um yeah okay thank you i think and i i'm sorry lauren to you're good yeah nope yep thank you lauren did you have fun yeah i just had a question so after the city tells us um what they will give us for the budget um and then it's decided how it's broken down does the board see that again like what's taken out or do they vote on what's taken out how does that work what generally happens uh we the city will say x and then it goes to its subcommittee of the city right and then they um either adjust or they generally just accept it or you know if they make an adjustment it goes back to the mayor's and then he makes a recommendation after that uh we start putting together what we can and cannot do now we can come back and share that with the board about what's possible um sometimes you know um it becomes necessary to make drastic drastic cuts like that when you only had zeros that was uh that was a whole different ordeal you know um but we would come back and say this is what we've been able to do okay rachel just said how are you going to do both when you can supplant well you're going to have to know that we're going to have to figure out what isn't supplanting in the budget and then what what can we get so we can come back and let the board know these are the things that we're doing and then there's some feedback that'll be helpful we'll figure it out because the the bottom line would have been set already you know what i mean from the city we could just move it through yeah we could just move around you know and then what happens also lauren we open up and we all of a sudden get a number of uh students that we didn't anticipate and we had three or four teachers so we got to figure out the budget right you're going to buy so that you know we could pay for that right now i get that no thank you thank you and just that and learning between now and then is um an opportunity to speak with council or with us because there was once they received the budget for the months that they put together their package and there's an opportunity to lobby for you know what what you're interested in speak to community members about what we what we're interested in putting forth and and it's a little bit unique this year in that normally there would be public hearings and they're still deciding if how that that'll be conducted last year it wasn't conducted at all because an executive order allowed them to just adopt the budget they they chose but we're hoping that this year at least even at virtual they'll be able to be public participation and we can give our comments okay thank you madam sure yes oh thank you man i'm sure um first of all a big thank you to rich and courtney for putting this document together this is a lot of work um courtney especially for the magic that's involved in trying to figure out how to allocate the limited resources we have um sadly i expect will be needed and we will need to braid funding again going forward this year um i agree with rachel this is a big ask in this budget for sure just like it was a big ask last year a significant part of the reason why it's a big ask is because over the last decade and courtney thank you very much for putting this document this slide into the presentation last night over the last decade um the board received or our schools received a 15 in the aggregate budget increase in a decade that's why it's a big ask this year it's a big ask this year because in 2011 the board got less than a one percent increase in 2012 it got a less than one percent increase in 2013 and 14 it got two less than three in 2015 1617 it got less than two percent increases we did get a three percent increase in 18 and let in a 0.06 percent increase in 2019-20 and last year we got 1.2 million the rest of the increase in money was money that we had that we saved and money that was grant money we were allowed to roll over and carry that money it wasn't budget money for our budget the reason why it's a big ask this year and the reason why it is so hard to fund all of this stuff is because frankly we haven't had the budgets we've needed for the last decade we were playing catch-up this budget is a big ask i agree unfortunately it's probably not even a big enough ask to do what we need to do it's just as realistically it's as big as it could realistically be um thank you courtney thank you dr self for putting this together i agree it's a big ask we wouldn't need to be a bit it wouldn't need to be as big as if if we had kept up for the last decade unfortunately now we are stuck playing catch-up at the worst possible time but unfortunately we don't have a choice we have to catch up that's why i'm supporting this budget thank you jeff adam chair i'd like to respond to that yes mr wilson um the numbers i have in front of me uh we're talking that 15 million was going to talk about it over a two mil increase in our tax 15 i think we've acted responsibly in the past and and the 148 or 50 million oh yeah okay double our taxes there you go thank you i think we've acted responsibly in the past we will act responsibly in the future we just can't have everything we want so i this is we've been practical it's work and we we have continued to move ahead thank you thank you any other comments i have one yes cathy i i understand al i understand your point and it's going to be tough to ask for this and get all of it because people will say my taxes will rise but it's our job as board of education members to advocate for the kids and that's what we need to tell people is this is what we need to raise your house values to make sure that danbury public schools stay ahead of the curve to make sure that we are educating our kids to the fullest extent to make sure that we are following all of the guidelines set down to us from the federal government and the state government that are unfunded mandates but still we have to put them in place so yes i do agree with you i don't want my taxes raised any either it's raised to advocate for kids thank you kevin i appreciate what you're saying i i do understand and i do understand that we are advocating for our children i just well i just think we can't take that side of the argument we have to stay on the side of the kids being said that i will go in favor of pushing this budget forward [Laughter] mrs cooper all right yes mr daniella i raise you okay thank you i'd like to ask dr casmara to repeat her statement that she made last night because i thought it hit the nail on the head relative to the need for us for the funding and the building of the foundation and if we don't continue to get as we as we ask for um the issues that it's going to present in the future i mean here's the person who's involved in the trenches understands the curriculum and can basically tell you what the the impact is on our staff and what they're trying to do with very limited resources in the past and as we continue that then what are the consequences going to be relative to what we're looking to do ahead so cara if you would just again reiterate the points that you made last night which i thought were very very strong and good about the lack of funding in the past sure um you know and and thank you joe for kind of outlining the the last couple of years and you know it it's no secret we haven't been funded to the to the level that we've needed to be funded um but we have very creative and innovative people who have been working with the best that we can put forth for the kids um one of the main concerns you know i think about we had this little conversation about the technology before we got started about flip phones and and jest but it took a pandemic to get computers into the hands of all of our students uh this year and and that's that shouldn't be the case so um the silver lining in the pandemic was that we brought technology into our district for the first time um at a level that our students deserve and that our teachers deserve and we're still working on it we have a lot of pockets and things to work on but it took a pandemic to get there um and these outside funds that came in in a one-time fashion to sustain that um approach um we're gonna need continual funding okay uh google chromebooks have a a life span of you know three to four years max um two to three optimum um going to need to sustain you know some of the infrastructure technology that we finally have been able to get moving forward we have visions in danbury to build an academy model to provide opportunities to our students we're going to be opening up a site a location over at the summit that's going to hold between either 1200 and 1300 students we're going to need to outfit that with staff members and equipment and and things moving uh forward to provide for the resources that we that we need to give our kids if we don't start to dig out of the hole to make incremental growth towards the budget um this year i'm not sure how we're going to open and sustain that new that new satellite location um we have to be able to fund the programs that we're trying to get off the ground now and that we've been doing in the last couple of years in order to be able to you know even think about opening up a state-of-the-art building and keeping it keeping it running so um you know i'm worried about that cliff i'm worried about when that when the building opens that if we don't start adding and keeping up with the ftes that we need now with the current uh budget and the current enrollment that we have now remember we're planning for um this growth that's coming upward uh that that's meeting us at the middle school and and and will be steady on through the high school and so we need to start continually moving up like a staircase in our budget when that building opens i you know i'm very nervous about that the one thing we don't want to do is open up a brand new building and not be able to fund it or staff it appropriately so um we need the resources um we've in the last couple of years with some of the braiding and the work we've been able to get materials that we have not had in the past in a in a efficient manner so um by having some of the materials that we've been able to put in like such as the phonics program and a few others we're guaranteed some of the programming that students are getting um and that was a little bit difficult in the past to um to guarantee so we're on the right upswing we've got a great crew in place and we've got a lot of people who are motivated to make change but we have to be able to support our budgets and um we have to be able to to make that opening for that new building and to be able to position our students and our and our staff well for that yeah cara let me just add to that and the board knows you know the perfect storm you've got the growth you've got the new building and you have new graduation requirements which are 25 which is really exciting we mentioned this a few years ago it's with let's say it's his current sophomore class correct as when they entered as freshmen so we're adding every year you know i think the number i heard was between the growth at the academy and this you're talking maybe 24 ft's thereabouts to get it done uh that we have to phase in them and i don't want to leave this without thanking the teachers because i go around the district and i know teachers bring a lot to the table they go out and spend their own money and and i see parents donating i just want to take this opportunity thank you to teachers and the parents for helping us out uh it is needed now with that said al never i heard what you talked about but i think my job is to put in front of you what i think to move us forward and that's what i have here this is something that will move us forward and it will help build for the next few years so that we can hopefully be prepared to open the matrix now can i just make one more comment about that i just want to mention the niask report you know some of the things that were cited in the nes reports just you know have been having more counselors and um curricular development in some of the special areas a lot of the things that were cited are direct result of things that we have been unable to get over the years that have built up um and that were cited in that report and so um we need to you know rectify those components and we need to continue to support our programs and address the enrollment that is this keeps coming down on the way thank you courtney dr sale i i appreciate your point and i'm glad i provoked an honest discussion uh i i guess what what i really have in my mind is we need uh to do a better job of selling this and ex to the public to get public support to move our our leaders towards a direction and that takes marketing and and which is beyond my capability of doing alone i could talk to a few people there are 33 people on board here on this that is the zoo meeting tonight but yeah it needs to be sold and and people need to buy and buy in on it and i don't know how to do that alone i can talk i can i can raise a few feathers i can raise a little bit of exposure but we need to garner total community support that everybody is on board not everybody but the majority is on or on board with the movement that that we want to accomplish and uh you're right difficult year i understand thank you for your comments thank you very much you're closing me down gladys no okay no i didn't close your thing i want to thank you for those comments very well may i just say i wanted to thank um everyone i wanted to thank amy and rachel and elle and joe for all of your comments because it's it's i'm i'm really glad to hear i also just wanted to remind us that and thank um that you know kate worked really hard with us on this and rich and the finance committee and al and i want to thank all of you for all of your dedication to getting everything ready in the way that would be presented to the board appropriately and also i just i also want to thank cabinet because although you know you're seeing the um presentations you know last week and this week uh there's been a series of sessions that went into it i think it's once again a very very thoughtful budget i think even though it's a big ask i would advocate that it is still a prudent budget because you know our ask was even bigger until we thought realistically about you know what's really needed for next year and so i hope that that's reflected in what you see in front of you it was a lot of work and i wanted to thank all the cabinet members because we met many many times to hone in on what we think is appropriate in anticipation of looking out at that multi-year budget and our future graduate and doctor south vision for for danbury schools and kevin's vision and and so i just wanted to thank everybody so thank you are there any other questions concerning uh the budget cnn uh kate would you do the roll call uh sir joe britton aye rachel chaleski jane uh kate caneva aye gladys cooper hi lauren daley hi joe da silva joe sorry you're on mute i think um rich janelli hi kathy molinaro hi al russo hi amy spolino hi so 9i uh one extension nine eyes and we have one extension so the motion is so carried uh thank you all thank you for the questions thank courtney thank the um uh finance committee and um mr genelli and all those members in the committee uh for working so hard to put this together thank you so much uh we move on down to presentation yes you know sometimes you look for the teachable moment the teacher in the other night the question came up about recruitment i thought what an opportunity here and uh i happen to be talking to rod cody oh and we have we've got some things i'd like to share with the board because i think um you'll be happy um to hear about the workings that we're doing wescon and i call it the grow our own program rob are you here yes yes i'm ready to share so is everybody ready here don't you have a spouse that works for us somewhere yep she's doing her um corrections upstairs being a teacher these days is a 24-hour job so um by the way i will say it's a tough fact to follow after the budget you put me in a tough spot here everybody's got you know numbers crunching through their head right now and uh you know like any good teacher i'm going to ask for everybody's undivided attention if you don't mind so let me um bring up my powerpoint real quick here we go is that up yeah go ahead rob can i get it yes are we good okay excellent so uh on behalf of western connecticut state university and the pre-collegiate and access programs uh i want to thank you for this opportunity to come before the board talk to you a little bit about the partnerships that we've had with the school district for for over 20 years now um and so um what i'm going to do tonight is go over our department and the programs that we have within our department and then uh i also have dr o'callaghan and professor huertas here that teaches our our pipeline program and they can talk a little bit about our teaching pipeline as uh sal was mentioned about uh grow our own so um first slide here we go so um we've really grown our own here you know at western connecticut so we have our excel program that services uh rising seventh and eighth graders uh we are looking to expand that program currently we're serving uh 30 37 students we want to take that to 75 so that we can service 25 in each one of the middle schools we did expand that quite a few years ago with the west side middle school which was a good thing um and that again that service is uh rising seventh and eighth graders we also have our upper bound program for our uh ninth through 12th graders that is a grant provided by the u.s department of education in d.c that services students that are first generation or low-income students with a small percentage of academically at risk students and then um what we've done with that program is we've sort of branched out and opened up our minority bilingual teaching pipeline um this is for you know our grow our own which we're going to talk a little bit about here we are in our seventh cohort i'm happy to say last year one of our graduates that went through our dual enrollment program at the high school uh then got their degree at western connecticut for education is now working in the danbury school system and i'm proud that that worked and we're looking at having two to three more graduates this year of that program graduates of college with the education degree and then our newest program which is uh in its third year as our computer science pipeline um we have roughly 15 to 20 students in that program um uh that that program similar to the teaching pipeline where students uh treat it as a dual enrollment elective credits at the high school and they'll get three college credits uh moving over to our college programs we have the educational achievement and access program this is for incoming freshmen for first-year students at westcon um we give them some tools to make sure that they can get through we are taking applications now i work with admissions to see uh students qualify for that um and we're in the process of doing some interviews for that program and then uh our last program is uh past promoting academically successful students this comes from the department of higher ed in hartford this this program uh focuses on um students of color that are on academic probation and getting them off of academic probation and into a major with the right gpa so that they can achieve their academic potential so that sort of rounds out our programs um you know at western connecticut for the pre-collegiate access programs i'm gonna go to the next slide now but while i do this i'm going to introduce to you uh dr katie o'callaghan who's uh a professor chairperson for the educational and educational psychology department at western connecticut and professor huertas who teaches the pipeline program for for westcon i'm going to turn it over to them right now thank you rob and a good evening a chairwoman cooper and members of the board and on behalf of the department i especially want to thank dr sal and mr walston for all they have done to support the program for those that may are new to the board this program was the very first of its kind in the state of connecticut so truly innovative and we began in 2015 and the state liked the program so much that it became the blueprint for all the other programs in the state and the purpose of the program is to grow our own teachers for danbury so we recruit from danbury juniors and seniors who have an interest in teaching and then they come through our danbury fellows program and they receive three credits of university credits which are funded by the pre-collegiate and access program and the department funds the course instructor and they actually get teaching experience in banbury public schools and some of them say to us well you know now that i've had the experience i i don't know if i want to go into teaching but we've planted the seed and they may come back to it many of them are bilingual which is in such a desperate need for our schools and as rob alluded we have uh already coming to fruition in that this fall we had our very first completer of the danbury teaching fellows program who is now a third grade teacher at pembroke and this may we'll be graduating even more from this pipeline program so we're very excited to be working with the district to recruit our seventh cohort beginning in uh 2021 and we look forward to working with the district leadership to expand it even further and professor huertas who i'm going to toss the baton to him in a second has really taken our program and exposed our candidates in the teaching fellows program to pedagogy that is so cutting edge and so exciting for us in our program and also for the teaching fellow fellows so i'll turn it over to uh professor herreras hector you're muted uh we have jessica and are we all set for that or we're going to move ahead no i keep let me there you go good sorry i forgive me i i i didn't realize i had been unmuted uh so forgive me so good evening uh chair cooper and good evening board of educators uh board members so thank you very much for having me um and to present and to talk about um the teaching pipeline um presently i am an assistant principal at hartford um but uh and i've been in education for my 18th year um but i am to the to the core still a teacher geek and and probably so um teaching uh for me is or being an educator is a transformative and a political um act that i do every day every day every year because i was you know i came from my first languages not english it's spanish my mother came from cuba my father came from puerto rico and i was born and raised in miami and i didn't have superheroes as a kid i didn't have you know you know i didn't uh inspire to be you know wonder woman or superman my heroes were my teachers those i wanted to be a teacher's pet i wanted to be around teachers and follow them um because they inspired me they made me feel special they made me feel that i deserved to to acquire knowledge and to create knowledge and to be empowered by that knowledge and to increase my confidence so i can pursue the unpursuable right here i am i just turned 50 last month and i'm just you know a year and a half away from earning my doctorate my parents couldn't even have the language to provide that to me but they instilled in me through my parents and my teachers instilled in me that i had the possibility and isn't that what we really do want for our kids to have that that will and that desire and that agency to act upon what they desire and so what i do in this in these two classes is try to provide that kind of context to our students of color to all of our students so that what they thought was impossible becomes now possible what becomes a pipe dream becomes the reality here i am in 2021 i'm an assistant principal out of school i have an office and i i can i can help people transform their lives and it becomes uh not only a job it's my vocation it's my vocation i do this for from corazon from my heart and uh and i try to do that for the kids in the pipeline so that they can be that transformative agent for those students too because if i open that door i have to keep that door open so more people can come in because they have to i can't close that door behind me i always must leave that open and i keep those courses available i i have these courses so that that conversation is not only uh had but sustains them so that they can go on further and um in the future so um i'm sorry that i got a little bit too um excited about this stuff but this is my love this is this is where this is where hector grows and and uh so thank you very much for listening to me and we have each of you an enjoyable evening thank you for being excited about education and thank you for being excited about working with young people and telling that they can go as far as they want to go thank you very much thank you chair cooper rob you have more sure so you know um what i wanted to do next is introduce to you uh jessica cornell she is our assistant director of of our department um and the programs that i talked about earlier the the actually i'll go back to them the excel program the upper bound program the teaching pipeline as well as the computer science pipeline we are in the process of recruiting right now um and increasing some of those numbers in the middle school program as well as in a teaching pipeline as well and i'm going to turn it over to ms cornell to talk to you about our recruiting efforts so that you guys can now be our messengers to get the word out so that we can get as many students uh you know reviewing their applications as possible thank you rob good evening chairperson cooper and members of the board i thank you for the opportunity to address you all so hear me jessica can you hear me yeah we can hear you can you hear me what you did before you did this job so i was actually an educator i was teaching at westside middle school um spanish and then rob recruited me so we can help create more teachers so yeah the lob took you away from us is that what i hear yes i just wanted the board to realize and where did you go to school where did you go to high school well i went to denver high school and then i went to wescon for my undergrad and central for my master's and i'm actually in my second year for my doctoral degree so hopefully thank you appreciate it oh yeah thank you so much i really appreciate that and um you know it i this is the reason why we love our programs because i was in the student in the program i came from ecuador at the age of 12.
