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good morning everyone such a pleasure to be here with all of you uh as you all know uh we have a really fantastic opportunity uh to see one another uh in this context um thank you uh for the uh i appreciate uh for now i'm gonna just avoid and um not take a look at the comments um but there will be a time when i'm going to ask you if you want to say anything to our speaker uh that that's a place you'll go but i just want to acknowledge where we're at and what we're doing um we are here january 15th at nine in the morning uh we have the opportunity um um to speak with a friend and someone who i'm being anxious for you to get to know uh he's someone who i know you've all heard a little bit about and i wanted to go ahead and invite jamal cole good morning jamal how you doing i'm doing well how are you doing today i'm doing fantastic it's a pleasure to see you once again um i've really enjoyed getting to know you over the past couple weeks and i've enjoyed our conversations and mostly i'm really inspired by the work that you've done in your life and uh i'm happy to share that with the students uh here at arms um so tell us a little bit if you don't mind just a little bit about your organization and and what you do in the organization because i'm really interested in that okay um again um thank you guys for having me um i'm jamal cole i'm the founder and a ceo of my block my hood my city uh we're a social impact organization based out of the south side of chicago we don't have programs per se but we create initiatives based upon whatever happens in society i like to think about us as like the red cross for the neighborhoods so our mission is to take care of people no matter what so if there's a snow storm you see us out there shoveling snow for seniors right it's really just following the demands of our instinct if there's a heat wave we deliver fans deliver waters directly to seniors if they're you know with the coronavirus pandemic over 8 000 seniors and people reached out to us from 12 different states and we we started um we had 150 youth teenagers that needed jobs so we created a program or initiative called youth senior connect in which all the teenagers were trained by rush hospital to make wellness calls to the seniors so they called them up and they uh shipped them ppe they connected them to primary healthcare physicians they um they shipped food they shipped a hand sanitizer all that stuff you know they shipped directly to seniors um we hired teenagers for eight months eight weeks over the summer um and then you know of course with the with all the looting that took place this summer we raised a million dollars for small businesses that needed help with uh glass repair graffiti removal light painting and construction so again i say that to say we take care of people no matter what if a meteor hit chicago tomorrow you will see our volunteers and our team out there doing whatever we can to help out i love the volunteers we have i love the organization we have 17 employees and um and we're located all around the city too that's really fantastic and you know when i when i look and learn more about your organization not only only am i inspired but i'm really particularly inspired because this is the kind of manifest vision as you've said of so many of the people you know working together but it's kind of an idea that started in your imagination and in your life and so i'm wondering if you can share with us a little bit about uh about your journey to get there yeah um that's a great question i think that um i think that uh can you guys still hear me yeah absolutely okay all right let me just make sure i got this in right um okay um yeah what i'm saying is that uh ideas are powerful weapons and they're tools that can be used to change the world so you know some of my earliest memories are um you know we the class of 1988 are determined to be our best at whatever we say or do you know we'll share a smile and lend a hand to our neighbor because no matter what will be the best in a lifetime and um those 50 words that was like the entirety of my preschool graduation speech and so you know since i was four years old you know my mom taught me how to do the hand gestures memorize this speech but that really was like the mission statement of my life and i just stayed true to that you know until now so i always knew i wanted to be an activist you know a spirit i always knew that um are you guys still with me yeah you guys still with me yes we are hello we hear you we hear you hello yes we're here i i we see you just keep talking tomorrow it looks like we're losing okay good good um so so yeah i felt like um that was the mission statement of my life and i just stayed true to that vision and you know i always wanted to you know i know dr martin luther king jr day is coming up and so i remember looking at vhs vhs tapes and staring into his eyes as he gave speeches to see you know had king really seen these places called the promised land or was this a metaphor he was using to create a great speech you know i want to be a speaker and a leader like that and no matter how many times i watch his speeches i was convinced that you know he had not only uh seen the promised land right but he had you know been to the mountaintop so me seeing all these speakers growing up these activists like you know martin luther king malcolm x stokely carmichael fred hampton you know i always want to be a speaker so when i graduated from college with my degree in communications i started crafting these speeches to deliver at uh my local library about whatever was happening in society it could be the red line closing down it could be charter schools coming into the area and us revamping our educational system it could be about the crime rate it could be about the the snow whatever was happening that month i wanted to talk about and so i started organizing these speeches and not only my community but different communities and um and and then i started listening to people and connecting whatever they needed to to resources and that's how i built this thing in 2000 and like nine you know i'm sorry jamal i realized i was muted i'm just wondering uh in terms of your journey to get there because you you know you referenced the speech you made when you were very young in terms of of you being in school uh tell us a little bit about your journey get to get to high school and college and beyond yeah yeah sure so um i come from uh you know i extreme well i guess it's relative poverty compared to poverty in other countries but i didn't know a food stamp you know wasn't real money until i put one in a pot machine in the brook right you know so i grew up you know my parents were definitely living below the poverty line they were separated so you know i spent a lot of nights homeless you know eating at homeless shelters i my first interaction with volunteers was while i was living at a shelter for thanksgiving and seeing them come in and give us turkey for thanksgiving and being embarrassed because i some you know some of my classmates from high school were you know in the shelter volunteering you know but um you know my father would always make me hold my head up and go get the food but um as i think back on um more so than having like a poverty of money i had like a poverty of imagination like i never knew anybody that went to college i had a deficit of hope because i never seen anybody look like me that went to college my role models were other than gangs or they were in the nba right and so that my what success to me looked like was either making it to the nba or becoming a rapper because i never saw it in different forms um i went to alternate alternative high school and kenosha wisconsin and um you know for me i every day was um a struggle between inclination and obligation like things i was inclined to do and things that i was obligated to do you know my friends you know if i said i was going to go to school today my parents would look at me like you going to school again this week you know so i never really had to like uh they weren't really reinforcing the things i was learning in school but you know luckily i was able to find a book in school that called all american colleges and i was able to rip a page out of that book and apply to this place called wayne state college in nebraska and this college in nebraska accepted people from alternative high schools all around the country so i was fortunate enough to to be accepted there and when i got out there i was connected to a basketball coach named rico burkett and i didn't have a scholarship so i walked onto the basketball team but when i when i got out there you know after six months of playing basketball you know my coach said jamal you know you have a great personality you know we like you but why do you have a 1.7 gpa and you're failing basically and so i told him i was like hey i went to alternative high school you know i'm not used to having these teachers let alone these professors um plus you know i can't afford any books i i don't have a scholarship or financial aid i've never even read a book in my whole life you know and plus you know people in nebraska i don't know if you know they're racist i mean they're calling me colored on the basketball team you know um my first day on the press conference people said hey um you know i've never talked to a black basketball player before um will you talk to my little brother on the cell phone because he watches the nba all the time hey will you talk to him you know so um i said you know coach you're asking me why i have bad grades but you know it's cold out here i don't have no money you know i hate the food it smells like manure out here there's too many cows and you know i'm homesick you know i'm having a hard time adjusting to nebraska and you know my coach his name is rico burkett he was really patient with me and you know i needed him to be patient with me at this time i was 17 18 years old and he just listened to me talking i said hey man you know people racist out here bro i'm hungry you know i miss my family i don't you know this is crazy he just looked me in my eyes and he said you know jamal you know what's missing from your list and i said no what he said your name's not on it right no excuses the highest level of maturity is taking full responsibility for your actions and i was like yo this guy's you know what are you talking about i'm not making any excuses man i just told you that i don't have any books i've never read a book what aren't you understanding coach i just told you that i i'm not used to having teachers i went to alternative high school i we didn't have teachers now i got professors i don't know how to study plus people racist out here bro it's cold out here i don't have no money i hate the food it smells like manure y'all treat me racist i'm having a hard time adjusting don't you get me and um and my coach was like jamal no excuses you know the highest level maturity that's taking full responsibility for your actions and i was like this guy's crazy man so um you know i left his office and he brought me back the next day and i thought he was going to kick me off the basketball team but he ended up giving me a 500 book scholarship and with this book scholarship you know i bought four of the five books that i needed that semester and in one semester in college i went from a 1-7 gpa to a 3-5 gpa right i have four a's and one c so you know i went back to the coach's office next semester say you got to play me now you got to put me in the game now because last semester you said that i didn't have good grades and you know i know all this is you know you know but you got to play me now and i'm four a's in the c what can you say about that man i got four a's in the c and you know my coach he looked at me he looked at my report card and he looked back at me and he um he said why why the hell did you get a c i said why did i get a c yo i've never made an a in my life you should be i got four a's in a c it's cold out here i have no money i hate the food it smell like y'all treat me racist i said i'm having a hard time adjusting man you know you should be proud of me you're talking down on me man he said you know um jamal no excuses the highest level maturity is taking full responsibility actions right and so i tell y'all that story because the entire time i was in college i might have played 10 minutes of basketball right i never played right at all i hated this coach i never played he didn't play me and um you know but i did graduate college with straight a's in three years so i mean i graduated college really fast i got to travel the world and um you know i wrote a book about you know this experience of hating this coach that never put me in the game and and that book got published and you know i started selling books downtown chicago and from the foot locker and those books got into cook county jail and when i when people they would come to the jail and tell your story to the teenagers and i got to the jail and you know i started asking kids like why are you in jail like why hasn't your life worked out for you and you know what the kids in jail said it's cold out here i had no money i hate the food it smell like y'all treat me racist i was like oh that's my list of excuses i gave my coach that's my same list i gave him and that's when my life changed and i realized that the entire time i was in college you know my coach wasn't teaching me to change you know a jump shot like he wanted me to change my philosophy of stop making excuses and so you know i just took that same philosophy into the alternative high schools in chicago and start telling youth hey it's about your perspective and how things work out for you you know what i mean and that's kind of how i started this um this after school program for youth in chicago that's a that's a powerful lesson and i think one of the things that i really appreciate about your organization is a lot of the work that you do is to give students in chicago the opportunity to just go to the other side of chicago and experience something different you know experience something that they haven't done before why do you think it's so important to experience different things i mean traveling is transformative and you know chicago wasn't designed for everybody to be inspired a lot of the teenagers i work with uh you know you know there's 15 currency exchanges in a neighborhood and there's no banks so if you ask a kid what's a job at a bank they don't know they've never seen a bank right um they have a lot of teenagers in chicago have to order their breakfast through bulletproof glass windows every day like could you imagine ordering your food every day through a bulletproof glass window you gotta hey you mean the doritos like you gotta you gotta yell your order um also you know there's more technology on the light poles than the classrooms every every light pole in the hood there's a a cops can respond to gunfire instantaneously right that's called shot spotter technology um the billboards in our neighborhoods all say cheap divorces and six six thousand dollar tax advances right you go to burger king it says get a 29 divorce you know what i mean that that's not inspiring like it's hard to be inspired when you don't have the internet and you got to go to mcdonald's to use the wi-fi like it's hard to be inspired when german shepherds sniff you on the train every morning this is this is the chicago that we live in so if you if you grow up in a neighborhood where you know there's a liquor store in every other corner and the funeral homes are marketing louis vuitton caskets in the window that's not regular right and that's not inspiring and so it's important that that teenagers get to see that you know the world doesn't end at the corner of your block you got to step outside your comfort zone and see more of chicago and and there's kids that have never seen lake michigan when they see lake michigan they say what ocean is that there's kids that want to be in marketing but they've never been in an elevator right and so that's not regular and so i think it's um i wish that i could afford to take kids to china but i can't so i just take them to chinatown or you know i wish i could afford to go to india but i can't i'll go to devon avenue or greektown you know you could travel the world when i leave in chicago there's 77 different communities and there's all these jobs so i wanna our after school program not only exposes kids to different parts of chicago but different professions in chicago so you can see what it's like to be a microsoft engineer an electronic trader right you can if you want to be in culinary arts we can take you to a restaurant to talk to the chefs and see what they do it's about job shadowing and exposure and that's why we work with 150 students per month in the 10 lowest performing schools in chicago and we take those teenagers on educational field trips if you will we call them expirations but we expose them to different jobs different professions or different cuisines you know that sounds uh amazing and one of the things that i'm really aware of right now is how young people in particular are so needing connection you know especially in the midst of a pandemic uh and uh and so you know one of the things that's been happening is in the chat a lot of the students are taking advantage of the opportunity to reach out to one another and to say hi because they're lacking that connection uh and and is this in this feeling of connectedness that i think you've been able to bring through your program by connecting blocks um connecting neighborhoods connecting people to their city uh and and that's one of the things that i'm really excited about trying to promote in our school community you know today is actually martin luther king's or would have been his his birthday uh even though we're celebrating it on monday and and it's a time uh and and we're here not just for this one day and not just for to have one day off but there's a strong commitment in this community and in the school uh for anti-racist uh teaching and and to try and create an environment that's not caught up in all that systemic uh racism and sexism that is so much a part of this country uh and so your message is really uh fantastic and valuable um i'm wondering what advice you have because the students that i work with are seventh and eighth graders so they're they're still young you know they're and and and looking outside is not something that that this world seems to promote particularly these days uh but i'm wondering what advice you have for young people who are uh trying to make sense of a world that's that's increasingly um uh feels difficult you know and and and and how you see uh your message or your example uh resonating with them what do you suggest yeah um well i would say first of all like yeah like um dr king was a person that had incredible vision right you know that's why i admired him about him most i mean he he was a leader that had the ability to see things that nobody else could see so you know um you have to know where you're going if you're going to get people to follow you right but you have to have a clear vision if you want to get people to serve and dr king can not only tell you where he was going but he'll let you know what the weather was like when you got there right he would not only in his speeches describe like beautiful hills and mountains and landscapes but he gave those destinations a name like the promised land he was an amazing storyteller and he had impeccable vision when um you know could you imagine if dr king had an instagram story or instagram page like he'd be verified right he'd have like a blue check next to his name he has so many followers i feel like um the southern christian leadership academy would be like a facebook page and the different cities would be different groups um i feel like um you know he'd be talking to nelson mandela on the whatsapp like what's going on in south africa man you know i think he'd be talking to him like that but he had he had great vision and at a time when at a time when um you know racial um discrimination was systemic dr king he he saw like he had his vision and he saw black boys to fight the cops on pettus bridge that they want to fight those cops um dr king stayed true to his message of non-violence by you know resisting by taking a knee um saying a prayer for him and turning back and there there were those that were probably like people probably looked at him like man you're a sellout right you ain't for the people man right but dr king uh he uh um he never wavered like a great captain he kept the ship going forward towards the destination he stalled which was the promised land so um that that's what i admired most about him was his vision and i'm happy birthday to you know the late great mlk but as far as the kids what i would say is about your vision too and it's about your perspective and um how to make sense of things is all perspective like quick story you know there's two salesmen right one salesman looks outside he sees a storm and he says man you know like it's raining real bad outside like with weather like this the boss can't expect me to go outside and make any sales so that that salesman stays home right and there's another salesman he looks outside he sees the same storm he said man you know it's raining real bad um you know uh with weather like this what a great day to go outside and make sales everybody's gonna be home especially the sales people especially the sales people and see your perspective and the way that makes sense for you guys is that some people look outside in chicago right now some students they might look outside and say man chicago is messed up right now the cops is messed up the school's just messed up the gang is messed up they're not going to go to college like some people gonna look outside and say man chicago messed up my city messed up the schools is messed up the gang is messed up the council's messed up but they're still gonna go to college and they're still gonna set goals so it's your perspective and how things work out and in the way that you keep your the way that you stay safe in the world is actually setting goals for yourself um don't ask me how it works just i just want y'all to get on the good side of the way things work if you set goals that creates a force field around you and if you're specific about the goals that you want the universe pulls you towards them that's the secret to it all it's like write down your goals and uh and also i would say like you know read a book man like you could say five years by reading a book if you want to be a chef if you want to be having your own business if you want to be up there read a book man you can say five years do you know there's books written by people that have done all these great things and people don't read them and they wrote how they did it i guess you know people are too busy on instagram yeah no that's great advice and i think i think it's really it's it's can be really difficult to think about taking that time to do what it needs to do to to build that vision but i really appreciate that you've certainly done that and uh and uh and you've helped so many people in your city you know uh one of the things i was able to share with the students was that uh you um you were named a couple years ago chicago's one of chicago's people of the year by chicago magazine uh and and you know and i know that that's not what's important to you but certainly that notoriety is a great example um and i just wonder in terms of other goals and other parts of your vision that you see for yourself because you've done a lot what are you looking well forward to great question man and i do enjoy uh those awards i never got no rewards growing up or no trophies so i'd be lying to say that i don't i don't keep track of all the all the um the accolades it's a um it's one of those things that you know for my daughters i want them to you know see and i want them to i want to set the bar for them but me personally man you know i'm looking forward to you know running for office and and and articulating you know the needs of the south side of chicago in dc i'm looking forward to um you know not only trying to change uh philosophies and personalities but also changing policies you know because i feel like my nonprofit organization exists because of failed policies and i want to be the person you call to change policies um i'm looking forward to um just just having serving more schools not only in chicago but in atlanta in detroit in california and new york city i want to expand our after school program and our our our volunteer efforts to different cities but um yeah that's kind of what i'm looking for and reading more man as a leader i have to read a lot more and uh and learn a lot more but that's kind of those are certain things that i'm um that are on my horizon yeah well you know i want to say that your example has been an inspiration for me and i and i feel like it's important for those of us who have the opportunity to influence others to to stay committed but also to stay in touch you know and i think i think another aspect of it is that when you surround yourself with people who are uh inspiring to you and you have the opportunity to reach out to them and talk to them uh there's there's an