark on the floor julia davis took the floater and got fouled but the refs called it on the floor as we have another sub number 10 is back into the game that is melee skinner and number 12 miley comes off the court for madison as the spartans are playing with that zone look and we have a foul call by north side and we'll put a cub at the line for two team fouls i think are all evened up excuse me no three to one is our foul with north side with three as miley skinner is at the line for two and our first one is up and off the mark as we have number 34 natalia rahm and 23 abby wheatley in for the spartans as skinner's at the line for her second and gets that one to fall 10-30 score 124 left to go as abby wheatley is taking the ball out here as madison stays with that press as that one is throwing great pass and great hustle there by number 35 and she takes the jump shot and a little short there great look could not get that one to fall as number 20 addison bortis is taking the ball off the court great hands and great defense by number 24 for the spartans that is gabby spurgeon as north side slows it down here coming up 2a minutes here in the first quarter she takes the three a little short and rebounded by spurgeon once again to keep things alive she had a great stop on defense and a great rebound there on the offensive side as she takes the two-pointer off the mark and rebounded by number 20 kennedy roulette and that's stolen by the spartans in stolen back by madison as she gets to the right side and draws the foul and puts her at the line for two at the line for two is julia davis 35 picks up the foul braylon pool 41.8 seconds to go here in the first as the first shot is up and no good as we have number 22 in for the spartans lydia cushman as number 35 graylin pool comes off the court for the spartans as julia davis's second free throw is up and off the mark rebounded by number 22 lydia cushman and she brings the ball to court 34 seconds to go here in the first as the floater is up and off the mark and rebounded by spartan but she sadly hit the line that was a madison cub player that got the rebound but her foot was on the line now spartans will have the ball 28 seconds to go maybe take one last shot here to end the quarter out as the spartans have had good ball movement that shot is up and taken by number 34.
um you know the regional school committee i think i could say this here did ask the apa to potentially renegotiate some metrics um there was one letter that was sent the answer was no there was another letter that was sent that was to my knowledge not responded to and so that's the current update of where we are that's not a blame thing it's it's just a factual recounting of at least from my perspective where we sit certainly the regional reps um can add anything if they'd like to add anything but that's i mean in terms of correct me if i'm incorrect in any area and then we can open up for any questions people might have okay thank you ron go ahead when do we create an moa for fall of 21. um i think that's a question that the school committee may take up the regional school committee is talking about not that particularly but talking about the next the next school year it will be on the agenda for tuesday night which is the next meeting of the regional school committee um so i think if there's any information to share back either miss dancer miss kenny or myself can filter that back to you or you can tune in you i know you've been on the region tremendously ron so um you know you don't have to participate you can just watch this time and if a member of the pelham school committee has some item they wish to be included in that moa what if the proper channel of communication i would recommend that you communicate that um well there's two ways it could be done one is that it could be a group conversation um i think that's a little complicated because that's communicating things around negotiation uh so my more specific advice is either to communicate that to me or to miss kenny uh miss kenny is on the negotiating team for the region and you know because of my role i'm connected to that so that would be my advice unless miss kenny disagrees with that okay and we will know when that time we will i will know what when that is appropriate to make that communication like next month you can do it later tonight if miss kenny will chat with you no no i will not but uh you're welcome to try uh but there's no uh there's that's not something super imminent i don't think you know i think though just to be really uh to be more serious about it uh i think it's highly likely that we'll have a vaccine available to adults well before the start of the next school year um children i'm less certain about the trials for you know especially for elementary age children there's no current trials that i'm aware of for children under the age of 12 there are trials for 12 and up that are happening right now but in terms of the adults the staff not just apea but all of our staff members you know i think it's highly likely that a 90 plus percent um [Music] effectiveness vaccine uh will be available before the before the next school year um so i think that will be something that the committee and the community will have to consider as we move forward so things will definitely be different one way or the other uh with that but if you have thoughts please do share them with ms kennedy myself or both of us thank you thanks just to be clear i'm not trying to i should note uh exclude miss dancer miss dancer's not part of the negotiating team and because of a conflict of interest which she shared publicly she's not part of the negotiations with the apea so it's not that i like miss kenny more than miss answer it just missed answers not the appropriate person for that information to flow to so there is no inviting among anyone on this meeting okay oh beautiful backgrounds for both of you so okay better thank you um all right thank you any other questions or things folks want to bring up on the health metrics for the moa okay all right we'll move on to regionalization um so ron just to get back to your question of why this is on the agenda um well i guess i mean dr morris you want to talk about i guess why it came up and then okay go ahead so at a recent meeting of the pelham school committee this fall we talked about a potential impending fiscal crisis that the pelham school district is facing the reduction in school choice students some other variables have us really concerned about the future of pelham school or has me i won't speak for us has me very concerned about the future of pelham school uh one of the things we talked about in that meeting was what are the alternatives that we could look into and what i suggested i still believe is there's no new alternative we have the same set of conditions the same variables we had in the past in conversation with chair hall we thought it'd be worthwhile to at least start talking about where we left off with regionalization because if the committee wants to pursue that and the town wants to pursue it we would want to map out what that might look like if the school committee is not interested in that conversation and we're done with it um but uh what i'll suggest to you now is i don't have any clear information that uh our fiscal situation's any better than the last time we met nothing has convinced me and i think dr slaughter hedged a bit right i think rightfully so um but there there's no uh oh yeah we won the you know school district lottery and you know there's this new income source i think the rental of the gym is a nice new income source it's probably a temporary nice uh you know short term i think you know next year if vaccines are here and we're we're moving somewhat closer to uh return to in person you know lssc or amherst recreation doesn't have to rent pelham gym anymore um i'm not sure they will because they get to use their gems for free in amherst right um so uh you know i think anything that we've patched together is rather short term and the concerns are not just short term but longer or medium term about the fiscal health of the district so what i asked ms hall to do is to put on the agenda at least have an initial conversation and i can be more explicit in a second as to one thing i shared at the amherst school committee meeting on tuesday is uh to make a very long story short um the amherst district is in in a process with the massachusetts school building authority uh there was some thought that the msba the massachusetts school building authority does give essentially reimburses at a significantly higher rate if your part if a district is part of a regionalization effort so there was some thought that oh well if the districts want to regionalize now would be the perfect time because you know an additional five or six percent on a 70 million dollar project is a pretty large incentive for the town of amherst to to take this um very very seriously if the town of pelham was interested what i shared on tuesday night is unfortunately from the msba perspective the towns would have had much needed to be much further down the road of regionalization for that to be considered in the msba process in essence a year ago actually very close to a year ago this process ended um the towns of emerson palmett many of you were at that meeting or at least some of you are at that meeting i know you were mr menino and middle school upstairs in the library and that process ended and and if that process was continuing that's really what the msba is looking for districts that want to regionalize their fur far down the process and this weeps into it uh you know they felt like if this is something the towns wanted to do the town of amherst should drop out of the msba and reapply when there is more clarity i will tell you that the amherst town of amherst is not going to drop out of the msba process uh and and wait to see about regionalization if they're going to reapply so that's the the not so good news perhaps around this at the same time i'll be done in a quick minute i'll stick with the i'm doing well with blunt i think i'll try to get to brief at the same time there's a significant revenue source that comes in if towns decide to regionalize in massachusetts and i included in the packet and emailed to you separately and the 86 page report thank you for all the six people who met a tremendous number of times to put that together and and that report really documents what the savings would be uh or new income shouldn't say savings what the new income would be uh you know and also really is clear about what are the two stumbling blocks that are the most significant ones one is how the new income is divided between the towns and the second one is governance those were two areas despite you know working with a frequent meeting schedule getting support from um consultants that we got a grant to pay for um that the groups were had trouble getting to consensus on and so you know i think for this committee to consider is a you know is it worth kind of bringing up that conversation again uh we have a lot of the data a lot of it hasn't changed in terms of what you know new funds would come in and b what process moving forward would the committee you know want to take in terms of talking to the town of amherst and and taking next steps if it's a committee's not interested that's great but i did feel like given the fiscal situation when we were in at least having the conversation tonight was a worthwhile use of time okay thank you that's helpful and i think also just important to be very clear it would not be a new starting from scratch regionalization effort it would be starting from where this last conversation left off um and so it would it wouldn't be the whole thing all over again i just think that's needs to be very clear yeah margaret [Music] um my recollection from that meeting was that amherst pretty much said we don't want to do this um after an awful lot of work and i find it hard to to me it seems like starting this conversation again is probably not going to get us anyplace different unless pelham wants to give up some things particularly in the governance area so it's just my two cents worth a bit i wonder this may be somewhat related because i wonder if this the survey that was done on families who left the district do we know what the results were just for pelham i know we had it for the region and do we anticipate many families coming back in pelham yeah so let me say that two things so the first part of your question i think is accurate i think in fairness to the amherst you know i wear multiple hats um so i tried to keep my pelham hat on but that was like one of the first meetings of the amherst town council when they were just elected and they just changed their form of government so i think there was some apprehension from that um and uh about it and that may still be true but i i also just the context matters right that it was it were people they were a group of people 13 people who were elected i think it was like the week before or something they were installed like the week before jumping into a conversation about a pretty massive governance change so i don't know if there was a scenario by which any group of new group of 13 people would say yeah let's keep doing that and i think