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thank you good morning ladies and gentlemen i'd like to start off with thank you for being in attendance for my graduating classes promotion i'd also like to thank the board and parents for helping us get through this tough year i'm grateful for being able to speak on behalf of my class i would like to start off by congratulating my fellow classmates for doing hard work to pass their classes and get through the school year with pandemic it was an odd year starting online but i'm proud of all of us for sticking through it and while still taking charge in our education i'd also like to thank the teachers for helping us get through the pandemic if you guys did not take the reins i don't know what my eighth looked grader i want to thank you for giving my class a semi-normal final eighth grade year i would finally like to say i'm very thankful for being able to attend continental i wish my fellow classmates look at the hospital they choose to attend and it will success in their academic and sports careers thank you i would like to welcome mr ken kratzer presenting the case so so today we're under the memory of uh kate seville who was uh taken from us back in 2007 in a tragic car crash it was actually my privilege to re-uh replace her here at this school and as we enter her memory i'd like to recognize two outstanding science students i had a number of students that i could have recognized and many students came to mind as i was trying to decide who to honor but i finally settled on two students normally we just recognize one but we have two students who partner together this year to accomplish something that no students have ever done in our history here which is to win a recognition at the state science fair and we had two students who did a pretty intense study on rgb led lighting and its effect on mood and they designed a little apparatus which would produce a moonlight for people to help put them in a better a better spirit and they they work to identify some of the color combinations that would produce and enhance some of the the better moods in people and so at this time i'd like to honor grace matthews and robert brubreaker uh [Applause] oh the next speaker i'd like to welcome is miss sue williams presenting the athletes can you hear me back there yeah okay um i'm gonna switch it up just a little bit i would like i'm gonna announce the the two names first so that their family and friends can concentrate on my remarks because these are two phenomenal kids not just in the athletic realm but just overall as well so carolina navarro and jason wilkerson please join me up here like i said they're two very remarkable individuals um they they are two of the best athletes that i've ever worked with over 25 years of teaching and coaching and um and part of the reason is because we both are always we're always willing to work toward a skill improvement and always trying to develop a deeper understanding of game performance and strategy the biggest thing though really is they are absolutely selfless when they're in playing mode if we're doing a team sport they're looking to bring up all the athletes on their team whether it was in pe class or out um in uh more of an after-school sport and that's the thing that makes them truly remarkable they're very very selfless in their plane and they'll go very far in life in general with that with that mindset it's been a pleasure each and every day that you came into my classroom thank you very very much [Applause] somebody [Applause] maybe the next speaker i would like to welcome is miss gina freeland presenting the desean good morning it is my pleasure to present this award desean glover was a student at continental and between his second and third grade in the summer he had a tragic accident that ended his life he was a very sweet and kind young man in honor of him his family has established this friendship award the glover families go way back when my kids went to continental so they're a very special family to me as well this award the teachers pick and we pick two students that exemplify kindness and friendship within the eighth grade seventh grade sixth grade years if they're here those years the two recipients this year are just outstanding young people i just have such admiration for both of them so the first one is really kind of fun because her mom was in my first class our second class at continental school when i started teaching in 1998 here and that is jennifer nunez our second winner started with us last year in seventh grade and i had the honor and privilege not only having him in social studies but in my spanish elective all year as a new student coming in he just meshed well with kids he was always respectful to everyone respectful to his teachers kind always willing to be helpful and that is eli white [Applause] so [Applause] the next speakers i'd like to welcome is miss fran king and mr mark heltonis presenting the kiwanis club hi my name is mark heltonis with the green valley kiwanis club and we sponsor a service club here at continental school called the builders club and we would like to especially thank wendy fanning um and we'd like to honor two of our builders club members riley amaris and [Applause] congratulations [Applause] the next speaker i'd like to welcome up is mrs roxanna rico presenting the high expectations okay this high expectation scholarship program is one of the amazing scholarships that we offer to post secondary ed for students um for tuition for funding once they start college so this award we at continental school district believe the pursuit of knowledge is a lifelong endeavor we believe education is an extremely important and necessary aspect of life helping individuals develop an awareness and better understanding of themselves others and their global environment we believe education plays a vital role helping prepare individuals to function more effectively in increasingly complex world and this scholarship is provided by our governing board on behalf of the superintendent and it goes to jordan wong [Applause] here it comes let's give it up for [Applause] jordan it requires parent and student signature so afterwards parents if you could please come see me so we can get the signatures and be ready for high school and college [Applause] the next speaker i'd like to welcome up is mr joe ferguson presenting the continental teacher's [Applause] award um my apologies i was not paying attention in the meeting so um it is my pleasure to um to speak today for the continental teachers award the continental teachers award is is offered to students who up to two students each each year who are just just genuine genuinely great all around these are leaders in the classroom they meet they meet expectations they exceed expectations they make good decisions um they make the lives of their their classmates and and teachers and just other individuals around them just generally better because uh because of the the presence and the space that they occupy in the room that they're in and this this year being a particularly uh difficult year for everybody involved with uh with the dramatic changes that we've had to education these these two students adjusted adjusted quickly and and continued their the good habits that they've developed over their lifetime um habits uh that that that lead to strong leadership and and um and and really just doing the right thing all um all the time and i can i can honestly say that when it when it comes to finding trusted trusted students in the classroom these are these are two individuals that i would never hesitate to um to lean on when when i needed to so this year's this year's continental teachers award goes to aleshka gamez and jason wilkerson congratulations [Applause] uh the next few speakers i would like to call up is miss tanya matthews and miss deanna cuevas presenting the parent teacher club awards [Applause] hello every year the continental parent teacher club sponsors three awards uh for the eighth graders the first one i'd like to hand out is outstanding cult this award is given to a student that exemplifies what a cult means not only on campus but off as well this year's recipient is white zeller the next award is greatest achievement k-8 this award is given to a student that has been at continental since kindergarten and has shown great achievements basically every year this year i'd like to hand this award to isabella and the last award is for highest gpa this award pretty much speaks for itself so congratulations jason wilkerson our next speaker is miss diana presenting the principles award [Applause] this principles award is going to be awarded to a student of the year who is extremely responsible extremely kind in all areas around our campus to all students not just middle school students we've seen this student just be kind to all of the student body the younger kids giving them advice through the hallways giving tours to our governing board members being extremely respectful and responsible and a true leader of our school we would like to award this to ivy [Applause] cerulean [Applause] the next few speakers i would like to welcome up are mr kevin welsh and mr steve latham presenting the optimist award thank you very much uh it's our honor each year to present to a student the optimist club award and uh this award is for improvement uh it's uh it's for a student that displays optimism and uh also the motivation to do better and somebody has turned it around uh pessimism of course promotes fear and you can't move frozen in place and you don't ever get any better optimism uh is the obviously the opposite of that and it promotes growth and everybody does not our club has been here for 33 years in green valley and we're here to support the kids mr latham is going to talk about the recipient and the blocky earnest awards so as kevin mentioned optimist club is really a group of individuals that comes together that tries to do good in the community and so when the teachers and i sat together coming up with some of these awards this student is one that didn't qualify for all the others but definitely definitely has turned their career around here at continental school from the first day that they entered until the day that they leave today from being in the office and visiting me on a regular basis to not see me this year at all instead of rushing by in the hallway um and so that's really what it is is trying to better yourself and recognizing that and day one of this school year this individual walked up with me in the eyes and said i am never coming to your office and i am it is my honor to recognize jayden reichel [Applause] [Music] the next few speakers i would like to welcome up is mrs bonnie clark and mrs julie cirolli good morning i'm bonnie clare i'm the president of the continental school district educational foundation and i'm julie cerulean the vice president for the foundation we are here to present three awards the continental school district educational foundation started presenting more awards several years ago and i'd like to read the criteria for each of these awards the first one is the outstanding student achievement the minimum of a 3.0 gpa involved in extracurricular activities that he or she will continue in high school and these awards are decided by this and so we do not have anything to do with this we give them the criteria and then they uh tell us who the award winners are right so the first award for academic achievement goes to jordan wong this second one is the outstanding service award and this is uh the criteria for this is to be involved in community service involved in extracurricular activities that he or she will continue in high school so the outstanding service award goes to logan does camps [Applause] and then the last one is the inspiration award and the teachers choose a student that has been inspiring to the staff the students and everyone else there really is no criteria it's up to them to decide who is most inspiring this award goes to emma barker [Applause] the next speaker i'd like to welcome is mr joe ferguson presenting the mason taylor musical so the mason mason taylor musician of the year award is sponsored by the foundation um and it it it was a ward that was um that's that's that's been in place for i believe about three years at this point and it's it's in honor of mason taylor who was who was an outstanding exceptional continental student specifically in in the music department um he he expressed a joy and love of music and a joy of love and love um of learning music in a way that was was not necessarily present in in other subject areas for him he used to hide in my classroom on his way to lunch and wait for me to find him and yell at him and tell him to leave but mason much like this year's this year's recipient showed showed an intrinsic motivation to continually better himself in in in his musical musical world this year's recipient in light of um in in light of the the the current situation and the fact that we we did not have ensembles this year this this year's uh this year's recipient um made uh made an extraordinary extraordinary effort outside of school to better himself as a musician and an individual and though though he was rather quiet in class and did not take up much space in class he found me a lot outside of class and asked me questions outside of class much in the way that mason taylor did when when he was a seventh in their sixth seventh and eighth grader at our school i will i will miss this student but i know he will go on to great things in his musical career congratulations shane trujillo mrs [Applause] the next few speakers i would like to welcome is this is diana cuevas and mrs roxanna rico presenting the excellence in social studies award so we have a lot of awards here six actually that we're gonna zip right through we appreciate it we know it's getting a little bit warm but we're almost done okay first excellence in social studies goes to mr sal nemes excellence in citizenship aubry hichner [Music] excellence in math excellence in writing mercedes morehead [Music] mercedes excellence and perseverance aiden aragones and last but not least excellence in digital learning rana stole and i just want to mention our community involvement with these scholarships being sponsored um typically the elks would sponsor and this year i just had to make two phone calls and these scholarships were sponsored by aauw alliance for action group and just thank you boys and girls you're amazing and congratulations and there's a little bit of cash in there so enjoy let's give cell a great big round of applause and now we are ready to introduce and promote the class of 2021.
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um but there's a constitutional limit that limits districts unified districts that can bond up to 20 percent of their assessed valuation so i'll expand on that in the next slide so the assessed valuation impact on our tax base you'll notice how we continue to grow in the fall right column is our estimated assessed valuation um everything up until 2021 is uh accurate and current so in the everything after that is projected so that is anticipated growth that we've put out there 5.7 which is very conservative considering we've grown 8.5 percent in this current year so as that assessed valuation grows so does our bonding capacity as a as a reminder our district is largely residential so we're not going to see a huge amount of growth over the years we're approximately 86 residential 11 commercial so our av is going to reach a limit at some point in the near future as we um as our land and our vacant land gets bought up and and used for residential buildings so that bonding capacity will hit a limit the next slide please so as mr gad mentioned there is a small increase you'll notice in this current year this is their current tax rate of on the secondary tax rate not remember you have a primary and secondary rate this is not your overall so your secondary tax rate which is your bond your current bond and our m o override is approximately 1.58 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation the 14 decrease is is going to happen next year regardless because we don't have a bond even if you authorize a bond now we would not be able to sell until 22.
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um you know and so a lot of it comes down to those very personal dynamics um and then also there is just that level of risk tolerance and trying to figure out how do i let my kids be normal and get that social capital but also not so for me for example i'm still fairly conservative i would let my kids go around other families who are vaccinated but we do stuff mostly outdoors and my kids are like kind of normal about wearing masks and staying far away from people which is kind of sad um at this phase but like it's the weather's great outside right now it's sort of like a great experiment to just get outside and play and do those things um but the cdc has put out some guidance sort of being a little more lenient for the the kids um and saying that you know if they're not maxed and they're not vaccinated that being said given the opportunity i would vaccinate my children um when the numbers come out if it shows that the vaccine is safe um and and sort of recommended in that population because um at the same time i want to do anything i can in the world to protect those sweet little babies yeah that that's great that's that's really um that's spot on it is it is a really difficult question because uh about the younger kids who aren't won't be vaccinated until probably this fall at the earliest um and so i think that that decision kind of comes down to multiple factors like you mentioned which is you know what are the individual risks to the family um you know how many kids are getting together where where are they you know if you have a you know you're getting together with one other family outdoors or you know and you know this family pretty well and everybody else has been vaccinated except for the younger ones as being outdoors are the mask the risk is going to be a pretty low risk we do know that kids you know it does seem that kids who are under 10 you know will transmit un transmit the virus you know less than an otherwise unvaccinated adult so there is at less risk but as far as compared to vaccinated adults you know there still is at risk potential of of sharing it um so i think you want to kind of weigh that in with how many people are around are you indoors or outdoors how long are you together uh and what are the risks to the family and what your tolerance for risk is um decide uh you know but given the opportunity when that when the vaccine is available like i said we have a 11 year old and you know for you know when she's around when she's you know like at school for instance you know you're outdoors you know with lots of people indoors you want to be wearing your mask but you know at home with one other family she's outside running around with um with her friends uh without a mask on you know as long as we know the people that she's with that's good i think i think you know it really is an individual this has got to be an individual um question and decision for each family based on what peter and lauren said really the the kind of um child the whether the child is is ill has any uh chronic illnesses or co-morbidities that you would worry about but in general remember that because the fam if the rest of the family is vaccinated even if they were to um you know the family was to get exposed um as the adults or or those that are vaccinated to covet the likelihood of them having asymptomatic spread is is really very low and and also the viral load in those individuals right so the amount of covid that a vaccinated person has is much less so it's much less likely to spread as well so you know pretty good protection around your child um i think and yes i echo outdoors in groups that you you trust um is really the right thing to do i think especially moving into the late spring and summer i think that's the the best way to go about it yeah i i agree i think um you know so practically we have a five seven and nine year old and and it's hard and and the cdc you know even when i read when when guidelines change and especially as they relax it's it's nerve-wracking and i've kind of hinged and i will say you know i'm lucky that my my kids are healthy um i've kind of hinged on a few things first outside really seems pretty safe there don't seem to be major outbreaks when people are outside um it just doesn't i mean i suppose it could happen but it really doesn't and the second is i've noticed with my kids they are remarkable with the mask um you know i wear a mask and i notice it all the time and i'm futzing with it and if i have glasses then my glasses fog up and i kind of take it down and then i put it up and and my kids will just come home and they'll just keep wearing their mask and they'll just run around and i had to tell them we had the sprinkler on today i'm like you should take off your mask because now you're going to suffocate because it's getting wet um so i i think you know their ability to do some of this stuff and and for better for worse they have adapted to that and you know you can take it as is and we've told the kids you know when you're outside it's okay and i think the fact that others are vaccinated and the fact that overall as a community our rates are going down means to me now there can be slip ups and i don't worry a kid can go inside and use the bathroom and hang out with another kid for a little while and i'm less worried about that and i can start to do more oh you know they had a birthday party and they moved inside for cake for 10 minutes so it provides just a little bit of extra buffer for kids to not be you know they hug someone great wash your hands afterwards for right now and we're good and otherwise so so that's been what we've tried to do yeah and i think something i'll just take from it from a non-medical perspective but i think you spoke everyone spoke about a bit is how individual this decision is right the individual risk factors are so different um but the one thing i also heard is that you know because our community is doing pretty well and our state's doing really well vaccinations that actually has a side effect of making it safer for these other situations for the unvaccinated folks you know um and so you know i think for me you know i'll just say frankly personally you know it the my daughter who can get a shot getting her shot makes me personally i don't know if i'm right or not but it makes me personally feel better as she's on the road to vaccination about my younger child who can't get a shot right and just you know it's it's not the reason we made that decision as a family uh but i think there is some logic to it that the more vaccinated folks like that slide you had up earlier the less spread you know is possible within our family and then beyond so you know i think it is about not just the individual choice about getting vaccinated but actually the community-wide impact uh of having you know lots of people with that strong immunity and that makes it safer for the folks who you know either for medical reasons who can't get vaccinated or for who vaccines aren't eligible yet if there's anything wrong please correct me i'm totally okay because this is not at all what last science course i took was a long time ago i'll put it that way um i think the other thing i just mentioned here is that i think a lot of times we want to have black and white like you need to wear a mask now you need to not wear a mask then and this isn't all it has been an area where there's there has been and this has been difficult a lot of gray area in there for different people like different people are going to have different levels of risk tolerance and we're not going to go straight from okay now we have you know 60 vaccinated so nobody should wear masks there's going to be this kind of gradation of time when we're gonna get used to it re-enter the world and kind of what's safe and what's not and i think that's what the question is trying to get out like what is safe and what's not and i think we just need to to get there and and and figure it out and if you feel like you know there'll be times when i feel like i need to wear a mask and i know i'm fully vaccinated there'll be times that i put a mask on just because i know somebody else might not be comfortable and there's times if i'm out running or outside then you know i you know don't feel like i need to wear a mask so it is a process sorry just one one last thing cause i can't help myself one thing that was helpful for me in thinking about this was thinking about countries that have controlled coveted very well um so for example new zealand um australia to some extent and then countries that have immunized their populations vaccinated a lot of people very well like israel and what happens when they vaccinate a lot of people is that they were able to drop restrictions on kids and things like that but they didn't see these huge rises in cases so people were able to go to soccer games and i guess there it's football i'm not sure um and and do all these fun things like they would have before um even though not everyone was vaccinated because they couldn't vaccinate those kids just because of that whole idea that you really protect the unvaccinated i.e those kids when you have enough levels in the community so that's just the other thought here is that if you're really interested in this and trying to figure out am i comfortable with it am i not what what activities do we as a family personally feel good about um looking at some of those uh things might help make that decision and um i want to echo what everyone else has already said and just sort of add the point that you know because it is an individual decision people who have sort of a first or second degree contact that may be immunocompromised so if you have if your eight-year-old's buddy has a grandmother that cares for them who is a cancer patient and has not been able to respond as well to the vaccine or as a transplant patient and would not necessarily respond as well to the vaccine that is a special consideration that the kids may not have to think about but as adults we just need to to really weigh into that and make sure that you're having an informed conversation with the other parents um about what what feels comfortable and what feels safe and how to proceed so you know if you're if everyone in your circle and your kids friends circles are you know otherwise well and unlikely to have any severe illness and potentially also vaccinated then you can really relax a lot more but i think it's really thinking about those other people who are less able to to be protected that's what we i mean that's what that's the overall goal of herd immunity and that's i think when we're thinking about exceptions to the rules what we need to consider for um for our younger kids as well who can't be vaccinated just yet thank you um next question came through via email thanks jennifer you definitely got the group talking quite a bit on that important issue um so the next question was uh what is the research if there is any on the effect of vaccine on pubescent girls is speeded up stall or does not affect puberty any effects on fertility i think the fertility one was probably directly addressed in the in the slides but probably less so on um puberty pieces so i don't know if anyone has seen evidence around that looking through the data i mean this is not something that uh they have really just in the time frame um not something that that you would be able to see um theoretically there's not a like really a link there there have been some thoughts that maybe um that the vaccine is associated with uh variation and menstrual cycle um but to be honest a lot of things are associated with variations in menstrual cycle and so i think that some of the thought may be um related to those just because hormone balances um change with with every little thing but again thinking about how those might also change with regard um to uh an illness so with regards to kevin k if you were to get covered 19 or something like that um so what everything i can't speak definitively on this um so i just have to be transparent and honest about that um but there from what i've seen there's no reason to be concerned um that it would affect the onset of puberty or the development um or um and that we know at this time that there's there's no link with regards to fertility or potential i think that's a great point i think lauren brings up a great point that crosses over in thinking about the the risk benefit right the vaccine is specifically designed to make one tiny piece of that virus and realizing that if you choose not to and someone gets the virus they are still getting that one piece right so if that spike protein has something they're still going to get that spiked protein because they get coveted because that's what's going to happen your body eventually will make that immune response you'll get sick from covid but also your body is going to be exposed to all of the other proteins and all of the other inflammatory issues so when it's weighing you know i'm not sure because of this spike protein realize that that's what covett is doing we're just the vaccine is just taking that one little specific piece and so thinking about the risk you always have to weigh it with well what about the risk of actually getting full-blown covet in that disease there's one for me actually on this uh maybe representative dom wants to jump in as well but um tell it's not going to be a science one will vaccines be required for students at the beginning of the school year um so the beginning school year is in august we're in may um so it's a really long way away and i think you know what we've seen in the last six weeks is pretty significant shifts in terms of guidance from state and federal authorities so uh i'm loath to predict things that are that far away uh i think it's a good question because i know i've seen some superintendents even in the last three days come out very clearly stating that if the you know emergency use authorization goes away that they will be requiring it in their district um i've seen some that have said that they would require it for athletics and extracurriculars