opportunity for synergy there you know i would love to see uh programs like the ones that you're starting where people are taking care of their block uh happen here in amherst and you know one of the things that you said was this idea that as a young person you were really facing the dilemma between inclination and obligation you know and and when you said that it really it was something i wanted to stick a pin in because that's a that's the point where a lot of our students are at and and i see that in their daily lives and and and it's this moment-to-moment decision can you talk a little bit about that and and and and encourage and how you encourage young people to think about that difference and and how to act with it with that choice yeah it's um yeah it's a inclination obligation those are the two different things but i would say that um there's always things to hit with that you're inclined to do you set goals goals kind of tell you what to write down your personal goals your weekly goals your monthly goals your personal goals your business goals your educational goals once you write them down that's the force field you're not going to be inclined to do things you know what you're obligated to do because you've written them down you've reinforced it i would also say that uh um you know the bible talks about it a lot it says that you reap what you sow and uh you know if you if you if you plant spinach today six weeks from now you're not gonna get pumpkins right that's not how things work if you plant spinach today um six weeks from now you're gonna get spinach now if you don't like the conditions of the spinach that comes up six weeks from now who's the blame come harvest time right the person that planted it it's the same thing with school man if you don't like the conditions your grades come june who's the blame from graduation it's the person in the mirror so it's all about what i would tell students though too is like um i would tell students to if it's about association too like bad association spoils useful habits so you know if you if you see somebody you say hey what you doing today and they say oh man i'm just maintaining you should run like you don't want to be hanging out with people just maintaining that that's not that's a mild approach to get out the trenches or get out of poverty if you get hang out with people that are striving man that have big goals because that that rubs off on you man so i would say stay away from people stay away from the mold thank god it's friday type people you know i mean it's not man i want to be grinding i want to be next to somebody that wake up and work out somebody to read somebody that has some goals because that that type of stuff is infectious and it's the same thing when you're hanging out with people that's uh that don't have any goals like um you know they say you're gonna be you're gonna be as successful as the people you hang out with for no reason yeah you know that's that's a great point i think i and and back to what i was saying about trying to find other leaders and other people who are inspiring me to do important work and that's certainly one of the things that i see in your example and i want to thank you for that i also want to just uh echo the message that you just shared which is this idea that we have a real opportunity uh in this interruption to think about who we surround ourselves by what what's the work that we're doing in our life and how are we bringing agency uh and and you know one of the things that you said was to try and choose something uh today that you can do to make life on your block a better place to be you know and that and that idea of acting locally and thinking globally you know is a really powerful one and i want to thank you for that hey um jamal i i'm really grateful that we had the opportunity to talk i'm really grateful that the students at amherst had the opportunity to tune in to your message and i just want to wish you uh the best not only for the rest of the day the weekend the year but also just really my my thanks for your work and your commitment to your work and and for your example hey well thank you guys for you know allowing me a platform to to touch people um you guys can always find more information about me at 4myblad.org and see what we're up to if you ever in the city and want some violent to do some volunteers some volunteering you can meet us on the block man i'd love to have y'all um y'all keep on uh dreaming bigger than your surroundings and surrounding yourself with great people man y'all have a good day peace all right thank you so much jamal thank you everyone all right uh well i want to thank you for your attention and engagement um i want to let you know that uh i'm not completely surprised by what was going on in the chat and i realized that opportunities to connect are few and far between so i'm not even really worried about that but i hope you all had the opportunity to hear what jamal cole shared and hope hoping that his vision and his life and his work can serve as some inspiration as you head into your weekend i wish all of you a great day i miss all of you and i look forward to seeing you in the future but until then stay strong and be clear
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you are good okay seeing the presence of a quorum i'm called to order this meeting of the pelham school committee at 6 30 pm um we are supposed to approve minutes sasha put them all together and i just forgot to send them to you all so we will have to table that for next time um public comment i did not receive anything so mike i hope you're ready because you're up already i'm actually going to do i'm going to pass the ball tonight too to lee because lee has a tremendous number of fantastic updates because the agenda items that i have kind of encompassed some of the updates i would give and to my budget and the preschool um i'm going to pass it on to lee who will do that and i'll give more updates along the way on the agenda items listed okay great all right well i brought props because i figured it was going to be a long meeting so i wanted to share with you a couple um a couple of things that are happening in the community so i'll start as usual with the students so our all school read this month is mixed me by tay diggs so it's one of the books that we chose um in partnership with high five books they're all uh about bipac kids or bye bye poc authors and this one is about identity um in keeping with the theme of anti-racism in our school this year we're working on black history month all year long and right now our third graders are learning about black scientists and inventors and we're gearing up for our all-school meeting in february where all classes will get to share some of the black history month all year long learning that they've been doing this year exciting news our paw prints student-run newspaper has started up so the students met for the first time this past week and we'll have the first edition hitting inboxes soon we also have our very first cardboard challenge happening next weekend so that's coordinated by our amazing art teacher and she's really encouraged everyone to save all their amazon boxes for the past month so apologies to all the families with massive stacks of cardboard but it should be really cool to see some of the things that the kids make our one of our other specialists our pe teacher mr arabian is going to be offering community workouts starting on wednesday evenings starting next week so i'll add that to this week's pelham press um just as a way for folks to hit the reset button he's going to incorporate mindfulness and some of the workout moves that he does with the kids in pe class but they'll be for everybody and then finally our kindergarten museum is in process right now so starting this week families will be able to come two families at a time signed up with mr lori and miss sage to come see some of the kindergartners work out on the field so we're excited to be rethinking some some of the traditions ron did i hear you correctly kindergarten exam oh museum museum oh okay thank you for clarifying no we're not there's a new sheriff in town right no i no no no oh gosh well that would get me run out of town pretty quickly i think so moving on to staff um the staff as you know we've been looking really closely at attendance and right now we're trying to take a little bit of a deeper look behind the attendance numbers to what the engagement looks like so we're doing a little bit of short-term data collection and having some great conversations with the staff about how we can support families and students engaging with remote learning and all the different ways that that can look we had a professional development day yesterday and we did a combination of some digital learning tools and we're continuing on with our year-long book study of this book try to get on screen it's called onward and it's about cultivating emotional resilience and the chapter that we worked through yesterday was about optimism which i mean optimism in january should probably be a theme of every professional development um especially in this time so it was really uplifting we spent some time talking about stories about students that we've loved and that we've we shared with each other and it was it was a really nice community building time in the midst of a really busy week so we also have some upcoming professional development on the updated let's talk curriculum formerly known as ski and i know you'll be hearing more about that when we come together next month and then finally we have a group of staff working to plan our black history month all school meeting and then last but not least our family community is also reading an exciting book so this month's book for our family staff book club is by dr bettina love it's called we want to do more than survive um and dr love came and addressed the entire staff at our um at our district-wide professional development day in november and she's just really inspiring to a lot of our staff so it was an easy pick for the next read um so we'll be meeting in february to talk about that book there's a pto meeting tonight so i know we may have lost some folks to that or people are jumping back and forth they're in the midst of a logo contest and they're also looking for a few new board members for next year um so just a little extra plug for the pto all of you are very busy so i wouldn't recommend taking that on but if you know anyone who wants to get more involved in the school community it's a great way to do it ron just a hint on the logo if it includes anything like a pine tree make sure it's a hemlock i've been tipped off to the controversy so i'll pass that along and then finally i'm continuing on with my afternoon tea times with families and getting some input from the community about themes that would be helpful you know so whether that's bringing in one of our in-house staff experts to talk about something like mindfulness or healthy tech habits for families or movement breaks kind of just getting a sense from the parent community about things that would be helpful but those will continue on too so busy as always at school any other questions from folks no all right thanks so much lee um all right next up is fiscal year 22 budget yep and so uh before we turn over to dr slaughter um i just want to give a couple updates that i chose to do um i'll choose to do now because it influences things so we had a meeting with staff by we i mean dr slaughter um i'm just gonna say doug we're gonna we're in pelham we're among friends so doug lee and i um had a meeting uh it was pretty well attended by the pelham staff uh this week on monday so that we kept them abreast of the budget developments there were three pieces of good news that we shared with them and some of them you know they relate to this year as we talked about in previous meetings that there are implications so the first is that we successfully have rented the pelham gym starting this week five evening or afternoons a week um we estimate that'll bring in in the neighborhood of ten to twelve thousand dollars in this year's budget which you know it connects to next year's budget i feel like it's clean on that because you know we're concerned we're gonna have to pull more from choice which would influence next year's budget uh from the current year and also i'll say it's just great there's a lot of pelham kids involved um i was there on monday for um their soccer and uh for for not a huge group of kids because of covid we have a pretty you know it's not close to what a full class of 20 students would be um just because of distancing um there's a much higher percentage of pelham kids than i think ever participated in any of the previous amherst recreation activities that used to be held in amherst so i think separate from the income i actually think it's been a great outlet for pelham folks and the other thing i noticed was there was a child who i don't know but she self-identified as being a pelham student and chum so glad to be back in the school like there was like there was like uh kind of mythic value in being back uh inside the walls uh in this activity um and so you know i'm really glad that not only the income coming in to help the budget but uh it's it's certainly being seen by pelham families as something that they have access to uh and not that amherst is very far for refers right down the road some of these maybe school choice families don't live in pelham but the reality is it's been well attended by pelham families and what i heard today from someone who's coaching in the basketball clinic is the same is true for the basketball group that they're having a higher percentage of pelham kids participate and this is someone who's done basketball clinics for a long time uh so you know that's a really happy story um you know and happy fiscally but also happy in terms of some of the outcomes second piece of of good news uh that we had is that we got our december charter report and there are still no students from the town of pelham listed on the state's charter report it's been around long enough you know that there is no guarantees with that um i'll believe it on july 1st um and that's sort of where we are but nonetheless no news or zeros or good news is good news for us and so i want to pass along that because that has implications and the last piece of good news uh early tentative good news is that in late december the federal government passed the second cares act and it had money for school districts it's uh the challenges it's based on title one formula uh but i in a conference call with the state they are trying to work out much like the first cares act that non-title one schools at least get some increment and that can be applied in the current fiscal year but also can be applied in the next fiscal year as well um so uh we're not out of the woods as dr slaughter you know i like my role i get to tell the good news uh we'll have we'll have doug come in and do a little bit of a dose of reality that this doesn't resolve uh the challenges we have but i think on the front uh i think the message i'd like to give before doug starts going is uh if any one of those three variables that went south would be in much worse shape so we are not resolved it's not pollyanna and it's not like there's no problem with in the pelham public school uh at the same time right if the rental thing was a flop and nobody came that would have been a problem if there were no cares that coming i know um like i didn't announce something this evening about more uh federal funds that he's hoping to send uh to schools and local governments so you know that's good news and certainly if the charter news was different that would be significantly worse so i think the hard thing right that's all the good news the hard thing is we still aren't in great fiscal shape um but any one of those three going the wrong way would have had a much more negative impact on where we're sitting now and as we head towards 22.
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good evening welcome everyone happy new year it is january 14th it's 7 30 p.m we have a meeting of the board education to uh see for the first time the superintendent's proposed operating budget but before we get into the juicy details uh mr zesky kind of a call to order sure mr grippo here ms hallen here miss hamm here miss harrigan here mr martelly here mr peregini here and mr white mr chairman you have a quorum thank you carol uh i ask that uh we all stand for the pledge if uh jeff you want to put up the flag it's awesome i pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of the united states justice for all well again good everyone thanks tim uh uh for joining us thanks team happy new year everyone it is the first time we've gotten together since uh well before the new year hope everyone's happy safe and well and to those watching same there before we get into it we really have one i'm an agent tonight and that is the superintendent's proposed uh 2122 operating budget which i know is gonna be a very important topic this month uh before we get into it uh do we have any audience uh correspondence uh jeff at this time i know we haven't checked that mailbox price since the last meeting at least in life yeah i have not received any correspondence regarding the meeting okay well that being said uh board members uh this was a special year in a fortunate situation we normally don't get the budget book until the actual meeting when we sit down to it but we all got it delivered uh this afternoon so hopefully you do have it uh if not please let carol know so we can actually follow along uh without the selling team so that being said uh jeff vincent marlene we'll turn it over to you thank you very much mr paragini um as you indicated this year is a little bit unique uh that you have the three of us here on camera at one time i want to just take a moment before i kick things off to thank not only and marlene but the team of people who've worked so hard together to put this budget together under such unique circumstances heather santee greg gibbons our administrative team carol jaczynski there are a host of people that worked really hard on this process and of course none of this remote work ever happens without mike salamini so i appreciate all of their hard work and your patience as we work through pretty unique circumstances in order to provide the presentation in the most typical way possible marlene came up with a good idea utilizing a couple of our different platforms so that i might be able to present full screen but also have my base live embedded in the presentation so you can kind of see me as i walk through the presentation i'm generally a more animated speaker so i think this kind of helps make it a little bit more natural if you will so if you'll bear with me one moment i'm just going to run over to my office and i'll kick things off marlene will entertain you in the meantime okay how are we doing okay yeah we can see in here yeah excellent um so again you know i appreciate everybody's patience as we work through this new method here to to present the budget and every year i like to try and remind everybody in the community really what is the board's role in this process what is the superintendent's role in this process basically board members have the duties is outlined in state statute to provide adequate instructional books supplies equitable allocation between schools proper maintenance of facilities and a safe school setting my responsibility in that process is to collaborate with our district leadership team to hear from the community and the the staff about how do we do this and build a fiscally responsible budget that ensures equitable and developmentally appropriate educational experiences between schools and fulfills those other statutory obligations as well as advancing our board of education goals and as you know about five years ago now the board of education after substantial work with the community everybody from students ptos across the district ptas our administrative team teacher teams students uh business leaders in the community just decided that we had to focus in two places complex thinking and social emotional learning and i think that's critically important because those have played a substantial role in shaping our budget decisions over the last several years so i just want to hit on this about why is social emotional learning important and because i i think you know i've heard in years past like not you know members of the board but uh some people who me weren't really connected to the school system ask you know why seo and there is great research to indicate how critical a factor it is in student development and by just looking at the bullets on the screen these are things we want from all of our students in our community so sel is an important part of what we do so what we do in our budget is provide so much for 4 200 of our current students it's not just reading writing and arithmetic it's also personal development as we talked about with sel goals but we also have to think about things that maybe don't necessarily jump to front of mind like transportation and heating and utilities and building maintenance it's everything that we put into this uh educational experience including diverse opportunities for students to engage in extracurricular growth opportunities and this is why we provided at the end of the day you know when you travel around the district and you see students gathered around and this really is a bittersweet photo because it's great to see the students together but it reminds me how much i miss seeing the smiles and the teachers miss seeing that uh in these days of of cobit so reflecting a little bit on our path i mentioned that you know we did adopt sel and complex thinking about about five years ago and as i said that's been an important part of our decision-making process so you know the addition of school counselors and school psychologists and at one point we were 17th um out of 18 k through 12 school systems in dirt b in terms of students per mental health provider we're now 13 and our students are better because of it they're receiving better services on the complex thinking side of things we've added elementary and middle school math coach positions we added elementary world language we've added professional development and we've seen our achievement skyrocket i think is a byproduct of both of these things simultaneously once 35th in connecticut five years ago in terms of our achievement now fifth which you know we certainly outperform many districts with with much much higher per pupil expenditures and different sets of resources than us our budget environment this year is a little bit unique as usual we have internal uh influences and factors to consider student enrollment and that's a going to be a different story this year than what you're used to hearing our contractual and utility increases special education the facilities themselves have received necessary attention through the school modernization committee in our community as a whole their average building is 70 years old in out of ada compliance in addition to having dated hvac facilities or services air conditioning is really non-existent in our school system air filtration is limited to non-existent so these are things that are key pressing items that we're also trying to address through the school modernization plan and capital budget but also have to be considerations in our operating budget medical benefits unfortunately you're going to be hearing a lot about tonight and that's a also a significant driver in this budget externally we always consider the state of the state um and of course we're operating through the global pandemic but i am going to talk a little bit how that global pandemic well influencing us is not part of the operations budget we have to thank vin again leading the charge working with our administrative team and our finance folks and central office to try and determine if and hopefully that's a huge if covet is a substantial factor in the fall what would it cost us to provide interventions that allow our students to attend and that will be part of one of our budget workshop shops down the road this budget as presented this evening does not consider those factors this is just our standard operating budget so stay tuned for more on kovic budget each year we start by asking our administrative team you know what are the things that you feel are important for your school or your program to move our school system forward we take that information and compile basically a budget um this year it was eight percent increase over the 2021 school budget um that's not obviously uh necessarily feasible and so our team spends a lot of time you know boiling down like i said running through that filter of social emotional learning complex thinking looking at those internal and external factors i just outlined and we're also uh certainly conscious of our history and our history uh is a a super far cry from eight percent i'm not saying that it should be eight percent but it definitely is not reflected uh in recent years so the last five years are the lowest budget average that we've had since before 1976 and i i don't even know it might be the worst ever um but i wasn't able to look back before 1976.