you know to be blunt there was also a lot of vocal resistance from the town of pelham at that meeting um so you know that mattered and i think influenced the mood of that meeting i'm not criticizing it but that's how i remember it and that's i looked back at the meeting minutes and that that that's reflected um i think on your second question um would i haven't it'd be pretty identifiable if we disaggregated for pelham because it's a pretty small number of families who left but i do think there there is an interest in some families uh in coming back you know the tricky thing is in terms of the choice numbers which is some of the driving figure on this choice families when they homeschool that that that's that's not actually quite how it works right they homeschool with their home district and they'd be leaving the district um so there's not necessarily i mean theoretically there'd be a seat waiting firm but it's not as natural a flow because if you're requesting home school you request it from your home district not your choice in district so i think there are some limits to what we can gather from that survey for pelham particularly on the topic of school choice students yep brown i believe there were two main financial incentives one the transportation piece and then the other piece the reimbursement of the cost of the new amherst building to clarify you've said that piece where the they would reimburse more for the amherst building is off the table that's no longer available that's correct because the timing um you know when they're making a decision about enrollments which is happening this month then they being the msba and they see that a process ended a year ago and there's no signs that it's being resurrected they're saying if you want to do that you know you're not ready to to really regionalize which is true i can't argue the logic there so that's off the table but the regional transportation that about 245 000 a year that would still be um on the table so to speak and when do we get to express our opinion as to whether we should re-engage the regionalization discussion at this meeting right now go for it oh well i'm against it um the assessment method i've always argued that one one group is going to be subsidizing the other amherst will be subsidizing pelham or pelham will be subsidizing amherst unless the assessment is the exact amount that we're going to spend on the pelham school and the formulas weren't that the formulas were formulas and sometimes the formula would charge uh the residents more than the cost of running the pelham school and sometimes it would charge the town of pelham less than the cost of of running the pelham school in addition the transportation aid i reread the report today because i anticipated this there was a lot of hedging in that report uh there there was more than just a newly elected board from amherst who weren't willing to commit to a regionalization uh the the the bulk of the transportation savings went to amherst it didn't go to pelham the voting i forget what it was but like like one vote or less than one vote uh for pelham uh it was insulting uh and then i read further on in the report debt i'm not sure how to interpret the debt thing will this new regionalized board be able to incur debt against the will of the pelham electorate will they be able to pass some kind of debt uh issue that the town of pelham doesn't want to engage in and we only have less than one vote to vote against it um we have a problem i've heard this from a number of people pelham's always had a problem we would somehow be able to muddle through one way or the other especially with the pandemic i think it we we may we may have to have this conversation next year uh after the after the uh temporary impact of the pandemic passes let's see let's see how it settles out i'd be willing to consider this maybe next year but not this year and there are a lot of other reasons but that's it okay thank you yeah mike go ahead um so this isn't to uh try to disagree with you ron or argue with you ron but i'm going to show the slide about the cost savings and actually the problem with the cost savings is pelham always makes out the problem is that amherst doesn't always make out um and so i want to show that and that's a real problem in terms of getting amherst to engage in this is that the savings primarily go to pelham which doesn't well so let me show the slide and i can walk you through the numbers there we go um i'm going to go this way so again that button where it makes it larger is going to be really important on this one because i there's a limit to how large how clear i can make the numbers so um so what you see is the negative numbers indicate cost savings um so if you look at any of the years you can see that the bulk of the methods used would have six digits of cost savings for the town of pelham uh and pretty minimal cost savings for the town of amherst um and in some years actually it costs more uh you know for fy20 some of those formulas would have amherst actually paying forty thousand dollars more uh and pelham saving hundred twenty thousand dollars i have a question so can i just can i finish on and then so you know i'm not gonna get into all the five assessment methods because i think that's uh perhaps beyond my capacity tonight but what sean who worked on this a lot was trying to do i was trying to find a more fair method and it was just very very challenging to do and even if you look at alternative three which if you scale it looks probably appropriate for the size of pelham size of amherst you know i would argue that for the 17 000 of savings that's probably not enough to make a difference where you you know all the loss of autonomy that you'd have so i think ron's larger point about how to finance how the financing works is very accurate but pelham always saves money in all the scenarios it's it's amherst that doesn't always save money or doesn't always save enough money to perhaps make it worth it for them i was interested in the divvying up of the transportation savings there's what 260 thousand dollars in transportation savings how much of that goes to pelham how much of that goes to amherst yeah so this chart is trying to show that okay i don't understand the chart i guess yeah so the chart is showing um the estimated changes to the cost associated with assessment methods um so in every single method in every single year that it was studied pelham would end up being assessed less than it currently is paying for educating its students the challenge is alternative three you know the savings are pretty low and in methods one through four that sean developed um the savings are significant for pelham um but they're not that significant for amherst you know i'll say i'm gonna stay with sarah's thing about being blunt for sixty thousand dollars a year amherst is not going to regionalize right that's just not enough of a cost savings to make it worth all the changes that would have to come into play so i think your larger point ron about the finances being a problem about how the cost savings work equally is a very good one um and you know and it was one when it was looked at two years ago uh and a year and a half ago that we weren't able to resolve but it wasn't because pelham wouldn't save money uh in fact it was often because amherst was saving so little that the incentive for amherst just wasn't there to engage in it and that still may be a problem well we'll leave it at that but my point is maybe pelham should the costs go down but maybe the cost should have gone down more with with an equal i i read the the assessment protocols i'll read them again but i still don't understand the main gain is 260 000 for transportation aid how much of that aid goes to pelham how much of that aid goes to amherst and these numbers don't show that but i'll look at them again so you know i think that's a really important question i'll try to answer briefly that you know it's not really that the aid goes it aid goes to the region right there is no amherst there is no pelham it's like the regional schools where there's an assessment offered to each town and the assessments uh that that 200 some odd thousand dollars of savings of new of new of new money uh this chart is showing the impact to each the town and amherst in the town of pelham of how it goes the town of pelham and methods again the two alternatives and the two statutory methods would make an enormous impact positive impact on the budget of pelham the challenge is they make such a little impact on the town of amherst i don't think it's enough for the town of amherst to perhaps engage in the dialogue which i think is one of your other points right so let me ask a question at town meeting we vote for a talent for a elementary school budget correct are you saying that for fiscal 19 under alternative one that ask would be 311 000 less yes okay okay yeah um and and it wouldn't be the only variable i'd add is it would not be voting on an elementary budget it'd be voting on an assessment to the regional budget but it would have huge positive implications for pelham i'm just concerned you know using your number that in that year amherst would pay fifteen thousand dollars more what's the incentive for them to reach i agree yeah um i think we should look into this i think um it only has even a slim chance of success though if we're we're willing to give things up that we weren't willing to last time around um i mean and certainly the details in that report are really important but um i guess for me when we have our finance director and our superintendent in october coming to us with um some pretty dire budget predictions and no real indication that anything is going to change in the immediate or distant future to make those things better um you know i i think there's only so long that you can muddle along and figure it out year by year i mean we dipped into a lot of the choice revolving fund last year um and doesn't that's not really getting any bigger this year and um i think if we just keep if we try to keep solving the same problems with the same answers they're just going to stop working eventually um and i think you know from what doug presented tonight we are not currently in a budget crisis but we want to be able to make have choices before we get to a crisis because when we're in a crisis then we have far fewer choices um i feel like at least if we are willing to explore this now we might have some options that wouldn't be available to us if we waited too long margaret clicking in the wrong place um it you make a good point i is this something that also would involve the finance people in town um and i'm wondering if the affordable housing that's going to be built in town is going to have an impact a positive impact in terms of money for the school i mean we don't know who's going to rent the apartments but certainly some of them are being done with the anticipation that it would be family so i don't know if that plays into anything at all i mean i think it would be great if it did the the practical reality just of that in particular is that it takes a really long time for new housing to go in the ground so i just don't think that we i don't think we should make any decisions for what this committee does based on housing that may or may not be built and ready to be leased up in you know so i mean great consideration it could be but i think timing-wise we have to be making proactive decisions long before that are you raising your hand i can oh okay sorry yes go ahead three questions would you please make a list of those things you want us to give up i think we gave up everything in the original uh uh a proposal i don't know what's left to give up but would you make a list and share it with us well i mean i can say right now governance and money in the spirit of just being well we get we gave up we we accepted one one one vote i i don't no that wasn't fun mike you can probably speak to this more eloquently so so two things i don't know if that question was directed to me and so i'm not asking you to do anything i'm just trying to present an option for you to perhaps pursue i think when i was saying the money and the governance those were the two in my opinion heavily unresolved issues that you know we didn't have an assessment method that ever got recommended they looked at a number of and i think there's four different governance models there was never recommendation and so you know if the committee wants to pursue it it might be good if amherst is willing to and i have no idea full disclosure absolutely no idea what they would to actually have a group that says okay we think this is the method that could work in terms of the finances we think this is a fair approach towards governance and then see how people respond but in terms of what i'm asking you it's just whether you want to pursue this and and even what um this document is has a bunch of choices without even a recommendation and i'm not trying to criticize the group that worked on it they just never got there because it sort of uh it ended before they got to a recommendation place um but i think one of the hard things from my perspective is without those two things even with with clarity of like what a group would recommend it sort of just stays in the stagnant place i'd almost