right now we're talking general generalizations so let let me talk to you about the three ways that we were looking at at this number one we were looking at how many times a particular model had a like statement whether it was like because or whether it was like but if we look at it that way same thing model 3 the most favored model 2 the least favorite we also looked at it by person right how many times not not how many times which model did each person say i like when we look at that same exact data results when we look at the survey that was sent out in the chat i'm going to put to you the results just so you can see them as i speak about them the survey uh does the same thing um it it the same result model 3 is the most favored model and model 2 is the least favored model but again before i speak about the numbers i want you to see them live in the chat i'm almost done here so remember this was on a scale of one to four so uh i just put that in the chat room so model 3 received an average score of 1.4 based on all of the survey data that we gathered from you all today i mean yesterday and today right so that's pretty close to a one right it's closer to one than it is closer to two right so you can see there that model three is the most favored and then if we look at the at the at the bottom of this of this list model 2 is a 3.55 almost a 4 right closer to 4 than it is to 3.
good one right 815. thank you thank you sherry members questions there are no other uh testifiers with oral testimony at this time um it's we have written testimony from um department budget and finance is someone here is cranky rye someone here from budget and finance i have some questions senator the only hero department of budget finance and robert do you come to the department of legion fine guidance thank you neil and robert so my questions for budget and finance is that if this bill were to pass how would budget and finance implement the transfer of the funds well we believe this essentially is an appropriation so we require an appropriation from the legislature we don't think we have the or the governor has general authority to do that because according to the constitution you know we can only spend money pursuing two appropriations thank you and then so what does the transfer of funds to the trust fund mean for overall state finances well you know uh senator as i'm not a general policy where we do not support dedication of general fund revenue sources to specific uses that's our position we we think the president in the present uh procedures for uh budgeting where the you know the administration and the legislature cannot assess statewide requirements and use all of the general fund resources as necessary to meet that uh given the circumstances that we're facing that would be the most appropriate thing so you know we're not supportive of that aspect of this bill well i guess i sort of disagree because we have other departments that get general funds you know through their programs etc so which is set aside so we can disagree on that were you consulted by the department of education as to this bill and the funding mechanism of this bill i don't believe so i'm sorry i could not hear i don't believe so okay so so should this bill pass or do you perceive that other department programs may not get the sufficient funding or there may be delays in payroll or other obligations our concern is whenever you carve out general whenever you take out general funds from that pot there's less money to go around for everybody else so you know we could have problems in other areas because if you take out a source of funding to use exclusively for the department of education then that there's that much less money for the rest of the programs thank you for that members do any of you have questions for the uh budget and finance senator kim so right now the only dedicated funding uh we have is hta is that correct and that money comes out of the transit um visitor tax yeah but uh as you recall senator that allocation to convention center and tat preceded the you know the money coming to the general fund i think right so that's the only is there any other dedicated funding not that i i there may be but i don't think so often okay uh so according to this bill you said that the only way you can expend is by an appropriation so the legislature has to every year appropriate money into the fund well yeah well i i for sure out of the fund i think you would have to do we would have to consult the ag's office about moving money into the fund okay so how would that money be moved into the fund we will after we let's talk with the ag's office about if this language works okay because i guess i'm not clear either so if it's every year can that if that fund if that amount changes it would change by statute how would it change as as we read the bill you know the bond would vary between the budget and whatever so the differences between the budget so it's not like a constant amount so the so the amount would change so but then is that we would have to the legislature would have to determine that amount it's the difference between the current year appropriation and the previous year's appropriation just reading the bill and the difference of that is put into the to the trust fund it seems like it so the difference between the last year's appropriation and the current year appropriation is that what you're saying um i think that's what the bill is saying that the state appropriation to the department for the current fiscal year are less than the receiving fiscal year the difference between the preceding fiscal year appropriation and the current fiscal year appropriation shall be deposited to the trust fund um that's what that's the wording in the world so brexit only the difference is put into the trust fund okay i'm not clear either because if it's only the difference in the trust fund then that's not enough money to uh okay thank you members any further questions of budget and finance if not if the board of education chair pain is still available i have a question for her thank you chair yes i'm here um if this bill should pass how does the board plan on holding the department of education accountable for the uses of the trust fund well that senator is one of the reasons that i said that we support the intent there are some questions that came up in our legislative committee concerning that just the lack of clarity because we couldn't find other examples and we felt that we would hear more clarity as the bill moved forward but certainly any expenditures of the department of education need to go through the board as part of the budget so that would be an expectation i appreciate that share pain but i do know that in listening to some of the past board meetings in your finance and infrastructure committee for instance recently where the chair and i forget the other committee with that chair also had deferred um hearing moving on certain things to the general business meeting because the superintendent did not have answers for the board but the chairs of those committees were overruled anyway and you chose to hear those uh you know the issues in the general business meeting which to me took the authority away from from the chair so i have some reservations um on that and would like to know exactly as we move this bill along how the board is going to hold the ue accountable for use of trust fund so i just wanted to put you on on notice on that that i would like that something more definitive right now the bill does not require any reporting on the expenditures of funds any reporting to the the board of education so this is why um you know we're going to not know how do he is spending the money and this is not okay with me and i'm sure it's not okay with the legislature if we don't have a clear understanding of that so um do you believe that the bill should be amended to require reporting to the board on expenditures or require board approval i think i think senator that that is what we would expect so if you put that in the bill that that would not have any objection from the board um and as i said earlier there is a lack of clear understanding on the board about exactly what this trust fund would entail but whatever it is we think that transparency and spending is is very important and we do want to have that information come to the board thank you chair members do any of you have questions of chair payne board of education if not thank you is superintendent still online i have some questions for the superintendent also thank you chirping hello i'm on thank you superintendent what could the due spend the trust fund allocations on the trust fund it sounds like from the way the language is written in the bill is directed back to the core education mission of the of the doe and so it's it's for for our core work the language in the bill seems to reflect that the intention is that the trust fund is not needed if the if the doe receives flat or increased base funding and the trust fund is a safeguard if that base funding is not held flat or harmless year over year and and so i don't think the trust fund would as the bill was written would ever need to be funded if in fact the intention of the bill is is carried out which is to ensure that there is a base funding that is fully funded year over year at some minimum level thank you as the bill is currently written would the doe be restricted in any way on what the trust fund proceeds could be used for well i think the the trust the language in the bill could always be amended to be clearer about it but based on current board policy the any funds that the administration is budgeting for for our schools for our organizational for offer the tri-level goes to the board of ed for the purpose of delivering on the mission of teaching and learning and so the trust fund would be limited to our core mission and the policies already in place by the board of ed the board of ed can also add to its policies if their trust fund was created that's another safeguard or way of clarifying or the bill itself can have added language about the restrictions of that trust fund but as it reads right now it would still have to adhere to the policies that are in place on how expenditures occurred in the in the doe those are reported on on a regular basis and it goes through the board for approval before i can spend those okay so if the legislature decided to cut positions or programs and i'm this is how i'm reading this this bill the salaries in program funding could be replaced by the trust fund so yes yes so the trust fund is is basically a proxy for general funds so then the due could re-establish positions and programs even though the legislature cut them the intent is to as the language reads is to provide predictability and stability for planning of educational programs year over year with an understanding that there's a commitment to a base based budget okay but you didn't answer my question superintendent so am i this is how i'm reading it that even if the legislature were to cut positions and programs you could still reinstate them by using the trust fund to fund this we would still have a budget that goes through the the board of education and falls under those policies so you're saying then the board would have to approve the use of the funds the board should be approving the use of all of our funds yes true but i will tell you the same thing the same thing i said to the chair pain um you know some of the last meetings that i've listened to of the board when asked how you were going to spend esser funds there was no real clear answers so this is why i have some reservations about this bill and i just want you you to know that i think that right now i'm not seeing the uh authority of the board expressed in their meetings when it comes to deciding on how you know funds are being used at the doe members i don't have any more questions of the department but senator kim has questions thank you superintendent so what would happen in subsequent years should the decline of population happen and there's a decline in enrollment in all public schools and i know we've talked about closing down schools in the past because of lack of enrollment so in that sense if shouldn't that budget again reflect um when you say stabilization that reflects that and so there would no there would be a reduction so thank you senator there is language in the bill uh that speaks to the three-year average and looking at that there would be an adjustment to that base uh fund based on that enrollment decline looking at the enrollment drop over three years the idea is to have it over several years time because we have up and downs you know one year to the other so the idea is to have a point in time that makes sense if you see a uh decline in enrollment over a three year period then there should be an adjustment down just like if there's an uptick in that enrollment over that three-year period we should be adjusting upward as well okay thank you members any more questions for the department of education thank you if not that's all we have for senate bill 815 and we will now move on to our senate bill 816 relating to a state lottery creates a state lottery to begin by january 1st 2022 creates the state lottery commission state lottery account and lottery administration account requires certain amounts of lottery revenues to be to be deposited into the administrative account general fund and special funds for university facilities and operations and public school operations to testify catherine payne chair of the board of education catherine please i'm sorry i'm on the wrong way sorry sorry sorry catherine uh i'm sorry to testify brian hallett assistant superintendent department of education all right good afternoon sir kadani vice chair makato kim the department stands on his written testimony with comments thank you members questions next to testify catherine awakuni colon department of consumer and commerce and consumer affairs thank you good afternoon chair kidani vice chairman karu kim members of the committee kat iwakuni colon on behalf of the department of commerce and consumer affairs the department stands on its written testimony respectfully opposing um there are a couple of reasons why we believe it's still a bit premature given that the state lottery task force has not completed an examination of the creation of a and the sustainability of a state lottery and then sort of noting the inconsistency with our um overall departmental mission i'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you members questions of director columbus if not moving on to trisha nakamatsu deputy prosecuting attorney trisha please hi senator they are not present i'm sorry i didn't hear your name not president oh they're not they're not present okay thank you philip johnson honolulu police department uh good afternoon chair and the honolulu police department we stand also on our written testimony and opposition be happy to answer any questions you may have for me thank you phillip tax foundation of hawaii uh thank you chair tom yamachika for tax foundation uh we've submitted written testimony with uh studies cited in in we'd be happy to answer any question thank you tom members questions okay we don't have any further oral testimony but we do have several written testimonies um members questions of any of our testifiers do i have a question for hpd favela please yes sir yeah so how do you guys concern on this joke um several concerns um as cited in a lot of the studies and the testimony i've read and other research lotteries throughout the country tend to be um the highest users are the poorest people minorities and those with the least amount of money which lead to a lot of social problems um connected with lottery and gambling so that's that's pretty much thank you yes sir members further questions if not that concludes our testimony on this measure and we are going into recess for discussion now we are reconvening the committee on education to deliberate on senate bill 815 and 816 for senate bill 815 recommendation of the chair is to pass with i don't have voting sheets pass with amendments clarifying that the amount deposited into the stabilization trust fund shall only apply to reductions to direct school funding sources such as edn 100 and 600 as as requested by hey also clarifying that the department of education shall make an appropriate allocation from the stabilization trust fund to edn 600 to ensure that any reductions in edn 600 are appropriately compensated in the same way as edn 100 clarifying on page four that the difference in state appropriations between fiscal years that shall be deposited into the stabilization trust fund shall only occur in deficit years and not surplus years requiring budget and finance to produce a report on general excise tax revenues diverted from the general fund to the stabilization trust fund and the impact that diversion had on other state departments and operations also for the boe to approve and the department of education to report on any dollars spent from the stabilization trust fund and then further to defect the date to july 1 members questions on the amendments if not recommendation is to pass with amendments chair boat's eye trevor tsai on senate bill 815 with amendments vice chair votes with reservations senator de la cruz all right senator favela okay um five four eyes one with reservation recommendations adopted thank you for senate bill 816 relating to a state lottery recommendation of the chair is to pass with amendments pushing back the start date of the lottery to january 1 2023 to allow the commission and task force more time to set up the lottery structure members questions if not recommendation is passed with amendments chair votes eye chair votes on senate bill 1 6 says amendments uh vice chair votes no senator de la cruz all right okay four eyes one no um recommendations adopted thank you members this concludes our meeting you
when you see destroy um the buses what exactly does that mean does that mean just sending it to an impound or does that actually mean taking it and getting crushed well into a cube they don't have a big enough crush okay but that's truly what they want to do but you do the main thing they're trying to do is get that engine offline so the engine has you have to put a hole in the block so they know for sure you have to show pictures of it all the emission system has to be destroyed the transmissions and and some of the other stuff you can take off so we really do we really do just send them to a uh junkyard it's like a graveyard or something it is a graveyard i know there's a big business you know for those tiny homes right now i need to kind of turn around on that maybe you wouldn't believe what people would try to use them for okay um and i just was curious what the cdl licenses i know just as average citizens we've had issues you know with dmv have you had any challenges with cdls expiring and are they extending those license expiration dates for you or yes we have had some extensions for that um fortunately not all drivers come in at different times so it's not like that's more of a cpr and that sort of thing when we have to train right away yeah we have a pretty good rapport with adot and mvd so we can set it up by appointment okay and we know pretty much ahead of time when somebody's ready to go so two to three days okay and then once they've gotten their permit they have to have it for a minimum of 15 days before they can even test and we do all that so we're trained to do all the testing and so then they just have to go back down and get their actual license so we do all the training in-house we do that the only thing that we can't do is have them take the actual test they have to go to mvd for that but that's the only reason they have to go okay and i just wanted to thank you for including all the challenges and successes towards the beginning of the school year and even last year but um those were some incredible feats that that happened in dysart and it's nice to hear the the ins and outs of how that how that happened so thank you in my opinion anything else i just have a question and actually i want to echo what miss dunsmore said i i wanted to um commend you for including those challenges uh it's very transparent we can't help you and support you if we're not aware and so i always feel like people come across as being very real when it's like more than just a celebration you're just saying that this is what we're struggling with so thank you for being honest about that i didn't want to elaborate as much [Laughter] um just some clarification the social distancing um so would you say i know you had mentioned with the numbers that sometimes that means two to a seat but you said that you weren't quite at that amount does that mean like one per seat are you able to on average it's probably two one two okay and so we try to keep that and and this depending well so you can do you have your sides too so you do two one one two one so we try to keep it and then where we do do the two to a seat we try to make sure it's siblings okay or uh same household okay good um and then the other question i had i mean obviously filling uh openings as far as finding good bus drivers is hard i think for every district and then obviously if we don't have drivers that impacts our students getting to school and academic success and all that so it's a very important role that our bus drivers have and your department has can you think um as far as like the recruiting is there anything that you are your department is is putting together to make dysart seem unique or draw to dice art to like this is why you want to drive for our district that we're getting out there to help recruit some good drivers we're always working on recruitment is what you have in this industry is if somebody's comfortable driving at a district and they've they've been there a couple years to bring them in at a starting salary and to learn a whole new district and that sort of thing it's it's truly a tough sell we've tried to find niches we're working on some stuff that i don't know if i can discuss and uh nope i can't discuss it trade secrets so we're working on some stuff i'm just kidding with the work but but i can tell you that that being in other districts that um the relationship we have with the hr department and and this uh exp expendency what's right where the speed in which they get the applicant to us we get them interviewed and then the process of them being hired is tremendously shorter than where i've been before so getting the background checks and getting the people here and getting them to work within a week is is truly extraordinary so we're doing pretty good there i'm not worried about staffing that much to be honest with you i mean that part's good for us because we get them in quicker but i'm trying to think of what's good for the employee like why would someone and you don't have to answer it right now but i'm just thinking i think that's something important like we need to find a way that are going to bring the candidates to us or people that want to actually work for dysart as opposed to any other school district that has driver positions open too so just finding unique ways to pull people in that they'd want to work here before they'd want to work somewhere else i think that's a good recruitment tool i was just curious if you had madame president miss pritchard if i could just give a couple of examples um mr croto and i believe mr hicks also met with groups of bus drivers over the last couple of years to kind of get focus group feedback on why are they here why do people not want to be here why do they want to be here to get a sense of i think what you're asking is what makes us special and why would somebody want to work here um to the chagrin of some of my peer superintendents around the valley who are not open for instruction we are attracting many of their bus drivers who want to work and are able to come here both because of the benefits and because of the hours that they are able to drive but also thanks to the governing board with a recent pay increase for bus drivers um we are competitive on the pay salary good okay thank you all right thank you i was unaware of that recent raise so thank you guys because it is it is a problem that you we have the benefits we have the retirement so it's money that you have to throw at it because ultimately you can love your job but if you didn't get paid so prerequisite is loving kids those are the bus drivers of aids that that that truly succeed and we just we just keep looking for the right the right niches to pull from we i was going from one technology wow okay um i was traveling from one school to another uh last friday and um i knew we were going to have the the transportation update and uh i just happened to see a couple of our trucks that um had some advertising on the side of it and so you know getting that out in the community more which i know we have then they're just driving you know from school to school or from the these uh support services you know to another school it was just great to see that traveling billboard that was going down greenway or what have you so that's that's a big plus um regarding the dara grant when do you think we will be able to find out um the applications have to be in by march 31st i think we'll probably know before that if we even have anything that qualifies us for that okay so we're keeping our fingers crossed that we are okay all right well thank you very much for coming on board it's a pleasure to be here to be honest with you well and if i could also just let you know i when i'm out walking my dogs in the morning and jogging i always see the bus drivers they have no idea who i am but i always wave at them i'm like hey how you doing and they're like hey i just saw you where are we so your bus drivers are super nice yes they're super friendly i always worry about them and they're all like okay that's great to hear so i just wanted to let you know yes all right thank you all very much thank you thank you all right next we have action discussion item g1 thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet uh mr croto will take this item thank you dr kellis uh madam president members of the board superintendent kelly's cabinet and guest tonight we bring to you the staffing models for our administration front office you had previously approved on february 2019 the staffing model for our elementary and our high school however with the adoption of primary schools and middle schools that model did not fit anymore so tonight we're bringing a revision of that for a pre-k and a pre-k-8 so our primary schools and our elementary schools that are staying the same will follow the same model however we have added the middle portion the middle school staffing model as well as a revision in the high school area for drts the high schools actually have two registrars so we're bringing that to you tonight so we can staff the models accordingly and we can be within our policies in doing so and i'll stand for any questions if there are no questions i will go ahead and make a motion one second to approve the revision of the pre-k through four pre-k through eight middle school and high school administration front office staffing model as presented second motion passes moving to item g2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet mr credo will take this item as well madame president members of the board superintendent kelly's cabinet and guest our next item tonight is bringing to you staffing modifications for ischool and sundown mountain alternative program in looking at the two programs we are bringing to you tonight a recommendation to have them put under one umbrella two separate schools still under one umbrella and and that first piece is a name change in changing the alternative program administrator to the alternative program principal and that alternative program principal who is obviously miss lockhart will now oversee ischool and sundown mountain they will be under her uh umbrella of coverage uh with that we'd like to change currently the sundown administrative two secretary um to administrative secretary iii there is a cost of that of about seventy three hundred 300 by the way there is no cost on the alternative program administrator to principal that's just a name change we are also recommending tonight that with the increased umbrella that the high school registrar that is currently at sundown mountain and at 0.5 capacity half time be brought to a full time that is an increase a budget increase of 20 525 dollars we are also um looking to eliminate the instructional system position that is 0.75 that is a a savings of 1948 dollars and then the elimination of the sped para professional they currently have both of those positions they have not been filled the entire year so they are positions that are not being used and in order to make that those alternative program moves that comes out with a total savings of those recommended changes of thirteen thousand four hundred thirty three dollars in the savings under the ischool department we currently have that department the ischool department will be getting 12 high school teachers for high school three math three english three science and three social studies there is no cost to additionally adding that those have been allocated through our staffing process so we staffed accordingly with the high schools and moved 12 teachers over to become full-time high school teachers we also would like to recommend to you adding a guidance counselor to the high school the staffing model that you just approved is 440 to 1.