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[Applause] okay the board of trustees will reconvene into open session since our student representative is not here this morning uh this afternoon for uh leading the pledge of allegiance i would take the honor of asking everyone to rise and face a flag if you have one and we'll all say the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and as we are facing some very high covered numbers this month i would like everyone to take a moment of silence and think about all the unfortunate people who have fallen to this disease and and you know think about them and their families and then in addition to that let's all be thankful that we are still here and able to speak and be a part of this meeting okay i will have the clerk of the board report actions taken during closed sessions thank you and anna i want to thank you for the for the moment of silence deeply appreciated item 4.1 no portable action equation superintendent 4.2 no reportable action taken regarding negotiations and lastly 4.3 no reportable action taken regarding personnel thank you now the board of trustees would like to recognize our community members and stakeholders for their interest in the anaheim union high school district and for attending our board meeting we want to thank you for your participation and contribution as we create an educational environment that graduates socially aware civic minded students who are college and career ready with unlimited opportunities for the 21st century and now i'd like to introduce any dignitaries that are here do we have any i'm looking through my frames i don't see everyone though do we know of any okay i i haven't been appraised of any that are with us so we will then move on to the reports of our association uh officers present from the district's employee associations will be invited to address the board of trustees but okay i'm looking for our list here let's starting with afscme do we have anyone from afscme present okay uh asta grant shuster is he present anyone representing astra uh miss piercy uh mr booster will be joining uh shortly so um i'm um he'll be here just a minute okay well let's move on then to someone to other and then we'll come back to him do we have um cse jackie brock president is jackie here no but i see grant okay grant schuster ask the president would you like to give us a report uh sure thank you uh anna i'll go ahead and start off here um good afternoon trustees cabinet and to our educators and employee groups as well as students and parents joining us online we hope everyone had a safe and rejuvenating break that was particularly important this year as we start the second semester we see both hope and anxiety in the forefront of everything we do it underscores how important it is that we continue to work together as associations districts school boards and communities this was no more clearly illustrated than almost two months ago long passionate and thoughtful conversations were had about returning to campuses to start the second semester there's nothing we all want more than a return to normalcy for our students and the community and in our hearts we continue to be pulled toward anything we can do to benefit them i'm proud to be in a district that is willing to have hard discussions with open minds at every level the decisions that have been made this year in this district have undoubtedly saved lives in our profes in our profession we often look back with pride and joy at the impact we have made on the lives of our students honestly it is the reason most of us do we do this year with the pandemic hitting our communities harder than most we had to make decisions that directly impacted the public health as a way of knowing who would who may or may not have gotten sick or may have even died if we had all made different decisions but i sleep easier at night knowing that we were all responsible for the virus spreading less readily in our district we will always be proud of the stand that we have made as an association and we will always be thankful that our district leadership and board have put the safety of our students employees and community first even when pressured strongly at times to do otherwise in the face of this decision it's also important to continually reevaluate our distance learning program asta and the district continue to meet weekly to discuss all matters of concern and how they might be addressed the recent alteration of the distance learning schedule is being lauded by parents students and teachers as a model that better engages students on a daily basis while still balancing screen time and workload with students home life under these stressful conditions this did not happen by chance hundreds of hours were put in by teachers district staff and other stakeholders within the teacher input group and the opening schools task force we are eager to continue with this dynamic that builds capacity and consensus within our district to increase the likelihood of a success when we bring change to better support our students and educators as we look towards a time that we can see our students in person it will also be important to continue our adherence to public health metrics we know that the situation is currently dire after experiencing the last two months there aren't many of us left who haven't personally lost someone we love to covet let alone had family members ill with the disease as we move forward with the hope of mass vaccinations we must continue to look at the community spread across our district in terms of cases and positivity rates to determine when it may be possible to reopen campuses to in-person instruction until the vaccinations and adherence to public health guidelines result in a decline in stabilization and virus numbers and transmission rates we must continue to make our distance learning model the best that it can be and prepare our campuses for a safe return when it becomes possible i also wanted to report out on what we hope to do when schools can reopen their campuses we know that the needs of many in our underserved communities will be even greater when our students return asta has been selected along with several other associations in california by the national education association to be part of a national cohort of bringing services and support to both our students and their families in need through a community schools model we know that covet has delayed the delivery of these services at the two community schools we already have at sycamore and anaheim we are also excited by the district's application to the governor's grant this year to add four more community schools within our district asta will have a unique position at the meetings in february and that we will be including district personnel in the form of our community school liaisons along with teachers and parents on our team that will participate in this community school institute we look forward to the great things community schools will enable us to bring our students and support in the within the community that will enable them to focus at school on their educations i just want to again reiterate how appreciative we are to be in the district that we are in during this difficult time we have done many great things to that we have brought to our students and we look forward to continue working through this second semester and until we get to the other side of this pandemic with uh with our district and the school board that concludes my report thank you thank you grant okay um do we have uh i see apga sylvia here yep but so silvia is uh going to rest for vocal cords this meeting okay brian i will be uh presenting and i love following grant and thank grant for being so well spoken so i'll do my best grand impersonation here um i'm as as with most asked members counselors are looking forward to return to work when it is safe to do so for all employees since sylvia's last report was very comprehensive i'm just going to highlight a couple things i know later on we're going to be talking about the national school counselor week which is always the first week in february i know it's hard not to get confused with the other national weeks that are celebrated in february such as national jello week international flirting week and national marriage week but i decided to uh make sure that we emphasized on that national school counseling week um something happened uh during the during the break um we had our loan council retiree and we have not had a chance to recognize lisa rockwell she retired lisa rockwell was a counselor in this district for many many years i remember when i first started here 18 years ago lisa rockwell was here she served our alternative ed communities and high school and junior high communities she was also known through to be a stalwart with rop and she was an excellent military liaison with the armed forces and students in our district she is a past apga president and served many years as a member at large so her leadership and dedication to our students and to our fellow apg members is certainly going to be missed so i would just like to take a moment to say thank you lisa hope you're watching my report yes thank you lisa anna i would also like to say thank you to her she was truly a jewel good long time employee i i slipped by me that she retired at the middle of the year but i now i remember that so i hope she's enjoying retirement i'm i would say i hope she's off on a good old trip you know voyage somewhere but unfortunately that's not the not the best thing right now like when i retired i took a trip to you know the islands of greece you know but maybe maybe in a couple months she can go somewhere we can all send her a virtual hug for her years of service right anna thank you okay um is sylvia going to give us anything or is that it brian that's it okay thank you very much okay moving on then we will look to alta uh hilda are you going to speak for hal alta okay yes thank you madam president prc good afternoon board of trustees superintendent matsuda and executive cabinet so i wanted to welcome our student parents and school communities i want to start by wishing everybody a happy new year and a happy 2021 hoping that you are safe and also that you are doing well um we wanted to just let you know at our sites we are beginning to focus a little bit more on action civics every site um has been doing a lot of work with our students revolving around covid and also we are supporting the anaheim protect anaheim campaign so you're gonna drive around and see banners and posters and our marquees with that information want to make sure that our community knows that you know we're supporting you and we hope that you are also being safe out there if you have to leave your house and so we want to just be part of the community and remind us parents and students of that also we are prepping for our registration process already i know it's crazy but our counselors will be going out to the federal elementary schools and so sites administrators have been collaborating and putting together a junior high showcase so we want to make sure that students junior high level and so next week on the 20th we have our junior high showcase so we're really really excited about that also we're gearing up for the el cap uh season and so we are actively again seeking side uh feedback and also students watching and parents watching we're looking forward to getting your feedback as well also we are are going to be offering more parent learning walks last time was here in december i shared with you that we have uh already done a couple of them savannah burke is in orangeview but now all the sites will be uh putting those out there for parents to participate and again getting um an awareness and understanding what those three pillars uh look like in our virtual classrooms and then i want to end with also just as grant and as many others share the positive feedback that we have seen as a result of the implementation of the new schedule um i'm going to take my site for example because we just ran this data but we do a weekly and engagement uh report and when we had asynchronous days we had um students uh not attending consistently and so you know it could be 100 150 students and so then we would connect with students and this week we ran that data and it was down to 48 48 students so we've talked a lot to parents and students and teachers and they just really appreciate the balance of going to class in the morning having a protected time in the afternoon to finish that work for those classes and also connecting with their teachers or any services that the site may be providing during the week and so just wanted to share with you and the board uh for again allowing that collaboration and for all the the members that came together uh to find some solutions that were really um positive for our communities and for our students and our parents so with that thank you so much thank you hilda okay and uh have we had anyone join us i don't see any asks me uh mma um so i guess that's for our our uh groups here and we'll move on okay from our associations to our parent teacher student association i don't see any pta members either i'm assuming that my screen shows everyone that's in attendance so it's a small meeting today okay i'm not going to complain i'm not going to complain okay so that moving on to public comments this is open session items opportunities for the public comments occur at the beginning of each agenda item and at this time for items not on the agenda comments may be submitted online prior to the meeting submissions will be read aloud during the board meeting by the board president or the our designee each speaker is limited to a maximum of five minutes and each time or topic or item is limited to a total of 20 minutes board members cannot immediately respond to public comments as stated on the speaker request form do we have any public comments mr waddell good afternoon everybody no there are no public comments for today's meeting okay then moving on we get to item nine this is recognition we the board of tree trustees wants to honor our past president uh mrs randall trejo we want to all thank you for your service as a board president from december 2019 through december 2020 you had an unusual year to say the least okay and would you like to say a few words right now emery uh no i i i just uh i just want to thank you and i want to thank the board i think uh we are a fantastic board uh and i think we have a fantastic cabinet fantastic district and just um i i'm so honored to have served and uh i hope i did a hope i did a good job okay very good all right yes thank you for your work you know it is a good district it's a great district i wouldn't have been with it for 52 years if it wasn't good to me so i'm getting up there okay item number 10 we are going to go into items of business item 10.1 this is resolution number 2020 slash 21-hr-03 national school counseling week so moved action item i have a motion do i have a second okay all right motion and second roll call vote we will start with mrs randall trejo i vote hi and i want to thank our counselors for all the work they do they go above and beyond definitely uh oh i didn't okay brought mr o'neal i voted and did or what um trejo said right uh mr jabbar i and ditto that too and i mrs smith and i would like to ditto but i'd also like to say that just um out of uh a deep appreciation for lisa brockwell i'd like to put my eye uh with her heart on it very nice okay and of course i vote i and not to have sl you know slighted the counselors i didn't go on and say a lot but national school counseling week should be really acknowledged because our counselors are doing an overtime job right now i mean this this this right now during this past year and now they're working even harder than usual with some of the issues that we're finding in online schooling so thank you all okay item 10.2 this is resolution number 2020 slash 21-bot-08 school board recognition month this is an action item who would like to all right kathy moves and second sure every second okay any comments or statements well i just want to confess that i asked for this item because uh i never knew that there actually was a recognition month for school board members and i think that um you know as you said we've had a very unusual year and i think you know none of us do this work for recognition none of us um you know want the recognition but i just thought you know this is a time where um i think that we we just really need to kind of uh sit up a little straighter and uh you know pat ourselves on the back for um the stress that we've been under the hard decisions that we've had to make uh through throughout the all the all the years that we've been board members um but anyway i just really thought this was a apropos uh for this time in our and and that we're living so i honor all of you and um and uh you know thank you thank you nice idea okay any other comments all right seeing them this is also a roll call vote and we will start with mrs trejo i vote i who started it okay mr o'neill hi mr javar hi mrs smith my eye has got a big thank you to ann marie for bringing this forward and i ditto that okay and my and i also vote i okay uh educational services item 10.3 has been uh deleted i'm looking for the right word uh item 10.4 donation kaiser permanente southern california so moved second motion in the second okay the district applied for a monetary donation and was uh and was approved by the kaiser permanente southern california to help support the district's ongoing efforts to prioritize the health and well-being of the school community this donation will specifically enhance our covet 19 response and prevention strategies and we thank the kaiser permanente okay i need a roll call vote any comment other comments on this questions okay a roll call vote starting with mrs trejo hi and i just want to thank kaiser uh kaiser saved my life when i was born and i had surgery through kaiser and i really love the work they do and so glad that we have a partnership with them i think they were the first to sign up with our aim program as well all right mr o'neill i say i with the thank you also mr jabbar i would thank you especially for their participation with aid program as well yes very good they they do a lot for our a program and mrs smith well mine i'm an eye and they saved my brother's life last year removed the cancer from his brain it's a big thank you all right and i will vote i of course okay item 10.5 consulting agreement experience inc action item do i have a motion and a second okay this um any questions comments okay this consulting agreement will provide externship experiences to our students to inspire them to excel in their educational and career goals it will provide students with multi-day industry experiences where students have the ability to try out different career paths okay having said that i i just so that the public gets to hear a little bit more of a description if maybe jaren could go over in detail a little bit more so that folks who are watching know what it is yeah so i'm good so i know scott rendell is not on the call and he could actually give the most detailed description what they did but i know they worked with our students at magnolia dale um it did connect with the work that we're doing with cyber security as you know um we have been really intentional as a district to to bring these exclusive pathways that will lead to real opportunities real jobs for our students um throughout throughout their life and the students who are in our cyber security program got a tremendous opportunity with with uh this this this group um the experience inc and i know in speaking with scott the students who did participate had a tremendous time they learned quite a bit and they enjoyed the opportunity to connect with this this group of course because of the pandemic it was done virtually um so so a little different than what it would normally be like if we weren't in a pandemic but nonetheless also very exciting and i think what you'll see at the next board meeting is we're bringing back items regarding the uci law school of law that also took place in the fall um with uci and we're bringing that back in the spring already doing our recruiting so just a lot of great opportunities for our kids and again as a superintendent monsoon has said um even though we're faced with challenges in a pandemic it has not stopped our forward thinking and bringing these kinds of opportunities for our students so very very cool thank you because i was going to question that i wanted to hear if you know what how it went and whether it was successful and if the students really enjoyed it so that's that's good and one more opportunity that's that's superb for our students okay we have roll did we vote on this yet not yet okay roll call mrs trejo i vote i mr o'neill hi mr javar hi and mrs smith hi and i vote i okay we're ratifying that that was already done okay item 11 this is our consent calendar 11.4 g any others i have 11.2 g any other request to full items uh i just wanted to uh make a quick comment for 11.5 okay actually ask ask a question sorry okay any others then do i have a motion to the balance move the balance okay so jabar and who was the second brian ryan okay thank you all right so roll call vote for the balance of the consent calendar mr trejo aye mr o'neal hi mr javar aye mr smith all right and i go die okay 11.4 g all right and a second okay uh any questions okay so mrs trejo hi mr o'neal abstain mr jabbar hi and mrs smith hi and i bowed eye all right item 11.5 hello i have a motion a second okay questions i just noticed on the uh check register that uh we're still uh um or there was a conference for with the flip flipping and i was just wondering um what what that was all about sorry to put you on the spot but did they have a conference or is a conference coming up um and how is that uh jaren or manuel do we have more uh flipping group uh conference you know so so we'll have we don't have we're not doing the capturing kids hearts uh school-wide right now what we are doing is we are offering certain um employees in the district teachers to attend the capturing kids arts um if they are at a school that's been trained but they themselves have not been trained because they're new to the school so it's not like what we had done before we have to do a big contract with them because we're not training the entire school at a time it's it's it's very similar to when we send teachers to a normal conference it's just this is virtual so it's a different process that we we go through so we have for those there's a few other conferences that people are attending um but they're virtual obviously because of where we're at um so yeah i mean the professional development has not stopped because of the pandemic either right um so that's the way we've been doing that now and we'll see when we're back to more normal circumstances about continuing with the work with flipping and capturing at all of our other schools that haven't yet been trained that's fantastic i was really excited to to see that and i was hoping that we were still doing the training um and even though we're you know in the middle of a pandemic so they've adapted their possibilities to a virtual world i'm glad they i'm glad they did it they they did that flip i'm glad okay any other questions or comments okay we'll take a vote mrs trejo aye mr o'neill hi mr javar hi uh mrs smith hi and myself i go dive okay all right that takes care of the consent calendar and we'll move on to item 12 superintendent and staff report you know i'd like to just take a second to echo the resolution thanking the board of trustees i i know i speak on behalf of our entire staff and our sure our association presidents would agree that in these times we're very fortunate to have a stable experienced wise and courageous board of trustees so i want to thank you for your leadership during these difficult times thank you i have no report tonight okay yeah um i would just like to um just extend our well wishes to all of our employees uh and all of our students and all of their families i know that folks are going through so much right now during this difficult time and that um you know our our our thoughts are um with all of you and um we hope that this year is a good turning point for us but we know that people have been through um a lot um and and we're hearing these stories you know more and more so um that's it any other cabinet um this is nancy nian i just want to say um thank you so much to everyone for such a well warm welcome so far and um i have met um a few of you now i think at this point so some in persons as well so thank you so much for the warm uh welcome and um i look forward to seeing everybody more in person at some point so thank you that would be nice when we can get back to in person so okay uh brad do you have anything more to say oh nothing else thank you my goodness okay manuel anything i also you know want to thank everyone uh i also want to recognize and appreciate our retirees who retired at the end of first semester i know that we spoke about ms rockwell great counselor at savannah but we had many more that also retired at the semester and so thank you for your service uh and we wish you well yes very good yeah there were there were some mid-year retirees and but um a lot of them are going to wait until the end of the school year so bon voyage and lucky people okay um board of trustees report okay we'll start with our past president mrs trejo so i attended the personnel commission meeting and uh our rop meeting um and i will let our trustee jabar uh explain some good news that we received with uh about western high school um with that meeting and uh also uh we heard some wonderful things about you nancy at that meeting um from the lasalle trustee uh just wanted to welcome you to uh to this meeting as well um and to really thank um you know our um our classified hr for the work that they've been doing uh repurposing uh reconfigurating uh you know how do you how do you hire people uh you know in a in the middle of a pandemic i just think that uh um you know everyone has been just doing a tremendous job but i want to make sure that we we recognize that that our hr department has been doing some you know miracle work too uh for me uh it seems like this has just been an amazing turnabout of uh of training that you know since uh you're kind of stuck in this um this virtual world um so i've been taking advantage and um and i signed up for for school so uh i'm i'm experiencing what you know our students are going through when you turn in assignments and um they disappear and you know and all of that so uh and deadlines and um it's it's been it's been uh um very interesting and and exciting at the same time and i want to wish everyone a happy new year and um and to um continue with the sentiments of our mr jackson that um you know everyone is going through a lot and you know when one of us hurts we all hurt uh we are a family and just you know know that um we're gonna get through all of this and um we're gonna get through all of it together it sounds like a cliche but we are um and that's the only way i know how to get through uh things is is together and so um happy new year we're gonna make it thank you all right mr o'neal thank you miss piercy i attended uh csba conference online and i uh oc sba both on on the budget with the uh i almost said superintendent what the governor is proposing um so we'll see how that goes throughout the rest of this first half of the year see what the may revise is going to be like and hopefully that we're going to continue to get some some good news by then i also wanted to welcome nancy because i know she is going to be handling all of this through the the business department it's the real challenge so i look forward to working with you and hearing the uh only the good news we don't want to hear the bad news nancy only the good news that's what's in front of us i i want to congratulate all of the retirees who have left the district and are now uh more likely at home but uh more in a relaxed state so i wish you well and i know that you'll be enjoying the the fruits of your labor in a few months as we all get our our vaccine and we're able to start to have a more normal life hopefully