rather if the committee wants to pursue it someone a group get together if amherst is willing and say we think these are the two is the best way to do the finances we think is the best way to do governance and you all say no that's terrible it's not going to happen as opposed to where it is now where like no one even knows what the real plan would be and again that's no critique to the people who spend a tremendous amount of time putting this together but you know i think there's not actually that much to respond to because there's not a recommendation that's clear on either of those items my second question you said we can build on this but don't we have doesn't town meeting have to appoint a special committee and the town of amherst to appoint a special committee and then basically formulate a new report isn't it well is that true well i mean i think eventually that there would it would have to become more formal than it is what we're talking about now is just trying to get a read just on these five committee members here um to find out what folks want to pursue i think from there it would make sense to have another stage of a more informal exploration into this to see you know we're not going to have the town vote to create a board here if amherst is like well we're not creating our board so have fun at your meetings you know so i think we would have to do something informal first and then if folks in pelham wanted to engage and if in amherst they did then we would have to get more formal yep go ahead my third question and it it really depends on how what the impact of our discussion and that is this ultimately has to come to a vote and it wasn't clear last time whether it was a town-wide vote or whether it was a vote at the um annual town meeting uh because it would make a difference uh in terms of whether i could well i'm only one person so i mean it can't hurt me to to discuss it more but i don't see well point is it going to be a town-wide vote or an annual town meeting vote meaning if we pursue this and if ultimately it comes to that point where let's assume the committee recommends uh regionalization amherst recommends regionalization it won't happen unless the town of pelham chimes in does the pelham just help him chime in through a town-wide vote or does the town of pelham chime in through a vote at the annual town meeting yeah go ahead mike yep i believe it's a vote at the annual town meeting because the town meeting in pelham is the legislative body that would make such a vote it would have recommendations um from school committee select board probably finance committee as well um but uh it's it's not it doesn't involve an override or something like that um where it would occur at a town-wide level that's my current understanding those are my three questions all right great thank you yeah doug go ahead so recalling my uh service and town meeting in amherst so because pelham is a full town meeting and not a representative town meeting um it's effectively like a an election so it's i think in the eyes legal eyes of the state uh either is equal um and so uh town meeting uh having a vote or taking action is the same as having a uh a ballot question that you have in it okay so it's the same i think any okay i mean i understand racially there are differences between how people approach that and whether people will attend town meeting versus go to the polls but from good i'm going to go with brenda first and then margaret go ahead brenda um i think that it would be worth exploring regional regionalization and kind of moving this along because also yeah there's not specific recommendations and maybe if we had specific recommendations or um at least consulted with amherst to see if there have been some changes in the economy that would make you know uh this more interesting to them or they would want to think about it i don't know how much the school committees on both sides have changed maybe there's just different players uh different conditions i just think it's worth looking into certainly i have uh lots of concerns uh as a as a town resident but i think considering that this has been an ongoing conversation since i moved to pelham it just seems like moving this process along so that if we get into a tough position we're kind of ready to move forward i think that's that would be wise a one quick question so if town meeting is you know the timeline i guess thinking about if that would happen this year if that would happen next year or and also wondering is there is there an expiration date and when these funds would it would go away for or do you feel like the the government wants to continue to have small schools regionalized and that may be that funny may be their continuing yeah my perspective is that that funding will be there continuously i think the percentage reimburse that sometimes we do see variations on that um the current administration is very high on regionalization they frankly are pretty explicit that they wish lots of other districts would regionalize i don't know if you've noticed what's going on in vermont i mean they've taken that to a new level where they're forcing regionalization on districts there's been no talk of that in massachusetts i think the capacity to pull that off in a state this complex and large is probably not going to happen anytime soon vermont has a very few small number of districts so it you know their superintendent conference calls with their previous decoded with their um commissioner were generally in person like everyone just got together it's like 38 people in vermont or something like that and that doesn't happen in massachusetts so the scale's really different but i do think the commitment's there there's actually a state law that any reduction to um the regional transportation line has to be met with a similar reduction to chapter 70.
all of the work involving covet has been accomplished with support participation and collaboration from other departments within asdb at this time human resources would like to thank the asdb board of directors asdb's executive and educational leadership teams business services information technology operations and our staff members for their collaborative efforts in such an extraordinary time these times are not easy it requires flexibility patience and creativity we appreciate all of the work our staff members are doing in these challenging times at this time i'd like to thank you for your time and make myself available to answer any questions that you may have looks like you're off the hook anita you did you gave them all the data they're ready to move on so that that concludes my assistant superintendent's report thank you very much uh thank you dr rex uh move on to item 1.05 information item superintendent's report uh superintendent rickman good afternoon president nigro the assistant superintendent rex member of the board of directors and the asp community welcome to our december 3rd 2020 board meeting i'm happy to see you all here as you've been hearing from our leadership team there's been a lot of challenges for us so far this year we've been meeting those challenges we are providing the education and support that our students need across the state so i just want to express my appreciation to the education leadership team to the teachers to the staff to even our students for working so hard as you've already heard our teachers have never gone through this experience before and that's true of everybody here but i think for our teachers most of us if we never taught in a classroom we don't truly appreciate just how difficult the current environment is our teachers are having to provide in-person classroom instruction at the same time they're providing the remote instruction that's never happened before that's a new experience and with these new experiences while we're doing awesome creative productive work that's really giving high quality education and supports to our students that work is also exhausting you can see our leadership team they're tired they're exhausted our teachers are tired they are exhausted and even with that exhaustion they're still able to every day to remind the students and themselves to wear their face covering to follow their social distancing and to wash their hands on a regular basis the one thing that you may have kind of picked up on but i want to highlight is that during this time of the community spread of the virus we've had and we do have individual staff with the virus they have been infected at the same time we have not yet had any spread in our two campuses we've not had any spread with our bus drivers with the chaperone with itinerant teachers so our efforts to really set the model of you have to wear the face covering you have to be socially decent you have to wash your hands and you have to stay home while you sit it's working as far it's worked really well so i just wanted to point that out to you and at the same time you asdb board of directors this fall have had two very productive work study sessions we had a work study session on september 24th and the second one on november 5th during those two work study sessions you were able to come up with four pillars and 12 priorities for the agency so before i describe that i want to remind you that in the last five to six years asdb has really been focused on rebuilding the foundation so if we use the metaphor of a house we have to start with the foundation what's been our work with the foundation well you may remember we identified and established the agency operating operating principles that is act accountability collaboration and transparency we have made the effort to create a culture of continuous improvement and to make decisions based on data and you heard a lot of data from our leadership team this afternoon we've also been trying to ensure as you heard from jay johnson that the education and services we provide are consistent include quality exercises are sustainable and have the continuity in our ability to provide those education and services statewide that's the foundation i think we we have it now we are building the pillars the frame of the house and those four pillars that you identified are outstanding let me start excellent communication and relationships outstanding student development superb organizational culture and effective resource management each pillar has three priorities so we have a total of 12 priorities i'm going to detail those priorities right now so the first pillar the three priorities are is our first rate customer service build capacity with school districts and community engagement the second pillar has under the outstanding student development it's the early language acquisition it's the high academic achievement and its social emotional learning the third color is the superb organizational culture those three priorities are a culture of continuous improvement we've talked about that a few times already that we as leaders will mal model server to leadership and third we will focus on staff diversity the fourth pillar on effective resource management the three priorities are human resource optimization that is the best use of our people the second priority is human human and capital resource alignment the third is the i.t the technology integration and improvement so we have our framework we're getting ready to build the house of asdb so today's agenda as we go further on we look at the schedule for 2021 we are proposing two more work study sessions one possibly in february february 4th and another one in april april 8th so the next step for you the board of directors is to review those priorities to make sure that you are in agreement with the direction we're going and then to look at possible metrics for the agency when we identify the metrics then we will be able to measure our progress towards meeting the priorities that we've identified here so i just want to thank you that during this time of the pandemic that you took the time to come together and to come up with the pillars and with the priorities i'm looking forward to continuing the discussion with you and i'll take any questions at this time if you have any doesn't seem to be any questions so i'll turn it back over to you david uh thank you superintendent um we can move on now to 2.01 action item approval of the consent agenda consistent board policy to include items this is shelley oh hi joey mr nigro hello i do have class at six o'clock oh sorry nothing for you miss reichman i just am asking if we can move up um some of the items that we needed to discuss i believe those items seven points give me one moment 7.03 and 7.07 those two items i'm wondering if we can move those up um to discuss and vote before i have to leave before 6 pm uh okay thank you shelley um superintendent reichman we have discretion to do that yeah i'm not sure do we need the board to to vote to move those and take those out of order i don't know if we need the board vote to change the order of the agenda i think you can decide that you need to vote okay i'm sorry that was uh that was mark saying that we need to vote um yeah that's mark you need to vote yeah i uh that's the point i'm unclear about at the moment um would uh i guess we would have a motion we've uh let's see we're in we're currently in 2.01 um with the board uh would anyone on the