again um we are budgeting at the adm count uh at current year so any increase to this how this fund how this formula works you would increase that weighted student count and then you would take that by the base support level of the 44 100 and that would increase our base support level um so again if we recognize any student growth in 22 that formula will be adjusted accordingly at the time we do a revision one adjustment we have made since the last board meeting we were budgeting for an inflation of one percent the state has come out and notified us that it'll be about 1.2 so we have recognized that here in this formula and there's also a state adjustment to the base support level it was a function of the governor's budget in the tune of about 38 to the the base support level this was part of the 20 by 20 teacher state funding so as we go to the next page where that 5 million comes in play from the may revision is in that third line there the budget balance carry forward in that amount is that 5 million and our current year budget balance carry forward that gives us the 13 million and that's a 20 carry forward amount that plays an important role in our estimated budget projections as you work down the line there you can see our estimated jbl which is our our total budget limit of 104 million that number is significantly higher than our revised or anticipated revised jbl that we're going to do in may so that difference there is budget balance that the district can utilize as they see fit that difference is now 8.6 million we brought to you last board meeting uh difference that's an increase of about 860 000 and a lot of that is due to that inflation number coming from 1 to 1.2 and the additional base support level increase from the the 20 by 20 plan that's part of the state budget so again estimated fixed costs nothing has changed here we are estimating a 10 increase in insurance that is a very very safe number from what our talks have been with mom and our renewal rates we have also budgeted a potential property cash only workers comp change if that were to take place we have set aside additional fte and reclassification amounts in the tune of 500 000 and we are set asiding transfers to stipends to clear up some of that 20 by 20 um uh adjustment from the classroom site fund to mno and we also have a line there for projected salary increases this will go through in the next page but there's a total estimated fixed cost of 1.6 million that we can safely budget for for next year so this is the same projections that we brought to you before this is a one three and five percent [Music] projected salary increase that we proposed using with that 8.6 million dollars in budget balance carryforward you'll notice here um that we are still going to use utilizing the 7.7 jbl difference this is from the revision2 budget projections this is just to show because we those numbers aren't official yet this is just to show how conservative this these estimates are and how comfortable we are presenting these numbers so um if those numbers when those numbers pass in the state legislature we'll increase that 7.7 to 8.6 and you can you'll recognize that difference on that balance remaining what we also talked about and that we're not recognizing is the potential s or two money that we have not recognized in here again we're projecting at 2.6 million but we have not received ade's total dollar amount that dollar amount would again be added to the bottom of these balance remaining amounts so for example if you were to approve a one percent increase at the march 10th meeting you can take that 5.4 million would be our budget amounts carry forward for next year plus the potential s or two and then again there's also the distance learning adjustment too that's also um potentially going to pass in legislature so there's essentially 5.5 million in additional budget amounts carry forward out there that we can add to these numbers we're not putting this in there because that's not approved yet but we just want to show you and kind of verbalize those those numbers as we move through this budget process again um one thing i didn't mention at the last board meeting was supplementals are included in these dollar amounts so i know miss martens was looking at potentially increasing supplementals or taking a look at supplementals at that march 10th board meeting in addition to the base support to our teachers admin and classified with that i think jeff you want to touch on the calendar yeah the last page of the powerpoint and i might just you know summarize what mr moore has presented the the amount of money available especially for seller increases is very good because the district has not experienced a large decline in adm as some others have so that's really helped us stabilize this subject so we have the 1.1 percent from the inflation factor stable adm and one of the big ones that has contributed to our ability to have uh as high as a five percent is that the colored money continues to grow we haven't even contemplated esser 3 which is as you know as in [Music] it's us capital in terms of and we anticipate obviously that that's going to pass and then how much districts get from that so it just keeps getting larger and larger and it allows us to be more comfortable with what's projected here and so i just wanted to to mention that the march 10th well let me back up for a minute the february 24th i'm not sure if we can do that or not because we're waiting on clarity about esther 2 and sr3 sr2 could be here and we'll know the dollar amount for the for our district uh sr-3 will probably not be here so we'll keep you updated on that and so we may not do on february 24th the covet grant just because of the uncertainty although we are very optimistic that it's a fairly large sum and the i action item on march 10th is to move us ahead with getting in place contracts for next year and help with the recruiting function so that's basically it we will be discussing with you [Music] in the near future probably starting on april 7th some reflection of a possible bond election in the future it has different parts to it including the part that's related to the leases of two middle schools that's also a part of that discussion and then we will be potentially asking you for a approval of a call for a bond election on june the 9th so we have time we have april may to discuss the bond and what we have contained within it and plenty of time i think to answer any and all questions and then our public hearing to finalize next year's budget is scheduled for june 23rd so many president members of the board that's the presentation on the mno budget does anyone have any questions regarding the mno presentation thank you for being very thorough in letting us know we still have potential money coming but we're not putting that in our budget yet and so i can tell you what you've presented makes me a little more comfortable that you're watching out what's coming for our future and that we potentially even have more coming that we're not even counting on and that we're still being responsible and making sure that we have a cushion for whatever else may come our way so thank you with that we'll go on to 7.2 which is our first review of the 2021-2022 capital outlay budget as a president remember the board this is the ongoing annual capital budget that all districts receive based upon adm it's it can generally be counted on as long as the state does not have severe budget problems because you may recall that they have taken this budget down in the past to balance their own budget and and that final restoration of it taking it back up is scheduled for next fiscal year and so far it looks fairly good the governor has included it in his budget for next year no one is talking about the necessity to reduce their budget got a large rainy day fund you know things are fairly good so far at this point so we have used that and you'll see that in the highlights we've used that backdrop to propose to you what we have here this is a fairly detailed version of what we're intending to implement for next year we will have it on the calendar for you um i think we are planning on april uh seventh to ask you for some tentative approval and that tenant of approval is is just what it says it's not final it's tentative we can change it we wanted to accomplish a couple things one is we wanted to get furniture and equipment on order qualified to your final approval on june 9th and we wanted to move forward with some capital projects that earlier we start the more chance we have of having those improvements done by the start of the next school year so with that i'm going to turn it over to mr moore and he will present the powerpoint to you all right good evening president ruiz member of the board this budget's a little funner this is actually like things or and items but it's a little easier and fun for for some of our departments to take a look at because we're actually talking about physical tangible items that we're improving so some of the highlights like jeff mentioned um we are the the full restoration of the district additional assistance which is essentially the capital budget is expected to uh be finalized uh next year so we'll be funded at our full capital amount and i'll explain that as we move on this budget if we go to bullpoint2 has fun designated funding for curriculum and textbook adoptions or adoption i should say those are not cheap and you'll see the dollar amount that we have allocated for that for fiscal year 22.
parents didn't know english i you know they didn't know english myself and i was in a student at the upper bound program at the high school level and now i have the honor of working and helping other families who maybe are in the same boat who are the first ones to go to college who maybe come from low-income backgrounds and teaching them that you know things are possible that they can make it to the college piece and you they can go to any college that they want not necessarily western so we're currently recruiting for racing seven eighth and ninth graders we have reached out to all the middle school counselors they know about our programs we have a great connection with them we also have reached out to some community programs in danbury such as the jericho partnership or you know some of the churches and we're having our first info session on friday from five to six virtually so we would love if you know of anyone in this public schools or if you know or any other organization that maybe can share that information definitely reach out to us check our website and then we do have a facebook and instagram account where we post stories or things that we're doing so really appreciate that and for the minority and teaching minority teaching pipeline computer science we usually start recruiting on april 1st so right now it's only for excel and upper bound and the application will be open onto april first and then for the minority and the computer science will start on april 1st thank you rob yes yeah i'm i'm here sal yep here we go all right um i just i i thought we'd take an opportunity for this rob because i i think you know i've been seeing things that you know that we're not recruiting and uh you know i think people need to know there's been a lot of work being done substantive work with our kids growing our own and uh because of europe leadership and jessica and the university with catherine and hector i get it hector okay um it really make a difference to keep our kids and uh we have found when we try to recruit outside of danbury um it's very hard to bring folks here but if we could like that spark hector talked about in danbury you got these kids these youngsters like jessica want to stay in danbury and they have immediate connection to the community and to youngsters and families which only breeds more and more success so i i'm just very proud of the program and i wanted the board to an opportunity to hear what it is that we're doing and i'll keep quiet and maybe a few have some questions if it's okay for that okay rob sure sounds good so thank you thank you for that by the way too oh come on one yet thank you kate i don't know if i have a question for you rob but i did sit in on when you guys did a presentation uh not too long ago and i was really impressed with the manner in which the students were speaking about um what was going on in the program um you guys are turning out an uh you know incredible um incredible students and i just want to commend all of you on the work you're doing because um i think it's going to make a big difference as we we continue to put our efforts into this thank you yep thank you you know one of the things i want to say i'm most proud about of my staff that that includes everybody you know from our our secretary uh to mrs cornacchia at the high school as our site advisor to mr corrado who's working is we had a seven week summer program during coving you know we we are the typical uh bread and butter of our program is a six week summer component that would start two weeks after you know they're done with high school uh and then we would run through the summer and give them the month of august off last year we ran we gave him some time off then we ran a seven seven week summer component that butted up against the academic year um and so we haven't stopped moving we did do the teaching pipeline last summer and in the fall so that continued to move forward um and i think that's what puts us in a good position today um in in april first to recruit some more for that teaching pipeline as well so again i i you know we're all educators i i hired all educators now that i think about it you know jessica you know has a master's in education director has a you know a master's in education i have a master's in education so i think that helps us a lot in the job that we and katie of course i'm sorry you know but you you have a master's in education you know and that helps us a lot to get this job done you know because we understand students and we understand teachers understand the counselors and everything that we're going through and i think that really helps us out a lot and i know i have a question to ask um go ahead kathy um when you are recruiting the students they come through um how do you recruit them i mean i'll give you an example rob why don't you talk about what we're going to do next week or in two weeks um i'm doing a lot in two weeks which so there's there's many different ways so just will talk about one way i'll talk about it another way you know through the excel program essentially services as a feeder program to the high school component um at the middle school the counselor's advisors we also have teachers uh that that work with us uh at all three of the schools um that help identify students that would qualify for the program and so that that's that's one component the other outreach component um just go ahead we want you to talk about that so for the especially for the minority teach bible and computer science we meet with all the counselors at denver high school we explained the program and then they sent out emails to naviance or they since they hold their junior meetings they know maybe the students and the careers that they're looking at so we get names through that as well we also reach out to classes such as like the child development class because maybe they're interested in being teacher the infant toddler class maybe psychology so just to see you know if maybe they know some of the teachers who maybe some of the students who want to go into teaching and i mean before covet 2 we will go in the cafeteria and just have a big sign who wants to earn three college credits because that's the main thing you know they earn three college credits and how is it funded that they earn the credits so it's a partnership yeah it it's definitely a partnership between you know the public schools the wescon as well as our office so i mean is that through grants yep yes okay yep okay so the the orig the origination of the the teaching pipeline came from the department of education in hartford it came in through seed money um and i worked with you know uh sal and and bill you know when bill was here to try to try to secure some of that seed money the problem with seed money is is that it tends to dry up right and they expect for the district to absorb the cost um because i do have a federal grant that targets students and they believe in dual enrollment courses because the the data shows if you have dual enrollment course you're more likely to go to college uh in complete college and and that specific grant the goal is for students to go to college and complete a four-year degree within a six-year six-year span um so that's one of the things we have to report out on our performance report and things like that so you know that that's how we've done some of the recruiting um if that answers answers your question yes that's fine thank you excellent and and how about this and coming to the board of ed and talking about it and hopefully you guys you know you know spread the word as well so just to end this i think kevin and kim will be doing some interviewing uh of candidates and uh that's how um you know we wind up getting jessica and the rest to advocate and the youngsters that we have in the program have just been terrific just terrific educators and um so you know that that's that's how we start populating our uh faculty yeah so so currently we have two two that are coming through that are gonna be applying for for jobs you know specifically with danbury that came through the programs and and are looking forward to that as well um and again those are those are students who are graduating from westcon not not danbury high going into school so you're getting a quicker return on those guys and how many juniors do you have coming in what do you think um i was ready for you i brought my sheet here so um currently it looks like we had we had seven juniors rising so those are right they'll be rising seniors for next year so that's all in our pipeline yes thank you yep but again thank you guys and again this is a huge collaboration you know what we all kind of are working in different areas you know dr o'callaghan of course you know she's you know chair and professor of her department i have my department uh professor huertas you know he's print he's being a principal in a whole nother district and and then we're kind of getting it done here so and and obviously the board of ed has helped out as well because we're servicing your students so i really appreciate that so this is a true collaboration that's really working well i just want to recruit more to be honest with you yep thank you on behalf of the board we would like to say thank you for the presentation and thank you for everyone that uh for information on the program thank you again for sharing the information with us thank you thank you and good evening thank you thank you uh next on the agenda about the same superintendent's report so you're on mute yes i'm on you thank you um best part of me um you've heard a lot about the portrait of the graduate and things that we're doing i think at some point we'd have a um a larger discussion about it um but for the boards um uh we just had another meeting uh amy you've been there i know you listened in i think you uh you've been witness we we've done a good the group has done a good job of outreaching doing focus groups and talking about you know when you rise and leave this school system in danbury as a as a high school student what skills and attitudes should that person have and i'm just really proud of the work that they're doing and the way they're going about doing it and i know dan um kevin talk to um board member and also um talk to gladys about maybe we ought to have a workshop about just so you get the hogan's thought and it'd be great for you to have so uh that that that'll be coming i just wanted to be aware your representative i believe on that is amy amy i don't know if you have any comments you want to make just quickly about it or kevin sure thank you thanks dr sal um i didn't know what i was getting myself into when i signed up for the portrait of a graduate and they have been um it was going in one direction when i first started a couple years ago but then they kind of have picked up with another um facilitator who's really taken us i mean she and the team right the team of people have taken us like through i think once a month we're meeting we we've done focus groups we break out into uh small groups on our on our zoom call and you know now we're drilling it down to the five or six um qualities you know that we want uh all of our students to have kevin i see you smiling there uh you've learned a lot over the last couple of months amy what you've learned a lot over the last couple of months it's been great to be a part of it um and it's it's got just a lot of different people involved you know teachers administrators community um and so on so and students uh so it's been uh i think we're i i i they serve us dinner which is pretty amazing and um on zoom so that i mean it's available if you want to go get it at mothership but i just like that really everybody's committed basically committed to meeting that once a month and we're we're getting the job done and we're we're about to we're getting there i mean i think by the spring we'll we'll have it yeah so graduate but i would like to do a workshop i think that would be an awesome thing to do for the board go ahead kevin so dr style i do have a um a quick share um with the board in the community uh before i do i just wanted to say to professor huertas who um i have not had the opportunity to meet in person yet um but and i think kate will agree um if you want to get an idea of what a portrait of a graduate looks like in danbury public schools when you look at the students that he has worked our students who he has worked with um in that program and you would not think these were high school students you would think they were graduating seniors from college and not potentially graduating seniors from high school so you did an amazing job just wanted to thank you for your encouraging words tonight i think dr o'callaghan has left us for the evening but her vision on this project has been amazing rob you and jesse appreciate your partnership and leadership in this effort so i just wanted to thank you both thank you very much sir so here is the share and i and um i mean thanks for that wonderful introduction um i also want to stay because i know it was important and carrick thank you for grabbing me today and you know saying hey let's make sure we're collaborating on this um i wanted to make sure this is like a three or four page slide by the way let me just start there um secondly i wanted to make sure we connected the dots for the board and for the community understanding how this theoretical portrait of the graduate begins to um you know begin to connect to the work to curriculum to experiences for kids um and so i want people to begin to understand the connection between the pog the portrait of the graduate and what this means for actual kids experiences um so here's the update and so you might recall you know we had some work initially around our vision and our mission statement so i just wanted to start there quickly um these remain unchanged but it has kind of anchored us in our work with our pog work um and you know just to be clear that the adopted policy the policy that this board adopted around equity and diversity is also apparent and amy will tell you um equity has been mentioned and discussed as part of our pog work and resonates throughout throughout throughout all of these discussions um the portion of the graduate just as a you know try to put together or identify a definition for you and it represents danbury's vision and when i say it represents danbury's vision what what we have are we have folks from higher education we have parents we have teachers we have administrators we had students we don't have students at this point but we will re-engage students again we have folks in the business and industry and all of them have helped to inform dan barry's vision for the 21st century skills character traits and or social emotional competencies that students will need to succeed in college career and in life right and so these are the um attributes or categories that amy was referring to that we've landed on thus far and so over the last several months you know we have surveyed our community we have met as a coalition uh we have met as big large focus groups and this these are the six categories that we have landed on um for our portrait of the graduate thus far and when i say thus far they might be modifying of this language but these are the six categories that have been uh produced from all of our outreach and that's a communicator collaborator innovator a thinker someone who advocates and a self-reliant learner and when we talk about communicator we're talking about communication can come in many different forms um graduates need to be able to communicate their own thoughts and emotions as well as effectively engage with the thoughts and emotions of others a collaborator graduates need to be able to work well with others to solve problems and create solutions collaborators are respectful and open-minded to the ideas and opinions of others an innovator requires problem solving and creativity a thinker associated responses also include flexible thinker adaptive thinker diverse thinker skills include analyzing and evaluating information detecting bias and determining source credibility an advocate the highest form of celebrating cultures and diversity is to protect them advocate for the diversity and difference in others even when it's not aligned with self-interest advocacy is tied to just to to just