only so i think we're seeing people talk about it and i'm not here to critique folks who are ready to make those statements but i've not had any conversations with with our town health department and thank you i think emma dragons on this call who's been awesome partner in all of this work uh all year long so thank you emma um i've had no conversations with the school committee uh so you know i think at this point it'd be premature to distinctly answer that question i am aware because i've been reminded this question's come up multiple times and last especially since the colleges i think put out the um requirements the five colleges uh was a couple weeks ago i think um you know i've been reminded that it takes five to six weeks to become fully vaccinated so it's not necessarily a decision one can make on like august 20th and then assume that that'll happen so i you know i just want to share with with the folks here that that i am aware of that fact it is something that as we head to summer we will be looking to the state uh department of health and and perhaps even beyond for that information uh and guidance on it and you know in the legislature you know may have some opinions about that i know there's a bill in the state house not particularly this issue but talks about uh vaccine and vaccine exceptions not specific to covid so i i think you know i'd love to be definitive on it except i really wouldn't because i think you know what i've learned over the course of this one of the things i've learned of the course of this year is that pacing is really important we don't exactly know exactly the pacing of how this will roll out what we're seeing is folks who are vactine hesitant some populations really switch you know the more time passes and uh we don't know exactly the tracking of the virus right you know i'd love to know on what what's going to exactly be our case counts on august 20th none of us here can truly predict that so it's a really hard one to have specific uh specifically respond to i know the state department of education will in the next couple weeks be coming out with their sort of fall guidance document i don't know if this will be involved in it or not so i hate to have a non-answer but i actually think it was a really important question at least to respond to publicly because i know it's on a lot of people's minds and you know frankly when superintendents talk about this it makes lots of news um and that's happened in the last 48 hours so at this point i'm going to wait and see approach i think i've been very public and and gotten some virtual tomatoes but not too many that i'm pro-vaccine right um that i think it's a good thing and you know our focus last week last two weeks actually we've had a 16 plus clinic and then the 12 plus clinic is really around access we want to provide as much access in our community and that's why we ran our clinics the way we did in terms of intensive special needs which are among the highest risk populations we all talked about you know individual risk factors of students who can't always be masked that's going to be an increase in their risk factor we had it ran it during the school day which unfortunately pulled out some students but it meant that they didn't need to rely on transportation of their parents being present to have that one student told me it was an incentive to miss a little bit of the friday afternoon class on a beautiful day as well so not exactly the ohio million dollar lottery uh incentive but you know for this 13 year old it seemed pretty darn important and and perhaps a little bit motivating uh to miss their last period a part of their last period class um but in all seriousness you know we'll wait and see and it's something that you know we will talk about publicly and and have some communication if uh if that you know if it goes in a specific direction and and i will say last thing i'll say on this and open up if anyone wants to comment is uh you know i've got people all over the map on this some people are really asking and almost demanding um that we put a mandate in and other people are much more cautious and very concerned that a mandate would be uh placed in and i think it's like much in the public policy world as representative dom knows very well of covet is that you know people are in really different places on this and we're trying to understand where people are and let that develop over time to make the best decision for our community i don't know mindy if you had anything you wanted to add from your your end i thought your answer was great i also want to shout out emma dragon who i think is on the call um for the amherst health department who's been just such an incredible champion all things public health and probably could speak more to um getting last minute sort of advisories from the state and having to implement them on a dime so i think that what's going to happen here is we're seeing as mike mentioned more and more colleges and not only in our area but across the state are requiring it as part of the enrollment in the fall that's one piece of it so that's not k-12 but that is that does affect a community like amherst because we are are a host community so i know there was concerns that people had when um students came back to campus without a vaccine so now we can feel maybe a little bit more um at ease and comfortable knowing that the colleges in the connecticut river valley are all sort of making that a requirement i tend to think on the state level they're going to wait and see if cdc comes out with a recommendation um the governor seems to be very comfortable aligning the state public health practices with what the cdc speaks about not only because now the cdc has moved away maybe from being kind of a politicized organization but it's also run by somebody that many people in boston know um dr welinski comes from mass general and people feel comfortable and trusting um of her expertise so i think what we'll we should look out for i think um is what is the cdc saying during the summer because that's probably foreshadowing what we'll start hearing from the state um government that would be my only prediction though at this point anybody else want to wade into that one well i i did want to just jump in and just make two quick comments one is just to just to point out and really thank you superintendent morris and emma dragon everybody who put together this amherst clinic at the schools this past week and from all reports that you went really smoothly and i think more that we can do to get vaccines clinics like that out and to the kids and make it easier for them to get there it's going to make a big difference in getting vaccines um into people and to protect our community so i really appreciate the efforts there and and i guess the second thing i wanted to just point out is that as we get closer to this fall and if you know if the recommendations come out that the two through 11 year olds you know or can get the code of vaccine this fall it's going to run as everybody knows into flu vaccine season so one of the questions has come up over the year over this past several months has been well you know can we give other vaccines at the same time as the covet vaccine and initially during the studies you know the studies were run to such that you know you only were able to do the study if you got the code vaccine and nothing else so initially they had said you know don't get vaccines together but the american academy of pediatrics has come out uh just this past week with a statement saying that it is it's okay to give the cover vaccine together with the other regular childhood vaccines um part of the reason for that is that they're in the past there's been few to know instances of any kind of vaccine interactions that would affect cause problems or affect side effects or um effectiveness i think the one example that i can think of is that there were maybe some mild increase in risk of fever with a flu vaccine and a pneumonia vaccine given together but even then the recommendation came out that it was still good to give them together and the main reason for that is that over this past year you know with covet and you know everybody's been staying home or doing virtual business and not coming in you know initially back in last march you know maybe not going in for their uh initial visits i'm sure you're all getting your calls from the doctor's office now saying come in for your visit um but as you know many kids didn't come in or missed maybe got behind on some of their vaccines and we know that's something we want to catch back up on because we don't want to you know get behind on that and suddenly find out that we're dealing with other uh you know issues related because we're not vaccinating our kids against pertussis for instance or or the flu uh this coming fall so that's just something to be aware of that when you come in um it is okay to give those vaccines together if you need to can i say one more thing i just want to point and thank you dr everett for that that plug to make sure that people keep up with their other vaccines for their kids but i also want to give a hat tip to you mike morris because by putting the vaccine by making the vaccine clinic on the school grounds for students during school it also sent a message that our kids really need to hear is that we're caring about them and that we're continuing to care about them enough to do something like that and i think particularly after the year we've had and how students lives have been really altered that is a beautiful message to give students that day so i want to thank you for that thanks and really i appreciate that tremendously but you know emma and the amherst health department not every and i don't i don't know how to say this uh fairly but not every health department either you know is able to or willing to come on site right and you know uh it was emma's focus is the same as all of our focuses how do we provide vaccine equity how do we get to kids where they are if they're there for them and their families are willing to do it and i also want to give a huge shout out to our staff who for families who had barriers whether it's linguistic barriers or other barriers how much outreach went on that was behind the scenes that got kids there it was a tremendous amount so i'm just fortunate to be able to work with really really good people i know that sounds cliche but it's just it's really the truth you know i just got to watch uh watch the scene and uh watch kids as i was mentioning before we started act really tough so many parents came up to me and said i want public vaccination for all my kid for everything else because there was no complaining there was already none of that so uh that wasn't true for every kid but for a lot of kids it worked really well and even though there was privacy it really did work well both of the 16 plus which we did the week before uh as well as the 12 plus last week and we've got the second shots already lined up and people you know parents should have gotten those emails uh same time same place three weeks later so um we are at time um so um i don't know if there's any final words that anyone would like to share no one certainly has to but i don't know if there's anything that um i have a little wrap but if anyone like to share anything they're welcome to i want to point out that there's four locations in amherst where adults can go and get walk-in vaccine that they don't need to schedule an appointment and one of those places is the bank's community center through the amherst health department on mondays and thursdays so they have a walk-in clinic you don't need to have an appointment tomorrow between 9 and 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we're going to talk about models for the tk in middle school and then we're going to talk about models one high school versus 2 7 12s again just to give you an idea of what this may look like may uh on the budget side uh we are prepared to show you uh again some of the things that we have been discussing in terms of um for instance in one of the models i believe uh center is converted to a tk8 and so giving you some estimations of what it would cost to convert a middle school to elementary knowing that we have uh preschool tk and k requirements by law and so kind of talking a little bit about about that and other other we have a new high school right shutting down two schools and creating a brand new school so some possibilities around there uh we we do want to emphasize and we will emphasize when we get there with latasha these are of course projections um and we don't we don't know what happens in the market between now and go time um if you have come anywhere close to lumber uh you know what i'm talking about right that unexpectedly all of a sudden that has skyrocketed uh we have um included in there um some in inflation possibilities and so but still just kind of throwing that out there and then we want we want to round it off we have we had come to this group previously with some models for support staff and so the group said go back and rethink and so we have gone back and we have rethought the models for support staff and so we're ready to again present these ideas tonight as well again if we get through one if we get through two if we get through three then you know that's what we'll do we will end at 7 p.m one last thing before i turn it over to dana to kick us off with the programs um i want to i want you to let you know that today we did have a meeting where all staff was invited to attend i believe we had 214 if i'm not mistaken 214 staff members show up today what we did is we gave them an update of your work right we gave it enough we gave them an update about how the team is is comprised we gave them an update of how there was four models and this team narrowed it to two we gave them an update how this team changed the model 4 that we originally took changed the model 3 that we originally took talked about that talked about the fact that [Music] we went from five years to three years we talked about the fact that tonight you're going to be listening about program um budget and staffing and then we let them know that we were going to be emailing them a a survey or a form really a form to get their input get their ideas uh and and the way that will be presented in the form is here are the four model threes and we walk them through the models so we show them what you know those spreadsheets that we've been using here we said okay this is what it means if you're in the orange this is what it means if you're in the yellow and so we kind of talked about that and we said okay of the four model threes which one do you prefer and why of the two model fours which do you prefer and why um again i want to be super crystal clear that this data and this information is for you you the team not not for me this is for you the team so maybe you personally are struggling between two model threes and so maybe the data helps you right to look at the data and say okay well i'm struggling between these two and then you look at this and say okay well based on this i think i'm gonna do this right so this data will once we collect it uh this will be presented to you as another data point just like the programs our data points the budgets our data points and the support staff are our data points as well all right with that being said i'm going to turn this over to dana mitchell who is going to walk us through uh programs all righty i'm going to present all right can you see my screen that's exciting all right well hello everyone um super excited to see you all this evening and to be here tonight i'm very excited to talk to you about possibility about possible opportunities for programs for our students and we have a unique opportunity to begin to imagine dream and innovate and explore what's possible so we're going to provide a plethora of possible ideas around programs for our students and just uh just as mr ortega had stated nothing's been decided nothing set in stone throughout the meetings we we have heard um things right we've heard been listening to some of the ideas that have uh have come up regarding programs and so tonight we want to provide you with um many possibilities and we want you to have that option to be able to just explore and so i'm going to invite you to imagine and to dream and to innovate so let's start out with model number three which has a tk6 a tk8 one middle school and one high school so i want to start off and talk about what we're going to refer to as base options in this model with the tk6 and the tk8 and what we would consider uh to be base or to be the floor meaning every school would get this so here's this first option for that what we're call what we're calling the base program so every school would have a preschool every school would have uh something we call seal and that's the sobrato early academic language and really what this is is it's um it is a um i want to say it's it is programmatic uh because what it does is it's a it's more of an instructional approach to early childhood education and we've been doing this with pk and tk and we are going to be expanding that and so it's really a way to be able to develop language with children that's one of the the pieces of that it also um honors and values um the students and the family's culture and again cultivating um just you know rich rich language and it's also project based as well so we would be offering that at all of our elementary schools all of our tk6 and tka we'd also have mild and moderate special education programs and services all schools would have stem and so uh we are going to be having uh what we're calling an innovation lab uh at all of our sites and really what this is is a it's a it's a space it's kind of like think like a like an art lab acceptance technology and within this uh innovation lab space the teachers would be able to take their classes and we have all kinds of different activities we do have robotics we have 3d printing these are things that we already have um have purchased and so um that's going to be in place so all elementary schools would be able to have this and again teachers would be able to take their students and be able to have a space where they would be able to um to just really engage in some of these stem activities we also would have vapa so visual and performing arts at all of the elementary schools um so within the this vapa program all schools would get a program that's called meet the masters and this is something that we already have as well and so with this if you if you're not familiar with this one um this is a program where the students learn about the lives and famous works of master artists and they're introduced to the techniques of the artists um they learn about you know the history involved and then what they get to do is they do a project that's based on the works of this master artist and then they will learn some of the techniques that these master artists have used and so if you've had a chance to see that at some of our elementary schools and the progression um and seeing like the kinders we'll do a project but then the first grade do it as well and so to be able to see the progression with um with the with the different grade levels is really really exciting and kids really um they enjoy that as well we also have instrumental and vocal music and so fourth grade students participate in vocal music and grades five and six get to participate in either vocal or instrumental um we do uh have a really great partnership with parks and recreation and so we know that they have lots of different opportunities for students to participate in activities through parks and parks and rec after school all sites will have think together we would have a before school care um we'd have think together you know participates or they have activities for after school activities and all kinds of fun things and so all schools would have that all schools would also have uh peer mediation and positive behavior supports and and really what this is is we have a um we have a an mou an agreement with um an organization called the western justice center and so they're really doing a lot of work with our schools around restorative practices and peer mediation which is which is really fantastic and so all schools would have that as well um we also have um a physical education program that is called spark and that's our pe health and wellness program for our students so all schools would have that and then all schools would also have equity focused project based learning and so this is something that we have started with professional learning with our district we have teachers that have been doing this work this year and working with high tech high graduate school of education and so we're going to be providing that as well and just a quick note about project-based learning that i wanted to provide it has many many benefits a couple are when kids are engaged in projects they're able to transfer their learning they develop critical thinking and reasoning students love it it's engaging they're motivated it's rigorous but one of the most important pieces is that kids have an opportunity to actively construct knowledge by connecting what they are learning to um all kinds of things and especially their own cultural context and so we're excited about that as well so those are things that all um all schools would have okay let's see okay there are a couple of exceptions that i did want to point out and so with this option one we would have dual immersion program at two of our tk sites we would have our life skills program at one of the sites and then we do have a program for our visually impaired students and that would be at one of the sites as well all right now let's talk about another option and so this is what we're calling the specialty options and so as we continue to imagine and dream and innovate and really think about creating new 21st century learning spaces we have this option to explore what we're calling specialty options so similar to a magnet concept the specialty option includes all of the things in the base that we just had in that previous slide so all of the things are still there however in the specialty there is a programmatic focus that's layered on top and integrated into the disciplinary units of study and so in the next uh seven slides we're going to show you some of these possibilities of what that might look like so here's one here's an idea and this one would be avid so an avid academy an avid school um avid is something that you know we have in our our middle and high school uh grades as well and avid stands for advancement via individual determination and um this is would be a school-wide program and what it does is it reinforces academic behaviors and higher level thinking at all grade levels and so the idea is that elementary students would develop academic habits that they would need to be successful in middle school and high school and college in a very age-appropriate way they learn things like organization study skills communication and self-advocacy because that's the advancement via individual determination um they even learn to take structured notes uh the middle and high school students uh take notes it's called cornell notes it's something that i learned to do a long time ago and still continue to do that they also learned to ask high level questions uh in this in this program as well um one of the things that you typically see in an avid school is that they cover their walls with college penance and banners and and there's this constant talk about you know college experiences and so students really um feel that you know they understand kind of what that is and they get excited about it so that's one option do i get it [Music] all right here's another one here's another possibility this one would be a dual immersion academy and so in this dual immersion academy it would be a wall-to-wall spanish dual immersion school all enrolled students would receive a dual immersion model that the one that we currently have at hodge and valleyville and a couple of things about dual immersion dual language helps students excel academically while becoming bilingual biliterate and bicultural and there is a there continues to be a growing body of research that talks about um that students who are enrolled in dual immersion programs um have a boost in their academic success when it comes to you know reading and language arts and math and science and all the disciplines um some other uh research around this as well that talks about um uh boosting working memory and comprehension and so there are many many benefits to dual language and so um some of the things that we do know also is that students who learn to read well in their primary language tend to also learn to read well in another language as well so we want students in this model to develop to be bilingual and then it also helps them in terms of um you know just some of the you know cognitive advantages and social advantages as well so that's another option for a specialty school okay all right here's another one another option might be the health and science academy oh health and science so similar this is this is a specialty model as well and so how would that work in terms of an academy right in an elementary school well what you would do is you would you would create curricular units in every grade level that intentionally integrate the concepts of the health sciences this would align with our health science and medical technology pathway that we currently have and we do have a very robust college and career pathway program in the zoo unified and so this could be something as an option that might lead to that all right let's go to another option here's another idea this one is called the innovation and design academy this one is kind of a model or prototype modeled after the high tech high network in san diego this uh this academy what they do is they have school-wide project-based curriculum and it's based on design principles of equity personalization authentic work and collaboration and the students engage in challenging open-ended questions that are relevant to them and their community and their world and with any great project based learning the the work does culminate in products and presentations that have an authentic audience and often go beyond the schools into their community as well so that's an option comes another one this option is called the primary years program or pyp and this one is part of the international baccalaureate uh program and so this one is for students who are in are age 3 through 12 and it's it can be part of a sequencing so they have pyp which is the primary years for the elementary there's also an myp which is a middle years program which leads to the iv program which is international baccalaureate which is something that we currently have and so um there are um ib world schools across uh across the the globe and as i believe there are 150 uh countries that participate in um international baccalaureate and what they do is um similar to an ap program in advanced placement um there are many universities that do accept university credit when students are taking the high school classes so this program is something that it leads into the you know the the middle years and the high school ib but the purpose of this whole program is to be able to give students um a chance to earn a rigorous internationally recognized diploma again that's at the high school level um and so the pyp program is inquiry-based it has a trans-disciplinary curriculum framework so there's um lots of different disciplines all together in in terms of the curriculum and instruction and in this program in in any of the ib programs there is a language component as well and in this model the language would be mandarin all right let's go to the next one so the next option is a steam academy all right so uh in this specialty model again the same as some of the other ones but the curricular units are intentionally integrating and connecting concepts of either science technology engineering art and or mathematics into the units of study so when the teachers are planning the units there is a particular focus that they do bring in for those units could be where project lead the way as one of um you know one of the programs that we currently have maybe it lands there um and that is something that we do offer at the middle school in the high schools as well and would align to our engineering and architecture pathway as well so that is another option for a specialty program now we'll take us to the next one and this would be a visual and performing arts academy option and so um this one is modeled after our very own powell school of the arts um and what makes this a specialty option is again it's that visual and performing arts is integrated throughout the curriculum and instruction and so it's just an approach where students are constructing um and understanding a certain concept in an art form and that could be through music it could be through design there's so many different options for that but it's an art integration academy and this particular option would also include partnerships with apu they have drum circles and art shows and then they also do musical full musical stage productions so that those are the specialty options for your model 3.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so that one's moving along you do have an item before you tonight and it is for a contract to go through the sql process which is the california environment environmental quality act and there's 13 different environmental features that we have to make sure that we're either not disturbing or that we're mitigating the effects of in some examples would be light pollution noise pollution we have to take care of the endangered species so there's 13 different items that we have to make sure that we're not messing with nature and um i have just a couple of other things um and i put it under other stuff we are putting together a contract right now um to do some hvac improvements we have a lot at about a million dollars of decoded money to start replacing our most inefficient and extensive maintenance-wise hvac units so hopefully we'll be able to get our consultants to help us figure out which ones those are and get uh get it out there and get the contract set up before june 30.