in the next four to six months so i want to thank everybody for all the work they have put in during this period of time of this covet i know it has been a real taxing issue on everybody not not just the teachers but the administration and the students also and all the staff that that helps support the education process so i wish you all well and look forward to seeing you at the next meeting thank you thank you mr o'neal well said at mr jabbar thank you um well first of all happy new year to all of you uh and congratulations to all the retirees i'm sure they're also in one-way relief but i believe that they're not going through this pandemic worrying about work um so thank you to all their services um i wanted to i think anne marie mentioned about uh congratulations to one of our schools which is western high school dance team uh won an award uh for their message behind the mass dance routine that they had that they submitted to osi human relations i was fortunate enough to be in the room when boss supervisor doug chafee was choosing which school to pick in terms of the entries and hands down he picked without any of my influence of course uh he looked at each and every one of the entries and picked western high school for their program i i urge you to watch it it's uh absolutely amazing talent of our students and also need to congratulate uh miley who's the teacher so congratulations to western high school dan steve i was also fortunate to come in and do a video with again with my boss supervisor doug chafee to uh accept the wi-fi units which had come in to the county they looked uh incredible i'm glad that the district received 10 of them and thank you john for putting that video together it actually showed all the wi-fi units i think our community will greatly benefit uh with those units so thank you very much i was also fortunate enough to be yesterday at a press conference where the county rolled out the uh supersite pod at disneyland disneyland partnered with the county of orange healthcare agency to open up their site for the vaccination uh while we were doing the press conference we saw a lot many of uh folks who have made the appointment rolled through to get their vaccination again like trustee uh o'neill said uh looking forward to accomplishing that we have uh the county has a goal of vaccinating majority of the orange county citizens by july 4th and it's called operation independence so we hope that we'll be will be out of the woods and people will start getting back to their normal lives i i don't know if it'll be normal but we're hoping that it will be and we'll have a great great school year especially for our kids thank you very much anna you need to unmute okay i was hitting the wrong button i'm sorry thank you mr javar mrs smith i brought the attention of a lady that worked for our district that died of coven and um on the front page of the anaheim bulletin this morning there's a second story about her and many of these people that die of covid are faceless and nameless but linda honma served lunches to students in the anaheim union high school district for 25 years making lasting impressions with her kindness and she was a resident of anaheim and she served lunches at thomas thomas jefferson elementary for many years and they said because the lesson of her life was simple colin kindness is a powerful force and i just wanted to bring attention to the lovely picture that her daughter holds of her mother in her arms and if you have the availability to see this online it's a wonderful article about a wonderful person who worked in our district and she was known as the lunch lady and lastly i attended the insurance committee meeting yesterday and it's always very powerful with information and understanding and yvette from gallagher does a wonderful job with their team so we welcome nancy and once again we welcome you to the bigger part of the picture thank you thank you mrs smith and my report will be fairly short um other than saying to everyone again happy new year because we are starting a new year um i'm going to make a little comment i love the fact that our agenda this today has been so light and i'm hoping maybe next month's agenda will be somewhat similarly all light um um i also attended the csba um oc well in the ocsba uh webinars and workshops and learned a lot about the proposed uh funding from governor newsom i just hope a lot of it comes true i mean it looks great if we get it but unfortunately as nancy means said some of the money that's being offered is basically like categoricals and there's a lot of strings attached to it and a lot of things that you a lot of hoops you have to jump through in order to get it uh so you know if if people are aware that we don't get all the money it's because of all the little little stipulations attached to it um it makes it difficult not no you know answer is simple um and please everyone who's listening in we are working as a board and a cabinet as hard as we can to get everything back to as beneficial for our students as we can uh if that means you know things work out and we can maybe come back to some sort of hybrid in class model then we'll do that but if we can't then bear with us we are working as hard as we can our teachers are working hard they're doing a tremendous job and as grant had said they are really pleased with the new schedule and i've talked to some parents who have found that new schedule is so much better for the kids and uh you know not only kids but for the teachers and that way you know they can work with the students a lot better um that's all i have was those two i failed to attend the uh insurance meeting yesterday but that's because i attended the princess principles meeting instead which i found very interesting and i missed this morning's uh coffee with the principal at lexington but i'll try to catch the next one so once again and to all of our retirees bon voyage i hope that you enjoy your retirement very much thank you for your service and everyone stay healthy do what you need wear those masks and be careful don't get in large groups and get your vaccine and it is a good vaccine and i hope everyone gets one a shot yes president i had a quick question for trustee jabar okay our our resident expert here yes the the uh the um uh what are we calling the the web uh no no the web the the mobile web um mobile vaccination units no for wi-fi oh wi-fi okay mobile units yeah yeah how how are they secured when you put them in a in a neighborhood uh they have a i mean they have to be secured to a vehicle so if they're going to be parking it somewhere then they need to be with a vehicle so that it's actually attached it's kind of like a trailer uh-huh okay so it'll be behind with a lock but if it's in uh and leaving them in the neighborhoods right you can leave it in a neighborhood uh but i there there needs to be a way to secure it so okay there is a way to secure it it's just that they need a location to secure it it's easy you have the the bolt behind it that you can secure and and our feeder elementary should be thankful as well uh for those very good that is really good we've got those units did you have anything else to say mr javar you looked like you were going to say something okay all right so that those are our trustees reports and item 14 advanced planning do i have uh we have our next regular meeting of the board of trustees will be held on thursday february 4th at 4pm and do i have any suggested agenda items from the board okay seeing none we will go to 14.2 i mean fifth item fifteen wait a minute i hear someone no i said so moved on you're fifteen oh okay you're jumping ahead of me okay i am fifteen tournament i have a motion do i have a second okay all right this one we can do all in favor can't we all at once or do i have to do roll call no okay okay all in favor aye okay i didn't hear any objections even though mr jabbar's mic was off there you go pardon i saw his mouth move we can see the baby let lift the baby back there you go
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e1 anticipated litigation four cases 208 1907 219 20-07 2020 2101 and 2020 21.05 and number four uh item number four we'll be discussing will be conference with lead negotiator uh dustin conrad employee organization apple valley unified school dis teachers association conference with league labor negotiator again dustin conrad employee organization california school employees association and finally number six conference with labor negotiator uh agents negotiate negotiator atrinae nelson employee organization and unrepresented and ask for a motion to go into closed session second thank you uh all in favor all right any opposed thank you now we can now go into closed session join the breakout room mr ben you're bender when you're ready click that uh join button this mouse is like snot going down an icicle that's weird okay we'll figure out why that's so slow okay maybe just a moment as we await the others as the breakout room naturally closes because we have exited a breakout room for closed session your mics have already been automatically muted so to speak you're going to have to unmute okay calling the meeting to order kylie do we have any um oh no kylie uh granite hills high school aaron 4g yes one moment yep high school board members superintendent nelson and attendees before i begin i would like to introduce myself to our newest board member miss blasen game my name is aaron forget and i am the active governing council president for granite hills i look forward to updating you on granite's activities in the coming months since returning from winter break granite has been hard at work as per usual to encourage our entire student body to also be working as much as possible we have began motivation monday this is where we post motivational quotes and self-care tips on our social media for our students we anticipate a rise in student motivation and thus success another way granite has been helping students is through our tutoring center immediately after second semester began our phenomenal cougar tutors got back to work their assistants in every subject offered at our school has helped many students to succeed and is sure to continue to do so not only do we help students to succeed in high school but we also help them to succeed beyond our incredible counselors have been spending countless hours helping to prepare our seniors for whatever is next for them they have been meeting with students weekly to help them fill out their fafsa applications communicating with all seniors to ensure we have a backup plan and aiding us in any way they can to help us complete our intended plans they are making our soon-to-be transition much smoother than it would be otherwise on behalf of the class of 2021 thank you counselors for all that you have done granite hills goes further than assisting our students in any way we can though we also push them to be their most authentic and creative selves in order to embrace that mentality this semester asp has announced our first ever virtual art contest students can submit up to two of their drawings paintings or photographs to be voted upon by the student body in a few weeks while the contest has just begun we have already received a large number of submissions and anticipate more in the coming weeks we cannot wait to see which of our students will win this creative competition overall our return has been highly successful and productive we think this will lead us to a great second semester thank you all for your time this evening and always remember maroon and gray lead the way thank you thank you erin apple valley high school by missell cia good afternoon esteemed board members i hope everyone had a safe break and a happy new year during the month of december we had many exciting events to help keep students engaged asb helped bring your pet to zoom day where we saw a variety of unique animals the activity boosted morale and was met with a large amount of positive feedback asb also held a successful toy drive for the holiday season they received 185 toy donations sensations and vocal motion choirs held their annual holiday theater show virtually hosa continues to spread their monthly disease awareness to help students with mental health they are provided with resources such as virtual coming rooms and are encouraged to email their counselors if they need anyone to talk to our principal miss howell has started holding weekly trivia nights to add a bit more excitement to our students school lives key club is hosting a virtual club fair on january 27th last saturday our first batch of students competed in skillsusa students continue to prepare for the competitions sensations is planning a virtual performing arts workshop for elementary and middle school students sensations and vocal motion students are preparing for their virtual throwback recital on february 5th as you can see our students continue to keep busy through these uncertain times thank you for your time and remember sensible pride is contagious thank you so much mizell and now we go to the union representative report uh kylie do we have any from california school employees association csa uh we do not do we have any from apple valley unified school uh teachers association avuta we do not thank you closed session reports uh yes there was no reportable action uh from closed session thank you adoption of the agenda the board may approve the agenda as is or add and or pull items from the consent agenda for discussion and or action we need to amend the agenda to add item 1.3 approve the reopener proposal from apple valley unified school district as per the 2 2 2019 2022 contract between the apple valley unified school district and the apple valley unified teachers association i need a motion to adopt the agenda with the um with the amended uh items thank you and it was a second i'll second it all in favor hi in the opposed thank you i just um i just want to confirm that that's going to be i added to item um i3 correct yes okay thank you do we have any do we don't have any recognition we don't have any discussion information oh yeah we do have discussion information background for the first read of updated board policy thank you i wanted to if i'm going to share my screen and go through just some background information that is in regards to items that are later on the consent agenda items 10 12 and 13 all of which are board policy updates regarding uh number 6146 and 61.57 just so there's some background in and context for those changes first item 6146 it's actually um it's both outdated and it's redundant it addresses the exact same items as 6146.1 it's just much older and so there is no need to have two policies addressing the graduation requirements so the recommendation is to completely delete 6146 it's what most districts have done and instead use the csba recommended 6146.1 so one of the items on the consent is to simply delete all the language in 6146 which will then give us just one policy that we will adhere to for graduation requirements 6146.1 is updated the csba updated language does a few things for us that are important first it eliminates the high school exit exam as a requirement that is no longer a requirement for graduation in california there is talk that it is essentially suspended indefinitely and if there is a new high school graduation examination then we will of course add that as a graduation requirement but at this time it does not exist and so that's an important update we need to make the other thing this policy does is that in the areas where it delineates the number of credits required per subject area it takes the specific course titles away and those are removed in lieu of the simply the content area so for example you'll see in the old policy specific course titles like intro to lit or world lit crossed out and instead simply the number of units required for english english credit uh to graduate which is for us 40.
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as you can imagine we asked the leaders within asdb and that self-raiding we rated ourselves pretty low had a lot of work to do so we decided to use advanced ed they had three focus areas for us you might remember we had building leadership capacity building learning capacity and building resource capacity that jump started us and we got involved in different activities that fitted into those capacities for example in the leadership capacity we set up a leadership academy that we pulled together the executive directors to learn about leadership we did that over the course of one year we also in the fall of 2017 did some other activities for example at that time the arizona department of education had identified our three schools that is pdsd on the phoenix campus asd and asb on the tucson campus as in school improvement status so with that we conducted a comprehensive needs assessment we did a root cause analysis trying to figure out what the issues are and what we needed to do to begin the school improvement process that became our action plan school improvement plan we submitted that to arizona department of education and they provided us with funding to begin that process so it was in 2018 in the spring using funds from that grant we were able to convene teachers after hours to look at research look at and select the curriculum for english language arts that is english and behavior curriculum you may remember approving the curriculum that we selected our english curriculum is the national geographic we were able to use those funds to train our teachers train our leadership team to bring people together during the summer time and then in the fall of 2018 to roll it out all of our english classes had a national geographic curriculum and we went from there so in looking back you know when i was thinking about this afternoon's presentation i realized oh that second year was the linchpin that started rolling out all of these different activities that led to some real significant system changes that we are engaged in today we of course in the second year rolled out the math curriculum and then last last fall we set up the science quickly so we moved forward with implementing those and i believe in our march 2021 board meeting we will be asking you to approve the social studies curriculum i think i will check on that so think about that and that's just the tip of the iceberg and of course last year in march 2020 our role changed with the covered pandemic and the need to really address those new challenges so in the last year we've had to become champ problem solvers try to figure out first how do we keep our students and staff safe we don't transmit the virus on campus and with each other and second how do we continue to provide education to our students both virtually and in person when we were able to go back to school last fall to do the hybrid approach the in-person and the virtual at the same time and we have met the challenge we have met the talent so to some extent we've had to redirect our energies in meeting both challenges in the last year all of this of course has caused a lot of stress from the system on our teachers our staff our students a lot of stress and if we hadn't had the glue to hold us together that glue of trust strong relationships collegiality collaborative problem solving we may not have survived but we have survived and we will continue to survive and in some instances we've been able to move on with just some saying this so that means we have completed in building our foundation if you look at asdb with the metaphor of a house if you remember early on i talked about the foundation or the bamboo tree with the strong roots we have finally achieved that we have those roots that are deep enough and they're strong enough where the house metaphor that foundation is there you're done with it you've just started building the frame of the house and that frame of the house is the four pillars that you board members have identified for asdb those pillars are excellent communication and relationships they are outside outstanding student development they are superb organizational culture and they are effective resource management so with the foundation and the pillars and the frame of the house we are now beginning to do innovation awesome understand of course with innovation it means we have to take risks and we won't take risk if we don't feel trusted safe and secure and supported we have to have that sense of security and support and we won't take risk yes failure is not an option risk me occasionally failing now and then and with the growth mindset we will learn from those failures and move on to even greater success so with all of that ultimately we are engaged in this great work uh continuous improvement of making data-driven decisions of cultural transformation and of providing the very best education and support to our students around the state of verizon there are many many more examples of system changes including early the early learning program the general services program the odd the organizational development division and the information technology grew the operations which includes transportation food risk management and whatnot many more system changes i haven't taken the time in this presentation today to share those with you they are in our agency profile report that report is in board docks under the superintendent's report i hope you take the time to read that report if you want to understand the work that we've been doing the many accomplishments that we've made if you want to understand and see the strides that we have made in improving asdb it's in that report it's a beautifully written report i've read it all the way through some of the things in there i didn't even know what they're doing so please read this thank you for your time in listening to my summary of the state of the agency this afternoon i look forward to continue discussion with you and we'll take any questions at this point in time thank you superintendent reichman um are there any questions from the board members for the superintendent um i i don't see any um so again thank you superintendent reichman for the uh report um we will move on to uh item 2.01 action item approval of the consent agenda consistent with board policy to include items 3.01 7.02 7.03 and 7.04 is there anyone that would like to remove any of these items from the consent agenda hearing none we should entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented this is lynn i move to approve the consent agenda as presented is there a second okay i'll second it okay i see 2k seconds uh all in favor um you can turn on your video and either say i or hold up a thumbs up try holding mine see mike [Music] thank you looks uh all opposed and the motion passes thank you um we'll move on now to item 302 action item approval of new district agreements uh assistant superintendent rex as the board has requested whenever we bring on a new district to our asdb family we like to have it formalized through your action and we are adding two new districts one in the current desert valley regional cooperative which is cave creek unified school district and the second one is in the southeast regional and it is called city center for collaborative learning it is a charter so at this point in time i am looking for a motion and a second to bring these new districts into our asdb family this is 2k i still move second okay um all in favor of of the motion please say i or give a thumbs up all right all right thank you and i see all there all of any opposed and uh the motion will pass um thank you uh we're on now to item 4.01 information item finance report uh ms cooper shayna cooper executive director of business services good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex members of the board and the asdb community our most recent finance committee meeting was held last friday on january 8th with board members manali ann gordon and superintendent reichman the minutes of the meeting have also been included with today's consent agenda items and in summary we reviewed in detail and discussed the december 30 1 2020 and 2019 budgetary and fiscal year budget to actual comparison reports the available cash balance the grant revenues and expenditures report the second quarter basic financial statements and also reviewed the student enrollment as of december 1 2020 in comparison to december 1 2019.
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yes ma'am so you know that's something you really want to push too yeah and while they're while they're thinking of it we can say exactly so we could say okay write a check for last year and while you're writing checks write a check for this year then you don't have then you can forget about it for the rest of the year and and the truth is that list of tax preparers i didn't know that until today when lance was sharing it with me the people who actually hire tax preparers are the people who might have some expendable cash to write those checks as opposed to lots of other people so that's why it's a little disappointing that they're not being you know that they're not pushing it for not just our district but for whatever district you know the the people want to be sharing with so uh we'll we'll be pushing that a little harder and maybe we even want to get back with our staff and let them know for their programs i know when i was at the junior high we we pushed hard i mean we raised close to fifteen thousand dollars in tax credits one year and the great thing about it when you do with your program you put your list together once people start doing it they will continue to do it so once they've given that tax credit and they get that 400 or 200 it's 200 for an individual 400 for a couple uh filing jointly maximum contribution but once they give it i get the same people giving to us every single year because they just cycle it and a lot of them once they get that 400 refund they're just writing that check right out to the school again and giving it to me again and it's a wonderful program there's another reason for us to push this right now on that list that you have of our programs that you've approved many of those right now are part of 21st century so they won't qualify for tax credit right now you can't double dip okay but at some point 21st century may end and if we get people in the habit of sending those dollars you know even if they designate them for something that does qualify for right now but if we get them in the habit of doing that each year if and when 21st century goes away from the three sites that have it now we have two sites that don't have it so the tax credit money can go to those clubs at the sites that have 21st century we've got to be careful about how we use those funds but get them in the habit and then if and when 21st century goes away we will have a an income stream for them i also think that this is a good opportunity for us in these two years to hit up some folks for some funds for we need a big shade structure at fox creek in the center of the campus you know that's going to be thirty five forty thousand dollars five thousand dollars raised this way would be really helpful in terms of figuring out how to come up with those dollars we probably need some playground equipment next door since the grade levels have changed we probably have some equipment at the elementaries that need to be replaced and we don't have the funds for those so lots of things that especially in this two-year period that we could use the funds for that we've not been able to in the past so it's a good it's a good good plan well and i'll say it's important he didn't mention it mr ross did but you know we're talking about the cpas but they can go pay directly to the school for tax credits and they can do it on their hr block their turbo tax yes all those different yes self-prepared ones as well so that's very important that we make sure we say that as well right yes sir mr president members of the board i i think uh we've got a two-prong approach one is internal messaging and the other is external messaging right now this is what we've got for internal you know trying to convince our employees to get back into payroll deduction you dude uh right now we've we've had what one pay period so far this school year that still leaves 25 pay periods you take 200 bucks divided by the remaining 25.