cult this isn't just tied to just culture but can apply to any type of difference in diversity and last but not least a self-reliant learner is emphasis on the growth of the learner over time and the use of skills to transform life for self and others persistence and reliance are key and as you can see a lot of thought has been put into this language thus far we will continue to massage this language as this work continues to develop we have the way it works we have a coalition which is kind of a tight group um in which amy is on we have representatives from our our schools um teachers and and administrators um and so that coalition we we invite a bigger stakeholder group from higher education from industry et cetera and so there's 35 40 people in that big group and we get their feedback to help inform this language let me just walk you through our next steps and so here's kind of a timeline for our portrait of the graduate initially uh we did pause for a while when the pandemic was at its um you know added zenith if you will and when we felt and we realized that um the pandemic was not going away and we were going to continue in this remote learning uh platform that it was time to re-engage our community and we did and quite frankly to with i think we've had a lot of success and so from from now until march 1st we will be engaging the community and focus groups to examine the categories and descriptors that i just shared with you uh for march 15th uh the coalition the coalition we will have a big coalition meeting to look at the results of the focus groups to further shape the categories and descriptors um and so we will you know we'll get feedback from what i just showed you on a previous slide um and then the real exciting stuff begins to happen we'll bring in a graphic artist and begin to discussion to help visualize what we've developed um we'll set up a second round of focus groups to be held before our april meeting and then in april we will use the results of the focus groups to finalize the categories and outcomes right and so now this begins to slowly begin to look like a poster for the community um and for all of our schools and really begin to become something real that we will be looking to present to you soon and may 4th um that will be our final coalition meeting to approve our portrait of the graduate and then talk about next steps and in our next steps we would like to we are proposing um a board workshop for may 12th um that is currently an evening for a border bed meeting and we're proposing a workshop prior to the board of ed meeting um we'll you know our coalition members will be part of a presentation to the board in the community um and then we are asking at the subsequent board event meeting um that the board consider um endorsing um the proposed uh pog um between may 12th and june 1st we'll be finalizing action plans and action plan side slows slideshows excuse me and then we'll need to submit all of the materials to the bar foundation who is um who has who has funded this effort um that we applied for i think gosh i think it's been almost two years now and and i wanted to make sure again connecting the dots to curriculum and experiences for kids um it was important um that carrie and i you know made sure we were connected on his presentation so i'll hand it off to karen now kevin um so just to kind of as kevin said to connect the dots a little bit um running concurrent to the work on the portrait of the graduate um are this flows in to be in my report i just want them to know it go ahead yes okay um running concurrent to the porch of the graduate um has been work on fleshing out the broader ideas behind the academy model that we've been talking about um and so you know as we move ahead um you know you'll start we will start to have more formalized meetings with broader uh stakeholders around the academy model we did do some exercises with the board as you remember um to kind of dig into what that looks like with that um what that model looks like i'm kind of absent of talking about the building specifically but as far as the academy model design planning is going just to give you an update we're currently as you know in collaboration with the state of connecticut as a pilot school working with representatives from the national career and academy coalition um connie magic has been uh she's the director of their professional learning and she has been guiding our work our partnership with them will span over the next year or two um and and we were on a sort of the uh standard timeline if you will for learning about um the development of these academies and how to best position danbury for them um as you know the the building and the timeline has kind of exacerbated our need to further our understanding in a way that's a little bit more concentrated we reached back out to connie and said you know is there any way that we can meet sooner and more often than with some of the other pilot districts in the plan that we have had in place and uh she she agreed and she went back and came back with that to us and said hey um i have a partner you know uh would you be interested in working with jay steele and and we might be able to do some uh accelerated collaborations and so the name kind of rang a bell for a moment like j steele and uh turns out j steele he's actually the national career academy coalition president but he's also the mastermind architect behind the academies of nashville uh which is a nationally recognized white house recognized [Music] national model and transformation for education at the high school level um so we are extremely lucky and excited to engage with them we have planning sessions uh tomorrow um so there's a small group of us that will be working the collaborative effort between uh debris high school leadership team uh with dan donovan dr martens myself a few others cabinet members dr sal um kelly truchas and some additional assistants and curriculum administrators to get together to work um all day with jay and connie [Music] in a very intense way in the next couple of days so we're very excited about that opportunity um and so we're looking forward to kind of continuing updating you on that um once we get to this place and how this ties in with fortune of the graduate is that everything we do in the portrait of the graduate with the academy model design will be intertwined so the the attributes that kevin mentioned before so we want our folks to be good communicators collaborators innovators thinkers um self-reliant thank you i was wondering if i was going to pull it off kevin because they've changed a few times that how do we create opportunities and conditions through this academy model and and k-12 pre-k to 12 for our students to um to shape our students so that that is the outcome um and so that's going to be very exciting work and it has uh curricular uh implications so when this work um merges and comes together and that's that is the goal um we will be looking at all of our lenses and in our curriculum programming and the opportunities that we provide kids uh through those categories through those opportunities um we had uh i was happy to be in amy amy's group in the last uh portrait of the graduate session and we were kind of wrestling with language and thinking around this idea of of what it means to be an innovator um and we talked a lot about the conditions for learning that we we design for students to give them practice with this to give them a framework for design and innovation and amy said carrot do we have that in the curriculum now and it was a moment where we we paused and i paused specifically and i'm like no but we have to build it in right so there are pockets of this in our district we have um some wonderful examples of where we encourage innovation and design and we provide this space and time to do this level of thinking um but to do this work well we need to be intentional and we need to build a scaffold across our k-12 continuum to grow out skills in these areas same with collaboration same with communication um same with uh you know being a thinker and critical thinking so where do we provide those opportunities that's very exciting work it's very deep work it's work that needs to be resourced well when we redesign courses so circling back to the budget we would like to be able to um you know rely on a continual source and resource to to grow the work over the continuum and as we work through uh this transformation and redesign effort as a result you know as we plan in the next years ahead we'll look to align all of our budget strategically to sustain that vision and to continue to further this the model that we have now embraced and i think that's it for me and we'll give you some updates on some of the meetings with uh our national career academy coalition partners in the next couple of months thank you guys um for the board for the board um you know i think um now you mentioned something you know about the budget and what we do is one of things i've said to the board years back when we don't get what we ask for is that your challenge is not to do what you need to do with the budget but how does this district move ahead with the resources it has that has been the thing that keeps me up at night and um when you don't do it in on financial resources you do it on the backs of people like cara and kevin and kim and kelly and my folks that were in at the high school with melissa and it's on their backs and then and dr mead who's on here searching out as you heard grants so we get grants so so that's been what we have been able to do is when we don't get it it's not about which would have been real easy throwing the towel the people don't throw in the towel not in danbury that's what's impressed me so much they get this passion they get lit like hector and they go and you know be damned about the resources they figure it out and that is so important that's how we've got ahead you didn't get those schools of distinction the blue ribbon schools and the rest on just that you got on hard work by the teachers the administrators and everybody putting it together this project should be the venue for development of a budget this should drive categories of the budget on how it's being developed over time once the board says this is what we expect our graduates to do and it would be incumbent on us to figure out these segments of the budget how are we supporting the budget it just becomes more realistic and a talkable budget that is one of the things i see us being able to do once we put this together and then the next step is to look at a rising eighth grader and looking at a rising fifth grader this is not just about the high school this happens down in the elementary into the middle and then into high school it's a real k-12 a pre-k-12 operation so um you should be really excited i'm really excited it really will drive the work here in danbury for years to come and the summit is just another place and that's what it is but it's what's going to go on inside based on this work so thank you all for doing it and i just wanted to share that with you tonight and you could see the workshops will be coming up the other thing i have on the agenda is opening school you know we've opened i've been kind of saddened on monday and tuesday it seems the pattern of closing school happens every seven days and those kids got hit with it and it's been too bad we have opened um the middle school now has been moving about they started that this week after two weeks of kind of figuring out this is what school is like this is these are the rules it's how we move around um this is how we do social distancing this is how we act when we're grabbing and going and on the bus so we're moving about um so that's going well yes we're being challenged kids and teachers are being quarantined and that's on our website and and that'll be the way we do business the good news is i am seeing the um the infection rate at four weeks ago i think i mentioned last night it was like 172 100 000.
again the least favorite excuse me the least favorite but one more time just for super duper clear uh uh transparency um mod just because model 3 got a 1.4 and it's the most favored that does not mean that everyone in this room right was rallying against number three now something interesting about number three nobody in this room that took the survey which by the way uh we had a we had a good uh turnout so again i do appreciate that uh we had uh close to 85 percent of you fill out the survey nobody that took the survey ranked model 3 as a 4. so nobody in this room ranked model 3 as a 4. so not only was it average wise the strongest nobody in the room gave it a four or another way of saying that model 3 was not the least favorite model of anyone in this in this room just based on based on that survey to add to that only one person ranked it a three everybody else ranked it either a number one their first choice or a number two their second choice no fours only one three all right so i'm gonna i'm just gonna summarize one more time just so we're all on the same page if we if we are counting how many times model 3 got a like but or a like because number one if we look at model 3 just by individuals who said i like it who gave a like because or a like but because at that point we weren't ranking remember we weren't saying what's your favorite model you could speak about all four but anytime a person mentioned it you it got one point and then it never got you one person could have said 20 things about model 3 but it only got one point which is different than counting all the likes in that way it was still number one and then of course you're looking at the survey data right here everybody ranked at a one or a two one person ranked at a three so we're gonna go into we're gonna try this please uh uh work with us here we are going to put a poll in the room right now and i want you to listen to this statement and i'm going to say this a lot of times tonight so bear with me and have patience with me in no way shape or form are we trying to force a consensus we have said from the beginning and we stick with it right now we want all voices to be heard the board of education the community deserves to understand the whole data the whole shebang so here is going to be the poll the question before you is this based on what we know about model 3 and we know that there are buts about it and we're going to get to that in a second okay we're going to talk about um removing uh there was a lot of ideas i like model 3 but without the tk8 i like the model 3 um but but would prefer sixth grade back at the elementaries right there was a lot of different ways to look at model number three and we and we're going to get to that we want to talk about that but right now just at a high level would it be fair to say the following thing to the board of education this is what what i want you to hear board of education the school reorganization team would like to recommend that model 3 be considered as one of the models moving forward but board of education we do want you to know in full transparency that of the that of the four models one person did rank it a3 but everybody else rented a number one or a number two and based on all the different ways of looking at it based on all the things that people said board of education we are recommending model three again i want to get to the nuances and we're going to get there i promise you this is going to be part two of today but right now just based on what we said that's going to be the question do you agree yes that is a that is a true statement and yes that is what the board should hear the school reorganization team is recommending that model 3 be one of the models uh that it considers uh but in full transparency there is one parent um who who designated it a three so you're going to vote yes i agree with that statement no i do not agree with that statement all right we're going to try this to see if this works and we're going to go from there so something should have popped up on your screen yes i agree with that statement no i do not agree with that statement miss lika do we get to see the results of that i think so can you see the screen right now no okay um right now we have 18 of 22 people who have voted we still have a couple people who need to all right vote thank you uh i'm wondering if those if those ones that are not voting is us oh that could be okay so of the 18 or 22 of what we don't get to see the data so so i don't know how to make this hang on let me see the where we are at right now is at 94 yes and a six percent uh no we have one more vote come in so now 18 people which is 95 say yes and one person which is five percent say no okay all right thank you for that um so we are going to invite uh because remember we we this is about lifting every voice so we're going to invite uh if they want to the one person that said no that is not that is not a i don't agree with that statement uh can that person unmute themselves and uh we're gonna give them uh some space there you go that that helps out thank you uh we're gonna give them some space uh to to to share uh to share their thoughts with us if they want to mr ortega i will i will speak to that right now i i just wasn't comfortable with just kind of the taking that right now i think at the end of the process i might feel a little bit better i just i wasn't really comfortable at the current time with that i have no problem moving forward with it however i'm just right now right now without discussing the nuances i had trouble with that understood that it was mentioned it just without the discussion of the nuances i was just not super comfortable with it but absolutely okay moving forward okay thank you for that um anthony i appreciate that all right so thank you thank you for that for right now we have anthony's voice and we're going to um keep that front and center but for right now we're saying as a school reorganization team school board um we we are recommending that we look at model three it was the model that was preferred the most but we did have um one person uh ranking a three everybody else rented a one or a two and and again we're gonna get to these butts and we're gonna talk about how we're gonna navigate uh those butts uh as we move forward with uh with the board of education all right we're gonna get ready for poll um number two but this time we're gonna go in the opposite direction all right so um again no matter which way we looked at it in all three ways model two was the least favored model model 2 um for three of the five groups didn't even mention it as a like not one like from three groups it is right now sitting at 3.55 which again is closer to a four which is in this case the lowest score than it is to to a three on top of that everybody gave model number two either a three or a four except two people that gave it a one okay so everybody gave it a three or four but two people gave it a one if we look at how many times it was mentioned it would be at the bottom if we look at how many times if i'm sorry if we look at how many people actually mentioned it it was at the bottom all right so the next pull before it before we flash it up it's still going to be a yes or no but it's going to be very very similar so board of education as a school reorganization team i forgot to say the one thing that i said i'm going to say a thousand times today remember this is not about forcing consensus and we want the board of education to hear everyone's voice so in that context board of education as a school reorganization team we do not recommend that we further look into model two but in full transparency we do want you to know that two members of the team did rank it as their favorite choice i'm gonna say one more time board of education as a school reorganization team we are not recommending that you continue to look at model 2.
and with that valley vista had seven counselors and we'll be moving to six counselors using that staffing model number and therefore we will move that counselor a counselor from valley vista to ischool to be the guidance counselor there and then the last piece is a name change we currently have a new century learning coordinator that will be the ischool coordinator so with that i will stand for any questions mr croto the one with the uh guidance counselor um for ischool uh currently we have seven right now so currently what's the capacity for each of those counselors madam president a member sawyer sink bill um they are about they carry a load of about 440 per counselor that is our staffing model for all our high schools in the district 440 to one 440. is that the anticipated amount of high schoolers using high school um madam president we are estimating that right now currently um i don't dr pulling do you know the exact number of high school high school people we have right now madam president the our current number of high school high full-time high school students so we're talking about high school um in this conversation um is approximately eleven hundred and we anticipate that number to drop by more than half um to begin next school year so the the counselor that um in valley vista's current model where they have seven counselors they have one too many counselors for next year um and so their enrollment next year qualifies them for six counselors according to the staffing piece so this counselor would be allocated to ischool where we believe that number will drop to very close to that ratio that we're talking about and you know additionally um we foresee down the road we don't know how far down the road but we foresee down the road that even more students will return to the campus with this staffing piece that allows us to utilize our teachers that are in high school and that counselor if need be to move back to the building as well thank you um and i i think you said this but i just want to clarify because high school and high school sound really similar they are very strong they do you're right so this is specifically for full-time students in high school that are enrolled in high school full-time so if they're enrolled in one single high school class but they're taking a full load otherwise in person those are not those we're not talking about those kids madam president we are not talking about those students okay we we refer to those students as taking concurrent enrollment both in high school and high school so the conversation that we're talking about today is full-time high school students that are taking our online program thank you so i hope that those are very very similar terms agreed so okay perfect thank you can i jump on to tracy's uh question regarding the the counselor taking the counselor from valley so i think that might have cleared up my concern you're saying that the numbers the numbers aren't going to justify having a seventh counselor it's not like the counselors left will have to endure a larger caseload than they already have to absorb that losing that one person we're not going to be like overwhelming them with madam president remember pritchard i'm just trying to do some quick math on my on the phone when we staff miss pritchard when we staff that is correct so we staffed at 440.
bullet point 3 this this capital budget does reduce the budget balance carry forward we do have a very healthy budget balance carry forward of 16 million that we're anticipating ending this year at this does reduce it to 8.6 million but you'll notice as we move through this that amount that 8.6 is 143 of our annual allocation our annual allocation is 6 million so we're still we're not depleting our capital fund we're still very secure in our budget balance and we have plenty of money to continue our capital plan over several years bullet point four this capital plan completes the one-to-one student-to-device ratio district-wide i.t i believe has a presentation coming up and a future board meeting that we'll go ahead and kind of outline how this plan has has been completed but just know there's funding in here to complete that plan next school year bullet point five this reduces the this plan reduces the amino transfer from 4.4 to 2.9 million we've talked about that in the mno budget you'll see how that adjustment affects the capital budget in this next proceeding slides bullet point six this budget allows for for the district to decentralize some of this furniture and equipment budgets down to the school level this gives these schools more flexibility in determining what needs are greater for them and and really like i said decentralizes that budget down to the school level giving them the power to purchase those items they see most need and the last bullet point there we'll pursue any sfb and e-rate funding when applicable this budget doesn't take into consideration any potential e-rate or sfb funding that may assist with some of these purchases and reduce our capital allocation or amount that we would expend towards some of these purchases so with that i'll provide a little context on the history and on on our budget balance carry forward and how it got to where it is and and where we plan on going so you'll see in the slide it provided the last five fiscal years of our ending budget balance in our capital budget this fund has continued to grow exponentially 24 million is four times the annual capital amount that this district would receive if fully funded granted there was some years in there that were recession-based funding so it was reduction funding but you can see the budget balance continued to grow if you look at the estimated 2122 bullet point this is where we are in this budget that we're presenting today we are anticipating a 24 million dollar ending balance at the end of the year and you'll see how we plan on spending some of that down to end at approximately 16 million going into school year 2023.