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3.8 this was the item that we were moving up before the um adoption of our tenative agreements so for the board uh board consideration assembly Bill 2756 um provided additional disclosures of financial impact of negotiated agreements it also required the superintendent and the business official of a school district to certify that the district can afford the agreements and so we are providing those disclosures to the board both for our teachers union and our CA group and then also note uh We've included our management but management is not a noi it is not a bargaining unit um it is an unrepresented group so we are including the disclosure because we think that's the right thing to do so the public and the board is aware of the impact but you'll not see a a tenative agreement for board approval proceedings since they are not a recognized bargaining unit um the nice thing is that this is onetime money and so we're showing the impact of onetime money and it would be paid from reserves and would not provide an obligation on goinging to the district thank you do we have any questions from board members about the uh the documents that were provided out of the county it's the county that reports to us right it's the County's responsibility to fulfill ab1 1200 which is the fiscal oversight language um so they have provided these forms to us so we' complet completed them and we've already sent these to them if the district were in a qualified or negative status um they could potentially comment on these agreements however we're positive our reserves beat all the um requirements of Reserve so there is no comment from the county and they appreciated the information thank you Mr Baltimore um do we have any uh questions or clarified purposes from the board okay do we have any public comment thank you okay board do we have any motions associated with this agenda item I'd like to move 10.
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before i begin my speech i ask that you please join me in acknowledging our students accomplishments as i read you these list of accomplishments that our class has achieved students if you have been admitted to a two or four year college please stand up [Applause] you may be seated if you are enlisting in one of our nation's branch nations branches of the military please stand up [Applause] you may be seated if you've earned one or more career and technical education certificates and are ready to enter competitively into the career industry please stand up if you have been awarded an athletic scholarship please stand up if you have been awarded a fine arts scholarship please stand up if you've earned an academic scholarship please stand up [Applause] thank you students for participating ladies and gentlemen distinguished guests families the graduating class of 2021 has earned in excess of 12 point million dollars in scholarships and awards and they have earned this during a time when it seemed the world had stopped and was stopped in its tracks due to covet and yet here they stand or sit before you having earned over 12 million dollars in scholarships and awards truly an amazing feat congratulations as we begin to comprehend these amazing achievements let us reflect on how we arrived here tonight while i have traditionally talked about perseverance choice character willpower camaraderie and more tonight i wanted to share these qualities with you in a manner that may be more familiar to our students our soon-to-be graduates through the marvel cinematic universe let us begin think of kindergarten in elementary school as phase one our students are perhaps for the first time coming together as a class they are just beginning to truly comprehend the world around them and the complexities of the world and during this time they are growing together as a class as a cohort as a team they are beginning to realize how amazing they are as individuals and as a class and then sooner than they may have realized or we may have realized we enter phase two middle school they have developed or are developing a strong sense of self-identity they have formed and reformed stronger friendships and developed an even larger view of the world around them they have had disagreements heartbreak and yet they remain steadfastly committed to each other and through this they are truly coming to terms with who they are as a class and yet a few short years later they arrive at phase three high school they have pursued new passions be it athletics fine arts clubs community organizations or all of them they are beginning to see that they have within them a tremendous amount of power and the ability to change the world there is a class and they are a team and then the blip happened covid rather than be derailed or deterred and let a pandemic prevent them from achieving their goals they found a way through it coming together helping each other and offering us their adults the concept of hope this class the class of 2021 persevered through the last 15 plus months they did not lose hope in fact they offered us hope now as we sit here tonight on the verge of entering phase four which will see our heroes and you all all heroes because you never lost hope you never gave up you will branch out after tonight begin new projects start new pathways whether it's in the military college a career trade school or ending directly into the workforce never forget who you are here assembled as the class of 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so if we can have our 8th grade teachers and president mr mcgibbon join us thank you okay so we do ask if you would please hold your applause to the end and we could applaud everybody so 8a please rise diego aguirre aiden aragones give me ben behar [Music] hannah bell oscar vajquez rogelio campus awesome [Applause] [Music] delgado sarah devine david diaz [Music] mommy [Music] travis garcia jennifer gonzalez jaden halbert olivia jacobson [Music] madison lendman lopez yes rebecca masterson grace matthews salvador eastside neves jennifer nunez anita ramos [Music] abigail reyes asap georgia smith [Applause] shane trujillo velasquez tiffany wright 8b please rise hassan abuser riley amarillas ivy ceruli bella syria logan discounts aubrey fitchner ammon chrysler levi moeller [Music] arabella myers eli white jason wilkerson [Applause] wyatt please stand okay vanessa acosta rodriguez lexi arredondo emma barker [Applause] alexander belial [Music] [Applause] robert brubacher sofia manhattan martinez jr briana moreno grana store and now jordan wow so before i present the promoting class of 2021 and we receive special instruction announcements from amy kreiser we have another presentation from bonnie clark and julie cerulli
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so you're going to see a decrease next year which is why we mentioned there's going to be a 14 increase because when we go to potentially sell in 22 22 23 you're going to see that 14 increase so essentially we're going down and then back to where we were we're not pretty much staying flat in terms of our tax implications to our residents next slide please so here's a projected property tax bill we included both a residential and commercial um valuation so on a 246 thousand dollar home which is i don't know where you're going to find that right now but um that would be an estimated uh cost and it shouldn't be increased because like i just mentioned it's it's essentially going to be the same property tax bill you're seeing currently would be 140 dollars per year and then um on a commercial business that should be business not home of approximately 1.1 million dollars their annual uh secondary tax rate would be one thousand dollar one thousand thirty dollars so you can see it's a very minimal implication um to both our residential and business businesses um and again you know districts are are forced to go to this secondary tax rate um due to our funding sources being restricted we're again the i think the uh um it just came out that we were again 48th in funding um still on the uh annual uh demographic survey so we're still forced to go to this these sources of funding as a public school district to kind of get the funding that we need to get our buildings our student our mno costs up to speed so next slide please and then again we talked about bonding capacity um so currently we would jeff mentioned in the 2122 year we would have approximately 129 million in bonding capacity we're proposing 95 million to not go to that full uh 100 bonding capacity that does limit our potential in the years preceding this you'll see how it decreases in 23 24 and 25 and then as our assessed valuation catches up to our bonding capacity in that 2526 area that's where we've kind of earmarked another potential bond cell that would put us five years out if this bond if we do authorize this bond and we proceed with our current plan of five years that 2526 timeline would be a potential area where we can do another bond sale now reminder this is just bonding capacity and does not authorize the district to pursue bonds we still need the authorization from the board to authorize to go out for a bond and that dollar amount so next slide please so we combined both the primary and secondary tax rates and kind of put our neighboring districts up here remember the primary tax rate usually mno adjacent ways in capital and then your secondary tax rates are all your voter approved items your your eminent override capital override and your bonds you'll see the highest tax rate is uh queen creek currently uh second to that would be mesa um we are kind of sitting in the middle of this group here and then of course scottsdale paradise valley because of their av is so high it their tax rates are are extremely low we just don't have that capacity in higley scottsdale 121 square miles lots of commercial and residential so we'll never reach that but we can um we are in competitive we're in competition with our competitors here and i think we're very favorable in terms of um comparing ourselves to other districts finally we have our calendar of events so if you go to the march june timeline that's kind of where we've been going with this presentation in our reviews um we've presented three reviews so far of the bond as we move into this june and july timeline we're going to ask the board for a res approve to prove a resolution um if that is approved we will go into june and august which we will have the voter pamphlet which we'll have to approve the language on that we'll ask for the board's pro statement we'll also at that time start to schedule some what they call i guess road shows in higley we'll make our rounds to some neighborhoods some communities present informational factual stuff regarding the bond and the stuff that we've presented to the board in our plans and then september it's it's going to be an all mail-in election this year so september october pretty much all the ballots will be mailed out and you know when we get to november election day um you know the decision will already be made um in terms of our whether we pass or whether we fail so um we feel confident in this kind of plan and um we feel like we have the community and the board support going forward with what we presented yeah and if there's any questions regarding this timeline or any of the financial information that i presented president reece i just have one quick statement i believe governor ducey at one point has mentioned that if we want more from our education that the own towns need to pay for it our own district needs to pay for it if i'm paraphrasing correctly what he said that i and i just think that's something to be pointed out that um our own governor says you know he pays for the basic education and then we have to pay for all the extra fluff so i just think that's something to be said thank you any other questions all right sorry i just have one question how much and this might have been addressed i just forgot how much does it cost us to do this to go out to about like what's the cost for for that and the the pamphlets and things like that yeah so there is an issue when it's cost uh along with this mr devil it's about two dollars two hours and fifty cents per registered voter that's what the county charges so you know it it's it's significant it's up in the hundreds two hundred thousand dollar rate sure any other questions thank you for going through all the detail with us all right now we will go on to 7.3 and we have a request to speak so we value the input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware or that fault statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431-01h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the mater for further consideration and a decision at a later date we ask that remarks be kept to three minutes mr edwards with the mahoney group coming up well thank you uh president reese and vice president wilson and all the board members it's a privilege to be here uh it's been an honor to handle the insurance and the risk management needs of the district these past many years um there was a review set out this year on the insurance and there was a little bit of confusion on that review as it took place and so um we reached out today when we saw last night the review that came out and so we reached out today to dr foley's office and uh first instant had recommended us to speak with mr hawes in his office to go over those concerns and so we did that and um in the interest of time you know that would have been a lot for them to put on their plate and revise everything and send it over so we took the liberty to go ahead and do that write it in real quick for that review so that the board would have full information tonight as you look at all of the um factors in in that review and so um i was going to speak after we look at the review just to see how what was included in the review and then to help um answer any questions and to be a resource after the review has gone forth and so if that's okay i'll yield until then and then our public comments prior okay all of them yes okay okay thank you all right sounds good um i'll just point out a few things then before we do the review um we went through a an rfp process a couple years ago very proud of that and very proud of the results of that we looked very closely at all of the factors for six years with higley and um came to some very definite and important conclusions about why the insurance should be moved and so with a lot of concrete facts on that we went forward there was an rfp put out we participated in that along with the trust and ultimately took over the insurance needs of the district and just very proud of what we've done during that time as you're looking over the review tonight with mr haas i want you to remember a couple things the district is exemplary in their risk management and loss control and that's that goes from the top down from district operations with chris good and his staff there fatima and hr josh crosby in transportation mum and hr dr fowler and operations and many others that we have the privilege of working with because of that higley is one of the top tier districts in the eyes of insurance carriers and insurability and because of that we've been able to do what we've been able to do with the insurance and gain the favorable rates that we have i want you to remember a key point tonight as you're looking through the review remember that the trust insures 200 and roughly 250 school districts and must account for that capacity within their within their limits higley is one and they stand alone and so those limits are appropriate and good for the district this plan was crafted specifically for them and they benefit immensely in many ways from doing that many things were added to this this program this year as far as flexibility with the council for claims that includes rosenfeld udall shumway as a choice of council during those claims a dedicated employment attorney as well in place of what you now have as prepaid legal and my time is up and so thank you for that if you have any questions after the review i'm happy to i'm here and happy to answer any questions regarding that thank you very much thank you so with that we will start our um is that for our speaker regarding the same subject i'll take it all right so this is also on the same agenda item so mr cole will go ahead and invite you up you also have three minutes um looks like you're with the trust is that correct thank you okay grace vice president wilson and board members thank you for allowing me to be here today my name is ryan cole i'm with the arizona school risk retention trust and i just want to provide a little bit of background and history into our relationship with the trust and why the trust was formed the trust was formed 35 years ago in as a self-insured pool for public entities for school districts across the state we started out with five districts in rural arizona it has since grown to 247 members so we're about the 250 member mark over that 35 years of operations what pools have done and what the trust has been able to do is really to find a niche market for schools we know the coverage that arizona schools and community colleges need and we've been able to refine our coverage agreements and the policies in order to meet those needs of arizona schools we are governed by and for the membership we have a governing board of directors that's made up of school district administrators from across the state some of your neighbors as well and higley mesa and chandler they're helping to direct the vision and the mission of the trust to make sure that we're providing the appropriate coverages for members over again i mentioned over the past 35 years we've been able to hone that coverage agreement specifically for arizona school districts and community colleges that offer that includes offering high limits up to 50 million in liability limits for districts which we feel is vital in protecting arizona schools we also have low deductibles broad coverage where we're able to lean into coverage as well as favorable terms and conditions within that coverage we know arizona claim adjusting we know what it takes we have the appropriate staff that's been in place for many years to adjudicate those claims the number of claims that we've handled for arizona schools since 1986 is 57 000 and that represents 674 million in claims payments again we in the discussion of the liability limits for the districts we feel that 50 million is absolutely appropriate for districts we have a couple examples within that we had a district up in northern arizona in 1996 and auto liability claim with a bus accident the total settlement for that was 28 million at the time the district had a 10 million dollar policy they then shortly thereafter joined the trust the second example down in southern arizona a little more recent 2006 general liability claim after a basketball game uh the crowd and some players dog piled another one of the players and that was a 25 million dollar settlement the commercial insurer after that claim canceled the policy and the district subsequently joined the trust so again those are old claims but social inflation is a factor that we we look at as well but we routinely receive large demands uh greater than 16 million in liability limits if the district has students if you have athletic activities you have public on your campus if you employ staff then 16 million in limits we don't feel as appropriate we feel we've crafted that coverage to fully protect districts so thank you for your time and i look forward to further discussion thank you all right as we go on to 7.3 we will be receiving a presentation for um as we've had two speakers here for both the mahoney group and for the trust this is for our liability workers comp insurance we'll notice we do have a action item coming up it is important that we direct our questions to dr foley during the presentation or thereafter a recommendation is a specific recommendation is not being made when we get to 8.1 the board will have to determine which policy which package we choose for our district so with that said i will turn it over to dr foley so we can start our presentation process thank you president reese members of the board tonight we have an important topic and and this is one actually we've been talking about for quite a while it's been on our agenda as future topics back in september when we did a renewal there was great conversation with the board at the time that when it came time this year as part of our processes and procedures that we do a thorough review and we bring recommendations for the board to make a decision which is what we're doing this evening we've also been talking with and again as as president reece has shared um this is workman's comp and liability but this also