board like to move that we take those two items out of order i believe she just asked that that would be a motion in and of itself so okay joey if we this is shelley i moved to move uh 7.03 and 7.07 up on the agenda to start the discussion before 2.01 okay um is there a second for that this is second oh okay great uh all in favor uh you can either say i or open your camera and and do a thumbs up no isd one two three i thank you i see all of us so it's unanimous that we will take those out of order um so we'll the whole 2.01 will proceed to 7.03 discussion action item proposed bill the state legislature uh superintendent reichman uh also noted that pursuant to ars 384310383 the board may vote to go into executive session will not be open to the public's discussion consultation from legal advice with the board's attorney as it relates to this item uh superintendent reichman yes so i'll go ahead and try to explain the proposal here and then we'll go from here as you recall earlier this year i shared with you that asdb and ade had been an ongoing conversation um with the arizona department of education ade about the responsibilities of the local education agencies leas and or district of residence dor during these discussions ade shared with us that it was their interpretation of our authorizing statutes that the lease the district of residence for students enrolled in our campus-based schools the primary responsibility for those students went back to the lea and or the district of residence um this understanding was different from how we asdb has understood our role and responsibility previous to that we just assumed that the minute the student is accepted and enrolled into our campus-based programs our schools then we had primary responsibility for those students that we were responsible for the registration for the curriculum for the assessment for the student academic performance on the assessment testing results and for the graduation so in those conversations becoming to understand that oh ade believes that the responsibility for the testing results and for the data reporting really resides with the local education agencies so based on that understanding we developed a document with ade that document i had shared with you earlier this year it's just a document saying policies agree to between asdb and the local education agencies we sent out that document earlier this fall to 88 school districts 10 school districts signed and sent it back to us 78 have not signed we have gotten feedback from school districts asking us what is our impact and not being responsible for the student academic performance so that's created a really difficult situation for us um and we are now asdb we are now at a crossroad and we're trying to figure out which path to take right now i know of two paths maybe there are other paths that we've not yet considered at this point in time but the two that i can see is one is we we do nothing we stay with the status quo um we tell school districts that when they refer and we accept a student into our campus-based schools yes we provide the education we do the curriculum we do the graduation requirements we will provide the assessment however the assessment results will go back to the school districts and those school districts will have to include it in their um letter grade their accountability for the school district as a whole and if we do that to stay that course we continue to get feedback from school districts that asdb if we are providing education then we should be accountable for the results of the education we are providing to our students so that's the conundrum there the second possible pathway is to look at our authorizing legislation that authorizes asdb and to see if we can clarify the roles and responsibilities of asdb we did some research around the country we looked at other schools for the deaf and schools for the blind and we found examples of other schools for the deaf and schools for the blind who are designated as l.e.a.s in their states we look specifically at the utah school for the nafta blind they have in their state statute that says that for those students in attending the school for the deaf in the school for the blind that that that the utah school utah school for the deaf and blind is an lda for those students and are accountable for the education outcomes of those students we actually talk and whole that language in their statutes and put it into the proposed bill that you have a copy of right now so that's our proposal to you i think i'm going to turn this over to on and melissa to expand this a little bit more um on cat cobb and melissa de vries has been doing a pretty in-depth analysis of what it would mean for us to be an lea so on and melissa all right good evening everybody my name is oren just i guess for a little bit of history since there's been school accountability which is what since nclb days 30 years about asdb has been responsible for the scores of the students who were in the who are in the day schools um so back in the day when we had a thing called ayp ade did work with asdb to ensure that they were part of the accountability model when ade switched to the a through f letter accountability it seems like around that time for whatever reason when it came to state accountability asdb fell off the map a little bit um our scores on the state tests still did count toward our schools to where you could look up the schools and see uh the percentages of how kids are doing on the ames and the azmerit um but there wasn't any i guess real accountability besides that um interim superintendent marv lamer came in was that five six years ago um with a specific mission for for asdb i think part of that was to increase the accountability in the day schools while dr lamer was in he did work with ade to get asdb within the federal accountability system in which case both of our schools were deemed in school improvement they were put on school improvement plans we were able to work with both principals to really put good plans in place on how to turn around those schools dr lamar also worked with ade to get us funding like school improvement funding and title one funding uh and that's been kind of where we've been over the last five years is again trying to to move forth of when the kids come to us we take responsibility and accountability is a good thing um it it's that external influence that keeps people on top of their game as superintendent reichmann mentioned in the last year there's been some changes out as to how that statute is interpreted and at this point you know if the way that we're being interpreted is that we're not schools but we're institutions therefore uh the accountability has to go back to the lease ade is correct when they say nobody's being held accountable when it comes to state accountability for our kids they were under federal accountability for state accountability um that wasn't happening and i think in trying to clarify the statute that's something that we're trying to do to ensure that asdb can be held accountable uh can be the lea um once those kids do come to our our campus programs the i'm trying to look at my notes here melissa feel free to chime in at any time um at this point as i mentioned any of the scores that are received here will go back to the the school of record and district um that obviously is a concern of a lot of our partnering districts and it makes sense um you know the analogy that i'm kind of using is when i hurt my shoulder back in the day i went to my general physician who then referred me to a specialist who i worked with for a matter of time if anything bad happened between me and that specialist i wouldn't go back uh and go after that general physician um that person referred me to a specialist now it's between me and the specialist and if that specialist screws up that's between me and uh and him and her not a matter of me going back and and suing the general physician so we are we are trying to clear that up uh figure out a way that our schools can be schools um as you all know there's a lot of pride when it comes to schools for the deaf any of you that were around six years ago when we had what was it the 100 year anniversary just being all the people that showed up through all the different cohorts through the years and their pride to be able to have a diploma from our schools to be part of an actual school and not something to where this is more of a place where we're going to put the students but at the end of the day there's a lot of responsibilities that still go back to the home district because we're not considered schools anymore um so i would this is melissa de vries and i'd like to jump in here when the document went out about our our roles and responsibilities with the public school districts um one of the things that we did is we had a lot of questions from our home school districts and kristin rex and i fielded most of those questions and the biggest problem that school districts had was in the accountability piece and that was something that annette reichman had talked about when she was was kind of presenting the problem um some of our larger districts phoenix union glendale union um litchfield tucson unified um amphitheater are all districts um and there were many others that said you know why should we be sending you our kids when um we're being held accountable for them and you're not um so that was a huge um sticking point with the big changes that were implemented this last year in asdb's roles and this is oren one more time to piggyback on what superintendent reichman said we did a lot of research here to see how are other state schools for the deaf and blind doing this um utah because they are kind of considered one of the best we did quite a bit of research with them we reached out to their superintendent of public instruction of utah and then annette met with the um the actual superintendent of the school there but just a list of other other state schools for the deaf and blind where they are considered a kind of a special lea to where they're the lea but they're still identified as a i guess a unique entity just to go off the list the florida state schools for the deaf and blind are considered kind of the the lea utah west virginia virginia michigan colorado tennessee hawaii louisiana georgia texas alabama montana and north carolina and again i believe a couple years ago somebody on the board mentioned do we look at what other state schools for the deaf and blind are doing and we have been doing that and uh as superintendent reichman said what what we're proposing in that bill which i would still argue is a draft to some degree is really what some of these top-notch schools for the deaf and blind are doing to provide the best access uh for their kids so this is melissa again um one of the things that we had looked at too was would the bill impact some of our funding chain our funding streams and right now um what we're looking at in this draft bill does not affect our our funding stream which is right now the um in the voucher program in the institutional vouchers and so that's a separate part of arizona statute and in the changes that um we were talking about and discussing in the draft and have been you know working through as a team um the changes that have to do with the funding pieces um the r2 um 404 that that does not change as well as um the classroom site fund the 15 1305 that does not change as well um another area that that had been kind of brought to our attention as a possible area of concern was in the area of um resolution um and with our if if there's a dispute among parents and um our providers our home school district arizona department of ed dispute resolution gets involved um prior to this year we were held accountable if the action um was us not implementing the iep as it should be planned if it was something that the school district said that they were going to do or were supposed to do and the school district was like held accountable so again our proposed changes in looking at us becoming accountable does not change the accountability that we've always had as far as dispute resolution and and making sure that we're going through due process we still share in that responsibility and if it's something that we said that we were supposed to do um then we're the ones that we want we want to be held accountable for what we were supposed to be doing and this this is oren i guess the last thing to add is the whole point is how can we make it to where asdb when it comes to the accountability that the every child in arizona is held accountable but the ones who are in our day school we're the ones who will be held accountable um we were in federal school improvement before so you know going back to that if we're in improvement we'd be in federal improvement and then on the state side to put us in the a through f accountability which is on the state side the accountability model uh superintendent reichman i don't know if there's anything else you wanted us to elaborate on i think we have given our board members a lot to think about so i'm going to turn this back over to david uh thank you superintendent and uh from here i think if there's any any board member that wants to discuss this with our attorneys we'd have to go to executive session to do that