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before we turned over to doug i thought i saw a hand go up yeah ron did you have a question go ahead at tuesday's joint meeting i asked the question when do i get to ask whether we'll have in-person learning in the fall of 21 2021 and i was told to ask that question or do something at this meeting when do i raise that issue i think it would be the oh i'm sorry so i think the closest agenda item right now is on health metrics memorandum of under uh agreement um i think more specifically if it's going to be a deeper conversation for the palm school committee i'd recommend putting that on the agenda for the february meeting um but i think you know as it relates to budget it's a bit of a leap for that to be um you know agenda specific i mean it does have an influence but um certainly i think miss hall and i hear you clearly that that is something you feel really strongly about being able to discuss with this body i can't speak at all but uh both okay um can i also just ask a quick question i can't believe i'm even bringing this up so the the charter thing in the past the reason that we've had the report showing someone in july but not in december has that's been because of a student with residents in two towns because of parents who live separately right so it is still wonderful one of the times that was the case the other time it was a clerical mistake okay all right and then we don't there wasn't i just remember having this really long conversation with that person who has since retired where like we literally use the term black box of data and stuff like that has that been reviewed do we know that there is anyone that could live in town part of the time right so we don't we can't say definitively and they won't tell us definitively but the um what happened last year is they did let us know that the split resident family was no longer all i know is they were no longer on the books for us so i you know i don't know if that meant they could have moved they could the family could not be enrolled in the chinese charter school a whole bunch of variables and so they told us that and that played out in june last year thankfully so um my sense is that that is uh fingers crossed a resolved issue but there's no real way to know they have not resolved their data system to be able to accurately predict that for towns and communities nope his response to me was if a person lives in pelham that's your responsibility yep so the door-to-door effort i could resume but it's a little hard in the combat time so with all that uh slightly positive news i'll then turn it to doug to share uh where we are and i'm not trying to flip about it we're still in a hard place right we're still uh looking at dwindling choice revenue we're still looking at some structural deficit uh within pelham public school i i started with the three things not just to be again pollyannaish but if those three things had went another way we might be in the the dire place and now we're in the slightly less dire but still significant structural deficit plays um and that's a better place to be and then if those variables had went south but i'll turn it over to doug right so i think i'll begin with if uh and i believe the superintendent sent out uh probably middle of the day uh a single sheet that was laying out uh uh the circumstances as i thought it was i i didn't send that out to panic you um uh but needless to say after after our conversation about charter and choice numbers for the for the for the current year um i realized in looking over and preparing for tonight that i hadn't included that good news in the calculation so i have a new version of that sheet that uh hopefully the superintendent can display for you a little bit and and and uh share on screen i'm hoping if not i can i can potentially do it but he's probably more facile with the software than i am all right i'll give it a go dug but uh since i'm since i'm at home my wife my bandwidth starts uh getting iffy since i see you're in the office i'll i'll turn it back to you but i'll get the revised sheet up in a second okay but you know the the primary thing i would like to point out is that we'll start with with uh you know some of the things that didn't change between this afternoon and this evening which is that uh you know we have currently uh a certain number of uh you know about 42 students in our choice into our school district that generates a certain amount of revenue we tend to have and try to keep a balance of revenue uh excuse me choice revenue um we try to keep a balance of choice revenue so that we have some flexibility year to year um and so you know in an effort to be uh conservative in estimates uh you know we have about four kids that are leaving sixth grade uh and going to seventh grade next year and our current uh kindergarten class has six school choice kits so i presumed an uptick of two if we get a much more uh you know positive uh response relative to school choice for for next year that will help our our income during the year um in looking at the balances of what we have on hand basically at the end of this year uh given the amount of school choice we're using this year we have about 225 000 we have just about a thousand dollars less than that is the anticipated uh amount of of uh choice revenues we'll have in the bank essentially uh and so that's why the choice number for uh this uh budget planning process is set at 225 we're basically using uh the money we have on hand and trying not to use our uh money that we'll be bringing in during the year next year um but nonetheless it goes back to the last conversation we had around our our choice uh balance and our use of that of that money so you'll see that 225 is at the bottom of this of this chart which may be just a smidge off screen there it is uh 225 thousand dollars is is what we're anticipating using from choice revenues to help support our budget um you'll also notice that uh you know the biggest increase is at the top of the chart which is our people and and you know this is by virtue of our estimate of the staff we have and and moving ahead to next year uh with the you know negotiated uh contracts that we have uh you know the the increase looks to be about 58 000 you know the short story is in general the the town of pelham likes us to shoot for about a two and a half percent increase in in uh what the town is actually paying for the school in their actual revenues um and that equals about forty thousand dollars so needless to say you know by virtue of our just normal steps and and that sort of thing in the contract we're above that that uh that target of two and a half percent increase in a single in a single entity here um you know immediately below that the substitute line you'll see is is a pretty decent increase part of that has to do with the fact that minimum wage is rising uh toward an eventual target of 15 per hour uh this january went up 75 cents to 13.50 next january goes up to 14.25 um you know some of our our uh substitutes will be uh paid at that at that rate we're going to keep pace with the with minimum wage and so that has an impact on our our estimates for what those costs are it's not that we're expecting any more hours of usage it's just that they're getting a little more expensive those are um nearly five and six percent increases from year to year um the line that i had forgotten earlier today but that i realized after having all the conversations we had the other day about the good news in school choice and charter i forgot to actually include the numbers on the previous one i sent you so that line that shows a 28 000 9 13 in parentheses uh basically uh that's that's the good news is that the you know anticipating no charter school students and therefore no tuitions in that regard and and the number of kids that we have in in choice out uh that helps our budget by that almost uh 29 000 there um one other significant change from this year next and and this is something that uh i've had a email conversation with the with the chair of the finance committee in pelham uh has to do with the uh information systems you'll see a 6900 increase there that's to replace 23 chromebooks um the lifespan on those is you know depending on which kind you buy you know can be shorter than five years or longer than five years and so because of that there was some discomfort and rightly so that that doesn't really qualify as a capital item so the the the uh the feedback to us was hey put it into your operating budget we know it's coming we'll we'll make sure to uh you know make people aware that that's what's happening and that that's an okay increase in the budget so that 6900 increase there is isn't is a known uh extraordinary increase uh that the finance committee was suggesting to us so that's that's what's going on there um utilities another area where we've got some increase um for a couple reasons um water and sewer rates are going up pretty significantly uh we get we pay those to the town of amherst they provide the water and sewer for our for our uh school building so those are going up uh in in significant ways not a lot of real dollars but if you look at percentages it's pretty scary um electricity heating those things are also going to go up a little bit so that's that's the increase there uh the transportation we've got that tied to our um essentially the the national uh consumer price index for our area the new england area and so that's a a contractual uh increase it's only a about a percent of percent and a half i think it's a little less than a percent and a half uh increase there and then of course uh risk and benefits is where our health insurance is and we're estimating uh our health insurance increases about two percent um so that's another sort of large area of of uh you know sort of concern but also impact on our budget so in total uh you know that drives the budget up about you know forty seven thousand dollars uh over the current year in in raw numbers and if we scroll down and sort of look at what our our uh you know revenue sources are it's a much more significant increase in in the uh the expectation from the town itself uh because we're using a smaller amount of of uh of choice money is the 225 the other number that's gone down roughly in half is the medicaid reimbursement we're not providing as much of that kind of service um that service is basically we we provide certain medical care that qualifies for medicaid reimbursement um and so we do file for that reimbursement and receive your monies in in regard to that and that helps support our budget um what i've done with chapter 70 funding the 238 483 that's showing there that's the actual number for this year so i'm basically pegging that to be uh funded at this current year's rate uh so we had estimated the fiscal 21 budget of 235 650 it came in just a little above that i'm using that that number from uh the actuals essentially for fiscal 21 is the estimate for chapter 70.
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in 1617 we had a mid-year reduction in 1718 same thing each year under 1 16 or 18 19 we did have a two percent increase last year as you know that we were impacted by the pandemic and returned uh one million dollars to the town and held two 200 000 in a rollover account so our net expenditures last year were 0.66 this year our budget increase was 1.69 it is almost impossible to run through a five-year budget history with one percent increases when contracts utilities insurance far exceed that and so what's happened during that time is that we've uh had to forgo advancement whether it be uh additional world language or some of the other position security manager will touch on that momentarily so we've forgotten advancement all we've focused on is scl and class size basically we've cut everything else to raise our thin levels and we've increased fees participation fees went up and nobody likes that um the last straw that we had last year was recognizing that we had a little bit larger claims reserve for our insurance and made the definitely justifiable decision at the time of budgeting to pull from that reserve my point being there's really no place else to go and unfortunately our clean reserve needs attention as i will get to momentarily um but we're really in essence at rock bottom in terms of pulling more out of this without significantly impacting staffing where our budget is grounded in personnel that's the lion's share of our budget and really we don't have anywhere else to go which obviously impacts class sizes and impacts programs and this isn't meant to be a speech about being dire as much as it is just presenting the history and where we are so our per-pupil expenditure when we explore um where we are relative to our peers we spend on average two thousand two hundred and sixty four dollars less per student than the average school system in connecticut that would mean that if our budget were funded on the average per pupil expenditure across connecticut last year's budget would have had to increase by 9.4 million dollars that is a huge amount of money um and i think it represents not only an incredible value but you know maybe even an opportunity for investment in facilities down the road so as i mentioned how do we uh take a one percent increase on average over five years and still sustain service and still improve well it starts obviously with focusing on what matters and marlene and kevin marlene solano our assistant superintendent kevin hanlon our k-8 curriculum coordinator our reading and math specialists our administrative team and our teachers deserve all the credit in the world for focusing on what matters and making that be productive for our kids on top of that we've seen a decline in enrollment we'll talk about that momentarily we've held or reduced line items over the last five years often times sacrificing maintenance to maintain staffing we've engaged in more shared services things like our technology contracts and insurance with the town we've certainly been as efficient as we we can be to deliver our services unfortunately as i mentioned upping participation fees and we've engaged in substantial contract renegotiations for things like copiers but also with personnel to ensure that we can remain competitive but also remain fiscally solvent finally as i mentioned before we we've dipped into the medical benefits reserve to be able to uh stay afloat here so when we look at building a budget you know there are three different buckets that i i really kind of consider one is if we were to maintain our level of service as it exists today so we're not cutting programs we're not adding programs we're maintaining the services that exist now what about restoring program so for example you're going to hear tonight about our medical benefits reserved has to be restored really that's not an area where we have choice if we're going to pay our medical bills so we sometimes restore line items uh perhaps to previous levels uh that would be considered a restoration and finally you know we consider advancement so taking a look at our current programs for example when we added a math um you know coach or uh added additional school psychologists we advanced our programs this budget uh this year is coming in at 5.22 and that number is obviously uh exceptionally higher than our history um as you can see i've never the highest budget i've ever recommended is 4.05 so uh i'm going to go into a little bit of why this i'm of course i'm going to explain why we are at in this position i talked about you know contractual maintenance excuse me maintaining our our current level restoration and improvement in this budget zero percent is toward improvement the twelve thousand dollars you see there is targeted in professional development we hope to offer a course next year uh black and latino studies as the state is offering and mandating for the following year but we need to we want to roll that out sooner additionally we want we need additional professional development as the state has required high school graduates to present a portfolio project that's important we didn't hire a position as we um hoped to do in years past we're going to need some more time to be able to address those those two key needs um the contractual increases are things as i mentioned like utilities transportation our staff the vast vast majority of our staff are under collective bargaining agreements and so this is the the end result of that 42 of our increase is to transportation and those other contractual increases unfortunately fifty-eight percent of our budget is tar of our budget increase of that five point two percent is dedicated to restoration and we'll talk about where those things fall into place here so the restoration is really again around medical benefits the lion's share with a small amount restored in the the budget to address maintenance issues across the district then i'll go into much greater details on these as we hit on our budget workshops but um i just wanted to to give you the the highlights if you will so our recommended budget as you know is a 5.2 percent change and this is how that is broken out overall in our budget so our overall total budget as you can see at the bottom is 78 million 487 52.
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what this does is gives school sites flexibility and every time there's a change in course title we don't have to change the graduation requirements finally what this does in 6146.1 is differentiates the graduation requirements between our comprehensive high schools and our dashboard alternative school sites which for us is high desert premier academy this is important distinction that we are legally able to make and that can benefit students greatly why do that well the graduation rate calculation is important to note our four-year cohort rate is what is measured actually we get a four-year rate and a five-year rate for our comprehensive schools but high desert premiere academy is actually measured on a one-year cohort because it's a dashboard alternative school and that one year measure is essentially designed to make it so that high digit premier academy's high school focus is about helping seniors get to graduation for schools like high desert premier academy the state requires them to have a minimum of 130 units ours currently must earn 230 to reach the dashboard alternative graduation level because we have no distinction currently our proposal after looking carefully across the region is to change ours to a 200 unit requirement reducing the elective units required maintaining the core content areas with a focus on matriculating those students to their next step in whether it be post-secondary school at victor valley college or trade schools or if they do plan to return to the high school then we make sure and work with them to do that but these are typically not seniors right if they're there their senior year to finish then then they're they're um most likely not looking to to finish at the high school and move on to the university level directly they might go there from vvc take a look at the comparisons um at 230 units primary how does the premier academy's graduation rate for 2019 was 62.1 actually the 2020 graduation rate is uh in preview it it's embargoed until tomorrow but it's just slightly higher than that um look at the graduation requirements across other schools in the area and where you see for example chaparral high school in snow line a program we've gone to visit we've found it to be a good model for us but their requirements 180 and so those students do graduate at a higher rate they just don't have to spend as much time on electives did i did did i lose you there everyone see the slide with the graduation rates on it no no the slide we have is that graduation rate calculation but it does not have all of what you're saying okay i'm not sure if i lost let me stop the share and reshare see if that helps apologize for that now it's me uh let me try again here wrong one try sharing this presentation again do you see it nope nothing yet all right how about now nope all right well we are going to give this one more try and then i'll talk you through it how about that okay now we see something can you enlarge that screen is that good i don't want to go back into presentation mode for fear i'll lose you it's really that's actually textbook adoptions pat i don't know i keep sharing the same thing but a bit while you are you guys are processing it there you go we got it all right here it is sorry maria all right i have a question there um if we are we're looking at chaparral and they have why are we asking our students to do 200 why can't we go to the 180 and see how we then compare we can we can um we we came up with 200 after looking at our students and looking at how many units would it take to get our students to a place where we were getting where we would catch the most there's no reason why we can't go lower we do have to consider that if they ever want to return back they uh especially if they're in junior year that they we don't want them to be too far off track but there is no legal reason not to go down we um working with earl smith we looked at we found 200 to be a place where we could still maintain the rigor of the program but also take away some of the elective courses that are really what gets in the way of graduation sometimes for those students partially because high desert premiere academy doesn't have a long list of of elective courses so that was the rationale for 200 but i understand what you're saying other questions about that or comments about the number that we're proposing of 200 units well um i know that my granddaughter graduated a year and a half uh ahead at premiere with the 230.
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provided to each of you is the same financial data but more in a condensed summarized version as referenced on page one there were 517.65 filled full-time equivalents and about 60 vacant positions as of december 1st for enrollment as of december 1 2020 we had 2108 students and as of december 1 2019 there were 2 students so a difference from last year to this year of 24. you will actually see the details of the decrease on the bottom of page 1 and on page 2.