has a lot to do with our legal services and we've talked about to do in an in-house or an outsource or what does it mean for us in our district and this is this conversation so again one of the things that we've that we've done and that we did as a team is asked we collected those those quotes and worked with attorneys with dustin rosenfeld because with our current carrier the mahoney group if anything had ever gone to a claim the preferred attorney group that we were to work with in those cases was dustin rosenfeld who are one of the two law firms that are experts in educational law and all things encompass with them okay so they have these would be our attorneys regardless of whichever vendor you choose to go with and what they've done is they have thoroughly reviewed these proposals they have been in consultation even up to today in conversations clarifications for them to discuss with and to provide clarity for answer questions dispel misinformation or to understand and probe this because this is an important decision the dollar amount to this is huge and we want uh to make the obviously the best decision possible for for our district the one thing that you your cabinet members want you to know is that while we are not experts in insurance we are experts in our field and we would hope that we also have experience in utilizing both of these resources and so we also are here to share if you have questions or would like to know our experiences or our perspectives we do have those prepared to share if you like that information as well as you prepare to make a decision tonight so tonight is important we are sort of at a time crunch here because um regardless of where we go tonight there are changes in the existing policy if it were to stay with the current carrier or move to a different one that require background on the back side we've got to get it finalized trained rolled out so that we don't skip a beat because there's an awful lot of um that involves all of us and training in our resources so this is this is something we don't take lightly um and again when working with getting information took some time to get the information as we've kept you posted and up to date in our status reports of this so here we are tonight with an important decision to make so i'm going to turn it over to our attorneys from guston rosenfeld both rob haas and jennifer mclennan who were we'll kind of walk through um the the cost proposals for both insurance companies i want you to ask that you please ask questions probe for information clarify any information you would like to know so that you have the information with the with them as a resource and then again your cabinet is here if you have other questions for us we are prepared to speak and share good evening president reese members of the board rob haas with gus rosenfeld my partner's with me jennifer mclennan we're very pleased to be your lawyers our only effort tonight is to give you our best assessment of the proposals that are in front of you there is a little bit of a urgency to this your policies are set to expire at the end of june so there needs to be a decision made we were asked to review the two insurance proposals that the district has received that were submitted by the mahoney group and the trust and over the past several weeks we've been doing that we've met with staff to get their perspective and their input we have posed questions follow-up questions to each vendor we've reviewed all of the materials that both vendors have submitted to the district we've requested some supplemental information from the vendors as well and had several follow-up phone calls with the vendors on that to make sure that there has been a thorough review of this that we do understand the issues and that we can come to you tonight with confidence in the information we're presenting to you mr oz i hate to interrupt you right at the beginning um i got an email today very late in the afternoon and it's very concerning to me as you were speaking that conversations have been going on for many many weeks and yet i get an email at the ninth hour this afternoon can you kind of talk me through the why that occurred because i'm very confused that that happened when there's been multiple conversations happening for weeks yes absolutely um president reece board member kaler happy to answer that question um of course we we want this to be a we've tried to have this be an open process and make sure that people have had a chance to share what they want to share about their product and service and so that's why we've had this ongoing uh review um i don't i was as surprised as you frankly to get that late uh supplement today in fact i haven't even i got it it beeped on my phone as i was driving out here be that as it may uh you know we we can come to you tonight with confidence that we've reviewed the proposals understand them and can highlight for you some of the differences some of the what we perceive as advantages or disadvantages of each and let you make the call we don't really have a dog in this fight as you may know you're currently insured by liberty mutual we are the law firm that liberty mutual uses when there is coverage for a claim when there's not coverage you can use whoever you want and your you use our firm and another firm uh so the mahoney group's proposal as you will see we'll go over this we have a short powerpoint presentation and a spreadsheet that we'll we'll go over and tyler may be jealous because we'll get into some numbers here but [Music] the the new insurer will not be the liberty mutual the mahoney's group proposal basically uh is proposing new carriers and the trust you were previously insured by the trust but haven't been for a while um if if the trust was selected we would in full disclosure we would likely be continuing to work with the district both on your day-to-day issues and when there is a claim to be made in many areas mr edwards has assured us i have not seen verification of this from any of your the carriers he's proposing but he's assured us that he's gone to bat for the district to make sure that if the new carriers are selected that you would have the option to continue to work with your preferred counsel um so um we are here as your lawyer to give you the best advice we can give you on the proposals um so with that i'll turn the time over to jennifer madam president members of the governing board jennifer mclennan and gus rosenfeld so i'd like to take you through a brief powerpoint that compares the two proposals side by side we prepared this information based upon the proposals that were submitted by the mahoney group and by the trust unlike rob i left a little bit later so i was able to obtain that email that you received late in the day and where possible i'll try to address the some of the discrepancies so that you have answers to those questions so just to let you know i did not get the said email so i have no idea what we're talking about with the email so just to let you know thank you i will continue um so the district as mr haas has indicated is currently insured through liberty mutual insurance and the insurance premiums that you have paid out this year are approximately 1 million eight hundred 77 seventy four dollars the cost for legal services to date is approximately fifty thousand dollars um i have spoken with your uh business services department they've indicated that they would expect those costs to rise to about 75 000 by the end of the year next slide please and we just want you to know that this is based on information we've received not information that we you know we are not coverage counselors there is a specific type of lawyer that determines whether a claim is uh covered by an insurance policy that's not robbenai's forte one of the terms that will you'll see used in this powerpoint presentation is the aggregate limit aggregate limit is a general limit that is the maximum for the insurance payable during a policy period so you'll often see the um used per occurrence and then per aggregate and what that would mean often it's 1 million per occurrence 3 million for aggregate that's one number that you'd see and what that would mean would be that that policy that particular policy would be um up to the three million dollar mark for all claims submitted under that policy and that's exclusive of excess and umbrella coverage which was one of the points raised in the late submitted information so getting to general liability the general the basic general liability policy for the mahoney group would offer one million dollars in coverage the trust is 10 million dollars again this is specific to the policy not including the excess or the umbrella insurance the excess liability coverage the one entity would be 10 million the excess liability on the other would be 40 million mr edwards did submit information indicating that on the general liability the total in aggregate coverage is 18 million 16 million per occurrence 18 million in the aggregate with respect to the employee benefits the this specific policy would be one million dollars in coverage on the mahoney side of the ledger the arizona risk retention trust doesn't have a specified limit within there's there's is related to the general liability coverage policy that we covered on the first slide two million dollars in aggregate insurance for the employee benefit with crisis management again on the mahoney side of the ledger one million dollars in coverage one million dollars in aggregate a thousand dollar deductible this is addressed in the general liability coverage for the trust counseling and professional liability services one million dollars in coverage three million dollars in aggregate and again on the um arizona risk retention trust this is covered with respect to the general liability sexual misconduct liability um mahoney had one million dollars in initial coverage three million dollars in aggregate and again this is exclusive of the excess insurance or umbrella insurance policies again the arizona risk retention trust that would be covered in their general liability but excuse me i'm sorry to interrupt no problem i have i have the email pulled up on my phone and it's totally different numbers than what you're saying to me right now so i'm not sure sure i'm sorry i i hate to interrupt but i i know that like mrs wilson didn't get the information and the rest of us you didn't is there any chance that we can have this printed for us because so i can i can address it and i think okay then it will be sufficient i just want to make sure that they're all aware since they didn't get the email um which is correct why don't we go back to the sexual misconduct misconduct liability slide so the inf in the information that was presented by the mahoney group which you have in your folder there is a specific line item for a sexual misconduct liability policy and it says that it's 1 million each employee 3 million in the aggregate they have a limit of a 300 000 innocent party defense a deductible of zero so this isn't the information that's in your packet that was provided what uh what the information submitted late indicates that that policy those limitations does not include the access insurance or the umbrella policy so if you add on the excess insurance so once you reach those limits you have an overriding umbrella that would govern the coverage if you add on that it would be 11 million dollars per occurrence and 13 million dollars in the aggregate if you add on the aggregate uh that if you add on the aggregate it would be plus five million dollars in excess insurance with a 16 million dollar per occurrence limit and an 18 million dollar in the aggregate that's at the high end whereas opposed the trust again is a 40 million dollar aggregate excess umbrella so those that is the difference in the numbers so each of these policies you've just or benefits or that you've just gone over the general liability is one of them correct and then the employee benefits liability the trust addresses that in their general liability but the mahoney group has something separate from general liability and that's what we're looking at so these are all separate coverages that is not in the general liability with the mahoney group but it is in the general liability of the trust is that correct that's correct okay with respect to the ones that we're getting to we're going to get to another one quickly we'll go through the director and officer slide if you can get to that thank you so again this is taken from the um proposals that were submitted and those are the amounts listed therein one difference between the two these two with respect to that policy is the deductible uh that the trust doesn't have um with respect to the auto liability slide next um now we're talking about a different insurance policy okay so mahoney group has one million dollars in coverage a thousand dollar deductible again they also have the excess and umbrella insurance so 16 million and 18 million the trust has a 10 million dollar coverage policy on that property insurance both relate to the total insurable value the bahone proposal had some flood and earthquake limitations those limitations are high um 10 million dollars 40 million dollars and there were deductibles that ranged between five five thousand to four thousand uh forty thousand on theirs commercial crime um the mahoney group has a million dollars in in coverage the arizona risk retention trust has 1.5 million dollars mahoney group has a 5 000 deductible trust has a 1 000.
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umass still has their vaccine clinic it's also walk-in and the two cvs pharmacies have walked in thank you thanks mindy well with that i just want to thank all of you for being here uh as someone who as i said before has been publicly pro-vaccine i feel even more pro-vaccine because i i know the science of it a lot more uh and i think the way you describe particularly the risk factors for individual populations as well as the the history of medicine in certain populations in our community uh is really helpful for you all for me to hear and hopefully helpful for the community here if you're watching you know we'll put this in our friday newsletter this link but you know this link will stay live this video so if you watch and said oh i know someone who would like to watch it the youtube link you're on uh about five five minutes from now will will be good to go and you can just email that out to anyone who you think might benefit from seeing it but thank you all for being here spending part of a what was a beautiful evening outside um with us and again thanks to our guests for spending uh you've been you've been in the trenches working on this uh for 14 months and beyond so i really appreciate you sharing this your expertise with our larger community thanks for being here and have a good night
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so now i'm going to talk a little bit about in model 3 there would be one middle school and so what would what would it look like and so here are some base programs that we would have for the middle school programming there's project lead the way which is something that we currently have we could either have a pittsco or a paxton patterson lab the difference between the pittsco paxton and the project lead the way project lead the way is has robotics it has uh electrical engineering uh it has coding they help different modules and the pittsco patterson lab they it's the same thing in terms of stem a stem lab but what they do is they have some very interesting modules as well and um they could be focused on like veterinary science they could be focused on space and the students rotate through a series of different modules and that's a a really interesting uh setup in terms of a stem lab um students really enjoy that too we would have a world language course we would have you know students can participate in leadership sometimes they call it asb avid media journalism we have vapa the visual performing arts after school sports think together special education services i have after school sports on there twice i guess it's really important i didn't catch that opportunities for students after school to participate in local parks and recreation again there's all kinds of things that we you know that we have that would be part of that base program peer mediation again positive behavior and then we'd have a dual immersion would also go into this middle school and continuing with equity focused project based learning all right now let's go to this concept of one high school what would be uh what would be the programs at one high school we we already have a very robust um a pathway for our career technical education and so you can see we've got our engineering and architecture information and communication technologies transportation health and science and medical technology public services arts media and entertainment all of those programs we would continue to have in terms of our pathways it's also the option of something called a middle college program and a middle college program is where students would um be enrolled uh not only in high school courses but they would take courses at the community college um and they would get credit for high school but they'd also get credit for uh their college coursework as well and they graduate with an aaa degree i mean that would be the idea so it could be either an aaa or an aas depending on what program it was but that is definitely an option um avid in high school again in clubs advanced placement courses the visual and performing arts sports think together peer mediation the same thing the other piece is that the high schools would have a well-being center we have a high school who that is part of the community schools initiative and so this is really all around community partnership and wellness um and providing all kinds of uh services for students that that help them not only um but really support them right with their academics and um their social and emotional well-being as well we would have dual immersion uh international baccalaureate um something else that does go along with the um the cte pathways is internships and when students are seniors when they are in these cte pathways there would be the possibility that they would be able to be involved in an internship where they would be able to get high school credit for that and um and and actually do this you know hands-on um you know uh internship with one of the pathways that they're working with and so that's a lot of fun too and then the last piece would be um a block scheduling format um for for the high school when um when uh coursework is centered around things like project based and you have you know lots of these different cte pathways um having a schedule that's a block schedule that has the students spending a little more time uh you know with their with their courses less courses a day but a little bit longer does give them a little bit more time to be able to um to really focus on that coursework so those are that's an option for having one high school okay here we go now we're going to transition to model 4 and this is the model which is tk6 and then two uh 712 schools so what might that look like let's talk about that so um just in terms of the base option um it would be the same this is very the same thing as the model 3 they would all have the same base option that we talked about before and then the same thing with the specialty options that we talked about all the different seven you know ideas uh that you know those again are options for that that would be the same for the model for now uh if it's a 712 and there are two schools in this model this is what it might look like so both schools would have an avid program would have advanced placement would have you know vapid these are the things that you've been seeing right after school sports and clubs and think together and pure mediation and internships and blog schedule those are those would all be the same but then you would have um possibly one school that would focus on uh one set of pathways and then the next school focusing on another set of pathways so you can see of the same pathways that we have but we would have one school that would have one focus and then another school that will have another one so you get your engineering your information and communication your transportation one school would have dual enrollment courses students would be able to take classes um at the community college or those classes would be um at the at the high school international baccalaureate and this is an opportunity to say okay you know let's have a let's have a seven eight nyp the middle years program and then the 912 with the international baccalaureate so that's an opportunity to be able to have that consistent program for seven through 12.