um so that probably makes sense to do that first um is there any board member that would like to to enter executive session for the purposes of discussing this with the attorneys so just out of clarification david the smart sims you it would be to speak to our attorneys about whether or not we can or can't recommend a statute or is it to speak to our attorneys about whether or not there is or isn't a legal issue um it's not whether or not we can we can take this action it's it's whether or not we have uh by if this if this were adopted uh would that change our legal position on you know various items uh throughout the agency uh in other words if we were to to put this forward forward um you know would we have uh would that change your legal position with regard to any event or matter that's that's ongoing um okay i mean okay i i'm not sure that that's the legal counsel i mean it's typically you know is there a legal counsel about this specific issue not what are the downstream implications of it you know that would be something that if that legal issue arose then we would need legal counsel okay mike um i have uh i have some questions legal questions that uh about potential conflicts about where this red line might be headed and i'm not sure if that would qualify for executive session or not but i'd like those questions answered by our aeg if that's possible suggesting executive session yeah i'm just not sure i'm okay if you want to go there i mean it seems to me the concept is to have a discussion about whether or not this is or isn't a good idea in other words you know the status quo is actually a new status quo as compared to reverting to the prior uh way that the agency would work now so i'll just throw in my two cents um the the data and the history and the test scores do not demonstrate that that prior situation before this change to the new status quo was the least bit effective that the agency was doing a good job in fact the perception out in the community was it was an insulated world an insulated institution that nobody could change or nobody could get um to to move it was kind of the the kids were put into this system and the system did what it did and the districts really didn't have any say and i would say it's pretty reasonable to say that the flagstaff issue is a direct result of this that the flagstaff district didn't feel that they could hold asdb uh accountable so from my perspective uh i'm not sure why we would want to lessen accountability um you know the the question that ort said was you know um or the question what that was posed was why should a district send a student to asdb when the district is accountable the fundamental answer to that is is because we're the pros from dover and we provide great services and we're going to help your kids so much that it's going to reflect well on your district that seems to be a very simple answer to that question not well this not a shimmy about who ultimately is responsible because it's about the kids not about the measurements um the other comment i'd make is the analogy of the surgical specialist so i am a specialist and so the way i'm held accountable is if i don't do a good job the primary care doctor doesn't send me any more patients and so that's why you actually want these trails of accountability so if you don't do a good job and the district gets a bad outcome they'll stop sending you patients or students so to me this seems like a a very great transformative thing i actually haven't heard what would be the fundamental crux reason that we would want to send this statute to the legislature so if there's some i i would like to hear from the the executive team what the fundamental thing we are doing or why the status quo is something we should go away from so i don't need legal counsel for that i would just say if the board thinks that that's okay i mean seek legal interpretation but from my perspective i'm a no unless somebody can tell me why we want to revert to something that historically demonstrated poor educational outcomes for several decades thanks uh thanks mark and uh right the discussion of whether or not to adopt this certainly is is in public and not subject to executive session um so you know certainly we want to have we want to hear your comments on that which we just did um in terms of the the uh mike i know that you had some legal questions um is it something that you would like to go to executive session about to ask our council or do you think these questions are more related to whether or not we should approve this this measure or if you have additional questions for the administrative team if you're a no you don't need what's that if you're a no you don't need legal counsel can i ask who wrote the who wrote the red line who wrote the red line um we uh murphy she did that um again using the utah state schools for the deaf and blind their statutes we just literally pulled that out and put that in to the current draft that we're looking at i think uh yes hello mike um yes i use the utah statute as a template based upon my understanding of what the administrative team wanted to achieve with um with this red line and what did the administrative team want to achieve with this redline the administrative team to my understanding in a net correct me if i'm wrong but the administrative team wanted to be able to accept accountability specifically for the campus based schools so we are specifically talking only about the tucson based campus and the phoenix day school for the deaf and accountability would remain with the uh districts of residence for those students who are based in the itinerant programs i'm not sure if we need to go an executive session or not but i would prefer that we do if i'm going to ask questions that might be questionable just to make sure that we're on the same page um i uh if there are questions that that are aimed at getting legal counsel then we certainly can do that if they're if they're hard questions that relate to other matters then now you know here's the place to do it have we all right um so and right did we consider um the full scope of arizona revised statues as they surround what it means to be an lea i guess specifically and i'm not a lawyer so at a first read um like the definition of lea in 34 usfr or sorry cfr 323 had we considered the the full scope of how um this might conflict with either other state laws or federal laws or how it might affect funding like specifically outside of the band that was written and provided is that for me to answer mike for the executive team or maria certainly okay so what i can tell you about my process is that we went ahead and um did a round table with our subject matter experts with oren with melissa i also had the opportunity to consult consult with shaina cooper um regarding the financial implications with paul creasy regarding any e-rate and i.t implications i also had the opportunity to meet with um annette with kristen multiple times and we did have we did run this by um deborah sterling r-a-a-g for review as well so and annette if you'd like to jump in please go ahead yeah i think the question is did we do a thorough analysis of other related state statutes and federal statutes no we have not done that obviously we know we need to do that but what we have right now is a draft and we recognize there will be revisions as we go along annette i'm just going to jump in and say i did have the opportunity to i'm and i apologize for interrupting mike i'm sorry i did have the opportunity to look at um statutes for other states as well um which is how i i hit upon the utah statute as the one that seemed to be the best fit for um what the stated objective was so i i did do yes some of that so if we're looking at utah and i apologize am i am i interrupting mark i see a hand up i guess my question is um like for utah there are accountability laws and there there are definitions um that the law that you cut from looks like it was one among many that looked at the full scope of accountability funding a whole host of out of items that would allow that to happen and i i'm i'm concerned that we're inventing a term limited lea which seems to limit um input from the district of responsibility while at the same time holding i think from the abstract doing trying to both have accountability for asdb but at the same time holding the district's responsibility to account to some extent and i see some obvious conflicts with federal statute in the way that it's written that and if i'm i'm i'm not a lawyer but um some of the pieces i i don't know how they ended up endorsed by asdb to share if we haven't done some basic testing against federal and state statute like i'm i'm very uncomfortable with um just the narrow band of edits that was shared with the team without looking at the full scope of the legality of what's being suggested um and i know that for several years we've talked about the issue of having representation like our iep meetings and buy-in from from the stakeholders that we're attempting to serve with these populations i don't know if the perception of cutting them out of the out of the accountability pieces for the kids that are living in their communities that eventually after graduating they're going to be going back to those communities how we want to uh limit the the scope of influence that our stakeholders have when it relates to um providing us students um i have a a a couple of questions um uh have we explored um i mean we haven't had a whole lot of time uh to consider the new stat the new what people folks are calling the new status quo um but i think if looking back we can we can point to some issues with data reporting and um outcomes and a whole host of issues that the current status may assist with and if we want to be held to account for the test scores why can't we be held to account by the lease that are sending us these kids i i know as a former special ed director high school aspect director you know i was one of the folks that would go to every iep at asdb because those were my kids i understood that this was the least restrictive environment for those kids but i was invested in making sure that they had the best experience we could give them and whole adam was willing to be held quickly for those kids because they're my kids um the perception that we're kind of moving away from that i think i've perhaps some ethical problems with that but also some legal issues and how that would fit um how that relates to idea which has i understand a bit of a different well that's the federal law might have a different um philosophical take on lre but when when we're looking at holding um someone to account to ensure that the at least i think these kids need to have as many eyes as we can have on them you need to have uh people really concerned about how these kids are testing how they are doing post-secondary um if their seo needs are being met active participation by community members in iep meetings annually and i'm just really concerned that this might take away from some of those steps that we've been trying to look forward to and i'm also not super sure that the way this is written it looks like you're weird that and i was a little i you know saw this for the first time a couple days ago um without really anticipating that this is coming down the pike but um you know writing writing narrowly writing that we're also going to now be accepting federal funds it's a bit more complex than that so i'm afraid that this might not be the tool if the goal is to access those federal funds that this might not be the way that we're actually going to accomplish that if that's what you're trying to accomplish um so there are a number of concerns and i'm not sure if this is the uh the right timer or version of how this is gone or if we want to and maybe this is actually part of a strategic plan i mean this wasn't discussed that if this is what the agency that wants to see happen over the night oh currently maybe we should all build it out and talk about what the benefits are because i'm not sure if we've had that opportunity to look at what's in the best interest of these kids long term and uh um i'm not uh prepared to vote uh for something that i'm not sure ethically i'm i'm with yet not saying that there's that uh that there's not plenty of room to hold a lot of folks to account when it comes to the outcomes of these kids but i uh as a as a former consumer i would i would be remiss to think that um creating any kind of a barrier between the least that that are having these kids attend with us um if it's in their best interest to limit the accountability to make sure that those folks know that these kids are taken care of and that's more of an emotional piece that i didn't wasn't quite going to go down i think just the legal concerns of how this is written with the narrow scope comparing it to a state that does not have a state institution in their constitution um that doesn't have the same voucher funding flow that doesn't have uh uh you know there's basically 53 different ways because the territories of the united states 53 different unique ways that these schools are put together we've talked about this um repeatedly and you know god bless arizona in 1916 when we became a state uh we wrote a constitution and it memorialized state hospital and arizona state