and you know with with a lot of hanks and people upset with us we waited instead of implementing right off after the holidays and what i'm seeing now as of today we're down to 42 per 100 000 that's a substantive change so i'm glad we waited it just gives us that much more of an opportunity to keep our kids in school and minimize the possibility of infection being you know being transmitted we also received information as monday uploading all the 65 and older so everybody in our district teachers staff everyone at 65 is going to be able to be vaccinated and that's happening i know voting up right down the road what we don't know yet but we're told will be coming soon whether it be the faculty and the rest other staff members that are under 65 and i'm hoping that happens sooner rather than later so we can move ahead i'm hearing and and um just one of the improvements that cara has been working diligently with is you know how do we engage the um students that are on the hybrid that are at home and she's got some ideas on how we can do engagement how we might be able to um you know involve them much more during the day you all have to remember that when we put together our plan we did it under best practice as of september so we learned a lot and i think what we're looking at is through that lens do we have to make other modifications as we go ahead and i think you know we want to look at the things that are successful and practices that we can modify um i'm going to keep quiet and ask kelly because i know that was brought up about you know you've been looking at your kids and uh kara might have a comment to me so i'll start with kara uh any comments about the opening would you like to make um you know we're still obviously you know um in the in the process of gathering feedback um we definitely you know are working with folks to you know implement in a way that is more meaningful to kids and the connections at home during the school day so you know how can we best support students during the asynchronous components of their day while also still involving them um to a reasonable degree to some of the to some synchronous experiences in the classroom so we're getting feedback on that um and we're also discussing you know is there a way to use maybe some of the funds that are coming our way to to take things to a level that we we previously were not able to do before so we're still having those conversations we're discussing those things with principles now we're looking at the instructional day and our ability to deliver on our our instructional goals um which is always the you know first and foremost is our ability to deliver our curriculum in this environment uh in the best way possible so we're revisiting um a couple of areas and we're still working with um some some principals now and we're working with the coaches and we're working i will be soliciting some back uh feedback from the teachers as well kelly yes thank you kara and sal um so very similar to uh cara the goals across the special education department and related services departments are no different we are looking to maximize instruction to students to make sure that they're making progress towards their individualized programs um as you guys know back in late november we started our re-entry by bringing our special education students our high needs special ed students not all of them um in uh for you know in for um hybrid model and they were our first students that came back it went very successfully the students did very well and i have to give a lot of kudos to the staff uh the special education staff are um live streaming while they're teaching kids in person because we are trying to maximize the amount of instruction that those children are receiving every single day regardless of their location that said we certainly do recognize that some of our higher needs special education students do have a need to be in person more and so cathy o'dowd myself and the medical advisors as well as cabinet have been speaking about um you know as we had previously indicated when are we ready to bring in those students four days um it is certainly a goal of mine to do so and to do so sooner than later but we are still having the conversations with the health health experts because that is certainly outside my area of expertise to say when is it safe to do so what this would mean is in certain populations it'll be cross-cohorting of kids so you will have a special education student that requires more support in person that will be exposed to both cohort a and cohort b and so we are currently going through all of our different classrooms and environments and looking to make sure that we're making the safest choice first that also supports them educationally um and so more information will certainly be coming on that um we you know some of the things we've talked about is a phase-in um you know do we start with some of our younger students or some of our more intense programming and start them back and then slowly build up on that um and we've also engaged in some conversation at a later point about looking at some of our esl newcomer students and and whether or not they could benefit from a very similar model so that's sort of what we're doing and you know we've noticed around where schools are having uh in person for the elementary and um you know we called the l for secondary so we're looking at something like that perhaps um when we have some delays or we have some school um affected whether maybe everybody doesn't have to be impacted the goal here for the board is to try to increase as best we can in school in person learning and that's what that's what that's the goal so i think yeah we're making improvement over time and uh but over and over uh it is going well and i just want to ask kim anything you want to update on the vaccine because that has been a question no i i think you summed it up dr salads it we're really in a holding period right now on that um we were really happy actually to be able we put in about a hundred and maybe 160 names in this last 65 and over group which was terrific and we've been getting them you know getting feedback from them people are really seem to be able to get in they're very grateful i'm fielding a lot of questions about what's next and we just don't know the answer so um we just continue to put out as push out as much information as we have um and i think you know to be honest i think people are just comforted by by sharing whatever we know um and we're just in a little bit of a holding pattern now in the vaccine so kevin anything you got to come off from you i think carrot and kelly covered it with the opening okay so uh i guess we've got it covered and and that's all i have um sorry you did see the um governor's um i guess speak or his state of the union none of this has passed yet but uh we'll have to go through it but it looks as though our alliance money is okay i think um it looks as though the money from the government the essa ii as i mentioned before is in there but he split it over two years even though we could use it all at once if we want um and he also has a choice program in there i see for um endorsement so i will have to go through it but right now that's the way i mean thank you madam chair thank you dr we're gonna move on down the agenda um board chair report uh i don't have anything right now do we have any of our committees we had quite a few of our committee's reports from tonight but do we have any committees that would like to report tonight other than the one that have already reported madam chair would it be possible to ask a question related to the superintendent's report yes yes um two two questions i understand obviously that we're it's a moving target do we have any rough idea of how many people total are quarantined at the moment through the system it was 75 two weeks ago if memory serves cathy's on she keeps the website hi good evening um yes i do have some numbers for you um so um i'll just give you the summary first from january that's fine so for the month of january we had uh 159 cases reported we had 220 close contacts identified and 243 were in quarantine and uh for february as of today we have had 33 reported cases uh 44 closed contacts identified and currently we have 44 people on a 10-day quarantine thank you so the quarantines and i will also share with you uh the quarantines that we had out at the end of january beginning of february everyone has returned and there has been no uh reported positive cases um so there has been no in-school transmission fantastic thank you that was one and then one quick question for kelly um you mentioned before bringing some kids back in a four day model and that may result in cross-cohorting that's an exposure risk for the kid who's cross cohort for the kid who obviously the student who's obviously involved is that not also then a bridge between the two cohorts yes you are correct it is a bridge between two cohorts and let me provide a little bit more information joe a majority of these students are students that um are in our self-contained programs so most of them are in a you know in a contained classroom where they would be exposed would be out for things like specials lunch um so there are minimal exposures outside of that that classroom but there are some and so we are thinking through that um so um ride most of these students ride our specialized transportation or mini buses but again coming in with other groups of students so there is some exposure there so those are the health and safety things that we are very carefully looking at to make sure that we make the best decisions not just for the high needs special ed students that we firmly believe should be in more but also for everybody else um and and it's a very it's a very careful and delicate process sure thank you that's it thank you madam sure thank you are there any other questions we'll move on down um i don't have a question but i have some uh committee updates um just wanted to mention that the building committee the city building committee met yesterday courtney was on and i thought we were going to hear from antonio you know before or during our vote today on the ellsworth edition but just to share my notes there were um there are three phases of construction um general construction ffa and playscape phase um they broke down you know the the projected costs of um the school and the administration part of it the grand total would be 11 million uh timeline is to get a final state review on march 2nd hopefully approval early april mid-june um enter into a contract and begin construction and then open for occupancy um in 2022.
but in full transparency board of education we want you to know that two team members did rank it as their favorite all right so the question is yes i agree with that statement no i do not agree with that statement and that's the way it would be shared so one more time before lika puts up the poll yes i agree board of education this group does not recommend model 2 but in full transparency two people did rank it as their favorite you agree with that yes you don't agree with that no lika go ahead and uh put up the poll please we have 15 people who have voted so far okay we are at a 94 yes so far and remember there's five of us in here that are not voting no six of us in here that are not voting looks like the looks like everyone has voted so let's share these results all right so again based on the percentages from last time it looks as if there's one person who does not uh who said no and so again we're going to invite uh this one person if they want to to share why they voted uh no just unmute yourself and share that please if you want to again you don't have to okay all right congratulations that was the easy part now let's get into uh a little bit more nuance uh or the little bit the ones that are a little bit more a little bit more more complicated and that hovers around model [Music] model one and model four okay so let's go with model four first so model four as you saw in your chat or as you see in your chat scored an average of 2.15 if we were rounding that would be a two right it's closer to a two than it is to a three um there are for model 4 there is only one group only one that did not mention model 4 whatsoever all four other groups mentioned number four during their like because or like butt and no matter how we cut it or sliced it or diced it in every ranking it has shown up as the second most favored model of this group now again we are talking averages right we're not saying everybody i just in average no matter which way we looked at this it always ranked number two on the other side of that actually let me let me go back one more one more data point on model number four so we talked about it's a 2.15 super close to two we talked about there's only one group that didn't mention model number four everybody else mentioned number four we talked about no matter how we cut or slice it it was all it always came in second one more one more data point um because we we have been sharing this there are one two three four five five members of this group that ranked it either a three or a four okay five members of this group that ranked it either a three or a four on the other side of this is model one model one as you see in the chat got an average score of 2.9 again almost a three right closer to three than it is to two no matter how we cut cut it slice or dice it no matter which way we tried to look at it in every single way it ranked third in all of the ways that we that we looked at it in addition to that um one two three four people ranked at number two nobody gave model one a one okay so four people gave it a two nobody gave it a one again closer to two point nine i'm sorry closer to three in every single way it came in third and some of the ways actually um well again depending on what you think of numbers it's all context if you look at the rankings in the chat one would say that there is a a large separation between model four and model one because we're only talking about four points right so 0.8 is almost is almost the one right so here comes the tougher one remember we are not trying to force consensus we're trying to be transparent and we're trying to give the board of education the correct data and we want to make sure that we are describing this group correctly okay so here comes the next statement board of education as a school reorganization team we are recommending that you also look at model 4.
we're not overburdening the counselors okay um matter of fact we rounded up to six to get there so their ratio should be a little less with our projections of course now if more kids show up we're going to have to monitor and adjust with that but our projections are that they will be at or under that ratio with the kids that we think are going to show up okay and then just two questions really quick on the moving from a admin secretary two to a three is that specific for that particular individual that is in that position or is that we are feeling like the person needing the job description of that position requires that three level uh they need to be at that three level madam president miss pritchard that it would be a pay increase which would result per policy in an interview process okay and miss pritchett i understand i think i understand your question their their feel with the more capacity and everything that's coming under ischool that that position is is doing a lot of the same duties as the secretary or admin secretary three at the schools so they are picking up a lot of those duties okay and then my final question is in regards i i cringe a little bit about the elimination of the instructional assistant and the sped paraprofessional i understand you're saying that we're not using them especially like with at sundown um just knowing the different like program and i don't even know if they still do this but i know sometimes they would take middle school students do we still okay who may have special education needs or that you know a pera would you know be appropriate um are we not using those positions but should we be using them to give those supports to those students to where we really want to get rid of those positions or should we just encourage that those people get utilized and we not eliminate them madam president member pritchard the answer to your question is that sundown with ms lockhart's leadership sundown has really rediscovered its form and so they are able to meet the needs of our students currently at sundown and increase capacity within the staffing model that's being suggested today and so they have not they have not filled those positions because those positions have not been needed and that continues or that allows for the continuation of middle school students that have been attending there as well so what would happen though if say because i i remember how hard it is to get an instructional assistant assigned to a student if needed so what happens if that need arises and then they don't have those people there will they be able to quickly get those resources for those students if we eliminate them madam president mrs prichard the answer would be that they would work with with with both hr and ess staff should that need a rise um there is full-time ess um staffing at sundown um they have not needed those positions which is why they've remained vacant um for for some time now but if if that need a arose then we certainly would revisit the conversation how long have they been vacant do you know or not that question i don't know i'm president i remember pritchard they have not been filled this year the registrar position increasing to full time would that also require an interview process madam president yes any any changes according to governing governing board policy uh requires a reposting of the position and an interview in order to take that position so they would be posted if you approve this tonight they would be posted those individuals are welcome to apply and there will be an interview process for that job okay thank you any other discussion on that i will move to a motion to approve the staffing modifications for ischool and sundown mountain alternative program as presented second motion passes next we have item g3 recommendation for approval of job order contract in excess of one million dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item madam president members of the board superintendent dr callus colleagues and community members thank you very much for allowing me to present on this item tonight so first this is required governing board approval statutorily anytime a job order contracting goes above a million dollars job order contracting is a specific alternative procurement delivery method that allows us to procure services a little bit faster and we contract that through a consortium one gpa and so this uh request is for 3.3 million dollars for mid-state energy and this is for our air scrubbering proposal that we're bringing to the board and so we have heard for about six months or so from staff and others what are we doing to help the indoor environment for the last few months we've been researching it with our facilities director mr young we've been looking at different alternatives uv lights increased air filtration different purging techniques and what we're looking at is a lot of the others have negative consequences so as we looked at uv lights what we saw was uv lights depending on where you put them some of the places we put them anywhere they hit our hvac system we'll have to replace those components and it would cause some damage they work very well they just work too well at some points and so looking at our hvac systems what all of our needs and how can we increase and improve our air quality indoor air quality into our air environments we looked at the eyes in the ionization so the needlepoint bipolar ionization is the proposal that's before you today and this is to put about 2700 devices throughout every place we have an air handler or air handler-like situation in our hvac system in every single one of our buildings support center's district office every school building and what that does is it takes and puts positive charged ions positive and negatively charged ions into our air system any time that our air system is on so if our air handlers are on and it's moving air it's going to push them out into it the positive the ions will then attach to particulates in the air so it's not just a a covid it could be dander could be pollen it could be odors viruses it will then attach to those and then they start attaching to each other they they accumulate accumulate and then they catch in our air filtration system so we'll be using our current systems to do all of this and it will not require us to change our filters more frequently but it will start taking out and improve the air quality within the we do like that it has the two year warranty we also like that it does not have the negative consequences of hurting other systems within our buildings and so it has a long lasting so this isn't a coveted thing it's going to improve the air indoor air quality for time to come from that standpoint so this is being funded it is a lot of money um the sr2 so when that was approved on december 27th it also provided additional funding for schools and specific to covet and so we thought this was a perfect use of improving our indoor environments with that federal funding that we'll be receiving so i will stand for any questions i will just i know i put this in the agenda item it will take about two weeks per site they've they've already ordered a lot of the devices at risk because we want to start this as soon as possible and so they'll be starting planning and scheduling they've already started that we'll start having meetings next week we'll get the po done this week with board approval so it will take a long time to get through our district to get all of this but it will start having positive impact as soon as we finish they will do it after hours so it will not have any impact on the instruction so schools will be able to continue they have to get up in the grids and so they have to wait until school's out and so they will work after hours to do all of this i have a question um is this a covid specific precaution is this just so that our teachers and students feel safe with the air quality or is there other benefits you kind of touched a little bit i just was curious as if if this is you know just a pretty much a coveted precaution and if so i mean do we have um the relief the federal or state relief funds to help us with this um madam president members of the board so one of the things we've been looking at is we don't want to do a knee-jerk reaction just for covid that then let's just pretend um in a year from now there's no covid no evidence of covid then we have all these things that are consuming our lives that are cost a lot and that we're not using this is not so this will help improve the flu season it just will improve indoor air quality because it will take particulates out of our air because it will be being trapped in our filtration system it actually has reduced our utility bill i'm not uh promoting that because i always uh we'll know it when we see it kind of thing but um it will actually by taking so many so much air out our automatic system will measures the particulates and air and brings in outdoor air there'll be less particulates and the air will take less air from the outside in at times which during the summer we have to condition that air and it our systems are running longer to cool it in that sense so it'll reduce our cooling in that because pulling it out and putting in the filtration actually cleans the air greater than bringing in the fresh air from the outside because of the pollen the other particulates and smokes and odors and everything in there so this is a long-term solution that will be better it is only a one-time cost and so we do have the federal funds for the one-time cost so there's no long-term do we still have federal funding to help support this the funding is in excess of right now we're projecting at 12 million dollars coming in on the federal fund so this is only using 3.3 of that thank you thank you so i i know that due to kova we were doing a flush you know bringing in outside error so would this eliminate the need to do that um madam president members of the board um we still do that because we said we're going to do that um it does reduce once this is we'll still continue right now we have told our working with our team we said we like the purge early in the morning so we're going to continue to do that through the rest of this year for sure we'll we'll reevaluate that but this does eliminate some of that because it cleans out the air so much and takes it it probably could reduce that i think that that was one of the things that made people feel safe that every morning we were purging and flushing out our buildings and bringing them out regular because the dampers because other things will open and bring in outside air at needed times you normally cycle through your room in our system two or three times an hour of equivalent of getting fresh air the purge would allowed us to not um bring in a little bit bring in a little bit bring a little we just flushed everything out and started all fresh all new we'll continue that right now so we have not talked about taking that out that'll probably continue for the rest of this fiscal year for sure we'll reevaluate that this summer okay and i'm guessing you have but were there i guess maybe testimonials maybe from other school districts locally or somewhere else that have you that are already using this can you give us information madam president members of the board they all have been installing them in some other school districts um it's all really early right now what we're going to be looking at is we're included in this as a requirement to get environmental testing done and so they get a third party to come in and pre and post-test to show how it's taking the particulates out to show that it is working that we know that it is having the intended effect but it is early on from the local school districts that have already started this a few months before us or a couple months so any other businesses maybe not a school the other businesses that we're actively using madam president i have not reached out to other businesses um we've talked to the vendor that's promoting it um and they have seen long-term success this started in casinos so this technology has been around for about 20 years and it was a way for casinos to get the odor and the smell out and the particulates out of the air as quickly as possible so it's a that is basically where the industry borne out of and you mentioned that it would take care of some odor issues as well if i could just recommend that you start in the band room um i did have one more question real quick you said it was just a one cost you know just a one and done thing there was not a long-term cost so we what would we have to do to maintain these if any to maintain this technology or anything yeah madam president members of the board it's only if they break um they they do not catch or do anything they're just putting ions out we're using our existing filtration system for them to collect and go they're warrantied for two years right now i think the estimate the vendor said that they expect this to be in place and probably not have an issue for eight to ten years with any of these if they start faltering after the two years we would have to then start paying to replace them they're roughly around twelve hundred dollars each as they're replacing my only question mr hicks was uh um it'll take approximately two weeks per site so is there a way that they can do a couple of sites at one time no madam president members of the board we actually are working with mid-state currently they're doing our led project and so they're going to dovetail this into the led to save some money on some project management costs the project first started out over 4 million and of course you know i get nervous on any dollar amount and so we work to bring it down so they're going to dovetail it with that they're going to speed it up as quickly as possible they think uh one of our a we have great as builds b they've looked at our plans to do the lighting and then see our team does a great job of identifying exactly where air handlers are so we actually think they gave us an estimate that's probably a little long that it'll be a little bit quicker and they'll move through very fast because all of our stuff we know exactly where it is all of our buildings built in the last basically 20 years and so we have good plans and documents to speed up that process okay cool i will make a motion to approve the job order contract contract through one gpa for mid-state energy and an amount not to exceed three million three hundred thirty six thousand eight hundred seventy one dollars for the district-wide air purifier project second okay motion passes do we have any requests for future agenda items okay this time we will move to executive session um i will make a motion to establish executive session to be held immediately during a recess in the regular meeting second motion passes and we are in recess 856.