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i'm excited about that any questions um in regards to the hvac at oakl as well as the ones that you're purchasing possibly uh what shelters will be using we'll be using at least for 13. so the new units um we we have units similar to the ones that are on the back so these buildings are called bar units and um so the whole kill project has some of the newest barge units that are out here they will accept them are 13 as well as anything that we put in to replace our aging equipment we'll also be able to filter like crazy very nice any other questions okay our reports and presentations out of 11 and the williams complaint process quarter three report don't blink i'm happy to report there were no complaints this quarter thank you thank you mr germany item number 12 comments from the audience regarding items that are not on the agenda do we have any comments carol i have nothing while i'm reading this statement anyone else in the room no okay all right moving on to board and superintendent reports um let us start with mrs pope tonight well thank you mrs kelly uh just a couple of things um i did go to oak hill with mr decent do you mind if i took this office i was told that they can't hear me with my last song so it's okay with the present morning we're plexiglas department um i did walk oak hill with mr duson mr man miss kelly and as he said the units that were installed or the classrooms that were installed looks like they have been there forever so you know great job to be architects with that that's amazing um if it's approved tonight we will be also receiving or purchasing 21st century furniture to go with the 21st century classroom um and hopefully um any other facilities or improvements uh the same type of furniture would be purchased um i was unable to attend the top ten in purple court and i'm sorry i did have an emergency in houston texas that i had to attend to but i wanted to congratulate all students that participated in those two events they are very remarkable and great events and congratulations to all um i personally want to thank ryle's administration um recently since a class or school has started the students have been dropping their lunch some of their trash behind school of riles and um up to redwater and once addressed by administer to administration i noticed that mr holmsley and some of the campus monitors took their escalade aka their golf cart and started picking up trash um around the neighborhoods so i thank you and i know my neighborhood thank you so i'm very much appreciated and that's all i have dr lee would you like to go next certainly so um i first i just want to say to everyone in the community uh happy asian american and pacific islander heritage month last month our board did authorize a condemnation against the national rise in aapi racial violence we also sent out resources and we hope that students and families will find the actions that we're taking to ensure that safe schools for all means safe schools for all in center joint unified school district to be meaningful i'm really curious to know from some of our educators you know what are some of the ways that you are celebrating asian american and pacific islander heritage month with your classrooms as we wrap up this school year we have a limited number as the um kyoto representative um did mention of days left something like six contact days so hopefully uh we're able to do some celebrations around this important heritage month uh feel free to send me a note drop me an example uh as we head into graduation season here i want to wish all of our graduating middle and high school students a job well done on your graduations i know that many of you worked so hard during a most trying time to achieve this milestone so we really look forward to celebrating with you we had some great conversations at my may drop in office hours suzanne from mom's demand action dropped in to thank the board for approving the action to inform families and students about gun safety in the home and just as a reminder my office hours are first mondays on zoom accessible to all so see you all june 7th 4 30 to 5 30 and the links are there on the board website that concludes my report thank you um this is anderson um i am looking forward to graduations it's something that we didn't get to do last year and i just felt so bad for those kids so it'll be nice to see it happen this year and i know in years past i've had particular in years past we've had great celebrations this month with dancers and dancers and all kinds of things going on at the high school great activities but they just haven't had the time to put all that together this year um and with co-work it's probably not a great idea to have extra events like that also i wanted to bring out we received a letter after the leaving last time about me and adjusting my mask i have a condition that makes me dehydrate really easy so i'm constantly drinking and that's why i was adjusting my mask everybody up here has been vaccinated there's new plexiglass in between each one of us so i don't think anybody was being put at risk and i know online you probably can't see the plexiglas so i just wanted to bring that to you you know the attention of the public that it is there everybody up here feels protected i believe and that's why i was hurting during the meeting and that's it thank you mrs anderson uh i'd love to go next um so it's been a busy month um i had the first delegate conference for the california school board association went to my new delegate orientation which was very interesting and exciting and went to the caucus for our region six and then attended the actual delegate assembly on friday on saturday and sunday of this past week i also completed make four masters of governance four and i have masters in governance five coming up this weekend so friday and saturday that's my last two classes learning lots of great things that i should have known all along some that i did something i'm improving upon so that's great uh it's good for the whole district to have that you know expertise to be able to tap into that and then as delray mentioned we did go visit oak hill elementary and that was wonderful i wanted to see the new kindergartens and she's right they look like they were built i mean it'll look old but they look exactly the same as the rest of the buildings and like like they belonged there from day one and it's unusual to think that there was that much space to put a double and a single building in that little corner but there was plenty of room and it looks beautiful um and the classrooms like she said are you know the 21st century we've got smartboards and tv outlets and all kinds of things going on so it's really exciting um to see that going in and the uh that the landscaping looks fabulous too so thank you for that and i wanted to say welcome to our new hires we have julia jackson student and family support assistant uh new josephine ryan instructional specialist uh autism and we have three retirements in our classified staff so um let's see wait a minute this is classified i'm sorry it is mullis bolton from cafeteria michelle churchill and captec and roberta sharing health assistant good luck in your next phase of life hopefully there's some travel and grandkids and happy fun hiking things going on uh and also congratulations on promotions for andy brackett alyssa demon oh i'm sorry i just ordered your name and shelley tompkins then we have classified retirements congratulations to loan jackson uh from north country elementary and candace ray from wilson t riles we have a new hire kathleen brown and a promotion coming pilcher so uh looks like uh it looks like we've got a lot of movement going on i understand that we are fully staffed for summer so i'm really excited about that because i know that's been the big talk about teacher shortages and you know teacher burnout understandable people like i want to be here but i'm tired and i get that so i just kudos to our staff and and kudos to the people that did all the hiring that we were able to staff up for summer that's fantastic so and then uh looking forward to the graduations next week i'm super excited to see all the little faces and um yeah it's gonna be great and then let's go to mr mirror actually as we're wrapping up this this school year there seems like it's so busy but we start to already look to the future but also we're looking to summer uh this summer program is is much larger than we've ever done um and so i need to give some some kudos to mr jordan and his team to get this all staffed and ready and organized so thank you mr jordan for making that happen uh we have about a thousand students already enrolled and ready to go and we keep getting more so that's quite a big undertaking while we're continuing to close one year and plan for the new year um you know one of the things that we're continuing to plan for right now based on what we're hearing is that full return and then we're really wrestling with what that option for our families who want the virtual option the independent study option will look like so as that guidance comes out we will continue to communicate that to our community to make them aware of the opportunities that they would have um and then i just want to congratulate the students that are promoting you know we'll get an opportunity to see them we can't shake hands like we used to but at least we could be there in spirit and share with them the accolades and the steps that they've taken in their lives so i'm happy to be a part of that that is always the culminating event and miss anderson as you pointed out it is it was hard last year we couldn't do what we normally did and so i think it will give us a little piece of closure for our students as well and then finally i think i said this every every month i just want to thank how remarkable our staff is our board we have a great district people are working really hard to do the right thing for kids and i appreciate everyone's role and contribution to making that happen so i will leave it with that finally the last thing i am looking forward to the board workshop on may 29th um and so i think that'll be a great opportunity for the board to work together with with me and our facilitator and i think that'll be a great saturday day okay thank you good beginnings good beginnings yes so that's wonderful okay this is okay i actually had requested to go uh last on the award reports there's there's been some stuff on my mind since uh last month's meeting uh first i want to say i got the opportunity to go to the top 10 dinner at center and it was really impressive um getting to hear from teachers the impacts that students have had on them instead of the usual story of teachers about impacts on students it was wonderful those kids are absolutely amazing kids they're young adults but they are absolutely amazing and i was honored to be there um so that's um that was a really big positive that was a pleasure to be a part of um something that came up at last month's meeting um we were hearing about all the hard work and long hours that some people were putting in the district and i myself recently had a few health issues and i work for a different school district during the day and i've had some coworkers um dealing with health issues who are reluctant to take time off we are here to serve students in the public and our work's important but i want to remind all of you to take care of yourselves also take take the time that you need don't burn yourself out please just seeing that in my other district i want to let you all know how much i appreciate all the work you do but first and foremost you know take care of yourselves also and then the other thing um and i'd like to practice this by reminding everyone that uh this is not an item on the agenda so this is not uh for discussion right now i just need to get this off my chest uh some of what happened at last month's meeting has been bothering me literally every day since and so i need to comment on it um some data was brought up and about how one of our demographic groups a percentage of them a high percentage were opting for distance learning and it was stated that we need to look at what that means um as a data guy who spends his life dealing with data i can tell you that what that data means is that percentage of that demographic group is opted for distance learning it in and of itself tells us no more than that it may imply that there's more to look at but we can't read anything into it that's not there and to do so is a logical fallacy and most of all we are to be role models and absolutely we cannot jump to racial conclusions and racial stereotypes you know that's set in a bad example we need to be better than that and i think we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard so thank you thank you steve thank you well that's it okay any other comments i think there was something that delray wanted to add after my board report i don't know oh okay and then i also just wanted to i forgot to mention that i did attend purple cord which was fun it was super fun the way that they put it together on student was great and congratulations to all those kids i'm going to take advantage of the two years free junior college which is wonderful and a lot of the moving on at universities we do have a fabulous student who is going to harvard this year so congrats to him and i apologize i know for your name right now david garcia david garcia wow good job great job buddy and i also attended the top 10 united states that was a great event so sorry i forgot this on my report anybody else have anything else just that the top 10 is one of the most touching things that we do get to enjoy as board members yeah it's every year i try to be there but it didn't work out this year but it is a very emotional event it is it is you see them become adults and you think hey they've accomplished twice as much in their 18 years so item number 14 consent agenda uh we've got requests to pull to delete item 7 and to pull item 14.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
3.8 thank you Dr Kaiser second I'll second okay uh second from Mr Lando thank you I have a point of discussion I'm sorry what I have a point of discussion discussion exception on the motion yes discussion on the motion yes yeah I'm sorry yes um representative of Representatives of the ca have referred to this as a bonus and I agree that that's what this is um I don't think a bonus for Chico Unified School District employees uh and management is appropriate at this time given the stress that our community has been over under in the past year and uh so I'll be voting against this expense thank you Mr Ten Mr tennis okay I believe we're ready to call for vote um going to ask for a roll call vote um all those in favor signify by their name Dolby I Kaiser ey Mr tennis tennis a Lando I Robinson I thank you it's it's passed 4 to one okay now to the um tenative agreements so first of all I'm bringing to you the um tenative agreement with CCA um um as I it is in the packet um but the main uh portions of it I'll just kind of do a brief outline and then um be open to any questions if you have any the total cost of the ca um portion of the 2% one time off the salary schedule ual payment is $513,000 um we also negotiated language to remove um catastrophic leave section which is very difficult to implement under IR IRS rules and the union agreed that they did not want to take on those responsibilities um we added registered domestic partner to the language under bement section of the contract we extended the term to June 30th 2024 which is a technicality in that the um contract would have terminated this year and um we just agreed to to continue it for another three years and then um we have um through the funding that the board um approved at the last board meeting we have the ability to do six hours um per School per per day um at school sites and um for um tutorials and um increase in learning um to address learning loss um through the covid um pandemic mic and um what we did was wave districtwide security seniority um rules that we have in the contract and we will Implement only site specific seniority rules so that we don't have for an hour or an hour and a half position having somebody come clear across town um we did this um knowing that each School site was going to get those six hours so the most senior person the most senior people at those School sites are going to get them anyway so we wave some some rules in order to make it more efficient and effective in order to implement those six hours so that's that's kind of the um the gist of the TA for CSA thank you board uh uh any technical questions regarding the tentative agreement being submitted okay do we have any public comment no public comment um board do we have a motion associated with the uh tenative agreement with CA sure Mr landow um I move approval tenative agreement with CA I second thank you I have a motion uh from Mr Lando second by Dr Kaiser any further discussion okay call for the vote all those in favor and we do need to do a roll call because our last vote was not unanimous Dolby I Kaiser I tennis nay for reasons previously stated orando I Robinson I thank you board okay next item is the um approval of the tentative agreement with Chic unified Teachers Association for the 2021 school year okay similarly we have a attenda of agreement with cuta um the uh total cost for the 2% one time off the salary scheduled payment is 1.3 million we did um quite a bit of um language um with this tenative agreement um we completely renumbered the contract um after 40 years the numbering system was um very cumbersome and so we um completely renumbered that we have um some final contract language for full day kindergarten um um we will be implementing the last um of the elementary schools in the district that will now have full dayc next year um we um have language to avoid staff meetings during uh weeks that grades are due which is very disruptive um and we don't really have those normally anyway so that was that was something we could we got reached agreement on fairly easily language referring to yearound school was eliminated um years ago when we had fewer schools and lots of kids and not very many classrooms we had to do year round that's not been a case in quite a long time so we eliminated eliminated that language um we also um included language that we have been working off anou for many years um to uh to to pay teachers $500 per student um if they're over their case load um for an additional five students um that saves us from having to create whole sections for just a handful of students um at the secondary sites so it's a win-win it saves the district quite a bit of money and um and then it compensates the teachers fairly um if they volunteer to do so and then we rewrote article 11 which is assignment reassignments and transfers which um had a lot of very uh gray hazy language in it that that could be interpreted different ways and was right for grievances so without changing content we we made the the the language as crystal clear as we could so that it's understandable for both sides regardless of what side of the issue you might be on and a transfer or reassignment so we think we did we think we did a pretty good job we'll find out if there's any grievances in the future but it's much clearer now than it was and then finally um we we have um state funded preschools in the district and um we wrote a section specific to those they have a different work year they have a different work length of a work day um their class loads are different their p is different so pretty much everything was had to be Rewritten from scratch so we have a section that is goes specifically to preschool teachers so that is kind of the gist of the cuta tentative agreement thank you Mr hin board do you have any technical questions regarding what's contained in the tentative agreement with cuta okay do we have any public comment I I do have a quick question for Jim um this pertains the the 2% is only to teachers that are currently employed correct currently employed and um in paid status at the time of the uh of the agreement that's I thought thank you thank you okay do I have a motion uh yeah I did ask there there's no public comment okay um board do we have a motion associated with this agenda item I move to pass the uh tentative agreement with the Chico Unified teachers asso iation for 2021 do I have a second I'll second that thank you Miss Doby have a motion by Dr Kaiser second by um member Dolby uh any other board discussion okay I'm going to call for a vote um all those in favor um again roll call Dolby I ker I tennis n Rando I Robinson I okay it's four to one um is er Erica nod your head if if we're fine okay thank you um next is the um obligation Bond under Business Services the um General obligation Bond program overview and 2016 series c bond issuance my favorite stuff this this is the good stuff I know um we do have makiko online she is our financial adviser with isim advisers um she has a brief presentation that she um we would like her to go through with you um so I'm going to turn it over to mikiko at this time and Miko just let me know when you'd like to go to the next slide and I'll move us along okay thank you very much uh board president board members superintendent Staley District staff and members of the public um thank you very much for the opportunity to make a presentation um tonight about your bom program so um this presentation covers a number of topics I'm going to start out with some general uh Bond program background so the chico Community has long supported the district's General obligation Bond program and the facility improvements um the two most recent Bond elections were in 2012 and 2016 in November 2012 District voters approved measure B which was a $78 million Geo Bond measure with 65% voter support so far the district has issued 45 million in bonds from that authorization meaning that there is 33 million in authorized but unissued bonds remaining from that authorization um one other thing I wanted to point out that measure e was designed as a tax rate extension meaning that the district intended to keep combined tax rates for both measure e and all prior Bond authorizations uh specifically um Bond authoriz bonds authorized in 1988 and 1998 to keep the combined tax rates for all those Bond programs to $45.50 per $100,000 and assessed value in November of 2016 sorry the district voters approved measure K which was $152 million General obligation Bond measure so far the district has issued $100 million from that authorization uh meaning that there is 52 million in authorized but unissued bonds remaining and measure k um was designed differently than measure e in that it has a completely separate tax rate and the measured K tax rate target is $60 for $100,000 in assessed value so the bomb program was designed to alternate between the two Bond measures um in the table Below on this slide um you can see the blue bars represent the measure K bonds and the green lines rows um represent the measure e bonds and compar it to the actual um the original plan of issuance we've been able to issue the bonds a bit sooner and um to upsize specifically the uh measure e 2012 series B bonds from 20 million to 30 million and we've been able to upssize um and issue the bonds a little bit sooner because of strong assessed valuation growth uh that we've experienced since 2016 um and also due to the very low interest rate environment that we continue to see so one of the metrics that I wanted to share with the board tonight um and you know one of the goals of the program when I started working with the district uh I want to say right around 2016 um was to proactively manage the district's tax rates um and prior to 2016 um the district experience some fluctuating tax rates um and so we wanted to collaborate work a little bit closely with the county to manage the district's uh Bond program tax rates um we haven't to be perfectly honest um this has been a little bit of a harder undertaking than what I had originally envisioned um and you can see that some of the measure e tax rates have um jumped around a little bit uh but overall when you look at the combined program from 2018 to the current tax rates um they've been actually rather stable and um over that period of time time I think our uh working relationship with the county staff uh who set calculate and set these tax rates has improved quite a bit so we continue to um be able to manage tax rates moving forward and to collaborate with the county so on the next slide um I wanted to share another um good metric that we look at um and that is the repayment ratio the repayment ratio is ratio where we take the total debt service the total payments associated with a certain series of bonds and we compare it with the amount of power amount that we um initially raised um when we were designing the metri K bomb program we were very conservative in terms of the structure so although the statutory limit in terms of repayment ratio is 4 to1 we were aiming significantly below that um somewhere between 1.5 to one to uh 2:1 depending on the series of bonds and that's shown in the estimated repayment ratio column in the table below our actual repayment ratio has been significantly below our original estimates which is shown on the far right column and um just to give you a sense of how much that actually means in terms of savings to taxpayers um we calculated that out to be about 39 million less in total debt service than we had originally projected um on these series of bonds here that we that have actually been issued so a lot of great news so far in terms of the bond program and then we wanted to um do a deeper dive in terms of the meor K Bond issuance as the district um is planning to issue its third and final series of bonds from the measure care authorization all right so as I mentioned before assessed value is one of the most important inputs into a bump program and since measure K was approved uh the district has seen very strong and consistent assess valuation growth measure K was designed with a 3 and a half% assessed value um growth per year and you'll see that we've exceeded that in every single year since the election another positive factor on the next slide um is the interest rate environment we were fairly conservative in assuming 5% borrowing rates um and we've actually been significantly below that um series a and series B were actually issued in a fairly strong interest rate environment uh a good one for issuers but you can see on the graph on the left that currently rates at every single maturity are lower than they were um at the time of the series a and series B issuance um and stepping back a little bit more the graph on the right shows that we are historically in a very low interest rate environment and then moving on to the next slide um this is where we talk about the structure of the series c bonds and this graph here is a little complicated um so each of the bars represent the projected tax rates per year associated with the different series of bonds that have been issued under measure K and what we want to do is we stack them up and we want to keep the total tax rate associated with measure K under that $60 per $100,000 um in asss value Target um that is actually the prop 39 limit and the estimate that was provided to voters and here we're able to structure the series c bonds which are the gray bars to layer on top of the existing Debt Service to stay within that $60 tax rate target the bonds will be structured entirely as traditional current interest bonds and there will be principal repayment in every single year and there I say that we have a final maturity of 25 years uh then actuality will probably be able to be um shorter than closer to 20 years rather than 25 years in terms of the repayment term so overall a very um conservative and um conservative structure for the series c bonds and and we appreciate Mika working with us in that area we've really tried to reduce the um repayment terms on on these bonds and this debt because we know that um our facilities will need improvements in the future and we really want to be good stewards of the Public's money and pay this off as quickly as possible all right so the next section is the refunding opportunity so whenever um we're doing a new money issuance particularly in a low interest rate environment we want to see whether there is any opportunity to refinance or refund some of the other bonds that are outstanding and when we did a review of The District's Bond program we identified two series of bonds that may be good candidates for this this is uh the two series series are the 2012 General obligation refunding bonds and the 2012 series A bonds which are highlighted um on this um in this table here so right now you can see on slide 13 um that if we refund those two series of bonds uh we are likely to be able to generate pretty significant taxpayer savings a reduction in the total debt service um we're at estimating gross taxpayer savings to be a little over $2 million um on a present value