schools for the deaf and blind um so i think before we could consider acting we should maybe take a step back take a look at the full scope who how do we hold ourselves ourselves being used to be how do we hold ourselves accountable do we have data streaming agreements that we could point to issues and we have we explored other options before um coming up with a a fairly narrowly written state piece of state legislation that might perhaps create more issues than it solves um and can and before we go about that take a deep dive take a look at the other state statutes that are perhaps more difficult to rewrite than this one and take a deep dive look at how this interacts with ideaa um philosophically or we're this at rsea ade is held to account by osep who sees things fairly black and white um and if we haven't taken a look at how this affects any of those pieces um i'd be very remiss in being able to offer support um at this point or if if this is truly what that the board of directors wants to see happen for our kids in our state and i'm not sure if we want to go over some of those legal questions now in executive session or not uh or if we want to hear out what some other folks have to say but um and i'm not even sure if we're looking for an action item right now superintendent or if we're just looking for discussion i would like to hear from other board members their thoughts as well this is lynn i agree with mike um i and going back to what melissa said about school districts reaction when they first found out that the test scores would go back to their schools i know and i heard from a number of districts that were shocked and oh no that can't happen we're not providing instruction we don't want to be responsible for the test results but that was an initial reaction and what i'm hearing now and i cannot speak for all school districts the ones that i am i hear from and there's a few um they want to make sure that asdb is accountable for the kids that they can keep an eye on those test scores and if they aren't coming up to where they need to be then districts they want to do what's best for their kids and by having that little bit of accountability and contact um they can make sure that their kids are getting the best that they can get i i'm i'm not for this bill at this point are there other board members this is uk um i liked the the point that mark brought up that if this or it might have been mark it might have been mike um but if this is a way that we are looking to move that i i do think it needs to be part of the strategic plan and i for one would like to have a more in-depth discussion to make sure that it's not only in alignment with um current state educational statutes but also with the federal ones and maybe put it on the one of the agendas for one of the upcoming work study sessions as part of our discussion within the strategic planning process i i don't want to make a short-sighted decision and i do think we need to look at some of the macrocosm impacts as opposed to just the current microcosm impacts are there other other board members that would like to speak this is mike i just have a quick question um i think the statistics are the number of districts that supported and how many would not sign on what what were those figures currently do we get those or not so so this is oren at the current count we have had 10 out of the 88 that submitted it okay thank you and uh superintendent right to clarify this is we're only talking about the brick and mortar schools correct not not the co-ops yes that's right we're only talking about the campus-based schools which is pbsd asd asv those three schools great um and i would know um you know in terms of the strategic plan it's kind of already there so we we have one of our um guiding principles uh his accountability is paramount and defined um so this is you know this issue certainly um is is is in our strategic plan now um so when we talk about it that's the one of the principles that we're furthering by you know by attacking this and related issues yeah mike um or david so that's where i'm confused i'm i don't understand how not allowing the district to hold us accountable makes us more accountable i i don't i don't think that's the the issue right so the current the the way that this worked a couple of years ago is that the agency would be or some of the schools ptsd and asd and asp would be accountable for the the testing scores for those students as opposed to those scores being attributed to uh their ascending leas um and then this this change uh would be would mean that that reporting responsibility or the change that that happened you know a few months ago in terms of interpretation was that the the sending lease would be responsible for reporting uh that data as opposed to the the agency itself so so the the the in other words the scores from the brick brick-and-mortar school students not the iterative students the attorney students were always and continue to be under under their under their individual lease but here instead of being aggregated and reported as as asdb scores they'd be sent back to the lease i think part of it would be harder to see how we're doing if we're not aggregating those scores together and reporting them ourselves and being accountable for them uh to ourselves this is not to say that uh you know there may be other issues with this that as mike pointed out but if we have i think you know generally more accountability is better than than less you know for as an agent help me understand and i'm not an educational pathway expert so you know all the money and all of the acronyms and all of that are way beyond me right i i don't really have an idea what idea is but that's an aside the the the reality is is the district chooses or suggests that a student go to the brick and mortar school correct and sends funds that way correct um well it determined there's a determination that it's the least restrictive environment and they right and then the ib team decides to send it to the one of the brick and mortar schools right and so as a if you look at the district as somebody who and then they they say oh my gosh look at these scores we're not going to send them there anymore because they're not doing well why why is the pathway of accountability gone i mean to me that's a relationship issue in other words there's nothing that would prevent asdb from getting those scores from those districts and so if you then it's entry and aggregation unless i i i don't understand but ultimately you know the measurements of your outcome the scores are what they are the issue is is if you look at the district as a customer then they can hold you accountable for what happens to the product that you deliver and so if you put it all within asdb then you're kind of the kids are put on to these brick and mortar schools and then the districts kind of wash their hands of where they actually referred so going back to that specialist primary care analogy the primary care doctor sends them to the specialist and doesn't care about the outcome of their patient no that's not how it works the primary care doctor sends somebody to a specialist and wants their patient to continue to succeed which is exactly what the home district should want is that their kid to succeed and the way they know they're succeeding is they get the test scores i i i'm just not understanding unless somebody can help me how that's a bad thing i understand it's a more difficult thing but i'm not sure that it's a bad thing oren did you want to add to that with what we're doing currently versus sure so under no matter which direction we go if it's the new status quo we're trying to go back to the old status quo under both situation the iep team always had the right to pull the kid from our day schools if they didn't feel like it was the least restrictive environment so in no matter which model we go the home district always has that mechanism to say at the iep meeting we're not seeing the growth here or we're not liking the scores therefore um we might be second-guessing this least restrictive is different than quality right in other words what they could say is is this is maybe the we have to look for a different least restrictive environment because you guys aren't cutting the mustard it could i mean the least restrictive environment is supposed to give the child the best access the to the education so if we're not showing that we're doing the scores then it could be what else is out there what are the other options for the student and no matter which way it goes that'll always be an opportunity for the iep team not every district sends to our agency so there are districts in the state that do not interpret that our agency is the least restrictive environment that there are alternatives that are just as suitable for children correct in their determination in their determination they have students of which we are not the least restrictive and they don't see us as the least restrictive environment right because what we're talking about are two different things least restrictive is different than best quality and so the question becomes from my perspective it's about the quality in other words so when they say that sometimes they're maybe using that as a little bit of a word to say well this is a least restrictive environment too where they're kind of like saying but it's really a better education i'm not saying it is or isn't the case but that sounds to me to be like the best competition for accountability out there right it's a free market concept that you know the way that the the the tide will rise is through competition and so if if the agency can't deliver a good educational product the parents and the school districts will vote with their feet they'll go somewhere else when you take away that accountability it's great you have a passive people kind of the the district drops them off and it doesn't become it doesn't reflect on them so whether or not that is the least restrictive environment's not the issue they're not held accountable in the reverse about quality and so to me it seems like this is and i suspect that's why ade came to this conclusion that ultimately somebody thinks that this is a better model in terms of accountability that's my i could be wrong but mike manley would have better insight i'm just kind of shooting off the cuff there because again i don't know any of the acronyms and actually i think our decision was based on the attorney general not in a vacuum right but my point is is those statutes exist for a reason so somebody want to make sure that we're protecting these kids and making sure that folks are watching out for them so that's you know uh action whether or not there should be forwarded as a statute i'm sorry uh mark so you you're you're moving to decide yes or no should we advance this statute to the legislature well i think we should decide i mean i think that's i can ask for a second or not i mean well we're to vote to decide that i think you should move to either table this or move to not send it uh or move to send it i mean one of one of those three things right so i make a motion to have that vote the the other vote to not send it well yeah well that's what i mean we can have that vote but you have to make a break we have to take one of those right i'll second that motion this is dean wait are we voting not to send it or to send it not if you say yes you are voting not to send it okay so we have a motion to not send this bill to the legislature um so all in favor of of not sending so again to be clear voting for this motion means we are not sending this bill this time to the legislature we're in this form to the legislature so all those in favor uh say hi hi mike uh any um is that did you did you vote yeah i i'm sort of on i sort of have a question of does that completely pull this off the table for future discussion or if there's a will there be a revisit uh that's it just means that we're we're not going to approve it or send it to you at this time right okay at this meeting or in this form yes okay then i'm in favor of that okay all right uh any opposed no okay um so that uh has concluded so we will not say that mike um i don't i you know as an employee of the department of education and a certified special ed teacher we are invested in the success of these kids and a hundred percent um if we can work with superintendent uh reichman and get to the gist of where we want folks to be held to account we're a hundred percent open to doing whatever we can do to help um the ourselves populations that are serving in in this institution constitutionally defined institution um and i i you know obviously the discussion isn't isn't over but um i want to portray the willingness to do what we think is the in the best interest of these kids in the state um from littlefield to yuma so we need to cover the entire state and think of what's in the best interest of all these these kids so okay well we can't be voted to not move this forward now this discussion is going to continue and i'd really like for this video okay okay sorry soapbox i'm wanted to throw that out there uh sure thank you um so now uh we can move on to the next agenda item uh so we we had voted earlier in the meeting to move out of order just a bit uh i believe we're going down to 707.