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it's 8.59 yeah so there's that but we also um there's an also an opportunity to have payroll deduction in the private sector mojave electric is set up for payroll deduction i know of one person there who does payroll deduction i'm not sure which district it goes to but that particular individual has payroll deduction for the schools there's no reason why a lot of the other businesses can't set up payroll deduction as well we were starting to make inroads with properties across the river and then one by one by one they went through ownership changes and management changes and trying to explain to their corporate folks in vegas what an arizona extracurricular tax credit was let alone payroll deduction for it um had a a really tough time not only with our corporate folks but also the you know the the turnover of gm's that they had so um if you've got contacts with any of the businesses in town with and it doesn't even have to be a large business you know it can be one with a you know few employees if they're willing to go ahead and get this set up i can create the form for them we work with sunny uh and darlene on the in the business office and get that taken care of they've got all the procedures set up for it and it's a piece of cake i'm sure both of you have got the same thing set up through crush you've got your payroll deduction set up through that it's the same form exact same form all i do is change the district on it and a little bit of contact information so the more we can convince our own employees of the merits of payroll deduction one of the workshops that i was at through one of my professional associations through the school pr association when we were talking about tax credits if you can get 50 percent of your school staff faculty administrators administrative staff to sign up for tax credits it makes it a whole lot easier to get community buy-in because one of the questions that you're asked at events is that i'm asked at events is how many of your employees do it so the better the case that we can all make as a team for it and the importance of it um i think the better the success is going to be thanks i think that's just my my humble opinion thanks thank you any other comments i don't know what it is i know in the past that if you did a donation to the elementary it would alleviate your sports fees at the high school i don't know if they still are doing that we probably have to double check with our current administration that was um a few years ago we did do that i know that we had honored it i know it was honored last year because i did fox creek and it covered baseball fees for us so i didn't know if it was just kidding wrestling [Laughter] i think that's the kind of thing that we can just administratively decide whether we're going to do it or not make sure that's still agreeable and that's fine with us as well you just bring your receipt and that's it well i know even though i made the donation last year we did to the to the drama club at the high school it still covered our baseball fees at the high school yeah the high school set it up to cover any sports or extracurricular fees through your tax credit when the high school did it they just wanted the money to stay in the community to go ahead and donate to your child's school but we just want the money to stay in the community i always tell people that this is the one opportunity i have to decide where my tax dollars go you know that that i get to i get to pick and i like that so you're paying it anyways so paying it anyway i might as well keep it here yep anything else all right sure okay uh well you guys wanted to talk about staff appreciation okay i we i'd asked about this um we've done this in the past i'd like to see it go again um this is really i believe is gonna be our responsibility as a board to head this up um and i'd like to to get some ideas maybe of directions we can go um it is very well appreciated when the staff knows that we as a board appreciate our staff i know we say it a lot because we do we absolutely appreciate our staff we got an amazing staff but that's one of those pieces that we're missing now that that we really need to focus on bringing back so i would like to for us as a board to to take this challenge on and and put something together and i'm willing to fit into that piece anywhere and get this going so i'd like to see what you guys think and and how and any ideas on direction things you may want to see how we want to do it um it doesn't have to be this all grandiose thing but but we got it i feel we got to do something we got to get something together and and and put that for our staff um it's a great way at the end of the year to have that pizzazz going out and the awards and the presents given and they love it they love it is it something we can discuss in an executive session so it's not public i don't know can we i don't know don't think it falls under those little lists amanda has her little book there with the with the list of things that can be done in executive sessions workshop okay um and i'm not looking for commitments believe me i'm not i'm not i'm really bought but i just want to make sure we're all okay with moving forward in this so i'm not saying okay i want you to commit to this i'm not please believe me i'm not putting you your feet to the fire right now because i understand uh that it'd be nice to be able to brainstorm as a group exactly and i think you could i think you could schedule just a workshop session a board a board workshop you still would have to post it and people could come in if they wanted but you could just have a round table you could sit in the other room and and do what you know do a planning session there's nothing nothing wrong with that as long as it's you know it's out in the public that you're doing it and that that's what it's about that it's just a work session all right so sooner the better well yeah because you know we're the middle of january already and i don't know where this i don't know where january's gone and it's and it's half done you know so uh let him know how you want to set that up and she'll help you set it up all right so do you guys mind if i just get with kim and kind of do maybe some of my thoughts have her put it to paper send it out do like a living document now we can't share it amongst ourselves but we can send it through administration so we can send this stuff in and she can kind of put something together getting collecting those thoughts and if you have some please email them in of ways you want to go that way we're prepared when we come to the workshop and we don't spend a lot of time getting the getting the ball rolling we already have a direction we're heading that sounds great all right excellent i like it okay and i appreciate the fact that you all are taking it on that you know that it's not not that the people who've done it from the district before minded doing it it's just that it will mean more that it's actually coming from the board and and you and i know all of us know that staff will appreciate that okay uh you have some policies to review it's six o'clock and it is six o'clock we're actually out of time and that's mostly my fault do you want to roll those over to next time over to next time and hit those next workshop is everyone okay with that all right yeah so let's do that and i may have a couple of a couple more for you to to discuss next time partly because uh one of the things asba does is it puts out a calendar each year that says here are some policies that you probably hear some you probably need to look at in january here's some for february and whatever and a couple of them we've already got on this list but there may be a couple of extras for next time no problem all right so with that uh we need a motion to adjourn workshop i move we adjourn the workshop we have second second all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland aye amanda ayman aye brandi dubois aye charlene diaz okay even workshop adjourned so at this time i'd like to call to order our regular meetings scheduled for thursday january 14th 2021 at 6 00 pm uh roll call corey burgess here jeanne borland here amanda ayman here brandi dubois here charlene d is here all present uh citizens present if you please sign in the back we'd appreciate it and if you join me for the pledge 2.5 election of board members so at this time for the election board members we have to have nominations for board president and board clerk clerk uh do we have any nominations i'd like to nominate corey burgess he's been doing a great job i second i look for second but do we have other nominations all right so uh all in favor of corey burgess being the board president aye corey burgess aye jeanne borland aye amanda ayman aye brandi dubois aye charlotte diaz okay now we need a nomination for a board clerk i'd like to nominate jeanne borland i'd like to decline it i'd like to nominate brandy dubois i'll second that all right any other nominations okay all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeanne borland aye amanda ayman aye randy dubois aye charlene diaz mr president could i insert a footnote one of the things you're going to see in the policies that you're reviewing is a policy for board clerk for whatever reason this district did not have had not approved the policy for board clerk and uh and yet it's a required position so uh it will be in that list that you're looking at great all right item 2.6 uh days and times of monthly meetings uh in the past we've always held the second uh thursday of the third sorry third thursday of the month um at 5 30 for workshops and six o'clock for meetings is that still acceptable for all board members can we work that in our schedules i think i feel like it's acceptable on my schedule however i feel like we miss a lot of deadlines so maybe we should move it to the second thursday of every month i'm okay with that that's okay is everybody else good with that and the high school still holds theirs on tuesday correct mondays mondays it shows how much i know on mondays and i would appreciate that because there are a lot of deadlines that fall on the 15th of the month and so it makes it so we end up having lots of special meetings absolutely every meeting in 2021 will fall before the 15th of the month all right um so no other problems then i will move that we now move our board regular schedule board meeting workshops tentatively scheduled for the 5 30 with a 6 o'clock board meeting uh can we get a second i think of that all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeannie borland aye amanda amos aye brandi dubois hi charlene diaz so moved uh i apologize i did skip one part um of our meeting my mistake uh call to the public no you didn't it's next it's nice i panicked [Laughter] 2.7 uh call to the public this is the time the public may speak to the governing board regarding issues within the jurisdiction of the governing board subject to reasonable time space and mana restrictions as the governing board may establish comments will be limited to three minutes per individual unless specifically waived by the governing board at the conclusion of the call to public the individual members of the governing board may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may have staff to review a matter or mass amount or be placed on future agenda however the governing board cannot take action on matters that have not been noticed as in advance as part of the agenda and we do have a call to the public scottie mcclure yeah i'm not can i do this yes uh this old business i guess is this thing this gender thing and sex is now gender i've seen this before in california when i served with on a board that jerry brown required us to he wanted us to get rid of male and female bathrooms and gyms and we voted no but this is what i'm seeing here i don't know who put this on the agenda or who's up to what here but this is the way they are you can't say amen anymore in congress washington dc according to nancy pelosi and stuff you can't say mother in law you can't say father-in-law in the capitol anymore of course so there's a few people that are going to go ahead and say amen but anytime you start changing san francisco's rights um you're asking for it i am so glad i do not have a teenage daughter going to high school because the locker rooms will not be male and female they're going to be gender rooms that's common if you've got a 10 year old daughter and you're a man a father let's say you're not going to be real happy i see this changing since i worked down in tucson in 1979 and this state has gone to hell that is our only call to the public at this time item 2.8 adoption of the agenda we get a motion to adopt the agenda make a motion we adopt the agenda i second the motion darling all in favor aye corey burgess aye jamie borland aye amanda ayman aye brandi dubois hi charlene vegas so moved item 2.9 superintendent reports dr stewart you see our enrollment reports and the building reports and a financial report that looks very different from what you've seen in the past but i felt like it was important for you to know that we have more than two budgets more than the m o budget and the capital budget we actually have at this point 41 active budgets and so i figured that you needed to kind of know how money comes and goes out of those accounts so if you ever have questions let me know before board meetings or whenever you have questions and we'll go over them only this first time will i put all the notes on all the pages for those unless there's some significant change that you need to know when i submit the next month i forgot to stop and i'm sorry you're done i guess i'm done the one other thing that i will report as an update after the board meeting last month where i ask you for some direction relative to sports at fox creek the committee met on the first day back from break and came up with a plan that was actually a pretty good plan they had some questions then about some legalities relative to our distance learning students and a couple of other things and so i ran those by the attorney on the next day mr eastman was chairing that committee he's acting as athletic director for fox creek this year and so he met with the committee again to share with them those legal pieces of information and the plan that they came up with was very much not to do interscholastic this year but to use the 21st century program uh and to expand all of their intramurals and even consider some different sports um i suggested maybe they think about wrestling that's a footnote sorry because we know that's that's a growing sport for both boys and girls around the country so they're uh they're recommending that they do intramurals that way they can have as many kids as want to participate as possible and teach them skills they will put them in smaller groups so they keep some cohorts and prevent you know the big widespread kind of contact thing but get lots of kids ready to perhaps play sports in high school and they're asking only they're suggesting that only for this semester and re review the whole process for next year so that concludes my report for dr stewart i have tonight question for you um regarding the sports so did they make a decision regarding students that are not on campus versus students that are on campus if um because the after school program is only for students who are on campus then the ones who would participate in intramurals would be only the students on campus so we're okay so we're restricting those that are not yes okay yeah in the in this circumstance we can do that because it's a it's part of 21st century and we have some you know rules and regulations attached to that so that would not be the case if we did intramural sports uh we would have kids who are never on campus who are coming only for practices and for uh for events is there a way to have an evening of 21st century where it would only be for those that are distant learning so that they have the opportunity to do so we have in the past opened up uh 21st century to community kids homeschool kids kids that weren't right because the yeah the and that the virtual learning kids are in this situation kind of like homeschool kids and uh and in the past when we've had intramurals yes those kids have been uh you know have been part of the program uh uh health concerns i don't know jen helps those folks work on their 21st century program we can take it back to them for some discussions for one of the four days if it was just like the you know we can explore 45 block or maybe 3 45 to 4 45 since they would have to come to the school most everybody would be cleared out by then that would give them the opportunity to you know have a little bit of social but keep them in a cohort and that will still allow them to participate and have activity as well um those students like you mentioned would be coming towards the high school next year absolutely at fox creek and hopefully would be involved next year so that would maybe help not deter some of that lack of participation that they should receive so this would also give them some social emotional with the ability to socialize a little bit with the cohort we'll explore it and i'll let you know thank you okay there's nothing in 21st century that says we can't do that we'll just have to figure out how they've got their dollars set up and how they have their program set up and we can look at it it's a good idea usually encourages community support but i know in this type of setting we're restricted a little bit maybe we could make a small little group for them we'll look into it thank you i have a question dr stuart do you know if other nearby school districts have also declined participating in sports activities with other districts some have and some haven't and and that was true mr eastman has met with the ads from you know the surrounding districts where they ordinarily do the intramurals and it's been a mixed bag of what they're doing and what they're not doing so we're not the only ones who are saying no at this point but there are you know so it's all over the place any other questions all right moving on item 2.1 donations uh as always our community does a fantastic job helping us out uh we have a 95.68 multiple items for visual and hearing impaired students from people caring about children uh to coyote canyon fox creek junior high at 2123.29 numerous learning eggs to be used for special education in classroom from the fiesta bowl charities and desert financial credit union 150 gift card for teachers from universal retirement uh name of james beechov a 600 check to adam schulitz uh for the shoeless for the full-size instruments from river valley artists guild and then desert valley received 145 dollars for 397 three-ply children masks from mrs gates uh thank you so much community for what you do for us it really really is appreciated um item 2.11 uh board member updates do we have any board member updates at this time okay moving on item 3.1 item 3 consent agenda can we get a motion to adopt the consent agenda submitted i move that we accept the consented agenda as written do we have a second i second amanda all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeanne borland aye amanda aymond aye randy dubois aye charlene diaz so moved item 4.1 a district policy a district mission and belief statement this is our second reading any changes that we wanted to see made to this policy uh before we vote yes mr president there's a couple of spelling errors correct all right brandi has presented those to kim and she'll take care of that okay any other all right so i will move that we approve the district's mission statement and mission and belief statement after corrections can we have a second i second thought all in favor aye corey burgess hi genie borland aye amanda amen hi brandi dubois hi charlene diaz so moot item 4.2 policy ac nondiscrimination and equal opportunity this also was a secret reading before our vote do we have any comments and i will move that we approve item 4.2 policy ac nondiscrimination equal opportunity do we have a second a second that jeannie borland all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeanne borland aye amanda ayman aye brandi dubois aye charlene diaz saw moved item 4.3 uh bcsd return to school plan consideration of the continuation of phase two or possible changes dr stewart mr president board members um you can see my recommendation there we've had a leadership we had a leadership team meeting last week which is the principals and directors and and now we have our current data for what's happening right now right now we have eight students out of school with covid active covet and 12 adults we also have 11 adults on quarantine low numbers principals as much as they would like to have kids and things back to normal really feel that we need a couple more weeks of really strict management of this to keep these numbers down and keep them going down i suspect that this item will be on our old business agenda probably the rest of this year so that we can keep considering whatever changes we need to make as of as of today bullhead city school district is one of few school districts in mohave county that has students has had students in school consistently now it's you know 63 or 67 percent of our kids depending on whether it was before break or now but we have consistently had our kids in school and other schools have been virtual for a couple of weeks in and out up and down and that kind of thing i think one of the reasons that we've been successful is the kids are in school we have all the protocols in place and with only eight kids right now after a two week break is pretty amazing i think that was a pretty big surprise to us that there would be so few kids but we'd like to we'd like to maintain that for another couple of weeks so that's my recommendation but we'll do whatever it is that you all would like us to do okay what are the uh what are the feelings of the members of the board discussion first and then we'll make a motion on what we decide to do i i personally think that the teachers are a little bit stressed with the numbers and everything going on and to give them a little bit more of a reassurance i'm fine with keeping things a little stricter at least until our next meeting i'm going to stay in the phase two for right now and just go another couple weeks until you know let me tell them the number term for the elementary district is really really good and that's nice to see um i'm not opposed to sticking where we're at at this time and then really delving in and looking next month so leave it on old business something we continue to talk about all right so we will need a motion um who would like to entertain the motion go for it amanda okay i'll do it all right i will i will move that we continue with the uh phase two at this time and reconsider next month in old business i'll second that motion all in favor aye corey burgess hi jeannie borland aye amanda ayman aye randy dubois aye charlene diaz so moved item 5.1 regulation gcca ra professional support staff paid time off dr stewart because i'm proposing to you uh an extension of the federal program relative to the covid family act we already have g g c c a dash r but i'm adding another regulation and so that means only the name of this one has to change so the only change to this regulation is adding an a to the title and it is a regulation so it can be approved in one reading and this is the extension of this is not this is our current leave policy this regulation is and in fact you approve those chain the other things that are on there a month or so ago or two months ago um so it's only the change of adding an a because i'm going to propose to you a gcca-rb all right so i'll move it this time that we approve gcca dash r a professional support staff paid process professional support staff paid time off second that jeannie borland all in favor aye corey burgess aye jenny borland aye amanda amen aye randy dubois aye charlene diaz so moved item 5.2 regulation gcca rb professional support staff paid time off thank you the federal federal law that had to do with paid time off for covid related absences expired on december december 31st this was the one that allowed us for certain reasons that you can see here in this document down in the boxes that allowed us to continue to pay people when they were on leave to the amounts that are listed up under where those bullets are as i said this expired but with the passage of the new i don't even know if it's called cares act or not but the new covid legislation at the federal level this became an optional thing for businesses and school districts and employers to do given the circumstances where nobody is choosing to have covid nobody's choosing to be quarantined because of somebody in their family having covid or having to stay home to for child care any of those circumstances nobody's choosing to do that so i'm requesting that the board approve continuation of all the elements of this act as part of our leave program so this regulation simply takes all of the same information from that federal program and just puts it with our heading at the top that it's a regulation so i'm asking you to prove continuation of this way of dealing with folks who who are absent in some way shape or form related to coping any questions okay then i move that we approved gccarb professional support staff paid time off i second that motion amanda amen all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeannie borland hi amanda eamon hi brandi dubois hi charlene diaz so moved exhibit gcca dash ea professional support staff paid time on as you know exhibits in the policy book are simply the documents or the forms that carry out the regulations and the policies so this is simply our representation of the corresponding form that is used for the regulation that you just approved it is exactly like the one we have been using since the first of the year any questions then i move that we approve gcca dash ea professional support staff paid time off i second that brandi dubois all in favor aye corey burgess aye jenny borland aye amanda ayman aye randy dubois aye charlene diaz item 5.4 bcsd classified placement schedule revision to reflect minimum wage for 2021.