basis that is about 1.5 million and uh the PV savings as a percentage of refunded par would be about 7% um the industry threshold is to at least have 3% savings when you're moving forward with these refundings um and as uh Advanced refunding I'd like to see um a little bit higher savings and so um you know right now we're looking at about 7% um if that goes up closer to 10% I'd be pretty thrilled um but this is something that um we will continue to track um I did want to note that because of the tax reform bill um of 2017 some of the requirements around refundings have changed um and so in order to um do this refunding the new bonds will need to be issued on a taxable basis and that may change uh the par amount of bonds outstanding um but you know the big picture here is that we want to make sure that we're generating taxpayer savings um and currently we're generating pretty significant uh taxpayer savings um so I think this will be a good opportunity uh for us to continue to monitor um and then on the next page um I also did want to um talk about this refunding in the context of the overall 2012 measure ebom program uh the measure ebom program is fairly constrained uh through 2026 because of the debt service that is um outstanding um the yellow bars are the projected Debt Service associated with the third and final series of bonds for measure e um but the refunding could help to restructure some of the debt service in measure and I know this is getting a little bit technical but um you know so we will be able to Target get some of the Savings in specific years um to help us manage the tax rate um for the measure e program um and as I mentioned earlier we want to keep the combined tax rate for the major and all prior authorizations within $45.50 for $1,000 in assessed value so that's not a um legal Target a legal requirement um as the $6 was for the metri k um it is a political Target but we do want to be mindful of the tax burden on the Cho Community um so we would like to continue to honor that and let me just add that if we do refund a bond we do not extend the term of the bond so it's not as if we re refund it and then take longer to pay it off we really just taking advantage of the interest rate thank you um and so in terms of the issu and schedule currently um today is the presentation to the board regarding the fin financing plan um the board would uh consider a resolution authorizing the measure case series C and the refunding bonds at the June 23rd board meeting um and after the board uh gives its approval or if the board gives its approval um we will meet with the rating agencies in July um and then price the bonds in Late July uh with a closing in August um and then the next slide I did have one um there is one Bond resolution on the agenda tonight and that is the tax rate resolution um this is a bit of an administrative step where um the county sets tax rates in the summer for the upcoming fiscal year and then according to educal California Education Code section 15252 um the district can have the county include an estimate of Deb service of bonds that are expected to be issued in the upcoming fiscal year in the calculation of the tax rates um and then the advantage of getting on the tax rate uh tax role for the upcoming year is that it will allow us to start paying down principle on the new bonds uh immediately um and it will help us avoid fluctuating tax rates um the district previously approved a similar resol resolution um in connection with 2018 and 201819 tax rates a few years ago thank you Miko thank you if I could just add to the board the reason um this is important uh for us to continue to issue bonds is we certainly have increasing escalation costs related to construction so the sooner that we we can get improvements in the ground um the better and we really are moving Julie uh kissell and her team have really done a nice job of continuing projects so as we're in the middle of one we're planning the next so we really do need this next Bond sale to continue moving on our next project mcmanis and then moving further into phase four the facility master plan so the timing works for us um and we'd like to take advantage of the market and issue the remaining balance of measure K which this is the final series we would have issued all of measure k um that was approved in 2016 um within five years and um we're going to work as quickly as we can to put that in the ground because again if I'm a taxpayer I want to see that my tax dollars have have gone towards something and I think you can see that if you go around town okay if I'm not mistaken what we are doing tonight is receiving the present presentation with the June 23rd date uh to move the approval correct that is correct Miko correct I'm wrong but I believe the action that we will need the board to take would be on the next item related to um the resolution 15382 that's correct there is a tax rate resolution um that the actual approval of the bonds will happen at the June 23rd board meeting any any questions of M for from the board you just do a great job M thank you yes one of the the most fun times I've had in my experience as a board member was sitting in Kevin's office and and watching Bond sales happen live at the most amazing experience are there any public comments are there are none okay since this is a receive and file um there's no action necessary board so we'll move to the next item which is the action item um resolution 1538 D21 Mr baltim uh resolution has been presented to the board for your consideration based on uh presentation Mika we recommend the board move uh approval of the resolution which we communicate to the county so that we can establish the tax rate and start paying principal if we issue bonds um this summer any questions from board members any public comment no public comment okay is there a motion from the board regarding this agenda item Mr Lando good sorry sorry no that's okay go um I move the adoption of resolution further discussion board I'm going to call for the vote um did we have a unanimous vote with our last IEM where are we okay so we're we're still we're still needing a a a roll call vote uh member Doby Dolby I Kaiser I tennis I land I Robinson I passes unanimously thank you thank you board okay thank you Miko oh yes thank you it's good to see you even though you're not actually here i' hopefully next time yes okay demographic analysis where are our demographics people okay huh oh hello good there we are here okay um the demographics report presentation um who's Julie are you are you going to be doing the overview yes I'm here okay can you hear me yes Julie Kissle you're on great thank you all for having us here tonight um we certainly appreciate your time I'm going to just introduce the topic and then we'll have Rob muray um go through the presentation um for those of you board members that are new um just want to set it up for you that it's critically important for us to keep a breast of enrollment changes and future projections in order to house the students in the district it's why we investigate birth rates housing sales residential developments very thoroughly on an annual basis we um we've been working with with King Consulting for a number of years so they have quite a backlog of our historical data that they utilize to um provide the reports that you've seen in the overall study uh you've all received a copy of the larger study but tonight Rob Murray from King Consulting is just going to walk you through the key takeaways from the study um he's going to say this and you all know this um this is a very odd year we've had a few odd years um with the fires um up in the paradise area cona area and then the covid pandemic um it has been pretty difficult to try to figure out what's going to happen with our future enrollments and I'm going to let Rob walk you through the whole thing so at this point um oh I wanted to mention if you have any questions please feel free to interrupt and ask them um this is informal and if you want to hold your questions until the end that's fine as well so with that I will hand it over to Rob right thank you Julie and thank you Bor I'm just going to go ahead and Dive Right In we have uh even with this high level view uh still a lot of information to cover so as Julie mentioned we're not going to be hitting every single thing from the study but that said if you read something in the study that I don't address tonight and you have questions about it go ahead and feel free to ask I'm happy to talk about anything that is in that study let's go ahead and move on to the next slide so uh then again please so a quick look at The District's overall enrollment Trends and what you see is between 2014 and 2019 a period of steady increasing enrollment which just to put that into a big picture context for a minute across the state of California uh this is not something that a lot of districts are experiencing right now and there's a lot of reasons why we believe your underlying factors indicate still a growth Trend but obviously this year uh you saw that sudden dip in enrollment and oftentimes when something like that happens it's against Trend we have to really dig into the data and look for why what suddenly changed what happened I think this year we know exactly what that is so we don't need uh to necessarily investigate it's more a matter of what kind of long-term impact is this going to have how much is this going to change some of those underlying trends that had been very firmly established so next uh slide please so a quick look so what you're seeing here in the top graph is breaking out so all of these will add up to those same totals you saw in the previous slide but we're breaking it out by the elementary enrollment the junior high enrollment and then on the top the high school enrollment and so just not to linger on this too much but what you see again that period between 2014 and 2019 when there was so much growth you see at the elementary level that's where the district had gained more than 400 students uh every time you you have these larger cohorts coming into kindergarten they displace a smaller cohort that moves in the junior high and every time you have a big number coming in to take the place of a small [Music] number you get growth so you see at the junior highs you had just been starting to see that same pattern those bigger cohorts were starting to get into the junior high grades and in high school you actually really hadn't even seen that wave of growth hitting yet and then this year with the impacts from covid-19 you see uh again the Elementary grades saw actually the most decline uh actually relatively little at high school and that's what we see a lot of the districts we work with across the state uh particularly the younger grades and you see that in the chart at the bottom with the kindergarten enrollment especially with kindergarten and TK not being mandatory to enroll a lot of families who had those children in those grades uh just didn't enroll at all and that will be the telling moment next year with how much kindergarten enrollment do you get and then of these students that would have been in kindergarten this year but just didn't show up uh getting them back again for first grade and on once again so next slide please and I mentioned those underlying factors that make us confident that this is still a growth trajectory overall and uh really so looking at the overall population of course you see a lot of growth across all the age ranges but that gold portion of the stat column is what we call your relevant school age population those uh residents within your School District boundary uh according to Census records who are 5 to 17 years old will uh certainly this 2019 estimate is based on American Community survey there is a chance that some of this is a little over inflated by some of the movement after the fires but we'll have that Full Count sensus data coming out so again your next update will uh actually have some of the most certain data that we've had but these estimates are still overall uh quite dependable and just show there that population of school age students is increasing and you've been seeing that over these last several years with the district's enrollment growth so next slide please and so one another excuse me one other big reason that you're seeing this enrollment growth is of course there has been quite a bit of residential development occurring in The District in the city of Chico And as you have more housing you have new families move in a fair number of them will have schoolage children and then those students will enroll in cusd schools so we look every time we do this study at various categories of recent development and see how many students are kind of immediately being generated when new homes are being built and then we use that to look at the development that's going to be occurring over the next few years to get an gauge of how many students were adding into the enrollment projections in addition just to the uh just underlying growth people moving into existing homes that is also occurring and you know what you see having affordable or below market rate housing is going to generate the most students uh typically single family attached so homes that are for purchase but that share a wall with other units might not have as much of or any of a yard tend to generate the fewest uh along with a lot of the multif family development uh and then the other big trend is that this year uh we did see student generation rates going down across the board again we have to check in when it's not Co we also though have noticed a general correlation as housing gets more expensive student generation tends to go down so we just keep we do have a question we have a question from uh board member Doby yes yes thank thank you um with this study could can you quantify what you mean by affordable and um if this is just purchase price taken into account for housing or if it's also rental availability no that that is a great question and so affordable housing that tends to be uh something that is a category uh that uh I mean there are different various uh levels of affordability uh but it will generally be uh units that I believe start with income requirements that are at 80% or below of the median Statewide or Regional income uh and then you might even go as low as 50 or 30% uh for different types of affordable we in this case are just looking at anything that is tagged as affordable housing and that goes into uh developers usually have an a component of affordability that needs to be built into projects uh and there might be uh there are some units that are fully uh designated as affordable housing this gets into your uh your county and your local Regional Housing needs assessment if you look at the city's housing element in the general plan there will be indications of the amount of housing of certain affordability levels that is the aim to build over a certain time period so what you're saying is that it's a moving Target it's not really easily quantifiable because it's a moving Target and so if our um if our demographic shift shifts drastically like it did after the campfire that that may cause that affordable level to be a much different number yeah see generally once when housing is designated as affordable again yes you're right the the precise income level that would qualify someone uh to be eligible for that affordable housing might change but the number of units that are designated as affordable units uh should be a more static number okay Chico designated zero affordable housing last year no and that and and certainly uh you know we we track the number of units that at least uh you know on paper with developments are indicated to be an a any affordable components yeah I'm I I'm just uh leery of the word affordable people throw that word out like it's candy at at a parade um because you know that's what everybody wants to hear is affordable housing but you know I I've heard developers tag you know $350 $400,000 houses as affordable housing and it's laughable um with our with our shifts in demographics lately oh and that is a good perspective to keep in mind and then we also look yeah we can go ahead and move on to the resale slide we also uh a benefit as Julie mentioned that we've been doing the study for a number of years is that Year bye we uh do a study of homes over the B approximately the past year that existing homes that sold in the district to track and these were tending to look at the single family detached homes uh but just to track how that student generation rate changes over time and uh through the early part of 20120 Records where we did our cut off with the start of the school year when there would have been time for those families to have moved in and students to have enrolled uh we actually saw a small increase but you still see the overall trend as one as I mentioned earlier that as the purchase price of these homes increases generally the student generation rate is decreasing will certainly continue to keep an eye on this as well so next slide please and then uh again there's more detail on this in the full report uh but a map of the development projects that we are tracking through the city of Chico and then onto the next slide and then combining that with those student generation rates uh and you can see uh just from that map the Southeastern part of the city uh has the highest unit count and so you see the little Chico Creek Elementary boundary uh of the current boundary assignment of the district uh definitely has the highest number of students being generated but I mean there's something happening in every single boundary at every single School uh somewhere in the district so a quick look at the spatial analysis and I'm not going to linger on the specific numbers in the table but just I think this is one of the most useful tools that we provide and so just as a reference what we're looking at with these matrices uh so across the top all the columns that's where students live so you're going down the Emma Wilson column that's highlighted as an example so 11 of the students who reside in that boundary actually are enrolled in Chapman 16 of them are enrolled in Citrus Etc going across the row uh you see of all the students who are enrolled in Emma Wilson four of them are residing in the Chapman boundary and transferring over and then Etc as you move across and what this is really pointing out is that uh aside from of some of the special programs pardon me there uh and then aside from some of the uh interdistrict transfers but every single possible combination of a student living in one of your boundaries and attending one of your schools is occurring and that's uh just important to keep in mind just when you're considering facility needs across all levels right now so next slide please and so now we're gonna look before you move on Rob um that on that last slide it really shows the dynamic nature of um the student Choice the parent choice that our district has that U students are going to school all over our town not necessarily uh the school of residence and um that's why it's so important for us to track this information so that we can keep up with the parent choice and make sure that we have housing for our students go ahead Rob yep good always to mention and then as we get into the projected moment uh one of the biggest factors uh I mentioned a little bit ago that trend of when you have large cohorts coming in and they replace a smaller cohort just mathematically you have a small number exiting and a bigger number entering and that's just going to naturally increase your enrollment up every year that happens and one big way that we anticipate the size of those kindergarten cohorts that are coming in is by looking at births and here's where even more so than the fact that your district has been gaining in enrollment your local births have been stable you know steady and stable over the last little bit and this is highly unusual I mean you've probably seen a lot of Articles not just I mean California particularly but really Across the Nation uh there has been just a general decrease in birth rates and the number of births and so the fact that for the zip and we track this by the California Department of Public Health based on the residence of the mother so even if the birth occurs somewhere outside of Chico as long as the mother resides and any of the zip codes that we associate with Chico we are capturing that here Rob we have another question yeah a question from Dr Kaiser uh Rob so I I was really struck by this because um I have a friend who just had a baby and said seeing a a seeing the doctor for that was like almost impossible because everybody was pregnant um I now have two granddaughters who are also pregnant uh so I think uh that this context of you know we talk about all the loss and the pandemic but some people were busy and U I think we are going to see a birth impact from that covid babies they're called yes at least at least in your area uh and uh will certainly keep track of more birth data as it's made available but uh so many districts are staring down uh just kind of a downward spiral of you know already having a bunch of small cohorts coming in and seeing nothing but birth rates going down and down every year and you're not in that situation that's why we can be confident again that you're going to continue to see these larger kindergarten cohorts that started coming in several years ago uh just because the number of births will continue to support that size of new cohort coming in every year and so you see again in the most recent year an exception I you can maybe call this a capture rate but usually uh somewhere in the high 70s to low 80s perent of those births will turn into kindergarten students five years later uh this past year was only 74% but again we anticipate a lot of those kindergarteners who didn't actually enroll this year are still going to come to the district uh just not this year so next slide please and so again same thing then we look at uh once we establish what we think those new kindergarten cohorts are going to be we look at all the existing students your existing kindergarteners move to first grade first into second Etc so overall you have all of your k11 students and they all move up broadly into grades 1 to 12 and if this were just you were under uh you know in a magic bubble where no one could enter and no one could leave you'd know exactly how many students you would have but in reality you a lot of people move out of the district and a lot of people move in and we look at on net what happens to your enrollment and you can see literally every single year except for the current year in the last decade that net result has been an increase in students and so again we don't have to go digging to know what changed this year it's really just looking at what kind of impact this might have going forward uh so next slide please and so here's a little bit more detail on this so we did a very kind of deeper dive this year uh so we looked at not just those net results but exactly in you know in a more normal year how many students who were in The District uh in one year who you would expect to come back and they don't show up again the next year and then how many brand new students who you didn't have the year before but show up in a grade past kindergarten and not surprisingly what we found this year is the district lost more students than it usually loses and it gained fewer students than usually gains and so we have what we call expected students who didn't enroll and so we for our enrollment projections built in depending on which projection it was at least some of these students to come back at every grade level so next slide please so again I'm only going to be presenting what we call our moderate projection tonight that is our planning projection that's the one that really balances out a lot of these in input factors uh kind of tries to smooth out some of the I you don't have huge extremes of inputs here which is again another reason we're confident in your underlying trajectory of enrollment uh but in the study you'll see we also have a high and a low projection especially just for the short term one two maybe three years out that can be useful uh just to kind of see what if everything lines up with the kind of the high or the low end of what your recent uh extremes have been uh those are totally plausible short-term projections but once once you get into those longer term I mean it's it's less and less likely that those extremes would all continue at that level for that long so that's why we're just going to focus on the moderate projection so we can go ahead and look at that next slide and so what you see here uh you know this is building back in the assumption that a lot of those students who didn't enroll this year are going to come back to you in the fall uh jumping back up close to the level of 2019 then as development continues to occur continuing to increase in enrollment and then what we're not really showing here in those out years and this is where I mean you you don't do a projection and then just keep using that for 10 years by the time you're out to the late 20s out to the year 2030 there will almost certainly be additional residential development that is not even you know the beginning you know it's just an idea right now that hasn't even gotten to the planner office at the city that will be tracking that we'll be adding in uh but we certainly wait until there's at least some kind of shape around a project before we can start building it and so keep in mind as you start to see those numbers tail off a little bit at the end uh there's a very good chance that by the time we get to those years uh there's going to be even more development that will then keep boosting those numbers and uh again this is also uh that kind of moderate assumption uh we'll see this will be one of those big check-ins next year between having the firm census data and just really seeing uh what our assumptions were about the number of students you get back from covid so then final slide please uh just a quick look we have these are the capacity numbers that come from the district's facility master plan uh that has already adopted so uh this is just again looking that at the elementary level is really where uh enrollment is coming closest to uh in this case uh just because of the decrease from this year we're uh actually showing uh a little bit less of a you know time period before you're coming up close to that but that's the one to really keep an eye on uh but again growing enrollments across all your levels uh and so just very important to continue watching the level of your available facilities and comparison to to what your enrollment Trends are so at this point uh happy to take whatever specific questions that anyone has are there any additional questions by board members yes Mr tennis sir do you pay attention to individual School sites and developments that are coming down the pike and how it's going to impact individual schools is that part of your job I I'll take that one Rob um thank you Mr tennis for asking that question because that last slide really um really brings into culmination how I wanted to wrap up this presentation so you start to look at the implementation of the facilities master plan and we've been walking the top of a fence for several years um the direction we got from the board when we implemented um the master plan and and the bond program all together was that it was a desire to improve all of our existing Elementary School sites instead of spending all of the bond money at at the you know takeoff point on a brand new elementary school um Equity was the Big Goal so we didn't want to provide a brand new elementary school that you know 600 students in our our district got to go to while the other students had to go to a school that had not been improved had not been um brought up to the standards that we wanted every child in the district to be able to experience so um with the implementation of phase four of the master plan it's been decided that we were going to start on mcmanis Elementary School next we're dealing with the growth in the uh North and North western part of town so we've we have increased the capacity at Chasta and we have modernized that campus we have modernized and added enrollment capacity at Neil Dow and now we're going to be tackling mcmanis um making it a much more attractive and safer School site to attract the residents that are moving into that North and Northwestern part of Chico as Rob mentioned earlier where you see the most potential for residential growth is really in the Southeast and those projects are just not coming along as quickly as the growth we're seeing in the north and Northwestern part of town but that is definitely going to be our Focus after mcmanis is focusing on those schools that are affected by the growth in the southeast so um I hope that answers your question we definitely do look at every school and um we're trying to keep ahead of the growth so that we can house our students while at the same time meeting that goal of the board to create