not evil rom as julia pushed the ball up the court and blocked by gabby spurgeon she's been all over the place here when she came in had two great stops there on defense and a great rebound for the spartans as that one is poked away by 34. great hustle there but julia gets a spin and gets to the inside of the paint and off the mark with eight seconds to go five seconds and out of bounds and spartans excuse me the cubs will retain possession 4.4 seconds to go on the clock as 31 takes a jump shot hits the back of the rim spurgeon with the rebound and there we have it folks the end of the first quarter your home team northside spartans 10 and your madison junior high basketball team three and here are our cheerleaders walsh once again we want to thank our sponsors columbus auto group and forced construction for your generous sponsorships for all of these live streams we are able to do we want to thank you guys for watching if you guys are watching please like and subscribe so you don't miss any other further matchups we might do here on youtube so we are starting the second quarter six minutes is on the clock 10-3 our score the home team spartans are on top and north sides will retain possession here starting this second quarter as abby wheatley and 34 nadavel ram is in the backcourt for the spartans it's number 20 it looks like addison borders checks in for the spartans as that one is stolen but hit the line great hustle there by madison cub julia davis as that one is into number 22 and off the hands oh my spartans but kept alive and this layup is off the mark and will stay on this end wheatley takes it out into number 22 she takes a jump shot and off the mark and madison will reach get the ball back here with 5 43 left to go here in the second quarter as julia davis brings the ball up to court and she passed it gets it right back but stolen by number 23 abbey wheatley great hustle there by her as she gets to steal and that one is thrown away right idea just a little too too far out in front of the spartan and we have a sub number 12.
it's not always implemented with fidelity as dr slaughter could tell you and mr mangano before him but but it was put in because um vulnerable but i think in the last couple years and it came up earlier there's actually been a real response to a lot of the work a lot of concerns about rural schools pelham is a member of the rural schools coalition her husband anyway um that group is a little disorganized at the moment um but you know it's gotten a lot of advocacy that's been successful uh in the last few years so i think it is a reliable funding source whether it's worth it you know in terms of the loss of governance which is very very real and um i don't want to minimize that uh i think that's a question for you all and then eventually for the towns to to think about and you know i think what's in the report and i haven't said functionally is that we we do function that way it's not like we have meetings and lee is excluded because she's the pelham principal and the amherst principles are getting together you know we have we function educationally uh knowing that there are differences not just between capella and amherst but between the elementary schools in amherst indian ovens itself um but you know when we're having conversation you know for instance this you know this whole pandemic leah has been an essential member i'm going to compliment her because she deserves it thinking of like the schedule and some of the instructional design it's not like ooh pelham's doing their own thing on the side and they they're not included in the meeting we function in a way that we want want folks to be connected to to each other so you know i think i don't want to minimize the educational piece i think there's some concern sometimes that big bad amherst is going to come and you know change up everything that's happening in pelham first of all there's no interest in that or frankly capacity at the moment to do that as lee and i were joking earlier but the reality is i'm the superintendent of pelham just same as i'm superintendent of tim sheen's the curriculum director in pelham just like he is in amherst and so you know i really do think it's a governance and finance issue and not those two things influence education i don't want to say they're disconnected but i don't have teaching and learning concerns um about you know regionalization it's really around governance and finances yeah brenda just one more question it could be in the um the document forgive me if i missed it somewhere but i remember one of the concerns amongst pelham um community members was the use of the physical building and i don't know if that if that i didn't see where that landed in the stock yeah so i do think there's an element about what the enrollments would be like would pelham continue with the same pelham resident plus school choice or would we change catchment area lines to include a students in for instance neighborhoods and amherst that are very close to pelham so i think that is an issue you know i think financially frankly pelham would better off staying as is um because you'd lose the school choice revenue if if kids from neighboring districts in amherst started coming but that's certain certainly something that would have to be worked out for me um that's a doug doug did this in a previous iteration of his job looking at catchment area and enrollment lines it can be a really cumbersome process that i think is only worth engaging if we're pretty confident that the finances and the governance we have agreement on uh but you're absolutely right that would have to come up you know i would tell you this isn't a formal recommendation it's off the cuff um but there'd be a lot of incentive not to shift lines very quickly because of the loss of choice revenue that would come from that margaret go ahead um i guess i would not be opposed to some informal conversation i don't think that that could hurt i guess i wonder what role if any somebody like john tricky our finance director plays in that conversation it seems to me like he's got to be involved or somebody from the finance committee has to be involved yes absolutely i mean i think i think there does have to be a really a threshold conversation with amherst like if we want to play ball do you want to i think if they say yes then for sure the first call needs to be to john tricky yes any other thoughts oh yeah ron i second the involvement of john trickey from the very beginning of this discussion great all right um sarah best i don't need to put you on the spot but you don't have to say anything but if you wanted to share anything just because i haven't heard so no pressure though no i would be interested in at least an informal conversation um you know looking over this i while i recognize calm as in you know an unfortunate situation um i don't know that it's gonna get us anywhere like i i i absolutely think it's worth having a conversation like a conversation is not going to hurt anything at all um but you know the same issues that were there before are still going to be there they're not going to have magically disappeared um so but yes an informal conversation and see how that goes i mean it doesn't hurt to talk to people so on both sides like not just um hey amherst do you want to come play ball with us but the rest of our pelham team you know how do they feel about that um you know it sounded from reading this there is you know not a lot of warm fuzzies that happened but the conversation is good especially especially now like um i think dr morris pointed out like we already function in many ways as a region with the elementary schools um you know like like the moa we talked about earlier right like that includes all of the elementary school teachers as well not just the regionalized middle in high school um so there are already pieces and parts that operate like that so sure see how it goes great so i in terms of next steps i think i will just reach out to the chair and amherst and start that process and then report back as i no more i don't actually know entirely what it would look like so i will figure that out and then report back to everyone um okay anything else on regionalization before we move on okay um sarah oh yeah margaret one other thing and i mean this is maybe just a little detail but doesn't the town own the pelham school building i mean is that is that something that was an issue in the regionalization yep so there if i can answer that one yeah yeah there that you know and the town of amherst owns its buildings as well so they would have to come to agreement about how that would work and that's true in in other districts like acton-boxborough which lee actually has experience with that was probably the most analogous district in terms of one more rural town and a larger town regionalizing and there's a couple different scenarios that one that towns can use when they look at that issue um so i think you're right to note it as an issue that would need to be resolved and also the debt payments that come from you know there's still a couple years left i think four years left on pelham uh from the construction that happened at the beginning of the you know in the early 2000s and then you know amherst is certainly going to take on a whole lot of debt for whatever the project it decides whatever it ends up being so i think you're right that that is something that would have to be resolved um in any agreement all right anything else all right um i have eight warrants so refill your coffee cup and bear with me okay um i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of negative dollars and 173.40 cents for the warrant dated september 9th 2020 and this was all payroll and i signed this on october 28th i authorized my my signature to payables in the amount of negative 173 dollars and 40 cents for the warrant dated september 23rd that was also all payroll and i signed that on october 28th i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of negative 173 dollars and 40 cents for the warrant dated october 7th 2020 that was also all payroll and i signed that on october 28th i authorized by my signature to payables and the amount of fifty eight thousand three hundred seventy eight dollars and fifteen cents for the warrant dated november fourth twenty twenty all of that was payroll and i signed that on november second i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 42 747.93 for the warrant dated november 12 2020.