so again we are planning on spending some of this money um but again we're being fiscally responsible and not depleting this fund 16 million again is almost three times uh our annual district additional assistance amount so almost three times our annual capital budget page four this is our this is going to be our guiding document here as we progress through the school year if you follow along at the top we'll go on the far left column you'll see page number so this document has several pages behind it that outline each one of these budgets you can follow as long as you see fit if you want to look at more research and we'll go through that as we progress the next column is our categories these are our major categories that we identified there's several subcategories in these but for a lar capital presentation these are the main points in which we'll be expanding your capital budget from going to the right you'll see our daa so this is what we're talking about this is our capital district additional assistance budget you'll see the folded number at the bottom the 24 960.
um i also was on the dhs pto meeting on monday this was their second virtual meeting of school year there were about um 37 participants they are working on a beautification project for the campus they purchased signage for the athletics entrance um one on the brick wall and another freestanding sign if you haven't seen them they're awesome they look great um so they're going to continue that and they're also focused on their seniors um in order to keep spirits up and they're also uh very eager to learn what the year-end activities will look like this year so um that's it i also um would like to have a policy committee meeting sometime soon um we have you know just some um basic things to take care of um and uh we have two um sped policies i believe um that need to be updated and then we really need to continue our um the policy audit um and get back into a regular routine of meeting monthly to continue that um so i don't know um if now is a good time to kind of work out a schedule um but if we could start meeting soon mr walton i don't know what your schedule is like but um could we meet as soon as next wednesday yes that works for me and the policy committee members does next wednesday work i think they can do that yeah you're thinking like six o'clock like we used to do rachel yeah does that work for you yep i can do that okay is it still going to be on zoom yes yeah i can do that too yeah great so we'll set a date for next wednesday at six um cara can you post it please okay thank you and then i also just want to ask um you know i see some council members on the meeting and um very appreciative of their involvement and and wanting to be here um but um were were all council members extended the invitation in the zoom and you know i mean we already have you know over 30 participants on the meeting so i'm just wondering if this is a board meeting or a council meeting there's a board meeting what do you mean i'm lost there's a board meeting is that what you mean yes oh yeah it's a board meeting i would just like to thank councilman santos and salvatore for taking the time to be with us okay anything else right um no i think that's it okay thank you are there any other reports we know we haven't uh because of the uh virus there's other committees that's going to come out in a little bit probably next month that we'll be able to get a much better selection and more information from our committees but i thank you all that are here that made the reports and all the workshops that we've had and those uh committees that have reported uh if there's no other discussion i need a motion to move into executive session so moved move by who is kate can i get a second second motion show move we're gonna move right into our executive session emily you have a separate there is a separate yes there's a separate link that was sent to the board members so we have to leave this meeting and then sign back on to the executive session link uh may i interrupt before everybody leaves are we supposed to vote before going into executive session yes okay i just want to make sure because i want to document yes well i just made the motion she consecutive and uh all in favor of the motion all right cara did you just send out that link i sent out the link earlier earlier tonight around six weeks we got it doctor yep um madam chair one question about the executive session before we go into it are we anticipating needing to take any action as a result of the executive session no no no no okay thank you bro everyone has the link they've received the link okay very good
unlike model 3 there were more members of this team that ranked it lower either a three or a four that was five so five members of the member of of the of the group did rank it either a three or a four but overwhelmingly in in in every way that we looked at it it ranked number two so therefore board of education we are recommending that in addition to model 3 you are also looking at model 4. reminder we're gonna get to the butts right event eventually after tonight right i'm going to explain to you how those butts are going to come into play because i know model 4 comes with butts the big butt of model 4 is instead of a 612 we want it to be a 712. so that is coming i promise you that but right now we're just thinking big we're gonna get granular and then and then i'll share with you next steps all right so before the the poll comes up here we go yes i agree with this statement board of education as a school reorganization team we are recommending that you also look at model 4 along with model 3 but in full transparency board of education we want you to know that there were a total of five members who ranked model four either a three or a four if you agree with that statement please say yes you do not agree with that statement please say no i think everyone's getting the hang of this our votes are coming in fast it's the third time third time's a charm all right everybody's ended here we go okay based on the numbers um again it looks like there is one person that uh voted no meaning that i don't i i do not agree with that statement um again you don't have to but we're gonna give some space if you want to to please share with the group why you disagree so just unmute yourself and please share with the group okay thank you all right next poll question we save the easy ones we we put the either ones first and saving the the hardest ones for last all right so the next question is now we're looking at model one all right once again 2.9 0.1 away from a three almost a three again nobody that took the survey nobody scored a one model one nobody scored it as their as their favorite model yes we had four people scored a two so we did have four people scored a two nobody scored a one once again in every single way that we looked at it model one consistently came in third and i would venture to say that also not only came in third but again there was a separation between third and second place all right so here goes the next comment that you are going to agree with or or um or or disagree with all right board of education the school reorganization team [Music] does not recommend that we look at model one any further in full transparency we do want you to know that four people of the of the four people from the team ranked it number two but as a team we are not recommending that you continue to look at model number one let's say one more time once again we're not trying to force consensus and we want to be super transparent when we go to the board of education and share and share accurately this group all right so i'm going to say one more time and then the poll is going to come up board of education we do not recommend that you look at model one any further as a team we recommend that we do not look at model one in full transparency board of education there were four members that ranked this model a number two everybody else ranked it a three or a four if you agree with that model you are going to select yes if you do not agree with that model i'm sorry with that phrase you are going to select no just a few more people there's one more okay voting has ended okay thank you uh there is uh let me address the the chat we apologize if you are watching this uh live on youtube i guess you're not you're not able to see uh the results um so i will tell you that the results of every single poll has been 95 yes five percent no which translates to one person in the group uh not agreeing with um with the phrase uh so we apologize that you cannot see the results but again all every single poll has been yes 5 no um so again going back just to allow space and allow voice um if you are the person that said that you do not agree with that phrase we're going to give you some space if you want to to speak to why you said no okay all right thank you everyone for for part one of of tonight um this is not easy um and so i just want to to show my immense gratitude for your honesty uh for your feedback uh for your courage um and being part of this team we really really really appreciate that okay now let's move to the butts um and share with you um [Music] how we propose uh to to do that number one and then number two uh how what what happens next right so i think those two things are are super super important that we are that we are sharing with you what we propose to do with the butts and what would be next all right so first let me share with you um the ideas suggestions that came out of last week's meeting that we were calling the butts right the like butts so i'm going to share with you with them with you in the order of most mentioned to least mentioned but nonetheless i want to put on record the ones that we heard okay number one the most mentioned and we're not polling right now so you don't have to stress about that um the first one is we like model 3 but only one high school the next most mentioned we like model 4 but it should be 7 12.
okay i will make a motion to approve the compensation increase madam president we need to reconvene oh sorry okay we will now reconvene the meeting let the record reflect that all members are present okay okay i will make a motion to approve the compensation increase of three percent for the 2021-2022 fiscal year madam president if i could um ask if we could modify the motion with the language that ken hicks is going to present the president oh absolutely i thought that looked a little weird uh madam president members of the board and i'll have uh mr croto listen as i mentioned that it would be a recommended motion to approve a three percent three percent retention stipend to existing staff that accepts their contract or notice of employment by the given deadlines and remains employed through august 30th if the board sees it so are you making emotion do i need to make the motion can i get a copy i can't remember all of that you can say so you can say so moved okay all right i will make a motion to approve a three percent retention stipend to existing staff that accepts their contract or notice of agreement or notice of agreement notice notice of employment by the given deadline and remains employed through august 30th all second can i ask a question before we question yes does that include all current employees mad president pritchard that does not include the current interim employees for clarification should we clarify the motion are we good i was just asking that question okay all right i have a motion by don densmer it was seconded by whom ms chapman loud right now empty in here i am going to recuse myself from voting on this particular issue due to a potential conflict of interest no i'm not abstaining i'm recusing myself i respect that love thank you i don't want anybody to i am present so there's not an option oh okay but it'll reflect it motion passes madam president mrs grant your abstention will be noted in the minutes of the meeting thank you not abstaining thank you okay all right this time i will make a motion to establish executive session to be held immediately during a recess in the regular meeting okay second did i miss grant sorry did i did i not vote yes that's my vote motion passes you
that's our total budgeted amount that we plan on having for school year 2022. if you look right above that you'll see the carry forward amount for 22 23 that's 8.6 million we are setting aside a large carry forward to make sure this this capital plan can be sustained for several years we'll go into detail on some of these slides but i just want to address a couple more funding sources so you'll see adjacent ways there to the right of the daa we have a cash balance of 2.6 million in there that fund has historically been set aside i believe for a legal purpose but we have confirmed that we are clear of that and we can utilize that as it sees fit for construction projects um that have adjacent ways funding or adjacent ways pieces involved mr tyler wasn't the um the conversation of repaying the adjacent ways more like four million dollars wasn't that the conversation before saying that i'll let mr gatt answer that uh we've had some conversations recently with the state and as the board may be aware the auditor general provided a report to the attorney general's office a few weeks back nothing has occurred that they're at least willing to talk about but what they have said to me verbally is if you have adjacent ways money we think and you ever need to spend it we think you should proceed as long as the sfb board has approved it as an eligible adjacent waste expenditure and that's required of all districts if the expenditure amount is above 50 000 so what they're telling me is you know this is coming from several years back as you probably know they're telling me that we ought to proceed and if there's any change to that position then we'll deal with it um and so you know they're saying instead of counting your money every morning basically why don't you just proceed if you have a plan to spend it that you know and that's about as specific as they will get with that comment but it kind of tells you i think that that we're not going to likely experience a penalty with this we have to remember the basis of this money is property tax it is not state aid okay and so there's less interest because the state does not have a chunk of this in order to have us give it back so that's a difference uh as opposed to mmo or capital outlay so i'm you know i'm relatively confident not totally but relevantly constant confident with the discussion i had that uh the district will be fine they don't even said we don't even know what the repayment method could be since his property tax how do we even try to figure out who gets what uh especially since it was levied six seven years ago so the more you listen to that the more you get the feeling that you know it's just that something that we want to try to deal with even if they did i think that the district could pro i could probably show them that as a part of that construction amount lease amount there certainly was a lot of projects in there eligible for adjacent wages and we would get the pay request from the contractor to show them that if it gets to that point where we want proof that that money was spent on adjacent ways i'm i'm relatively sure we could provide that so that's an update for you on that subject then that last column there is our current bond we are anticipating a budget balance of 3.6 million a majority of that set aside for there's a small bus purchase in there and then you know the potential if we have any major project needs which we'll cover in these next slides so again this week we plan on having this as our guiding document for 2022 um and then any expenditures we propose to bring to you from our capital plan we will outline which budget this will come from um so you guys have a clear indication of what we're bringing to you and and what we project presented to you so the the first line this is our kind of contingency amounts um you'll see a small amount for for capital um again mr gat just went over the adjacent ways fund this is only we'll only touch this if we have eligible adjacent ways projects in fiscal year 22 my current bond we have a contingency amount of 1.8 million set aside again we haven't identified any major projects for 22 yet and we'll only touch that when we have a plan there we have an allocated amount of 1.5 million in capital if we do not use this this goes back to the budget balance and again ensures that we have sufficient capital funding for years to come we do have a building lease obligation in there as you all know for 4.4 million and that is funded from the capital budget [Applause] like i mentioned in the highlights the the classroom technology budget has a 1.7 million dollar allocation to complete that one-to-one student ratio you can see the four schools there left remaining to get the one-to-one student devices within that technology budget there's also a district-wide technology these are our annual software renewals our licenses microsoft office our financial software this does not include canvas we'll we'll touch on canvas a little later on that's part of the education budget safety and security there's a small amount there to start replacing some of our our or adding new cameras to some of our schools with the current climate some of the break-ins we hope this will help address some of those issues can i ask which schools will be getting these i believe dr fowler is working on a plan to identify those schools but president um vice president wilson we've had we have three schools right now currently that um we're working on installing some cameras ones that we've traditionally had some issues with in fact in the last few weeks um so that would be cortina coronado and san tan but that budget actually allows for cameras additional cameras at all of our campuses and so so work i'm currently working on those three schools you know you know by spring soon on those three but then that that budget would allow for additional cameras at all of our campuses um so good question thank you support services they're obviously a major part of the our capital needs of the school district we have 1.7 million set aside both from funded from our current capital and current bond a lot of those repairs have been uh prioritized and outlined by dr founders group these bullet points are just a high level estimate on some of those large projects so you can see roofing repairs for 400 000 hvac 320 000 and so on continuing with support services we have outlined a 250 000 budget for school capital requests these are requests that come directly from the schools um you can see the bullet points there and some of the the high level requests that we got and we anticipate funding in 22 these projects are potentially saving you know ptos from going out and funding these projects so that was our expectation here to try to assist some of these schools and some of their their capital needs projects it's a small amount but this this is a start to helping address some of their capital needs and below that you'll see major projects we have allocated 3 million dollars from both the capital and current bond this amount is is just to set aside we do not have any identified plans for this dr foley do you want to president keller members of the board one of the things i wanted to add here and you will as you recall we had a work study back in october november where we had uh we have some important information coming to us we have a demographic study from rick ramer and his group that's updated we also have a facility index report that is being finalized where we take a look at helping us prioritize what are those major projects one of the things you will see coming to us soon and again you'll be getting background information on this but come april what we'll do is we'll have presentations for you based on what we've learned for them here's our growth in numbers and projections here are uh if we were to pass upon what those priorities might be over the next several years if we were not to pass a bond what could we do not do uh considering multiple factors so that the what are those major projects and what do they look like and what that priority will be more information coming to you but just know that at this point we're doing like a set aside and then would have a more formal plan based on our demographic data our facility index in addition you've been reading in your status reports about um dr fowler and and sherry richards and david lotzenhauser have been walking buildings with administrators looking at every space on our campus where do we have room for growth or movement or space for us to make really informed decisions about any any future growth or addition plans um so more information will be forthcoming but again this is just placeholder with knowing that we have been diligently working on background information so that when we get um to the end of toward april we can make some real formal finalized plans with what does this look like for us for the next several years dr foley thank you for that i i really appreciate this whole demographic thing that's coming our way because i think it's really important that we base our spending on needs and not the ones that um i think in the past there have been some louder calls from different schools or departments or whatnot but basically higley is an older school district in some areas and we need to look at those needs and not just the ones so i'll be excited to hear those things in april board member taylor we are excited for that information too so we'll have all of this come together as a comprehensive thing so that we can take a look at where where is our potential growth where our potential needs from a programmatic standpoint and also where are our major project needs because main uh you know maintenance and ongoing um care of of facilities is an expense and something that we need to anticipate and have as part of our plan and so those will be two things that two big things that'll help inform what we're going to do and how we're going to prioritize those projects and we're going to look at a multi-year plan so that we know what and what the priorities are i mean obviously emergency things happen but there would be contingency funds for this but planning long-term planning for us dr foley real quick um i'm assuming because dr fowler and his team have been extremely successful at getting things covered by sbf funds and so i'm assuming yes we're going to budget for some of this but we're not going to give up on that process correct and utilize what we can where we can and how we can get it because you guys have been great on staying the course and getting us funds and covering some of our older schools and repairs and items that otherwise we would have to pull out of here yes president reese members of the board yes we're continuing to work um very closely with the sfb and um you know we we really just don't take no for an answer and so we continue to to battle and work and and um you know just point back to the uh when you drive by santan and coronado and notice the difference on those campuses now to to be fair that took almost two years of jumping through hoops and well wait a minute we won't um replace that roof because it's metal and it's like well you built it and so i mean we just have to go through all these processes and it does take time and i think a lot of districts just give up and we're not giving up we'll continue to work hard and and identify all of those areas and and they keep changing the rules and so okay what's the new rule we'll adjust and uh but really a credit to to um all of our our our staff and and mr buhultsen and his team that and the architects that we work with to really put that together because it's a very methodical and sometimes frustrating process you know because you hear no many many many times until you finally get the yes but yeah we're going to continue to work um and and hope that the funding remains there with the sfp as well but appreciate that that um that perspective but we're yeah we're just because we have some additional funds that's not going to stop us from getting every possible cent that we can get from the state to help with those needs perfect thank you because there's no doubt that your team and everything they've done have helped continue to build this fund and has it where where it is and then we can shift i'm not going to use the word pivot we can shift those funds where um they're needed elsewhere that we can't get covered so again thank you to your team who's saved our district a lot of money thank you thank you i just wanted to make sure that you that the perspective is sfb is maintenance they're not they're not square footage growth no i was referring to because we have chillers on here and roofing repairs and yeah we can get it covered great i'm glad we have contingencies but i don't want to give up just because we have something here one of the reasons that you see that bullet point under major projects is the growth is going to need to be if there is growth and we need to put additional classrooms on it's going to be local funding it's that is not what sfb is into but by the same token just what you said is if you can save money in other sections of this capital budget through them paying for maintenance it gives you more money to deal with in terms of enrollment growth so it works out in the end i'm ready furniture fixture and equipment this is what i'm talking about decentralizing this capital budget we have estimated 492 000 being kind of pushed down to the school level we're going to allocate this on an adm basis so it's equitable across the schools typical purchases from this budget include new equipment instructional materials furniture this also includes some pe equipment if they were to choose to replace uh physical education equipment this is separate from sports so this budget allows for that an example of kind of how big this is for some of the schools this is take for example higley high school um they're currently getting a three thousand dollar capital budget this this would give them a two thousand percent increase over their current capital budget so i know speaking to mr fields like he was very uh happy and elated to see this projection um and proposal so mr moore can i ask you a question here yeah you know i i see and hearing everything about you know decentralizing um one is there's still oversight and two um the benefit of centralized is if multiple schools need similar items we can typically get a better price in bulk so is there a process where we can still give the schools here's your budget and you know kind of decentralize so they know more of what they need than anyone here us you know but with that then if we have multiple needs at multiple schools or oversight or if one school does need something and an extra school has extra of something because of how something was ordered i mean there's also ways to be fiscally responsible and save money so is can you let me is there some oversight there is there some help here yeah certainly um so this process does not change the the process in which we uh approve and how any of these purchases route through the appropriate departments so any type of request that would come from say higley would go through david it would come through finance um so we would identify you know okay this school has put in a requisition for chairs for example you know okay williamsfield has the same requisition and there or same need then we would research on how we can maybe both purchase those two um so there's steps in place to to stop um any type of not waste but like any you know excess purchase that may be better utilized as a bulk purchase so there's places steps in place there and then of course this all routes through purchasing so any type of procurement is all covered by review through us before it even becomes a purchase order um so there's there's processes and steps in place to monitor this budget but then give them the ability and the freedom to kind of um identify the needs of their campus because like you said like we do not understand their campuses as good as they do um doctor race members of the board one of the things too is that this what this does is also help us be more equitable and what we're spending out of this budget for each school based on student need again these things often were being purchased but again it was you've got a little bit for your school and then there was a dis over overall arching district budget this helps us be a little bit more equitable across the same approval processes in place we know what they're ordering or what their needs are and obviously we inventory and move things around you know one of the interesting things we have found is doing walks is walking through campuses and finding oh there's a whole lot of chairs here that might be important for us to know about an inventory and utilize as needed so again the pro the processes the procurement the oversight doesn't go away this is a more equitable way to ensure that all the schools have that amount of money from that from that budget being used for that purpose because how they're using that funding has to fall within the rules of the fund it was allocated for so it's more of a equitable spending of that budget rather than as needed questions obvious keep in mind too the district also would support if there was a new program or something different that was being added to a site it would also come from our overarching budget so again this is just a different way of monitoring that and giving it back to the site for help working with the district administration of course mrs kaler did that answer your question which is good to say dr um foley i think we were talking at one point that even dr fowler had kind of gone through the schools and kind of put together some type of walk through of knowing of oh this carpet is getting older and so that's also a working document that exists now that had not existed prior correct correct and it'll be part of your major projects plan as far as a replenish replace and and support yes in addition to the nice thing is we did our own version and we also have the facility index to confirm our version of it and this would just be items inside the school correct it would be like the items inside the school it wouldn't be the building itself right okay because i was talking about like hold on no no no that's not really fair to hta that's been around forever no no no and then we have some new buildings like they don't need to use their okay this is just the items within that school correct thank you the last section there the warehouse has a a small allocation they desperately need a new forklift this will improve some of their efficiencies in which they can pull orders receive goods etc they also have a this is not your typical copy printer this is a large printer to support our schools and their copy needs they're going to replace one of the two they have a color in a black and white this is a phased approach but again these copiers are used for large print jobs to help support the schools for some of their copy needs transportation uh this one's pretty straightforward the the transportation has a current equipment uh upkeep budget of 40 000.