Equity across all of our elementary school sites for all of our kids any other questions board Mr Lando thank you uh Rob anecdotally I've heard stories about um the high price of housing driving people to leave uh the area and the state do you have any data that might back that up and if so is that something that might um make this uh current uh negative growth that we saw on slide 16 something that might stick around longer no that is a great question and yes anecdotally uh you certainly a lot of people uh I think have some legitimate concerns and all I would say is that we continue uh we will just continue to monitor what your local births are doing we will continue to monitor uh as housing is built uh and certainly the market seems to be uh quite conducive to a lot of people wanting to move forward and build housing right now even with the anecdotal stories of a lot of people moving out does not uh you know so we'll just certainly see uh what's going on but everything I'm seeing with the underlying demographics everything that I'm seeing uh just with the continued development of homes and again while the student generation rates were a little lower this year uh still with a good number of students being generated from those uh I would need to again move past the anecdotal and really see uh a much bigger uh deviation from what have been some pretty firmly established Trends uh and that said what but if we do start to see those uh then yes we could definitely chain you know in a couple of years we might see a different report but for this report now uh we're still very confident in showing an overall under you know strong underlying pattern of growth for the district thank you Dr Kaiser in fact uh homes do not stay on the market very long and a lot of people are forced to do cash bids because of the context of actually getting one so I think uh one of the things that will be impactful will be if Chico actually moves towards more affordable housing um which they haven't done in this past year and a half so um but uh def definitely people are buying there's no question about that do we have any public comment we have no public comment okay um we do need to accept this um report demographics report or adopted do I have a a motion I'd like to move 10.3.3 I second second I have a motion by Dr Kaiser and a second by Mr tennis um any further board discussion all those um in favor I I I I I it's unanimous thank you board Bard uh we've been asked to take a 10-minute break so we are going to do that and return at what time is it 10 minutes from whatever time we now have 84 8:42 thank you board we're all back in place uh call us back into session okay um we finished the uh demographics analysis and so now we are um with item number four potential new Elementary School site Valley's Edge development which fits right in with our last item Julie thank you I want to make a correct um on that title um it actually should be called the Valley's Edge planning area um not the Valley's Edge development um so we'll correct that in the future um tonight um we have Bill Broward with us from valley's Edge and the facilities department has been talking with Bill about the planning area for many many years uh it goes really far back um the board heard about it in um February of 2018 was the last time that we we brought forward kind of an update information about the area and um I'm happy to say that we have um Bill Broward with us here tonight and he's going to go through a a quick presentation on uh what's been going on and and and all about this area that he's been working on for many years and uh we also as you have seen in your board packet there's a letter um that the district is going to be providing to um Mr Broward if the board allows um at the end we can discuss that but for now let me introduce to you um Mr Bill Brown good evening um thank you for taking the time to listen to this update I think this is our our third third time we've been before the the board um simply to provide an update and to keep the new board members I think there are three new board members since 2018 um to familiarize you you with with the the general plan directives for this area um and the collaboration um that has happened over the years with our planning team Chico area Recreation district and Chico Unified School District um so I'll I think I'll say next on some of these slides is that the code word um uh so this area has been part of the uh plan for growth in both City and County General plans for about 10 years um the most recent Chico General plan I'm sure you all know adopted in 2011 and then amended and reviewed uh back in March of next um my primary job is to is to implement Chico's General plan um as a as a master planner next um this is the area it's referred to in the chico General plan is the dill Honey Run special planning area there are five special planning areas in the chico community and general plan um Valley Edge represents over half of the acreage of all combined special planning areas and I well over 30% of the capacity for housing next uh appendix C of the general plan describes what is referred to as kind of the community's vision for this special planning area and our job as planning managers is to implement that vision next uh there's specific references to Community Park Elementary School next um and within Chico's General plan we've got uh goals and action items that inform and direct both us as land owners and planners uh as well as the district and card primary goal is to continue Cooperative efforts uh the this is this is in the Parks public facilities element of the chico General plan the first action is encourage card and Chico Unified to coordinate joint used school facilities so that's effectively where we can have a community park and an elementary school that can share facilities it doesn't change the criteria for planning an elementary school which is about 14 acres and you've got all your own facilities but it does in the future provide a really good synergy between sharing parking fields and Ingress and egress and altered uh times for Fields there's a really good collaboration between elementary schools and Community parks and we haven't been able to do that in Chico so this is the first kind of forward opportunity Forward Thinking opportunity and we've been coordinating with the district and with card since 2008 um another action items talks about where where schools should be located serving new neighborhoods away from heavy traffic in areas where plans or existing circulation can allow for safe access safe loading safe unloading of kids and and to me the one that's most important is really promoting walking and biking um to uh to our schools my I've got a 10-year-old at Sierra viw and I've got a 12-year-old at Marsh and Sierra View as a new parent trying to navigate parking and unloading and loading was a real challenge for my wife and I and every parent I think that goes through that um so being able to plan 10 years out 15 years out how turning movements would happen and how buses can get in and out without compromising walking and and bicyclists and really thinking through how people move and thinking through how we encourage people to move in ways that don't require the vehicle next uh the the planning area the special planning area is is here located at the end of 20th Street bordered on the south by Skyway and honeyrun Road bordered on the North by Stillson Canyon it's about a mile and a half Square it's next a mile and a half away from kind of the center of Chico mall next and in as I think your consultant mentioned a lot of the the planning activity the chico General plan pushes a lot of growth in order to protect the green line and what has now become the Gold Line or brown line on the east side of Chico um encouraging development consistent with the general plan in areas on land where food doesn't grow to preserve the best soil um in the world in some accounts um this is this kind of walks you through what our original ethic was um imagine if we could replan Chico if we could start with open space and and see open space not just as a way to preserve the natural environment but a way to move people through and imagine if we could widen Lindo Channel and big Chico Creek uh through Bidwell Park has good access but little Chico Creek much of it is inaccessible commanche Creek much of it is inaccessible the public doesn't have an opportunity to utilize that but if we could rethink that and use these to connect people east to west through the community and north to south through the community um uh next slide um that's that's why planning open space first in an area with natural resources that need to be preserved is so important next slide and that's exactly what we've done with the open space framework in this planning area um it provides not only for preservation of important natural resources um next slide but but it also uh like these these are all examples of the typical open space character rock walls historic rock walls those are part of the land Heritage we need to respect that we need to pay it forward educate people these are part of Chico's Heritage and that's another anchor commitment in this in this planning area is to make people aware of those preserve them incorporate natural rock wall or natural rocks into landscaping and have that be part of the the social fabric um rock escarpments Oak Woodlands uh seasonal Creeks this is some of the most beautiful land in Chico um and when we get to the principles you'll see that the land matters we need to listen to it um next this is just typical development character where we've got kind of open grassland it's Rocky in many areas um the we kind of plan a lot of the Steep areas those are all open space development areas end up being relatively uh uh gentle and slope um it's not like Canyon Oaks it's more like California park uh uh on the east on the south side of the lake um both in terms of topography as well as soil conditions uh and I talked a little bit about the open space framework um the bicycle Network in Valley's Edge is the most comprehensive in the community of Chico next um we've got over 20 miles almost 25 miles of trails connecting pieces places to where people live work and play next uh there are three levels there are kind of three types of trails in our Master trail system nature trails class one Trails which is kind of baby stroller and and commuting enhanced Trails um which are kind of you see we a lot of enhanced trails in Bidwell Park next uh this is the overall Master Trails plan next um and you can see the yellow is kind of the class one trail system um what this illustrates is no matter where one lives within this planning area you're going to be able to connect to a trail system that leads to every neighborhood park that leads to the Comm the public space on the west side it's really a a way of of moving people around um and I'm going to use an example here I live in California park our neighborhood park is across Bruce road so my kids have to get have to drive on lak West Drive theyve got to drive across Bruce road to get to a neighborhood park that's surrounded by homes what we've done in Valley's Edge is nestal naturalized neighborhood parks within larger open space corridors so to get to a neighborhood park instead of driving in a car which parents shouldn't be doing and and it's no fun when you get there because all we have is a steel bench to sit on the family gets on a trail right near their house and that begins the adventure in open space so it's promoting nature it's promoting kids getting off of the iPads getting out into the woods and the forest um and that's all part of the master plan architecture this isn't possible on small 5 acre parcels and that little yellow thing that just came up is the Elementary School location all Trails lead to it next this is a blowup of that area you'll see the uh Elementary School kind of right in the center to the left is a is a community park so we've we've designed these areas in collaboration with with jul and her staff um as well as with card I think we started with Steve Visconti back in 2008 uh and we've been through a couple of directors card's always been consistent their master plan calls for a community park in this area uh Chico General plan identifies an elementary park being in this area um these are amenities Lake features on the North side we've drawn a lot of inspiration from just the local community asking questions what what do we need more of what do we love in Bidwell Park that we don't have that we we were overusing uh Horseshoe Lake was a big element so we we're planning uh Lake elements on the North uh Community Gardens family picnic areas uh neighborhood parks um next then this is kind of the village core area which is right near the neighborhood park I mean the elementary school so getting from the elementary school to the Village core which is kind of that uh uh Deli Village scale retail um as well as Community Clubhouse are are a one minute bike ride away Along a class one Trail path right through the Community Gardens next um the vision for a joint use Community Park in elementary school um and I want to be clear this is not the district's uh plan the district will go through its own planning process when an elementary school is needed in this area our job is to kind of arrange land uses around an elementary school site that complement that School site and don't conflict with it um and in this case Community Park medium density residential which is kind of some of our Workforce housing um and then again a collector roadway system that has a lot of opportunities for safe left turning movements and and left in left out and so forth um these are the collaborative outcomes it it aligns really well with what the general plan directives are um Road and Trailways designed to create safe access circulation parking pullouts Community Park complimentary surrounding land uses and again I always go back to this an open SP Tri an Open Space Trail Network that promotes people walking and riding um and getting them out of their cars next uh and that that's concludes this short presentation I'm happy to address any questions you may have or any questions bill that was fantastic thank you I'd like to make one clarification there was an article in this morning's Enterprise record that implied um the board was being asked to support the development um you're not being asked to support the development um the specific plan which is kind of a a Zoomed In general plan is not ready yet we're still working on it you haven't seen it I will never ask anybody or any institution to support an application for a plan in City Chico my job is kind of inform you um but I just want to kind of set the record straight you're not being asked to support a development the distinction between a development and a planning area Chico's got one gen one specific plan it's the Northwest specific plan and that's got dozens of developments within it uh they're working on another specific plan in in North Area so the at the planning level it doesn't authorize one single house to be built what it does is establish a framework for conservation U preservation of of I mean avoidance of n of endangered species protection of open space protection of Oak Woodlands within that framework we identify where various land uses should happen and then over the next several Generations an area like this kind of is available to respond to the demand Chico's demand for housing and Commercial workspace and parks and schools um so that's that's the difference it's it's going to be 50 different individual developments this is simply a planning area that provides a framework and a regulatory document for future developers to come in and comply with so so Bill this is this is Kevin so for the board we're bringing this to you for two reasons one um we know our growth in Chico is going to be North where we have our hen shop property and East where this um area is and we appreciate the collaboration conversations we're having with Bill um for a future Elementary School site because we know that that's the other place for growth um we do have a letter here of really just acknowledgement of collaboration that we've been involved with um that we would like to send a bill so we're asking the board uh this evening is to allow um or give authorization to Administration to send a letter as a tra that is drafted attached and uh we'll continue to work and collab at with Bill as we move forward okay I didn't see who put their hand up first so draw swords Caitlyn Miss Doby yeah I suppose my question is um in here there it discusses the acquisition of the 14 acre parcel um does that mean that it would come under ownership of the district when we get to that point in the planning process yes we'd have to go through a legal process but um the idea would be that we give up uh future developer fees collected in an amount consistent with market rate so ultimately we would uh purchase and own that portion of land um again working with Bill as a as part of the plan area and then we would hold that land as we do with like the hen Shaw property or the future inspire site until the the development is necessary with future growth the nice part about these conversations early is is we do it in the better timing you know historically we've gone and found available land when we've had resources to do it and then held on to it for longer periods of time and by having these conversations up front we can time when we need it in a little bit better manner so yes we would get it um to have it but again we work with Bill as he gets further into it when we need it if that makes sense Dr Kaiser that was pretty much my question so in effect where there's no actual transition of ownership at this point we're just acknowledging the reality that this is a planning stage okay good any further questions board can I ask for one friendly Amendment to the letter yes and that's simply again the qual the clarification that we made at the beginning of the meeting um rather than referring to it as a develop velopment uh refer to it as a planning area if that's if that's doable I don't want to throw kink in the chain here but yes Julie mentioned that at the beginning of your presentation and we can certainly make that change um before the uh the letter is authored thank you yes Miss Doby um yeah because I'm just really new obviously this this entire process um so let's just you know imagine however long it takes down the road that this goes through and and um you know there's an agreement that we will move through to acquire this land um is there a way to ensure that this land doesn't have any sort of pre-development on it or any kind of disruption in the the current state that the land is in before we acquire it um that sounds like an odd question but I just am wondering you know what what type of control do we have with what happens to the land before we ac acquired it I'm I'm we would end up with some kind of a formal agreement the district would put in whatever conditions they felt were appropriate um I can tell you right now that you've got a lot of there's a lot of hikers and mountain bikers um uh so some of the some of the things we'll be able to control but people you know before the district requires it it's just part of a large um Ranch sure Bill I'm uh I'm I'm pretty well known as the tree person up here and you know I just want to make sure that nobody's going to go in and cut all the trees down before believe me no but we I we ride around with a uh shotgun to make sure no one does that well don't do that um but I do look forward I do look forward to speaking with you more about this project Bill thank you for answering my questions yeah thank you any other questions board thank you again Julie and Mr Broward uh appreciate uh bringing it back to us I do remember the last presentation and it's nice it's nice to see that uh that your Visions sir are continuing to be brought forward in the process of uh planning for the the community thank you thank you thank you have a good evening thank you safe do we have any uh there are no public comments there are no public comments thank you madam superintendent okay board um I'd ask for a motion considering the uh the uh requested changes that we will make before the letter is um officially authored and and sent to Mr Broward any motions so I moved the u letter recognizing the uh potential new Elementary School site at Valley Edge planning area thank you any is there a second thank you Mr tennis I have a motion Dr Kaiser second for Mr tennis any additional board discussion we've got a guarantee that the treat will be protected at all cost okay uh all those in favor of uh uh sending the letter to uh Mr Brower signify saying I I I I thank you it's unanimous oops I need to click some things away here sorry okay okay five this looks like Julie again Julie Kissle the discussion action on phase four master plan project yes thank you so as you know we have four Career and Technical education projects that are going to be occurring at Pleasant Valley High School um let's see in October of 20 uh 20 the board approved these projects and approved an overall budget for the projects of 10,674 7238 um we have put two of these projects out for bid uh they are the arts media and entertainment and child education uh development CTE pathways and we're really happy to announce that we got four competitive bids all from local contractors uh United building contractors Geno construction REM construction and Slater and Sun um who is currently on the site building the new um multi-purpose room and administration and medical pass and Slater and sun was the the low bidder at 3, 323,000 which comes in um below our budget of 4.9 million so we're very happy about the bidding and we're asking tonight for the board to uh approve that bid and allow us to enter contract with Slater and Sun the lowest resp responsive better so move there is no public comment we had no public comments apparently okay any other um uh for discussion I'll second I'll second that oh I'm sorry I yes Dr Kaiser has uh moved um member Dolby has seconded any further discussion are we ready to vote for all those in favor signify by saying I I I thank you that's unanimous I just think it's great since they're already there and they're already fully engaged and we drive past them every time we have a board meeting that they're going to do this next piece thank you thank you board um the next item is the uh upgrade of clock spells intercoms little Chico Creek Marsh and Chico high again oh this is Mr Baltimore this is this is yeah mine uh the clocks and Bell systems at little Chico Creek are very outdated we're finding difficulty getting parts and replacing that system it is the same system at Marsh jior high so we'd like to replace both of those and at the same time this summer Cho High School be having modernization improvements and cabling work done so there'll already be trenching occurring on that campus site we'd like to take advantage of that work that's already occurring to upgrade the clock and Bell systems at Chico high school we would pay for this out of our routine restricted maintenance account which uh is a restricted part of our general fund we are able to do that because that 3% contribution is going to increase dramatically with the additional Esser and State dollars related to covid-19 so um I am spending our maintenance director's dollars that he after talking with him he AG agrees that this is a good expenditure so um we're recommending that you approve a budget not to exceed $500,000 for this work at those three School sites do you know how much fun it is to have you the budget guy talk about bells and whistles okay um does anyone have any other questions for Kevin we will bring the contracts back to the board for approval so this is the the budget allocation let us do that is there any public comment there's no public comment there is no public comment board we're ready for a motion Miss Dolby uh I move to approve I second I have a motion and a second by Dr Kaiser um any further discussion seeing none all those in favor I I thank you that's unanimous okay okay uh expanded learning Opportunity Grant plan oh I huh it's yes ja Jacqueline Krueger and Tina Keem will be presenting this report yes thank you I and I I read this grant uh that's that's really cool okay jacine yes good evening boor so the month of March was a very busy month um both for us locally as well as at the federal and state level so as Kevin alluded to there was covid relief dollars that were appropriated at the federal level as well as the state level there was essentially a FastTrack appropriation um ab86 that was passed by our state legislature on March 5th um this funding is called the expanding learning Opportunity Grant funding um and it is to be spent between now and August 31st of 2022 so essentially what it's asking is that we take these dollars which for Chico Unified is just over 8.1 million and categorize into seven potential strategies of how we're going to basically achieve learning recovery so this is a learning recovery plan um that Chico Unified has put together so the elements that are in this plan are not new to the board so during the month of March and April um business services and Ed Services brought together a list to the board of positions and programs using both state federal dollars to deal with learning loss mitigation so what we've identified in the plan is $8.1 million of those items um that fall into the seven strategies that the state has identified so I will say there are seven strategies um it is up to the local Lea or educational agency to determine which of those seven you would like to utilize you can utilize all of them or a combination of them so for Chico Unified we are expected or planning to spend about 740 or sorry 475,000 on extended instructional learning time and that's really related to our summer acmis both this summer as well as next summer we are planning to expend just over four million on implementation expansion and enhancement of learning supports 2.7 million on supports to address other barriers to learning 75,000 on technology and then 410,000 on additional academic services for students and those have been identified in bullet points for each of those elements and I do want to say for the two categories where we don't have dollars it doesn't mean we're not providing those Services what it means is we're probably providing those Services through other funding streams so the board did approve 40 plus million dollars of positions and services to kids we're only identifying 8.1 million of those those Dr Kaiser I saw a reference um in the paper today that uh after the city council's meeting on Tuesday that uh they are looking at some and it wasn't it was certainly not very clear in terms of the specifics some way of reinforcing or Contracting or like I said it was really unclear to have a high speed internet accessible in the city and I know that access to highspeed has been just a tremendous barrier for a lot of our families including in the Chapman area so uh is there any context in which we could be interacting with them or we would have some way of knowing if there was a way for us to uh make sure that that covers our students too Kevin we're actually very involved in these conversations the city if you remember we brought forth um the city of Chico talking about building out Broadband in the Chapman mberry area and that is the first step in that conversation we have um had conversations about using our school sites um to help push that Broadband access throughout the city because we are strategically located throughout the city so there's not anything concrete to bring you today but just please know we are having those conversations and would definitely support what the city is trying to do providing Broadband to families and certainly students well make little noises or blow up things that are shiny to keep them moving thank you Dr Kaiser uh did you did you guys have some more to your presentation yes just one last thing this year we've had a lot of compliance documents more than we've ever seen come through and this is one of them uh we worked in tandem Jacqueline and myself with with this but it couldn't have been written so eloquently and beautifully without the talent of Liz Meer our grant writer and um I bring this up mainly because this is lizz's last board meeting that she will attend as a Chico Unified staff member as she's retiring promised to come back no no no no no she will so I wish the room was completely full of people who love you and know you Liz but um this is just a very short and small token of our appreciation you will be missed are there any other question public comments okay any other uh questions members is there any public comment okay so this is not action is that or it is action what are we going to take action on don't we have to file this by uh like a week yeah so the the compliance piece is um board approval on the plan it must be filed with the county office within 5 days of approval and all of it must be done prior to June 1st I moved 10.