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we may get news in a couple weeks from the governor and and uh that has more positive news around chapter 70 that would be great i don't know that that's going to happen but you sort of combine all those things and so the pressure on the on the uh the town of pelham to provide uh tax resources to us is uh such that it that it goes up more than two and a half percent um and so that you know we're above the two and a half percent by about sixty seven thousand dollars there in the box um so we can reduce that though by a couple of things the 6900 is a is an additional expense that was uh considered above and beyond and so that's one that they will you know will come off of that as far as when we're trying to make reductions to meet uh you know the the uh ability of the town to to fund the school the 6900 is expected so that reduces that 67 000 by that and then of course the other one is the the revenue from from the uh rental of the of the building and so that will take another say 10 000 off so now we get into a problem of about 50 that that is is more than likely what we'll be looking at over the next few weeks uh and trying to uh resolve in in partnership with uh you know the finance committee and palum yourselves uh and and uh superintendent principal to try to come to a you know an appropriate in a and you know functional uh program and budget for for next year so i think i'll stop right there i've said a lot of stuff in a lot of detail so hopefully i'll be i've been clear but i certainly want to give everybody an opportunity to ask questions about what they're seeing and what is uh on their mind yeah so if i could add one thing before we go to questions doug um i just want to be really explicit and clear that with this budget there's no way in pelham even if we can get that down to 50 some cares act even brings that down a little bit less there is nowhere else to go than to make staff reductions um so you know when we come back in february we'll get more specific about that uh but i don't want anyone believing that we can find um dimes and quarters uh around the edges to make that budget work without making reductions to staff at pelham school um so you know i started with the positive news because it could be a lot worse but this is very real um and i don't say this lightly this is the least fun part of our job i think um is trying to figure out how to make staff reductions we've already started some conversations you know this document as doug said you know was finished uh you know an hour and a half ago whatever it was so it's not like we had this uh to work from but we saw the writing on the walls explained to the committee and the staff last month uh that we do have a structural deficit in pelham and uh there's not there's not extras there's not um you know things that can be pulled that are further away from kids so this will be a very difficult budget year and again this was compared to a month ago our best case scenario um so sorry to to go from the good news to the bad news but i want to be really explicit with the committee that that's that's the type of thing we will be having to look at for next year all right thank you um any ron yeah go ahead uh on the salaries that's a 58 000 increase if i'm correct that's a 4 increase in salaries while the cpi was much lower than that why is it so much higher than the cpi index yeah before we before doug answers i just want to clarify um this is a negotiation year we do not have a contract with actually any of our bargaining units for next year so when doug answers he's going to be speaking in hypotheticals because we are not interested in sharing more about our bargaining position in a public meeting so other years where we have a contract that number is fixed uh that is not the case this year i still think doug can answer the question with some detail um but because we don't have uh a contract with any of our bargaining they just end it it's not like there's what went into the estimate then right that's what doug can answer exactly um but i just wanted to for you know foreshadow that some years we're able to be incredibly specific about that this is not one of those years but um sorry to interrupt doug won't you uh jump in yeah so i think the the shortest answer is this is that um even when we're in a circumstance without a contract we we will uh grant steps to our employees that are not at the top step of the salary schedule um and so you know that's one of the primary drivers any given step if you're in a particular uh position any particular step from from one year to the next is in that three to five percent range depending on the contract in which you know lane you're in um so that's the largest driver of this it's not the entirety of it say that steps increase the payroll budget by more than one percent by less than one percent i mean because that's a big that's a big increase so the cola is really not the pay increase the cola is the step which i believe about half the teachers get and shouldn't that be taken into consideration when negotiating the amount of the cola because i know that like you like to tell us that the cpi was two percent and the pay raise was two percent but really the pay raise is more than two percent it's two percent plus the step so to the latter point um i mean i think that's certainly feedback you know um you happen to she's not here tonight but sarah bess is on the negotiating team uh as the regional rep and i think that could be brought back and i think it's good for me and doug to hear your concerns about how the cola and step increases combine in terms of the salary lines that's probably as much as we can say to answer if you do look at the contracts or you know that we have or public documents so you can see what to what degree the step increases what percent it is but it's almost always that the step increases are larger than the cola increases it was just that the 58 stood out as a four percent increase oh no no you're 100 right ron um but the in most years in most public school districts the step increases outpace the colos and not everyone gets a step increases the other things worth noting right if you're at the top of the step uh top of the step scale you're not getting the stuff increased about half the teachers give it though across the district i think what gets a little complicated is when you're a school as small as pelham that may or may not be right you know yeah yeah okay um either i guess this would be maybe mike or lee i mean you know hearing that there's no way around some kind of staffing cuts is pretty jarring not necessarily a shock but certainly hard to hear i know it's way too early for any kind of specifics and i'm sure it's difficult everywhere but can you can you just talk a little bit about how the process works especially in a such a small school community like pelham just in terms of again i'm not saying that it it's easier at bigger schools but it just um it all seems very personal um at pelham so can you talk a little bit about that again without specifics of course yeah i can take that because lee hasn't been through this before in pelham you know i know in previous positions certainly but not not in pelham so i think it's really hard i think you hit the nail on the head when you describe it in a school like pelham we just have to think what's the core what are we obligated to do what are we legally obligated to do what are we contractually obligated to do and that takes up pretty much most of what we have there's not a lot of excess in pelham um it's not like oh you can make class has a little better at bigger larger at third grade by combining sections uh and going from four sections to three sections and therefore you can save money that's not the case in pelham um but i think the process is essentially what i described we try to look at what's required legally what's required educationally what's required contractually in german in terms of making sure teachers have preps and uh all these things what ieps say what ell you know services need to be um and then anything outside that circle is something we're going to have to look at uh and potentially take action on it and that's sort of the way it it works in pelham um you know i think the other commitment we've made i think we've held good on is before any document becomes public with specific cuts both the individuals affected would be had a conversation with the principal and there's also an opportunity for the staff to hear it before it becomes a public discussion point some communities get a little cagey about that uh some school committees rather get a little cagey about that and pelham i've always felt very supported that staff should find out we can always email a document with some specifics to the committee but we want to make sure that before it's a public document that staff are aware of what's proposed so that's that's sort of the process lee i don't know if there's anything you'd like to add i mean i think you you really hit the nail on the head and because we're a small tight-knit staff um it is really emotional and it's i think important to name that and that that's it's gonna be hard news on top of a year of hard news um and i'll just say that our our staff are incredible professionals they do amazing work with kids um and the thought of having a school without any one of them um is really hard and um but we have we've figured out all the challenges that have come our way thus far this year and um i'm really confident we'll figure out the best thing to do for kids moving forward yeah all right yeah thank you both any other budget questions uh i'm gonna go brenda and then ron this may be wishful thinking but i'm just wondering um i know these are all predictions but what if we had an increase in school choice people for the fall is that something that could be beneficial or like cut down on the amount that we had to had to cut from the budget so um two things uh one is i think uh again you all are right on the mark in every comment so far tonight uh for pelham school i mean i'm just i'm gonna i've had meetings throughout the day so i'm a particularly uh blunt mood uh lee wasn't in my amherst budget meeting this afternoon otherwise she saw that would have seen that uh not a bad mood but just being transparent and blunt and so i think the future of pelham school relies on increasing the number of choice students the school is not sustainable at 40 choice students it's just not um it's not fiscally sustainable and when it's not fiscally sustainable then we have to make budget cuts that not that make it not educationally sustainable so we absolutely need to do that i know leigh's done a great job in trying circumstance and if we didn't do make the efforts she did this fall we wouldn't be at 40 we'd probably be at 35 or 36 and and that has already made a huge difference for our budget and this is challenging time right uh you know it's um through no fault of anyone the reality is that you know um it's hard to attract students during a pandemic and it's particularly hard when we haven't been in school very much um to attract students for virtual elementary school on a school choice model so i think it gets back to ron's point that he made earlier that would like to bring up is how soon can we get clarity on an approach for next year and we need to do that if we do get more choice commitments that would certainly soften the blow for next year and maybe be able to restore some cuts that we may have to make but we're not going to know that soon enough to be able to for our budget process you know this has to be voted in march to be on the town meeting docket and we won't have clarity on that particular point but i i really like the way you're thinking about it that if we can't increase the choice numbers uh then maybe we can you know try to claw back some of the things that we may have to reduce this year so thank you for that helpful suggestion rom good getting back to the 6 900 for chromebooks is it is my understanding correct that with the virtual learning that students are doing every student has already been given a chromebook in pelham school is that correct lee do you want to respond to that one sure so um chromebooks were made available to families who requested them to borrow from the district so i will say depending on the class between a quarter and half of the students are using district issued devices others are using personal devices whether that be ipads chromebooks or laptops or desktops at home then was the 6900 dollars for replacement of chromebook carts or what what was that intended to do so i can take that one um so in talking with the with the um is director jerry champagne you know there are currently existing um chromebook carts in the school and essentially one of those has a set of machines that are are uh becoming obsolescent for lack of a term and so it's really just a replacement of one of the cards worth of machines how they'll actually get utilized will depend a little bit on in person not in person et cetera et cetera but it's essentially one cart has reached end of life and we're replacing that yep go ahead ron then another question which is not to be uh two snide but i read the budget on the email and it said there was a ninety six thousand dollar gap today you presented a sixty seven thousand dollar gap why can't we hope for a seven thousand dollar gap with the next iteration of this thing facetious but i mean well in some ways i wish i i hope that to be the case i mean it would be lovely if we got uh there's a couple of big pieces of news that we'll have coming to us in the next few weeks one of which will be um what will be our actual uh insurance rates for the coming year um that could be the circumstance that could be good you know very good news um you know i'm i'm thinking that our estimate which was about the two percent increase is is pretty reasonable but i'm hoping it comes in lower than that which will be uh which will be helpful that's like you know that increase is not a huge increase but nonetheless it's the same thick one um i think the other is the chapter 70 funding i think that's one that you know we've taken a fairly cautious approach um to what that number looks like you know uh indications from the state or that their revenues for taxes are are pretty decent that may bode well for all school districts as far as state funding for education but you know we just don't know yet we'll get our first taste to that when the governor puts his budget out on the 27th i think thank you any other questions all right um next up fiscal year 22 preschool i will take that one um so uh let me stop sharing the screen so that you can see everyone a little bit easier that is better that's even better okay so um the uh as just to go backwards before we go forwards um so the preschool program started in 20 i think 12 and 13 or 13 14.
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80 of that is salaries and benefits um it as i said you know our organization is people heavy teachers ias nurses secretaries administrators all designed to support our students and the what you see here is that 63 is uh targeted towards salaries 17 is employee benefits as i said the total being 80 the other three pieces of the pie are kind of ever shrinking support services instructional expense expenses including special education and maintenance so some of the detail about where are the major budget increases these are the lines that have increases of 100 000 or more again medical benefits 1.877 million dollars at the end i'm going to really highlight where we are with that and why it's that number teacher salary increase is about three-quarters of a million dollars maintenance and repair as you can see these numbers shrinking down reflective of the amount of increase so by category the increase for salaries is 2.32 percent um it's a it reflects not only the pay increases but any adjustments in the number of staff as well um benefits is again where that huge increase lies it's more than 17 and a half percent our maintenance and utility increases instructional expenses including special education and support services which includes transportation so again the budget increase for 2122 is a total of roughly 3.9 million dollars with 1.8 of that going toward medical benefits the revenue side this is our anticipated revenue for each of the the areas that we draw revenue for and that revenue is not calculated as part of our budget that goes to the town so our actual net operating expense would be 68 million um but like i said this money is revenue that is received on behalf of the school system to the town so what if and you know i talked about fee collection and how that increased i think it was 1617 that we increased the fees that information is in your budget book the rental fees again this is based on 1920 was a real anomaly given the pandemic 2021 also not really anything you can budget on our hope is that we return more to normal next year our building fees in the last full year were the 13 000 the custodial reimbursement um well the custodians when people come in again it's about 40 grand that we collect there participation fees 163 000 parking fees which offset the cost of um in a pool of maintenance uh of the the parking lot areas and striping at the high school but across the district um and then we paid that year 33 almost 34 000 to the town for use of the pool for our swim programs so again they're all they're collected to offset the cost of us running a program these are fees that don't necessarily go to the town but are expended by us as part of our overall budget in maintaining our school facilities and athletic programs so you know i talked a little bit about foregoing some of the the areas that not only we as a an administration hope to move forward but also as a board so i think it's important to know that many of these items are things that had been supported in the past by the board ultimately um when our our budget came back from the council we had to make difficult decisions about what wouldn't be moving forward based on superintendent recommendations and these are some of the things that we haven't been able to implement over the last several years and we would love to put forward in this budget but we didn't think we could do so responsibly given the already substantial increase that we've had to dedicate toward insurance so you can read some of these uh items and i'm certainly happy to answer questions on them but as i mentioned things that the board had hoped or wanted to adopt right at the top math intervention technology coach security elementary world language none of which we've been able to build upon based on our budget circumstances so another variable that's really influencing this year is our projected enrollment and our pre-k through 12 enrollment on october 1st was 4070.
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right i understand you know she's she was an unusual that's not the norm so i you know 200 to 180 would you know really uh motivate those students yet yeah yeah maybe give them a sense of hope yeah no for dropping from 230 to 200 is okay i'm fine well we have to have an understanding that this the students that we are looking at are students who are not uh working towards college readiness they are working towards uh going to two-year college or the workforce so if that is the case then just find out what the two-year college will need from our students in order to to come in and be and learn the trade in the two-year college but just the fact that you know high desert premier does not have enough electives to keep them engaged um that will be a block that we put in place uh to make it hard for those students to meet the 100 and even the 180.
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page three begins a financial summary based on the comparative data for december 31 2020 and december 31 2019 the budget fiscal year 2021 collected revenues of 11.5 million dollars was 1.3 million lower compared to budget fiscal year which was 12.8 million dollars that decline is primarily from the decline in the federal and state grants medicaid revenues rental income as well as the gifts and donations that we've received thus far as it relates to our expenditures our expenditures as of december 31 2020 are at 27 million dollars which is higher by about 1.3 when we compare last year's amount to the 25.6 most of that is related to payroll and that's because we had 14 pay periods this budget fiscal year compared to the 13 pay periods last budget fiscal year there is a one point mill 1.8 million dollar increase in our encumbrances which include our requisitions and purchase orders and that increase has is about 2.05 million and that's related to the purchase orders for rent water electricity janitorial as well as charges we've also began to initiate purchase orders to the school districts for our tuition reimbursements that are owed for our regional cooperative students we've also worked with adot to order the vehicles for the agency fleet replacement that relates to the million dollar allocation from the governor's emergency education relief fund established by the cares act you'll see on page nine the budget status report and so far six months into the budget fiscal year as of december 31 2020 we are showing a deficit of about 4.4 million dollars when you compare actual revenues of 22.6 million again that's collected revenues plus what we've expended in general fund appropriations you can compare that to our actual expenditures of 27 million and what that means is we've had to use our june 30 2020 available cash balance which is at that time 11.2 million as of right now that's not any of particular concern as there is a month-long delay of when we receive our voucher revenues to reimburse us for those expenditures we've incurred for the instructional site-based campuses our preschool program as well as the regional cooperatives it should also be noted in contrary to what people may think we do not receive all of our appropriated funds of the 37.3 million up front those funds are actually received on a quarterly basis so we've been having to continuously monitor our cash balance as well as utilizing funding sources that are available to us until the voucher revenues and quarterly appropriated allotments are received you also notice in the report are the second quarter basic financial statements beginning on page and as a reminder the basic financial statements show us our balance sheet the income statement as well as our statement of cash flows for the fiscal year not budget year in summary the business services team is continuing to work on processing payroll and invoice payments as well as we're working on our july through december monthly budget package updates based on a review of the preliminary financial data there are no immediate concerns based on what is known other than the recent information we received from ade as you may already be aware the contract that we expected to have an agreement on and receive five hundred thousand dollars in funding from ade is not going to be awarded to us this fiscal year if everyone recalls we lost over a million dollars in funding primarily from the title and the idea federal grants because of our on our non-lea status and the 500 000 was supposed to help us offset that loss and assist us in focusing on school improvement and other accountability efforts unfortunately the budget team included the 500 000 in our original budget based on the commitment by ade since those funds will not be awarded i will need to work with the team to revise our budget expenditures and cash balances very closely along with student enrollment since those numbers are tied to our voucher revenues usage of the general fund appropriations will also need to be closely watched with the recent covid relief legislation that was passed by congress i'm hoping that we do qualify to receive some of the funding that will be allocated to ade and hopefully the same criteria that applied to the existing ess er cares funding is applied to this new federal funding we'll cross our fingers but again if a potential for shortfall is identified and the numbers are re-reviewed i will inform the superintendent and i will then work with the various departments to have them review their upcoming purchase requests and identify cost savings and or i will possibly decrease the budget allotments to ensure fiscal solvency whereby we have sufficient revenue sources to cover our expenditures all non-essential purchases may be asked to be put on hold and possibly some of our funded capital projects may need to be reevaluated that being said while the goal is our commitment to the education of our students and seeking improved outcomes my goal is addressing fiscal sustainability for the agency and our students our financial success is dependent on planning and prioritizing as we move through the rest of the fiscal year as well as looking into the future i appreciate all of the support collaboration and efforts the agency instructional and support staff along with our leadership team have made and continue to make as we continue to look at cost-saving initiatives using the resources that we have available to us which definitely applies to pillar four of our strategic plan which is effective resource management if there are no questions on any of the information presented this does conclude my report of the agency's informational and fiscal data for business services thank you are there any questions for ms cooper i do have a question this is shelley i was wondering about this 500 000 it's unfortunate that we won't be able to receive this um i wonder as far as the different grants that we may be available to are you looking into alternatives hi shelly thank you for that question and yes we are um actually because of our non-lea status we have not been eligible to apply for a numerous number of grants so we are hoping to be able to beef up our donations looking at other resources that are available to us but we are limited in what we can and cannot apply for because of that current status right now does that answer your question [Music] yes it does thank you you're welcome are there any other questions for ms cooper okay uh thank you ms cooper we appreciate your report as always um and next up on the agenda is item 7.01 information item introduction of possible discussion policies gdjcs g c f and g c b c uh miss murphy good afternoon uh board president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex um you all have before you the red lines of the aforementioned policies um i have not heard any feedback from of the board members at this time and the policies were uh posted on the website i have not received any feedback from members of the public and at this time i would like to make myself available for any questions uh hi ms murphy um thank you for uh producing these in in gdj uh there's a proposed change um to allow um a transfer or reassignment of a staff member to a position of greater or lesser pay and that requires previously that required asdb board approval um i can tell you in the last five years i don't recall that ever being brought to our attention we would typically handle these you know on a routine basis uh every year when we do contracts so you know we're doing this work every year it's just there's not a change mid-year um in response to a a change in need at a particular site or in a particular program uh and i understand that there may be a desire to have these types of changes if they're needed and again they're rare um to uh to have the superintendent approve it for uh you know for the purposes of expediting that change um you know in terms of the in terms of that change i'm wondering for the the rest of the board members if they have comments on it you know do we wanna have it as proposed um and and that's proposed as the superintendent would approve uh or or or make make that change after consultation with the the board president that's that's what's written uh or proposed to us um you know an alternative could be that the the superintendent would be able to provisionally make that change subject to the ratification of the board um and that would put that before the whole board in a board items that the board would be able to see it um i think that you know to me i could be convinced you know either way um but i at least want to put that out there to get the board um you know to discuss it i see uh shelly go ahead hi yes this is shelley i do support the idea of having the superintendent making this decision understanding though that there is a also consult with the board president before proceeding with that decision this is what my thoughts are uh thank you shelly uh is is there anyone else that would like to comment on on this change no okay um all right i wanted to make sure that that we you know we looked at both options um you know because it is you know it is a change there so i want to make sure we looked at both options and and uh you know we can get some feedback from this murph if needed um you know this comes up for second read at the next board meeting so you know we can change it prior to implementation we just want to discuss it now that's that's our purpose of first read here that we all get to discuss any potential changes and and uh you know and then we can go forward with it at a later time when it comes up for uh for approval okay thank you um i think seeing no other further comments uh thank you miss murphy thank you all right um the next item on our list is 8.01 called to the public called a call to the public on non-agenda items and this one sue k if you're able to read the one comment that we did receive absolutely thank you we received a non-agenda item the subject being importance of board service to a parent from danny lawrence and her comments are good evening thank you board of directors and superintendent reichman for the opportunity this week i was able for the first time to attend the finance committee's public meeting in the past the meeting was held privately and the general public was unable to attend i appreciate the transparency of being able to at least observe thank you by email i requested that documents discussed in that public meeting be made available to members of the public via board docs but was told by the administration that those documents would only be viewable in tonight's financial report it is better than nothing but not as effective as having them for the actual meeting i hope you would reconsider in the spirit of accountability in the finance meeting an issue was discussed that i wanted to address here this evening a conversation took place about the creation of the committee and the two board members who have served on it for years in that discussion it was also revealed that only two board members read the policy change suggestions from the government affairs liaison and report back to the board if there are concerns having faced so many difficulties in my own situation getting equitable statewide services from asdb i wanted to express how frustrating it is to hear that only two board members trouble themselves to remain committed to the organization's financial situation and that only two of you actually read policy statements that affect how the organization operates additionally in the two years i have attended your board meetings i've watched as board members complain about the six total meetings of this organization they have to attend annually i think it's important to understand that the work of this board truly truly affects in real time whether two thousand children graduate are prepared for college and life reading all the material and paying attention to finances is par for the course for any board service much less appointment from the governor to this board if attending a meeting every other month dissecting finance or reading policy statements is not what you want to be doing please step aside so that someone with a vested interest and passion might be willing to serve in terms of service there is always a huge benefit from the perspective of of all the board members what a lawyer and a state employee of an organization that could benefit from policy changes made here have in perspective might be different than a businessman and a doctor all of those thoughts are valuable to make the desired accountability changes that this board sounds committed to in strategic planning it's going to take a lot of work i hope you all can find it in your heart to recommit to taking on the challenge your service here is appreciated and so much needed for so many great kids in our state uh thank you sue kay we can move on to the uh next item uh and that is 8.02 uh discussion item agenda items for the next regular board meeting scheduled for march 4th uh 2021 to include discussion to meet in phoenix or virtually i guess the first part of this i'd like to ask if there are any particular issues or items that board members would like to have placed under the agenda for the next meeting on march 4.