the next most mentioned we like right now we're right now i'm only gonna say three and four because right now we've kind of i'm we've only we kind of uh said one and two is kind of being put to the side for a quick second so the next mention we like model three and four but we don't like that it's going to take five to six years to get this implemented we want this to be shorter a shorter implementation the next most mentioned we like models three and four but we do not want to implement next year we want to pause for a year we like the models we we want them to move forward but we want one year pause and then we can continue uh the next one would work for either one we like model three and four um but we think we sixth grade should stay at the elementary and the last one that we heard was we like model 3 but remove the tk8 or maybe a better word i i'm we're not 100 sure in other words would we like the model 3 but make the tk8 an elementary like the other schools but the the big idea was that there would not be a tk8 in that in that particular model right so that so it's very different to go to the board of education and say as a school reorganization team we are recommending that that you look at model 3 and in full transparency there was one person who ranked at number three that's very different from board of education this group is recommending that we look at model three but only if it has one high school right those are two very different two very different statements right and unlike models one two three and four these are lesser in number in terms of you know how many times we spoke about it or how many times you know we we we discussed that all right i'm gonna pause on the butts for a quick second and i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna loop back around to this but i wanna first share the big picture with you because i think that'll help with when we get back to the but conversation um okay so the idea here is that we we would go next to the board of education mr ortega may i jump in i mean we've had a um lilia who's had her hand up for a little while and before we get to the big picture maybe we want to address her question absolutely thank you for that lilia uh lilia you are on mute we cannot hear you she typed in the chat that she does not have any question oh okay thank you for that clarification thank you and thank you jorge for uh pointing that out okay so big picture we go to the board of education with this initial data sets right this initial data which is hovering right now around models three and four and that could have some but statements in there then we look for direction from the board of education the direction might be perfect let's investigate these four models with these butts and let's get to work then we staff would do that we would roll up our sleeves and we would get to work on these three on these two models and maybe it's the two models and maybe it's model three with two high schools model three with only one high school right we don't know how that shakes down but when i mean we get to work i mean the names of the schools um again if they if they were to agree that this should only be you know instead of six years only three years only four years whatever those things may be we start getting to work and now putting muscles and skin on these bones before we went to back to the board of education we would pit stop right here again so we would pit stop here and we would say all right school reorganization team uh you probably tuned into the board of education this was what we were doing we we are not coming back with models three and four and now they are more fully developed school names timelines better budget um numbers locations right all of that but now we don't have model one and two if that's what the board decides and we only have maybe either two or some iterations of these things but but we come back here as a pit stop for those detailed plans for further input and feedback once we get that input and feed input and feedback then we head out to the board of education again for the second time again with your voices again with your input again with your feedback so that's the idea the idea is that we our next pit stop would be the board we would get some clarity on in terms of what the next steps are we would get to work to start building these models out in detail as detailed as we can bring them here get more input get more feedback and then head out to the board of education back to the board of education and maybe that happens one more time maybe it happens two more times maybe it happens three more times and maybe along the way it's not just the school reorganization team and it's not just a board of education maybe there's other things built into this as well that currently are not built right and those things will evolve as we as we continue to go okay question so far about the big picture in the context not about the models not about the butts just about the big picture of how this works okay oh all right you got me at 13 seconds meg um you muted you muted yourself back am i unmuted now yes okay sorry i i just need to clarify you said putting aside the butts um i i i know that i particularly voted the way i voted because you said put aside the butts and i thought we were going to then discuss the butts before sending on those the models to the board and so we are we're going to do that now yep okay all right i just i i missed a slice no worries no worries no worries i'm glad you asked for clarification but i wanted you to understand the process because again i think it helps with the the conversation that we're going to have around the the ideas and the suggestions and those kinds of things yeah any other questions about just the big idea how this the ball is going to get bounced to the board they're going to give some direction and some input we're going to work really really hard to to make this clearer stronger more detailed and then we're going to bring it back here more input more feedback back to the board yeah all right i i do have a quick question absolutely what if what if our reorganization team decides like we're all in agreeance that we'll just give you know like the implementation um that we feel it's too long but the board feels that it's too short um what happens when like we're in disagreeance with the with the board of education thank you for that question um that's a very important question and i just want to remind us in this group right we we are not a decision-making body right we are here to to gather voices to gather input um and and we want to be super clear and super transparent when we get to the board of education but but again we we only recommend we only advise uh but we don't have a quote unquote decision making powers in that manner okay thank you for that question though okay so this is this is what um we were thinking would be the uh a good way to to handle uh these ideas right i we we mentioned eight of them eight of them to you today uh that we heard that day again some of them we heard only one time some of them we heard eight times but nonetheless it was something that was thrown out in the atmosphere around models three and four so the idea here is that and the reason i want to give you the context is because right now we we cannot right iron out the details right iron out the details of one middle school iron out the details of what's what would it look like if instead of six years we did it in three years right any of these ideas we cannot iron out those details right right now so the idea here is that we would take these eight ideas these eight butts if you will we would turn this into some kind of google form or some kind of google survey allow some open-ended input and that no matter what happened there that we would take that and attach it to our recommendation to the board of education so that it would look like this board of education we are rec up this group the school reorganization team is recommending that we look at model 3 in full transparency for model 3 we had one person that voted or ranked it as their third choice everybody else ranked it as number one or number two in full transparency because we have a new data point in full transparency when we asked the school reorganization team if they agreed with this recommendation or this statement 95 of the people uh said yes we did have one person who said no they did clarify that they needed a little bit more information but again in full transparency that that's where we're tapped but board of education we want you to know that model has some additional ideas so this is model 3 the way it's supposed to be or the way that it was presented to the group but in addition to that here are some things that this this team wanted us to consider they wanted us to consider um only one high school they wanted us to consider to consider a shorter implementation phase they wanted us to consider only one middle school they wanted us to consider sixth grade at the elementary we want they want us to consider not having a tk8 and this is how the team lands on each of these so based on your google forms your google surveys we would say of all these these ideas 95 agree that it should only be one high school or only 12 percent agree that it should only be one high school so we would take the buts that are associated with model 3 we would give you ample time to think about this to to make a decision on this and we would take all of these ideas attached to this model but with the data from you for consideration and again remember they could say okay because this was so high why don't we investigate model three with one high school and model three with two high schools and whatever that direction is then we get to work on those directions and we bring back here but that way everybody speaks into these ideas everybody's idea is validated even if it was only mentioned once or twice or three times or four times and you get to speak into these these buts that are attached only to model 3 then we would put model 3 aside we would bring up model 4 and again we would attach the butts that match up to model four which ones match up to model four we like model four but we want we want there to be consideration that would be a seven twelve instead we like model four but we want consideration that instead of five or six years that that be shortened to two or three years we like model four but we want consideration that it only be that it be paused for one year we like model four but keep well that's that's the same one keep sixth grade at the elementary would be the same as make it a seven twelve right so attach the ones that go to model four and again you then individually chime into these and then we just take that data to the board and we just say look at this this is how this group feels about about these exceptions or these ideas or these suggestions and then from these branches again we get some we get some clarity of where we want to go next we build those out with detail names of schools you know again being a being way more detailed than what you saw this first time around and we pit stop here before we get back to the board of education we think that that would be a the most equitable b the most transparent and see the most options um for us to to entertain and to think about um as we're trying to make decisions for for next steps um again just like this team right we have no idea what happens next right we we have no idea what happens next but at least we have given some some some clear messaging to the board of education about this particular group and where their stance are on the models and these ideas that are attached to the models yes meg am i unmuted yes you are different on zoom than on google meets right i know um i know i didn't say this um and i can't remember who did specifically but i remember four people five people um saying as one of their statements um i like this but i wish that we could wait and not do anything next year because of this year being the pandemic and stuff i didn't hear that as one of your um statements to apply to our decisions and i i just because i heard it from several people who said can we wait a year to start this versus starting your shirt are you going to include that um and and and i don't remember what the context was i just remember hearing that several times absolutely and if i have failed to communicate that i apologize but yes i i believe i believe i have said that multiple times tonight that one of the things attached to both models to model three and to model four and maybe make because i've been using this terminology i've been saying but we want to pause right that's that's the word that i've been using so my bet on that we want to pause this for at least one year and then we can move forward but yes thank you for uh for that okay so i'm gonna [Music] let it let this sit for a for a few seconds um and then we're gonna go back to our pole because now we're addicted to that poll um and we're going to and we're going to get some some feedback on this okay um i'm going to i'm going to tell you what we're going to pull about and i'm just going to give this room about 15 seconds of just silent time and then we'll get to it so the poll is going to be i agree that we should let the board know about all of our butts and share with them the data from this group about how they feel about all of those those buts that we've talked about that are associated with the group i am in agreement with that that is that is the next step and we agree with that that's what we're going to be polling you yes we agree with that no i do not agree with that i'm going to give about 15 second silence time all right so we're gonna get ready for a poll you're gonna vote yes i agree with that no i do not agree with that all right it is our first of the night 100 percent of members in this group for those of you on the youtube or zoom that cannot see 100 percent of the poll said yes we agree with that all right so let me summarize to this team uh where we are and where we are going you will be receiving from us uh an email with either a google form or some kind of survey that's going to give you two models model three and model four and for each one there's going to be these butts attached to this and then you're gonna be speaking into these butts likes dislikes agree disagree and you're gonna be speaking into these then we're gonna give you model four the ones that are attached to model four and you'll speak into these as well we will take all of that data to the board of education and we will say and share with them the first four statements that we that we talked about and we'll also talk about these buts or these ideas or these these suggestions and how this group landed on that we will get clarity on what our next steps are whatever that is we will roll up our sleeves we will get to work on all of the intimate and intricate details including names of schools including timelines including budget we will come back here we will stop here we will let you know by email uh with enough time we're gonna keep the wednesday uh 5 30 rhythm uh since it seems to work we'll make a pit stop here again we'll have feedback and input on that whatever comes out of that then we land back again to the board of education and we don't want to be close minded because there might be other things that pop in that we might think about to get even more input and more feedback than than we currently are so um that is where we are that is where we are going once again i am in in we are all in immense gratitude again this is not an easy topic um but you being here you being honest you speaking into the system you being engaged you being part of of the solution uh means a great deal to us and and we just we just appreciate uh what you bring to the table um and we have appreciated what you have done so far we will be in contact with you and we will see you um sooner than later have an amazing awesome question oh we have a question i'm so sorry i believe melissa wilson perkins was first i i just wanted to ask would so it will be the same group because um would you be calling in the um the alternates we had for parents our our parent group is no i think for this group it will be the same group when i think about like being not close-minded i'm talking about do we survey do we have town halls like is there are there other ways to to involve more people but not in this group per se okay and then next was amber fish so you guys are going to go to the board of education before we get to see the results of the butts questions will you email us what everybody says so we can see that i mean we won't be able to talk to you beforehand but at least so we have that information for sure thank you and then diana ross how do i get on diana rojas just clarification when we receive this survey or form um are the butts just about the models the way they've been presented or are we going to also talk about buds regarding support staff within those models or will that be another time um you know what we will put that butt as well okay thank you that was a that was that was thank you for for for reminding me about that one that was another but that was that was talked about okay thank you for the clarification yeah anthony does that also speak to the question that you posted or the concern you posted in the chat no i just posted it in the chat because it didn't seem to be a forum for this site but i did promise that i would share information tonight um by the people that i kind of talked to so i didn't want to make sure that that that got out in somewhere okay great and then i um just had a question is on the google form or survey however we do that will we have an option to as we've been thinking about these models to come up with more of our butts or more thoughts that we have not opposed to that but then when we get to the board of education there's no data on those right so it would be here's the data on the ones that we we talked about in this room and here's the data from the group but if somebody comes up with a with a different butt then it now is just a list of other things that came up but it wouldn't be with data behind those so again not opposed to it again whatsoever um just those would just be comments now at the at the board level with with no data backed um back to it okay uh was there anybody else lika that you saw i do oh hey hi so after we've had an opportunity to evaluate the butts will we then reconvene and maybe even re-rank the two models that we're proposing right now that is not part of that's not part of the plan um as um right now it's about as as a as a whole um again just saying these are the two models that that the this group is recommending be transparent about you know those that voted twos and threes and fours these are the two models that are not being recommended be transparent about the ones and the twos um so right now i did not hear what i heard is we're we're moving forward too we're not saying one so so no that is not part of what we were what we were uh considering at this point in time the next time we came back here is when we had put meat and potatoes on the plants uh and put a lot of details into the plans for us to speak into those uh now my concern is that maybe one of those butts might have ranked had one of those butts be included in one of these models one of these models may have been ranked higher than the other so i'm concerned that we're sending the models ranked to the board saying these are this was our number one this was our number two without ever considering those buts and then maybe having an opportunity to re-rank them had those butts been in place i hear you i hear you um so so maybe again that transparency to the board of education and our responsibility uh would be to to translate that and to be very careful and again maybe these are just spin-offs right so i'm just going to take the the most popular one right now and the most popular i don't mean popular like you know the cool kid i'm just talking about the most times it was mentioned and i think this is this is this would be an example of what i think you're hearing model 3 was the most the model that most people ranked the highest but you ranked it the highest not knowing if it was two high schools or one high school right but if but if after this this survey data the idea of one high school takes off and now 97 of the people like model three with with one high school then maybe that three percent would have been i would have ranked the number four if i knew that ahead of time um so again i think it'll be our due diligence to make sure that we're conveying [Music] that to the board of education and and even stepping in and recommending because xyz even though it has a lot maybe we want to consider again slicing 3a and 3b any other uh mr fernandez says henry's fernandez last year when we kind of started the process and then paused it there were some enrollment projections as a consequence of adopting certain models is that part of the investigation that the board would would do because we have our recommendations coming from this reorganization but the obviously going back to that primary but that i've heard tonight that one high school model from what i recall the data from last year that had quite a bit of projected student loss attached to that so um is that something that the board is going to consider or i know that's not our role maybe it's more of the board's role that could be a consideration um my my emphasis or my responsibility at that point in time is just to um to make sure that we are understanding that those were projections those were ideas and those were thoughts and our team is taking a different approach to this and and again we certainly we can try to guess or stipulate or you know try to assume best case scenarios worst case scenarios but at the end of the day those are only ideas and thoughts and guesses and so uh that would be my responsibility to make sure that that we that we if that if that were to come up because right now the question is right now we haven't been talking about that again we're getting we're rolling up our sleeves and we're talking about staffing we're talking about facilities we're talking about program we're talking about uh phase in we're talking like those things and we want to continue to concentrate uh on those things but absolutely if if those things are requested or i'm again we will add to we will add to that for sure meg you know i'm reading anthony's um comment in the chat it it makes me kind of think back to our last meeting when we were doing the butts and i know that the teacher group who represents the counselors had a couple of comments specifically related to our concerns of counselor to student ratio assistant principal to student ratio things like that and how the distribution was was done over the five-year period again i'm going to say that you know i voted and my team voted based on what we had heard from our teachers but at the same time we've expressed some really strong concerns about those buts i think i heard you say that you took the seven or eight most frequently mentioned but okay or explain it to me because i'm not hearing you say you took all the the butts and that we're going to rank all the butts so i guess i need to hear that because um i'm very concerned about sending these to the board without us making a few more tweaks that have to do with why we chose those two models yeah because i think that some of these things and specifically i'm thinking of the counselor ratio that's a huge deal for us and so yeah let me let me speak into that meg thank you thanks so to answer your question yes we are taking all the butts i made a mistake this today and i forgot to mention this one about the staffing this was the only other one there were no other butts that are not that are that we are leaving off of the table even the ones that only got one comment are in the ta are are gonna be are gonna be considered but i also wanna again just to throw out a little bit here uh to um and we obviously we have failed in this particular subject when when when these ratios or when we were talking about you know a half counselor or a half social worker a half ap that was a that was with the mindset of seven eight that wasn't with the mindset that a counselor an academic counselor would be for a kindergartner right so if you have a tk8 and that tk8 is at 400 kids we weren't thinking oh my gosh we only have half a counselor for 400 kids right we were thinking we have half a counselor at a school of 400 kids for the 7th and 8th graders so again we're going to put that in there it's a hundred percent to revisit to relook at and again we probably didn't uh communicate that as effectively as as we should have but it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a 400 case load it was the the the the size of the school knowing that they weren't managing the school right they were only managing seventh and eighth graders i hear what you're saying but in reality the counselor that works there helps all of the kids it's not just seventh and eighth they they serve all the children and i see leslie nodding her head because i think your kids go there right and and so while it's nice that we say they're only doing the seventh and eighth grade they're not and furthermore if you are having k through eight with self-contained seventh and eighth grade classes that's very different than seventh and eighth where they are switching classes and things like that and and i'm not that's not to say that ellington shouldn't have a counselor but if anthony's school has 700 7th and 8th graders and ellington has 60 and anthony's school gets one counselor because they have 700 8th graders that's nodding that's that ratio is off and so i guess my point being that how do we adamantly express how important some of these things are to us versus just ranking how important is this to you on a scale of one to five because some of these things are i'm going to say systemic problems that we should address now while you're reconfiguring and remolding the district into the best possible scenario so a thousand percent and again just to pull back the curtains uh yeah 700 students at a seven eight middle school right is not the same ratio that we were thinking about at a 700 k-8 school because those those are different so as part of the rolling up our sleeves and adding the details and and doing all that remember we're going to pit stop here before we get to the board of education right so there's going to be another pit stop here before we get to those to those details uh and we get to the board of education so um but i appreciate again the the thoughts and the comments uh around this and we'll make sure again that this makes it as part of that i had a question um next time that we meet is it possible to have a um the reasoning behind having a half-time social worker versus having full-time counselor um because they do widely different jobs absolutely so i was just wondering about that anyone else before we finish our evening tonight all right well once again thank you so much you will be hearing from us soon and we will be seeing each other uh in the in the distant future thank you again have a wonderful evening everyone congratulations and thank you for what you've done thank you everybody