uh discussion accident action item election of 2021 board officers pursuant to policy uh shall be the last meeting in the calendar year um so for this one we need a president and a secretary uh so we should uh probably discuss president first if there are any uh discussion i'm so sorry to interrupt this is the captioner i am in dire need of a break okay i'm so sorry i was trying to find a spot but i'm i'm not very accurate now and i just need that break okay um is there uh is it possible to take a five-minute break um can i i'll i'll i'll move to to adjourn for not i'm sorry i'm editor i'll move to to take a five minute break sounds good i'm gonna need ten ten okay um all right we will pause now or if does anyone uh does any of the board members um second that motion uk does suit does okay great uh all those in favor for ten minute break say hi hi hi dean manley oh any of charlie any opposed okay i don't see any opposed so let's all take a break um it is now 6 30 at 6 40. uh we will resume uh so thank you hello everyone it is uh now 6 41.
miley mcqueery is in for madison as the spartans are staying in that 2-3 zone like they did most of the first quarter as that is into number 10 and a travel [Applause] might have moved her pivot foot there and spartans will get the ball back 513 is our score madison is staying with that press screen set and into number 23 abby wheatley as she pushes the ball crosses over to the right and pulls it back out as that is up at the top of the key to number 22 back to 34. she gets to the right side and gets a floater up and off the mark rebounded by number 31 addison roark as she pushed the ball up to court passed it to number four julia davis she's been in quite a bit of the game for madison that is back to rook and a foul committed by north side as we have number 25 natasha armstrong and for the spartans you can hear the north side cheerleaders cheering on their teams as that was a great pass right idea just mishandled that one so northside gets the ball back here no points have been scored in this second quarter great defense there by madison and we have a timeout taken by north side did not want to get a five second call there so he will for sure draw up a press breaker thirty second time out taken by north side four forty four left to go here in the second quarter ten to three is our score uh and here we have it the timeout is up and done northside called timeout to draw something up to break this press taking this press by madison as they set screens to get somebody open and that is in a great pass and great catch there by abby wheatley as she passes it to her left to number 22 down to the baseline to number 20 she looks at a shot and passes it off number 22 takes a three and excuse me pump faked on the three and it got her stolen by number 10 maylie skinner she gets to the block and good our first point in the second quarter goes to madison and solon by number 20 a baseline jump shot is up and off the mark and rebounded by spartan that's number 22 lydia cushman as she pushes the ball off the left-hand side and pulls it back out on the bench at the score stable looks like we will have a fresh new five lineup after this dead ball as we have a travel violation by the spartans as madison really picked up their defensive pressure here in the second quarter it's been giving the northside spartans quite a bit of trouble here but a whole new five on the floor for the spartans 105 is our score 350 left to go here as that one has stolen by number 42 melee excuse me miley just passes out to braylon pool as that has stolen away by number 31 addison and back stolen away by north side as they're looking to push the ball off the court gets to the right block and up and great look could not get that one to fall as we are going back and forth this game and a foul is committed by spartan he's on the floor there so 322 is our score and we have number five and for norse excuse me madison kylie montgomery she comes in for number 20 kennedy roulette as the spartans are remaining in that zone look and end to number 12 and she gets a strong take up there that is miley montgomery that is passed off to number 12 morgan jarvis spins to her left stolen away by julia davis and a reach-in foul committed by northside once again madison has really picked up their defense on the that into the court and here in the second quarter and it looks like madison is in the bonus here so she's at the line for a one-on-one sorry about that but we are here back frito was off the mark and rebounded by north side excuse me she made the first one miss the second one so ten to eight is our score as that shot is off the mark but rebounded by a spartan number 35 braylon poole 12 to eight is our score there's the first points of north side here in this first quarter as julie gets the give and go and down low it's 2 number 10 but that was blocked but number 10 kept it alive and puts it in for two great concentration on the ball there by madison almost stolen away by madison but northside gets the ball as julia davis has been applying great pressure there on the press and spins and gets through it there and a travel violation committed by north side the momentum of this game has really flipped here by the great team defense by madison julia davis brings the ball up and looks to push some pressure on her once she crosses half court and a great pass to number 10 and up and good a great assist by julia there ties the ball game up she got hit pretty hard on that one set is into pool as she dribbles through the middle of the court and we have a carrying violation and and for madison is number three maybe perry comes in for number 10.
uh this included general fund expenses of 29 and sixty six 932.66 revolving fund expenses of thirty nine dollars and eighty cents grant fund expenses of twelve thousand four hundred eighty nine dollars and eighty six cents and other f uh oh gifts of 285 dollars and 61 cents i signed that one on november 13th i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 26 952 000 and 12 cents for the warranty november 16 2020 this included general fund expenses of 19 459.98 grant funding dollars 1 fourteen cents and i signed that on november 16th i authorized by my signature to payables and the amount of fifty seven thous fifty seven thousand seven hundred fifty eight dollars and eighty two cents for the warrant dated november 18th 2020. that was all payroll and i signed that on november 13th and finally i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 58 000.
i want to make sure everyone is back online and that we are ready to resume all right excellent um thank you everyone so we were on 707 election 2021 board officers pursuant to policy um we will need a president and a secretary uh so i'll entertain discussion first for president i would like to nominate david nigro to continue uh thank you um i uh i certainly would accept the nomination shall we second uh are there any other nominations okay um all right so then you've you've uh would you move to uh i moved to nominate david nigro to be our president for the next year okay uh thank you lynn and a second mike manley like the second uh mike uh okay uh all in favor uh say i or show you a show of hands be good thank you um and any opposed and seeing none um that carries uh for secretary uh i'd like to open it up for any nominations for secretary sukay why don't we keep the team together move to nominate sue k i am not opposed um to that at all the my my one concern is if the governor's office should come around to um appointing my um replacement on a cth's board i would no longer be representing acdh that might my term with asdb would be done if they don't move me into another position we'll keep you until that time ck okay yeah yeah i i was going to say we had the exact same conversation last year and right we did look they did interview me for for the board position so that's a that's a step in the right direction okay that is um so i have uh uh dean your hand is racing i'm seconding the motion second in the motion excellent um so all those in favor for suitcase to be secretary okay uh any opposed and not opposed so that that carries um thank you sue k uh so with that done we're gonna go back to 2.01 a shelly um just to let you know i'm going to step out i have to return to my class okay i will see you all the next time all right thank you um 2.01 action item approval of a consent agenda consistent report policy to include items 3.01 5.02 7.02 7.04 and 7.05 uh do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda or to in the alternative to remove any of those items from the consent agenda it's flynn i appre i moved to approve uh action item 2.01 okay uh do we have a second i second okay i see um 2k seconds uh all in favor please say i or raise a hand or a thumbs up and any of any opposed okay so the percent agenda passes we can move on uh to 3.02 action item approval of new district agreements uh dr rex there are two uh new agreements that are up for consideration um did you have anything to say about either of those not at all i just know that that was a board request whenever we added new districts to make you all aware of what we're bringing into our house so this is a simple action item with a uh someone to motion and a second great um and these dr x these are all the typical agreements i know sometimes with uh some of the tribes we have special you know terms and things like that so there's there's no other term that's out of the ordinary no okay uh great so do i have a motion to approve these contracts i move that we approve the new contracts okay second okay sue k second uh all those in favor um say i or a wave or a thumbs up hi your video bye and any opposed okay thank you um next up is item 4.01 information item finance report shaina cooper jana cooper executive director of business services good evening board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex members of the board and the asdb community our most recent finance committee meeting was held yesterday on december 2nd with board members manali and gordon and superintendent reichman in summary we reviewed in detail and discussed the october 31 2020 and 2019 budgetary and fiscal year budget to actual comparison reports the available cash balance the grant revenues and expenditures report and also looked at the student enrollment as of november 1st 2020 in comparison to november 1st 2019.
um melee skinner who's had a great first half for madison as julia crosses back over to her right and through the hands of number 31 and northside will get the ball back all tied up with 145 left to go here in the second quarter as number 12 morgan jarvis spins back to the middle and crosses over to her right and she dribbles through the defense pull has it he gets to the left block up and under and good for the north side spartan she did that earlier in the first and it seemed to work and sold away by number 42 miley mccurdin calling and off the mark a three or two is off by number 12 morgan jarvis and off the mark by a spartan as julia passes the two number 12 had the right idea just too far and high for her to retain 12 14 is our score 106 left to go here in the first northside looks to slow it down to maybe take some time off the clock here so we are under a minute to go here in the second as poole takes a free throw jump shot and good nothing but net by north side use the pump fake to her advantage as julia's going to bring the ball up the court gets it to number five she takes this shot and short and off the mark 37.6 seconds to go here in the first half madison's done a great job with this press and it looked like number five kylie montgomery got her hand on that one should be north side basketball here and that is into morgan jarvis after a great screen set and she kicks it out to number 31.
570.8 cents for the warrant dated december 2nd 2020 that was all payroll and i decide i signed that on november 30th any questions no you don't have any questions um all right we do not have any gifts to accept so i will take a motion to adjourn i move that we adjourn the meeting and boy you did a great job of sticking to the timeline on the agenda thanks no i have 802 you wrote 405. not bad well it helps when you're blunt is there a second second all right and i'll do a roll call vote uh ron we are adjourned thank you so much everybody enjoy the rest of your night you