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mr president this is the placement schedule for when we hired classified personnel it is not a salary schedule as we have for certified personnel it is a placement schedule the minimum wage in arizona changed to twelve dollars and fifteen cents on the first of january and i'm not proposing any change any other changes in this document at this time other than changing step one in lane one to the minimum wage we only have probably i think it was two employees that were making the minimum wage before so obviously we're gonna move them up to twelve dollars and fifteen cents at this point it doesn't affect anybody else in our employ any questions then i i move we approve the is that an approval yes yes bcsd classified placement schedule second genie borland all in favor aye corey burgess aye genie borland aye amanda aymond aye randy dubois hi charlene diaz so moved thank you item 5.5 calendar possible discussion uh prior to staff input and collaboration with cru hsd and other possible stakeholders dr stewart mr president board members um i had this on the agenda before i realized that the high school had their calendar on their agenda for their board on monday and so i just had attached to this a blank calendar so you would have something to look at and for you to give me just some general direction of anything that you wanted to be sure we included or anything you wanted to make sure was not included in our discussions with staff and other stakeholders in building the calendar in the meantime of course the high school has adapted has adopted a calendar with a couple of changes in it and i think kim has it so you can look at the high school one you have a copy of that in front of you as well and then you also have in front of you a calendar that just moves all of those things a week later just for you to give me some ideas of where where you want us to go in working with the high school or working on our own calendar yes ma'am at the crest board meeting on monday they tabled the discussion pending discussion with the illinois yes they did so they didn't approve their calendar yet they did not approve it it was on the agenda but they did not approve it um and in fact that's how i got a copy of this so you can see the one from that crush is proposing the one chain of the two changes that were proposed uh in that discussion were for september where september 3rd which is the first friday and traditionally in our district the first friday is since we went to a four-day calendar the first friday is a pd friday the board suggested that they move that one since it precedes a three-day weekend to move that professional development to the 10th and make the third of flex friday the corresponding change is the friday friday march 4th which just precedes spring break to make that a flex friday and move the pd to the 25th those were the only changes that their board suggested at that meeting before tabling it and sending it for some discussion with the three elementary districts that feed into the high school district mr flora sent an email the next morning with this calendar attached to each of the three superintendents for the other three for the three elementary districts mr warren responded from topok that they do a five-day week and they pretty much schedule it sort of around this but it's a five-day week mr young the new superintendent for mohave valley elementary school district has been meeting with teams of people already they're trying to tighten up their their calendar in the past you know they've had two weeks of fall break two weeks of winter break two weeks of spring break it used to be three but it's been two and they're trying to tighten that up and bring it down to one week of fall break one week of spring break so their calendar actually starts the one they're probably proposing actually starts on the 2nd of august so it's a little bit different than the one the high school is proposing so but essentially both of those districts have kind of gone on their own and then kind of fit it in so that's one of the reasons that i want some idea from you all of what kinds of things do you want us to work strictly with this do you want us to make some suggestions are there things you don't like about it are there things you want changed give me some direction please i like the idea of moving those professional development days and required days like the high school suggested i would like to see us to align our calendar if possible with the high school because we do have a lot of families that have kids in both districts so that does relieve a lot of that pressure that's my my opinion well i'd like both calendars to look at at you know trying to make their flex fridays more even the concern i have is when i look at march and we take off spring break and then we have a full week and then a red friday and then we have another week and a pd friday another week pd friday another week red friday and another week and then a flex so we our kids are essentially going five six weeks if you include spring break without the flex friday so to me i i i don't know if we can if we can look if we can break up some of that a little bit slip a flex friday in there move a red friday we have two pd's back to back in there and i know that they're utilized i just would like to see if there is a way to maybe spread them out so um and are you perhaps switch the 25th with the 18th that would give us that would give a although that makes it just a week after the break but um and then i mean i'm i don't know how the calendars work i'm just ideas and thoughts but even with that flex friday on the fourth or the flex friday are you able to move like i noticed that we have seven flex fridays and seven red fridays in the phone we have six flex and six red in the spring are you able to kind of move them around or do is it just broken up so they're semi equal originally when when flex fridays were set up originally in this district at least there were two flex fridays each month um but that had but then that changed because of funding issues those were funded with some grant funds that no longer exist so that's part of the reason it's this way i don't know that it's any particular number in either semester necessarily i'm a little surprised by can we we scroll a scroll a little bit so we can see me i'm a little surprised that the crushed calendar has a flex friday in may we usually don't have a flex friday in may at all sure i'm sure you do yeah i'm sure you do credit recovery though kids want to make sure they're getting their grades out yeah it's different from the high school semester right i think i i don't i mean i like the september third to have a flex friday before the three day weekend i think it kind of defeats getting the kids there i mean i'd rather see that one on the 17th but the the september and the march ones were the ones the high school is recommending changing anyways weren't they well it is shown the change is shown on this mat on this on this version so the flex friday is on the third that used to be or that was a pd historically the pd's have been on the first friday of each month it makes it very easy for people to remember and so you know i i understand the argument about not having a pd friday on uh the before a three-day weekend on the other hand as jeannie says if you have a flex friday the chances of getting kids there are slim so can we put it on the 17th put the flex friday on the 17th and make the third a red friday yeah i mean i think that makes more sense if we're not going to do a pd day why would you do a flex and that would be the same thing you could do the exact same thing in march flip the 18 to the fourth yeah i agree because if teachers want that day often i'm sure families do too early yeah that makes more sense i like that that breaks up my six weeks of no flex friday either it gives it a little bit means two weeks okay so in september september third would be a red friday and september 7 september 17th would be a flex friday right yes okay and then in march march 4th would be a red friday and march 18th would be a flex friday is that what you're recommending i like that any other changes you guys want to see in there none i mean yeah there are i was just looking at the november one the friday before thanksgiving break you'll probably have low numbers but the 12th the 11th is veterans day i'm guessing so the 12th people are going to want that long weekend too so it don't really matter yeah you're back-to-back um conferences in february i like them when they're on different days from the high school there are a lot of people happy about that so i don't know if we can and i would recommend that we do that actually february that one makes that's a little tough to change for us i would recommend to you that for our october parent conferences for bullhead school district that we move those from the 13th 14th for us to the 20 to 21st now for us to move them to the 2021st on our calendar they're already on our calendar moved no this is my this is my possible one that i gave to you that's a different thing totally this is starting a week later so um stay with the crushed one please but we would move hours yeah because everybody didn't like having that a week later and we would do that on our calendar with your approval as we would have hours a week later the problem with the february one is that if we move those a week later we only really have one day of school that week well we have two we have tuesday and wednesday and that that might present some problems if we move that to the 23rd 24th or the 9th now one of the things we could do is move in february for our district we could move it to the 24th 25th and and move that flex friday for us because it that really does not affect the high school or whatever when we have does it it doesn't flex friday's doesn't really affect so we could move flex friday from the 25th to the uh to the 18th and have our conferences on thursday friday because our our folks prefer to do a full day of school with kids evening conferences and then only morning conferences on the second day no kids only morning conferences and they're gone at noon yeah i like that and there were a lot of people who did appreciate not coinciding are you okay with that everybody okay with that okay any other changes no i have a question though um dr stewart so you're proposing that we start on the same day as the high school this year well that's uh that's what you all are wanting to do i i wanted to give you an option um of uh of starting a week later um and for you at least to think about starting a week later it's essentially the same calendar just move it a week later for uh that maybe i could share that with the high school and say okay can we talk about this and the reason several reasons for that one is if you notice on this calendar we have summer school in july we have three weeks of summer school in july that worked this year this was the first time we ever did that and it was really really good and everybody liked it we had kinder camp when we have kinder camp in june kids are there for a couple of weeks or three weeks and then they're gone for five weeks and they've forgotten anything they've done but everybody the kids liked it teachers liked it everybody liked it and starting school on the schedule that the high school has we can't get that we can't get the 12 days in it's a funded program from title and we have to have 12 days of that so that was that was one reason for considering moving a week later a second reason is fewer hot days in school if we start a week later but my other reason was the farther we can get down the road from covid the more likely we can have normal school so for me those were the those were the three things and i at least wanted to give you options you know i wanted to not just i mean it's fine whatever we do but to give you some options to consider i do too i think the only issue was the whole payday thing last year is that going to still be an issue will they miss it i don't i don't think so because there are three paydays there i mean there's there are five fridays in in uh july and at some point we're going to have to do it anyway because if we keep moving earlier and earlier at some point we're going to have to drop back a week and i think if if we were to decide this now people have lots of time to plan for that payday you know hold hold save some of my as a you know as an employee save some of my uh my prop money you know put it aside to help me get over that week the people who would be teaching summer school would have a little bit of income during that time but with the three the five fridays there would be three paydays that month so i think we i mean i think it's doable especially if it's decided early but that would take us off the calendar with the high school because of graduation and everything they've got so they that's going to be very difficult for them to move a week later well unless unless we negotiate with them and say hey how about moving a week later you know mojave valley starting a week later they would be starting actually only two days before this they're planning on starting on the second um i don't john didn't john warren didn't give a specific calendar or dates that he was looking at he tends to match his to mojave valley partly because his seventh and eighth graders go to mohave valley junior high so you know so they coordinate a little closer than with us because of that i think the key is that the holidays the times the kids are off are the same for the most part except for that week later starting this seoul this summer why why are we starting on a wednesday we've been starting on a wednesday for a number of years it gives us a couple of days to get kids in place and and uh you know get routines set up you set up all your routines during those days and then you hit hit the academics starting on monday and and it gives us those days that we that we want for teacher and service beforehand and and those kinds of things and it's worked very well for a number of years to start on wednesday i remember i taught i spoke to um superintendent floor about the start date last year and he said that they have to start earlier because to get all of their semester days in for first semester and so i don't think that they would be changing it to to match us if we started later the thing with uh the thing with the high school and brandy is that high school credits are not determined by number of days they're determined by credits yes this does unbalance the number of days it makes 72 in the first semester and 78 in the second semester but they're it's it's not days the high school doesn't govern it doesn't determine anything based on days it's based on credit hours and and it might affect that so you know it might be the kind of thing and in fact he mentioned that when i suggested the idea of considering a week later his other uh his other concern was the dual enrollment classes with the college and when the college has graduation and those things uh i think that's kind of a spurious argument the dual enrollment classes have been around for at least 15 years my daughter participated in them it's just that that class exactly it doesn't really affect anything so i that to me was not a good argument for this uh or you know for the earlier thing but he did talk about the the number the credit hours and he did talk about the salary things so it's not that those are not concerns we need to we need to conserve consider them and we need to talk you know whatever it is we're going to arrange and coordinate with them the biggest thing i see with it is that week that we would be if they didn't we'd be a week of our kids at home and the high school kids at school if they didn't push back a week with us but they're gonna have the same issue in the valley if they're starting earlier yeah we got a lot bigger population i know we do i know we do that's why i was wondering why we start on a wednesday if we started on that monday it would only be a matter of two days but i gotta agree it is nice to have those days to get your routines and your procedures out of the way because then it's rolling um but i mean it's still a decision we can make discuss it and still receive more information yeah so we could we could pass to them saying because if we still have time so we could say we would prefer this what do you think and table this for next meeting so they have our input and um or we could say we approve this if you approve this you know we could do that too you know we could we could approve our calendar pending their approval because then if they say no we're not doing that we can revisit it and then we don't have to revisit if they say okay we'll take those changes so we do have some options of what we want to do so would you like to approve that calendar with the changes made on the dates by pushing back a week if the high school approves theirs pending their approval because then it's off our table if that's really what we want and if they say no we want to do that we can discuss it next week and we can make a decision say well you can do that and we can do this next month we still have enough time giving our staff what's going on but that's really what we want to do is that calendar we can approve it pending high school's approval of a matched calendar and if they don't then we can revisit and say the only thing that's not matched is that they start early that affects both we will be moving our parent teacher conferences because that has no effect on them right um so it helps i think yeah it really does it really does it does absolutely i think it's better it was a good morale thing for our staff and it was a good morale thing you know and and families liked it too because it made it much more convenient for them how many high school teachers have kids in our district exactly exactly so it goes both ways so are we okay with that proving the one week later calendar with the changes recommended pending the approval of high school accepting the same calendar i'm fine with that all right then that will be my motion i move that we approve the one week later calendar pending with the with the changes uh pending the approval of high schools because that way if they accept it we're done if they say no we want to do this we still can talk about what we want to do all right we get a second second that jeannie borland all in favor aye corey burgess aye jeannie borland aye amanda ayman aye brandi dubois aye charlene so moved uh right item 5.6 job descriptions dr stewart well as i've told you in the past thank you mr president um i've started working on job descriptions as we were looking at a number of things job descriptions came up we have a big binder of those and many of them many many many of them the most recent version of the job description is 2006 2009.
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uh it's been a super helpful um part of our school and an incredibly valued part of our school community in pelham um i think the intent was to increase choice numbers i think you know we've had a hard time quantifying that impact but the impact the larger impact on having young students in the school has been fabulous we've been blessed to have wonderful staff members to lead that program and last year uh we had a hard time committing to it it is a self-s it is intended to be a self-sustaining program in other words it is uh it's in a public school but it's intended to uh bring in enough revenue where it doesn't rely on pelham school funding obviously there's in-kind services in the space the heating custodial staff you know the principles work um and and i think we righted that ship we had to increase rates which was very difficult to write that ship we did that because we were close to closing the preschool a couple years ago because of finances last year we um i made a recommendation which was supported that we explored whether families were willing to um pay whether it was virtual or in person given the uncertainty of the school year uh the results and thank you lee for your quick work on that right as you started uh showed that really there wasn't sufficient demand unless it was a commitment to be in person and uh well the world is definitely getting to be hopefully uh soon a better place in terms of numbers we find ourselves not being clear on exactly what next year will hold so again i'm in this place of struggling with what to recommend not because of the value that i place on preschool or the preschool program but really because i don't know how we can con i can in a good conscience uh take deposits and for people to assume that the preschool program will happen regardless of any circumstance when i can't really guarantee that for next year right now um so i guess you know what i'd ask is that you know perhaps we can come back to this if we see if we have more clarity in a month or two um but i can't you know encourage lee i don't feel good encouraging lee to be doing recruitment for preschool when until we have real clarity that that preschool would be able to operate uh free from some constraints next year i know there are preschools in the area that have operated uh successfully this year in a lot of the towns in and around pelham but because we have other constraints being operated in a public school it's hard to make that commitment and so you know i think this is really hard because it gets into staffing and it gets into families wondering and these already had families inquiring about it for next year but um i think we're going to be in the same conundrum uh when we're in the budget process and so my my recommendation is to come back to this um and if we're able to fund it do it sort of off the normal budget cycle somehow or something like that but until we have full clarity on what next year will look like i you know i i really struggle to imagine how we can commit to a program when we don't know what the funding structure would be especially given the conversation we just had um so you know um doug pulled the preschool out of that uh presentation you know because we talked about it because i really do think it has to be a separate kind of thing um and i don't you know i don't want to be again too negative um about it but um i guess i really struggle to see operationally how we can do that with kind of the nature of public schools in 2021 and the uncertainties that come with them assuming that we don't have a preschool class in 2021 are there any long-run implications are there licensing things that we don't adhere to will space be gobbled up for other purposes in other words can we then have if we don't have it in 2021 then we can reinstitute the program for 2022.
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and if you have a great memory earlier in the presentation i indicated that our current enrollment is 40 to 12. um now if you add our 20 or excuse me 33 open choice students to that that group we just are over uh 4 100 and then we've also added an additional 80 students just enrollment only since october 1st so what we've experienced in years past is a decline in enrollment and if you've been following the school modernization we've kind of hit the valley we're at the the trough of the wave and we're starting to increase again and i think this data helps lend strong evidence to that to know that um next year this is nasdaq um as of october 1st projected 85 students up we're already up 80 students from october first in pre-k six since october you know let alone by next year so what we are seeing is that swing back up in enrollment um and it is a factor budget so some of the information from the nasdaq report i mean they they hit on the case of cheshire having higher than typical home sales recently but also a high birth bubble that would impact us for kindergarten next year that we really have to be considerate of in our planning so our projected student enrollment for next year you can see this is just further broken down by grade now and um this is grade 12 and you can work back to grade k this is our pre-k column here i'm sorry it doesn't have the headers but we um next year that's where you see the net minus 18 but again that was projected back on october 1st so i wouldn't be shocked if we're actually in the positive come october 1st of 2021 that the rate things are going our enrollment as we are predicting for next year dictates the number of sections we have so at the elementary level what you can see is that with that increase a substantial increase in the number of students uh we are currently at 17.8 students per teacher in the elementary schools as you as anybody who's been on our board a while knows the community i think is probably most sensitive to student for teacher ratio and so in addition to our scl and we think it's part of our scl component honestly but scl complex thinking is part of that scl component is the student teacher ratio so it is going up slightly but certainly well within our our past numbers our past range and so this is what we feel would make most sense for next year the total number of teachers you can see however goes from 111 this year to 113 even adding two teachers with all the increased enrollment we've had it's the average number of students per teacher still goes up so when i say we're you know we're influenced by one of those factors being enrollment this is exactly what i'm talking about so again projected class sizes these are the average i talked about our numbers being within that relatively within that range next year we're projected at 18.3 as i just mentioned for k-6 and if you look across that row you can see that you know at our highest we were at 18.8 but we're we're in that realm of where we had been historically at the middle school however what you've seen is a little bit of a decline in enrollment and that um that valley is right now passing through the middle school in terms of the low point of our enrollment and that number uh pernesdek is and myelona mcbroom's recent study is projected to swing up too where we are for next year in terms of our enrollment numbers uh roughly 22 in grade 8 23.3 in grade 7.
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you have to remember you know how they ended up there they were reluctant learners or they were not motivated so now we just need to give them the motivation with num with 180. you show them 230 versus 180. if you are looking to go to college then you need to really consider getting your work done here and return to the comprehensive high school where the 230 is required me propose this um uh i'm just going to throw out an idea for because this is discussion information um is if because what we wanted we don't want to delay a change too long we have a first read now and it would take a second read in february to give these kids some hope and this is this is what we kind of worked on with the principle of the site could we do an analysis of see how this what this yields for us and bring back to you a second recommendation if 200 is insufficient sure that will work okay i think let's just drop it to 200 and then we evaluate it that's a good idea okay that's what i'll do i will bring an evaluation back with grad rates uh at this new unit requirement i'd like um to see what the electives are that are being offered um at the academy sure okay we could do that um they actually have some really creative and and well attended electives of course in covid they're tough um but that's across all of our high schools and a site so i'll do that one last policy related to this is the 6157 that you saw there it's distance learning and for the most part the distance learning policy codifies and puts into policy those structures that we have in place for our distance learning program however there are two changes or two additions to the csba recommended language one is an allowance for and this is why it's part of the graduation discussion information item it's an allowance for the superintendent to adjust the graduation requirement during a school closure like this for students who are on track and have met the state minimum requirement if you remember for example last year for the class of 2020 the graduating class of 2020.
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