this is to replace any um i put their automotive engines transmissions um 40 000 will will probably pretty much take up an engine replacement but um you can see how this is uh just a small allocation to address some of those capital um equipment needs in the transportation department they do on have on 20 school year 22 two bus purchases this is out of the current bond this will replace two 84 passenger buses in addition to the fleet there they also have a white fleet allocation out of the capital budget we have an aging white fleet some of our dump trucks dr fowler can attest are are costing us more to upkeep than it would be to replace so this capital plan addresses that that maintenance need there and to update our vehicle fleet educational services we have identified there is a library there is no library budget currently so for 22 we are proposing a 120 000 dollar budget this will be again allocated on an adm basis this is not an exhaustive amount but this will help those librarians and schools replace some of those books expand some of their library collection and then as we move to a one-to-one student-to-device ratio there are digital subscriptions that will be more beneficial to some of the schools rather than physical textbooks so this budget does allow for those digital subscription purchases as the school sees fit this again follows the same kind of plan so there is oversight at the district level but again each school has certain programs there are certain needs so it does allow them to request a need based on their school and then the district will make that purchase for them fine arts um we have heard loud and clear that there is a musical instrument inventory that is extremely outdated this amount is a small amount and again it we don't anticipate it being enough to catch us up but we anticipate this being an annual amount to help replenish and replace that musical instrument inventory this again has oversight at the district level but it allows us to start to address those poorly you know not poorly outdated musical instruments um and and replenish those to uh help our programs out i would like to just interrupt there for just a second i want to thank bob edgar and all of our music educators in the district who last year worked really hard with the consumer institute to do an inventory of what we had to help us make a really good understanding of not only what we have but the condition of it to put together a replenish replace and additional plan so it's a nice multi-year because again these are expensive but again you need to sustain it maintain it and continue to budget for it so there is a nice plan that was put together by our educators in the district led by bob edgar who brought this in and they worked together for pd hours to create this information to put this together for us so we really appreciate the work that our educators did to help us understand the extent of the need here so that we can budget for forward and begin to implement that plan and multi-year plan to to improve and sustain that our collection and condition for our musical programs in this district and then lastly the athletics there's always been a district level athletics budget um but we are keeping it the same amount as that fine arts there just to maintain that equity across the board in terms of all our programs and again athletics you know typically purchasing and replacing equipment you know we've identified a few items there um but it really depends on what that school need is so that school enabled and bring the request to to david we'll have the oversight there on on that whether that need is necessary you know he can leverage if another school has that product or equipment maybe we don't need to purchase this so there is oversight too on this athletic budget lastly this is our like i mentioned canvas was is a part of this educational service budget um the achievement and assessment a team has a 310 000 capital budget this is for canvas synergy this also covers our assessment and testing and student information software the curriculum textbook adoption this budget here like we identified in the the highlights identifies a overarching you know 2.9 million dollar fund to address our next curriculum or textbook adoption need i believe dr foley is working with the team to identify that need and put together a plan for fiscal year 22.
and then lastly the higley online academy we do have and i believe florida virtual learning was brought to the board last year for a district-wide fund so that number you see there represents a student-based renewal fee so that number is a lot smaller than i believe what was brought be previously so that is we still plan on maintaining that uh platform with florida virtual but that number will represent you know whatever the enrollment base is for higley virtual and school year 22. dr foley would that be all students getting that or just our higley virtual academy kid i was getting that president vice president wilson that would be that would be as we would not purchase this curriculum for everybody this year one of the things that was important for us last year is that we we needed establishing an aoi we had to adopt a curriculum we also wanted because at the time when we had purchased it we did not know how long we would be in or if at any point we would need to return to we needed to have access for everything for anyone potentially to have access to the same library also your initial cost is more expensive than a renewal so it's kind of like you you you buy it and then you sustain it but your first cost is a little bit more um and so because we have it this number is a little bit less but it would be that we would not put it for everybody who would have could have access to this library within canvas it would be only for those who are teaching online only or for students who would be accessing it because again now you'll notice canvas will stay canvas will be a learning management system that that is a way that we access what we learn and what we do whether we're in person or online but but this would be the curriculum for the online students and as as needed per student so it'll be a lot less uh each year than it would have been initially for everyone to have access to that library um are you guys getting feedback formal feedback about the program and and how it's working and if they like it and i feel like it's working for the parents perspective and the admin and teachers perspective yes we've been receiving feedback and we've had varied feedback from people depending upon how they've used it or not used it and their experience and i think there's not so between whether you're an elementary student or a secondary student and how just like anything how it's being used and so i think we've had some varied perspective i think there are those who have had very positive experiences with it and those who've had some negative experiences with it and so we've tried to do is take all of that feedback to improve upon the why and then what can we do to help improve the utilization for where there's been concern expressed particularly as we transition from this kind of as we remember talking about this um hybrid version uh you know a trial version of the online school to the full online school because this year obviously they stayed as we talked about quite a bit they stayed enrolled in their home school and they were on if they were online next year what will happen is they'll transition and to be actually enrolled into our online school i'll let mr gad close this out and review our capital budget plan and our dates that we intend to bring that back to you thank you tara madam president members of the board i'm on page 13 with the calendar that you also saw on the m o budget this subject of the capital budget will be back for a second review on march the 10th and and so we'll try to clarify help understand whatever needs to be clarified by having you call us let us know what you want us to give you more information on uh the pre you know the presentation itself will be very similar to the one you've seen and then uh the important date here is april 7th that date can move if we need to but we would like to get furniture and equipment on order we would like to get some capital projects started so that we can accomplish as much as possible over the summer before school starts and and that's why the april 7th date is there we'll qualify all of the awards that you will make all of the purchase orders we will prepare if they're involved in next year's capital budget there will be conditional upon final approval of uh of the district's budget on june 23rd so that kind of summarizes everything and and again i want to emphasize one more time that if you if you need some more information about whatever the item might be in here please let us know and we'll get it for you thank you again i'd like to stress the team has worked really hard to pull together what do we think we need what are the potential cost i mean this was early even for our sites to say what so what are some of those potential needs and costs and priorities so that we can begin to put figures together of what this could look like so again i just want to thank our entire team and our on our site administrators for their quick responses and work and time on helping collect some background information so that we can present this to you and dr foley i want to reiterate that for you mr gadden mr moore dr fowler and the entire team that's working on this i have to say my entire time serving on this board i have never seen more of a detailed intentional budget we have line items and budgeted for items we never have before we have items budgeted for teachers and their classrooms we have a budget for the schools and their needs and we've never really had this level of detail whatsoever and that takes a lot of work it takes a lot of time and a lot of work and a lot of thought so i while i've had a lot of questions and mr moore you've been great thank you um but i have never seen more intentional planning than what you have been presenting for both mno and capital so i so appreciate that and i know our districts and our sites will also appreciate that as this is rolled out for them so um i know it takes a lot of time and effort especially when you're initially creating this and mr moore i know that there is plenty in here you've said well there's not currently a budget for that so they're getting this and there's not currently a budget for this and now we have one and um would you say two thousand percent of an increase um for another budget so and this is what directly impacts our students um and you weren't wrong about our musical instruments when i saw an instrument literally fall apart on a field during a performance so you're not wrong we need to take care of that so um again thank you i know this has taken a lot of work and i appreciate it and it will go directly to our students so thank you any other questions for mr gad mr moore dr foley regarding our capital i do i'm sorry mrs anderson um can you point to me where uh the the classroom for like markers and paper and everything goes to her site and how that's divvied out i've been there and it hasn't been that much before i didn't know where we're at now so this capital budget is is so the the items you just identified there are coming from a supply budget those would be in our mno plan i know what we presented is is more salaries and benefits and in overall emino budget um i have spoken to a few principals and um they have indicated the the funding level is is not uh you know it does not meet their needs in terms of their supplies that they're needing to you know whether it's a science resource room or et cetera not just your general classroom needs your your specials um so we are reviewing that and looking to kind of revise that funding level to make sure it's adequate for them president ruiz mrs wilson is the nurse's budget would that come from the school allocation would that normally i know sometimes our nurse needs i don't know band-aids and i'm assuming this is more elementary and i know it's not nurse it's health aid i'm sorry i still call them a nurse so is that coming from the school allocation budget yes yes so that would also be incredible at that point okay correct yeah thank you and i'm just thinking sorry one more um and i know that we're getting confusing because of different language um we're getting coveted grants and that's we have that kind of in our mno um has there been discussion or conversation i kind of popped up in my head in the safety and security of looking at getting more um cleaning materials or items um things like that safety is a different word now than it used to be and we're receiving coveted relief grant money and so is there clovid related items that we would be looking whether it would technically fall under equipment because we're looking at expanding what we currently have has there been some conversation with that madam president remembers the board you'll recall that we allocated to emino the sr2 so sr3 is going to be large as like near as i can tell and one of the things that we will be discussing with you at some point is how we use sr3 and that could be a capital outlay focus if we need it to be so we would benefit both mno and capital outlay to roughly the same dollar amount potentially so we can pick up we can pick up momentum in both places and especially as we talk with you about a potential bond election and how even covert might relate to that uh where we'll be there to talk to you on april 7th about that subject so in some ways you know talking about covet is not a lot of fun but it is providing lots of resources to the district that we would not have had had that not happened say that in this room only but that's you know that's the situation we find ourselves in president members of the board we've also talked about additional equipment as far as as you've probably read in your status and we've added additional sanitation guns you've also you know as you know sanitation and staffing for that is a big issue and so looking at the compensation for that or the addition of that or ability to attract and retain so that we can continue to provide that additional level of sanitation and cleanliness because again that is one of the things that as we evolve and emerge from this that i do not see going away anytime soon in the near future this is going to be a reality that we are going to have to plan for staff for and and have materials and supplies um so yes those conversations generally have been around sanitation um you saw in the budget though and read in your status report about the issue of again updating uh cameras to be something similar like we've used in transportation for the last several years so that you can actually see um you know make out actual faces or bodies instead of fuzz on our our um security cameras so that will be important perfect thank you and i can add just in addition like the the ppe that that the schools need and stuff we have allocated budgets down to the school level for their need but we also have a warehouse that's fully stocked with sanitation ppe mask you saw the large donation from the maricopa county um the warehouse is fully you know if um schools are not aware we have you know if there is additional needs out there we haven't heard of them um but if there is like we have all the supplies um at the warehouse and the schools have a budget too to purchase sanitary supplies for their unique needs you know if that's if there is a need there too but um i believe from what i've heard i haven't heard any additional needs coming but if there is we have the uh ii coming to address any ppe needs that the district may need perfect thank you all right no other questions then we will move on to our action items 8.1 i moved that we approved the 2021-2022 contracts for certified teachers certified ninth non-teaching psychologist occupational therapist speech therapist physical therapist administrator classified administrator certified classified exempt and classified at will with the notice of page two and the pay for performance on the administrator um to read 3 500 not 6 000 which was in our initial proposal second questions so this is this is approving our language for our contracts these are not approving our contracts to go out we're um miss martins you want to kind of talk about what we've done a little bit different certainly good evening president reese members of the board so as my tenure with the district what we have traditionally done is brought to you the contracts in advance that was a request i think that was made a couple years ago so you had an opportunity to review the language first and then we'll subsequently bring the actual renewals along with as mr gaddy mr moore mentioned the salary recommendation increases that will occur and that'll be the march 10th meeting president ruiz mrs wilson thank you for just having these done early i appreciate them being done early and that we're not rushed at the end to try to fit everything in so i just wanted to thank you for doing that and having it ready dr foley and your whole staff mrs martins especially thank you governing board member well vice president wilson i apologize um i also want to make sure that i recognize the hr team because i know they've worked really hard these last couple of years and a lot of different things contracts as part of that process and as president reece you mentioned earlier you know as a team mr moore mr gad dr foley and cabinet have all been very intentional about our process and where we're going and that way it's in advance and you have full full information laid out to you prior to making any voting decisions in that process so and miss martin's the the contract now holds all the information so we're not doing a contract and an addendum is that correct that is correct so upon the request of the board about this time last year um we were directed to look at changing our processes so that way the addendum wasn't something that was separate so in working with the attorneys on this we moved to add all of the language that had previously been an addendum into the contracts so you'll notice significant changes with our various administrative contracts to encompass that where you don't notice as much changes with our other contracts because there was not an addendum that was separate president ruiz mrs anderson outside of what you just mentioned were there any other significant changes to the contracts that you just want to put on record or put out there no not that i am aware of i'm certainly one thing that we did add that our language didn't have prior to that related to our certified um was information related to if results-based funding dollars didn't come through or if they did come through we would look to disperse that the board has traditionally always done that in a separate action item and we'll continue to do that but we've added that language to the contract too as well as if there's other funding that mechanisms that come through we've added some of that language in relation to that too so there's three things in specific to the certified teacher as well as the other certified psychologist occupational therapist certified non-teaching physical therapist speech therapist i think i've covered all the other educational professionals that were things that we had historically been doing just didn't laid out in the contract and like i said results based funding was one of them and that was something new that started in the if i remember correctly either the 17 18 or 18 19 school year so president caleb member anderson i also believe mom was there an addition about food if food is provided that that it would not be a taxable um yes dr foley thank you actually for mentioning that um i did not think of that as a significant difference but that is true um i know that we have had challenges in the past when we've provided all-day training to our employees or all-day commitments to interviews or other types of committees curriculum etc to where we've struggled and wanted to offer food and not always had the ability to get sponsorship from various vendors so now with this added language if we do have a full day training um you know again minimal but we would be able to to feed our employees that are participating in those things which we think is the right thing to do if we're gonna ask for the commitment of their time for that so all of our contracts have that language in that now yes we don't tax you for your cookie [Laughter] thank you miss martins any other questions regarding our contract language all right all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero all right we are now on to our future agenda items you can see we have technology update and liability insurance and plan reviews coming up as well as our budgets now um i know our new board members on the 24th we will take care of board business it will be pretty short pretty much um unless something else comes up it's just our agenda and our consent and then we do our work study so while with kovid we've kind of stayed in this setting um it is a little more back and forth questions the presentation so we have our work study with taking care of board business on the 24th which is going to be a lot of good information so is there any other items we want to add mrs kaler um i'm kind of interested in and and this is no rush by any means but just our world language programs i would just love an update on our immersion programs costs associated with our emergent programs how their enrollment's going just kind of an informational update just whenever time permits again no rush but i think it's been a few years since we've had a full comprehensive view of them so i would love to hear president rings board member taylor we would be excited to do that so obviously we will get something to you that was something that a lot of work went into and then was interrupted a little bit by by covet crisis management um but there is lots on the front of our immersion programs that we would be excited to highlight and share um about where we've been where we're going and some of the unique work that's being done as well as a world language overview president ruiz mrs wilson how about um an emergency protocol meeting at some point again pretty far out because i know kovitt has kind of changed everything but just going over our emergency protocols especially for our new board members probably even for me because i know things have changed and we can now have an executive session if we can always have an executive session and i was just going to say we would have to plan that as an executive session it may have to be our emergency protocols we do not discuss our emergency protocols right so that's what i was thinking um i know we discussed it uh at our work had our saturday training that that was something that might be a good idea to refresh us so thank you anything else all right with that said i move we adjourn second all in favor aye aye motion carries five zero have a good night meetings adjourned you