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now as all heroes face your next challenges are to continue to discover who you are and what you believe in and to share those gifts the gift of hope commitment perseverance with the world around you you the class of 2021 will profoundly shape and reshape the world around you that is your true power never forget that you will solve the problems of today and lead your communities the nation and the world into a new era i know that each and every one of you on this field will achieve success which doesn't mean there won't be obstacles yet to overcome however know that these moments are fleeting and you and those around you can most certainly overcome them my final request to you this evening as your principal is to ask that you take a moment this evening after the ceremony has concluded to thank your family to thank your parents to thank your guardians to thank your friends and to thank the educators who have helped you through this 13-year journey and prepared you for the next journey on behalf of the faculty and staff of ironwood ridge thank you class of 2021 [Applause] and now i would like to welcome our valedictorian ryan haymore [Applause] good evening fellow classmates parents teachers and administrators congratulations class of 2021.
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cyber liability um this is a part of the trust's general liability coverage the mahoney group has a 5 million dollar coverage with 25 000 deductible equipment breakdown they're exactly the same storage tank liability again the same prepaid legal service so with respect to the mahoney group they have you would have access to a and prepaid legal services would be services that are not covered under a general insurance contract um with respect to the honey group there would be access to a consultant and the mahoney group has indicated that as mr haas indicated that we would be both the law firms that the district currently uses would be um available to be used on that um the arizona risk retention trust has three hundred thousand dollars coverage of liability they have a vendor list that's extensive of only arizona firms that are able to answer questions with respect to prepaid legal there is some difference between the proposals here in terms of what what access you would have that that is covered the access to the consultant is a hotline of sorts um with a we're told a local arizona attorney for employment related matters but there may be other matters that you wouldn't have access to your um to generalized legal services so for instance in this in the school year that's where the 50 ticket came in for legal services um was because that would be general legal services that weren't covered under your existing insurance policy commercial package total those numbers are here and those are the numbers that are at the bottom of the spreadsheet that mr house and i prepared as well so and that's without your workers compensation your workers compensation insurance two different carriers the alliance and copper point um two different price points with respect to coverage and one million dollars on the mahoney side 500 000 coverage on the trust side and the workers compensation premiums are on the slide here and so the total combined premiums on the mahoney proposal one million nine thousand eight hundred and seven dollars on the trust proposal one million one hundred three thousand nine hundred and eighty one dollars less if you exclude administrative practices liability coverage or the prepaid legal option then your then your premium would be 1 million 42 891.
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uh dual immersion and a you know a community school at um at one of the one of the high schools and then you'd have the project lead the way and that one um aligns with a project lead the way with the engineering and architecture pathway and then at the other school you've got your health science and medical technology public services arts media entertainment middle college program where again students would be able to earn that aaa degree when they're in high school and still graduate from high school a well-being center and then the pittsco patterson lab would be at one school and then media journalism would align with the arts media and entertainment pathway so you have some different options there in this model that's it okay thank you dana uh before we open it up to to questions um again just wanna reiterate that obviously there's a lot um but these are just possibilities right as again inspired by you as you were talking keeping our ear to the ground um again just throwing out different ideas one option everybody gets the same another option let's move to specialty schools and then we didn't spell it out specifically but obviously there's a third option where some schools are based and some schools are specialty now what that word ends up being sometimes some some of the popular words are magnets or academies right now we've just been calling them specialty just to kind of you know put that put that across um you also will notice because of the models that we are on both models have tk sixes so trying to trying to figure out you know base versus specialty versus a combination that really affects both models um and then of course in model three specifically the one middle school the one high school versus uh the two seven twelves to kind of just give you a flavor but again these are just dreams obviously there's some big things in there these are just dreams and visions but again in no way shape or form [Music] you know are we purporting that these are the best ideas or the only ideas out there so at this point in time i want to go ahead and turn it over to the team to ask questions that you may have regarding what was presented and dana i don't know if it would be helpful to uh present uh again just in case somebody says like go on this slide and then we can go back and forth yeah just so it's there yep i can do that let me see what i do so while she's doing that if you have a question go ahead and unmute yourself and uh ask away okay let me see today question when you i love all of the ideas for these specialty schools but i'm um are there real plans in the works for making this happen for some of these models but because if we're making decisions with that in mind and then it doesn't happen it's a little hard to make those decisions so so let me let me jump in here and then dana can can follow up mm-hmm i don't know we i i'm not sure i heard dana say this explicitly or not but on purpose uh we did purposefully put seven specialty schools because the model threes have seven uh schools uh but yes uh we think that um again if this team coalesced right and were to say like yes these are awesome and yes we would like to go this route then again that recommendation goes to the board of education to say not only did this team want you know model 3 or model 4 whichever one it is but for the tk sixes uh they really are recommending at a 95 rate or an 86 percent rate uh that the schools be specialty schools uh and then these are kind of the specialties that we are looking at because to your point jen i think um right there there is a there's a level of commitment and investment uh that we would have to do to say we are committing to this uh and so but but to answer that was a long way to answer your question yes and i don't know dana you could uh put more for that yeah i i would say i would say absolutely yes um and you know these are uh if that's the direction that the you know the team would recommend i mean there's definitely a lot of you know planning consideration that goes into these things but yeah these are things that are feasible um and these are things that are they are possible um and they're they're also i mean these are you know the options that you know that we're just you know thrown out there are things that and these ideas are things that are evidence-based um these are things that um right i mean that are are backed by um very strong you know research and so um you know the again these are examples of things that you know that if that's something that the team wants to recommend that we are prepared to say yeah this is something that we can do do you know there's a request on that you're welcome as a request in the chat for you to move to the uh slide where the base models are at again guys i'm facilitating so don't ever think that i'm saying one thing but there is another option as i'm talking right so option one everyone's getting base option two everyone's going specialty option three some will be based some will be specialty another option as i again as i'm thinking with you is okay seven specialties is too much but let's narrow it down to this and then there could be two schools that are you know a specialty and so that's another option as you as you're wrestling with this this one was a model three okay this patricia han is raised hello hi um good evening everyone so thank you very much dana for that information um took a lot of notes so i appreciate it uh looking at it on the base option for model three and for model four um it's nice to see that a lot of our schools are already doing it i mean i can speak for my uh school um that i work at is uh and we actually do practically everything except for preschool so it's kind of like oh wow i didn't know we did it's kind of different to see it on screen but the um other thing is in the specialty academies are we prepared because i know that we try to bring for dual immersion we try to work at mandarin and um it was unsuccessful the two attempts that our district tried to promote it if we come across that where we decide to move forward with an idea an academy or some type are we prepared it just in case the just in case situation that it does not work the way that the community is has a positive response to it so again i can start the answer to that um i think there's there's a there's a slight difference here uh in order to run a dual immersion mandarin program you actually need the the students and the parents to say i'm in um these specialty programs that uh that are that we have outlined today besides the dual immersion academy so that that would be the only exception um there is no requirement that there has to be a certain amount of kids you know that speak english a certain amount of kids that speak only one certain language and so that kind of goes away even for the pre even for the pyp school that dina presented um yes a pyp school um requires it's not an even an option requires a language and so that would be mandarin but again unlike a dual immersion mandarin all kids would get doses of mandarin but it's not a it's not a requirement of the program that you have again a certain amount of students so the only one that would require something right like to your point would be the dual immersion academy and so that one um would be wall to wall dual immersion there would be no english only or sei the whole entire school would be dual immersion and so everybody that went to that school would know that that's why i'm going is because i want to be bilingual by literally bicultural okay and then one last thing with regard to the pltw i understand that it is kind of a a program which requires a an agreement between the company and also with the district and that there is rigorous training involved for teachers to be certified before is this something that the district is prepared to have all teachers trained and are you know because again i i'm kind of going back a couple of meetings because uh as also a union representative not for teachers but for classifieds um i know there's always a contract and when they're and it is a fact we are going to lose schools which we're going to lose employment and so on with that there does that conflict does come into play uh have we done the research and the homework on that to see the cause and effect of that um so patricia i'm gonna um i just want to make sure i'm understanding the questions so the question is is it's a um it's about the contract with uh project lead the way well with that because i've been doing my homework with everything that's been going on on programs and so on and i understand that project lead the way has to agree to what the district will propose in order to have more teachers trained on it but that teachers cannot according to it cannot become a project lead away t uh instructor unless they've met the uh completion and certification through the facilities that offers it okay yeah okay i get which i understand what you're saying um yeah so and i actually went through this when i was a middle school principal we started uh project lead the way um at slauson uh several several years ago and so i i do have some you know some background on that so yes um this would be something where um they do depending on which modules you wanted to have they have lots of different options and so um yeah they there is training uh we've been doing our training through cal poly pomona um and so um yeah that is part of it i mean we do need to have that training to be able to understand you know again what the curriculum is and how you do it and so that would be something that we would provide right if that were an option that you know want to move forward then yeah absolutely perfect thank you okay before we have we have miss karen has a question but we have one in the chat it says about the di academy would there still be an english only pathway not in this specialty in this model again there's nothing's been set in stone this is just an idea but in this dual immersion academy it is a wall to wall so all of the students would be in uh enrolled in dual academy dual immersion all right and now we have miss karen thank you so much i'm wondering for parents who are already have students enrolled in these schools if for instance my home school is hodge and i wanted to enroll my student in the dual immersion academy and that's allocated at valley dale elementary for instance would i be able to move very easily my child from my home school to valleydale and then for students who are incoming into the district is there going to be an ease of being able to move them uh in that situation as well got it and so yes if the students that are already in an existing program would be able to um to be able to move and to be able to do that and typically um i mean if if a student came in from a different district and they were already enrolled in um you know a dual language program then that would be something that you know they could do but we do start that um the program does start um with uh we have it at um pk and tk and k and so we want to start them early on we wouldn't want to um to start a new student um let's say in the upper grade so it's something yeah yeah i'm i was just thinking about these specialty options that we have for these model three schools if somebody wanted to enroll maybe from outside the district or you had an incoming tk kid but you who is you know two now and the time this actually gets rolled out they want to go to maybe one of the other specialty schools that's not their home school got it yes yes uh-huh and we do have open enrollment so yes that would be the option thank you that's a great question i think miss jones had a question no question okay sorry hi dr mitchell i have a question just for clarification yes dr contreras so um i look back on the middle college dual enrollment slides um just for clarification there we've also used the term ecp for the early college program i i saw it on both uh both columns now from my understanding it's all dual enrollment because the students would be getting credit for both college and high school correct correct the difference between an early college program and the middle college is that the middle college um actually gets that that degree that's the difference great thank you and can you go to that slide uh dana just so that we know uh what dr contreras was referencing yeah make myself dizzy for one minute that's right yeah that was the one right there just making sure that we had clarity on on on the difference between those two here yeah great thank you dr mitchell another question would there still be services provided for any student new to our country non-english speakers thank you for that question absolutely we will absolutely serve our international students who are regardless of what um you know what grade they enter in but yes we would definitely do that all schools do that thank you for saying that any other questions around mr gabriel okay within the the feedback mechanisms that are being proposed for for staff and for for parents are questions going to be asked about um what programs people are preferring because we see the the ideas being fleshed out regarding base and potential magnet schools so is that something that maybe parents and faculty would be asked about regarding um which of these options in terms of the big picture are we considering and then as from from my vantage point there's a lot of of uh the sequencing that occurs from middle from elementary to middle to high school and then how we uh articulate students in the district so if they're going from like a feeder pattern so to speak so if a student starts at one program goes to another program and goes to another goes to the high school or however we call it eventually have we like that's there's a lot to put put there and just are we thinking about how kids travel through our system and what program experiences they're getting so there's coherence so to speak so um to answer your first question um yeah again i want to reiterate right this is fluid um right we're we're facilitating uh to to the best of our ability and trying to keep a a pulse on the team and where the team is at uh so yes as these things happen live and they happen real we will we we've actually told uh the staff today that this is the first time but it won't be the last time uh that we go back to them but again as as this is as this is unfolding it would make itself visible and clear like okay it's time to go back to this to the staff and to the parents on this issue or on this thing um so it's it's early to answer the question specifically but we did make it clear that uh it wouldn't be the last time in terms of um articulation uh again the ed services team right now it's right the beginning of this of this whole presentation was dream uh what was a dream innovate um and imagine and that's what that's what we're doing we're trying to imagine and dream and innovate so uh in the in the model three the articulation uh becomes really easy right because you go to your if if this team wanted to really explore specialty they'd go to their specialty they'd go to the one middle school and then they would go to the one high school right so so the the the in terms of physically it just it happens that way in model 4 um yes it could be a little bit more difficult but the articulation is still there right if i go to the health academy magnet school elementary school or the health sciences academy me elementary school that might be on the north side and i really i'm really in love with the health academy then in this situation in the model four then yes i would have to travel down to the south side uh to go to there but the articulation is still there right it's just a matter of which school i'm gonna go to and in the model four it's really only two moves right i'm in the i'm in the tk six and then i'm gonna go to the 712.
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we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as revived yes sorry thank you mrs anderson in a second i'll second mr bruno thank you and we have uh we're gonna vote to approve the consent agenda linus item seven and fourteen dr lee aye this is anderson bye this is cool that's okay that's okay oh i'm sorry [Music] all right so then let's uh take item number 14 independently do we have a motion to improve our discussion or we have to move it to bring it to the farm two yeah to approve motion to approve and then we need a second how are we approving it without this it was um we're just making the motion not the vote we make a motion to approve and second shouldn't we be moving to bring it to the floor we can choose to do that but then we have to make another motion we could do either i i was going on the assumption that it eventually will get approved but maybe i'm incorrect in that assumption so i bring it forward for discussion and then have a discussion and then see if there's emotion that's fine yeah that's fine so we have a motion by mrs pope and a second by mrs anderson to bring it to the floor for discussion apologies guys no you were come ready discussion did somebody have something to discuss on dr lip so i did ask for this item to be told um you know i uh stand as a strong advocate for literacy in our community and i found um you know several things concerning about this list and just some additional information that i need to make an informed vote on this item the first question i had uh was what is the circus the number of circulating books at oak hill elementary because this number of 420 discards seems quite large to me and i'd like more information on that so does anyone have that information so in in the library at elko there's about 15 000 books 15 000 books okay and so this is so the 420 is like it seems like it would be well under the threshold of the five percent the next thing um was i'm just curious about what is their collection maintenance and leading policy over at oak hill um because this seems to suggest that these books will be discarded at states um or recycled which means just thrown away there are many organizations in our community who would love to have those books we have little free libraries we have uh friends of the public library i mean there's a lot of we have our own students who you know might might like these materials so i'm curious about that and and what the plan is for for these books um after sure and mr grimes can elaborate if you want more but what we do when we discard it's the wording that we have to use to to to allow them to be uh just taken out of circulation there uh these in fact i talked to the principal this morning and what happens is once the board approved the discarding of the books any book that is still usable some end up getting damaged and things like that they actually allow the students they'll put them out on table students can come collect them and take them home if they like them they also have at oak hill it's a little unique they have two um like i call birdhouse libraries that they would use to stock so people like the friends of the neighborhood you come over and get a book and use that so they could use them for that uh if that all else fails with that they end up getting them and then we ended up looking at organizations and letting them come by and pick through and take the ones that they would want so we don't unless they're really damaged we don't we don't throw them away but the word is like the legally which also caused alarms um and then two um i'm just curious because it says that they're out of where um outdated i disagree with that assessment based on the list that was provided um you know i don't know if there were checks for relevancy um and circulation stats on those books and two um if those books are being discarded recycled whatever we're calling it removed from the shelves what is the replacement plan um because i know that a number of these books um are classics um they are books that have high relevancy for students in elementary school um so is is the plan just to discard and not replace or what is the plan that's not stated here in this document great question so with that they would they do replace the books and most of the time it's the library currently is pretty close to capacity so some of the weeding they do is so they can get new books in there but it was my understanding from the principal today that they will be replacing a lot of the books some of them are just flat out outdated with not accurate information um and so mr grimes has an example of when he was over at oak hill they came in and and the information just wasn't even correct anymore he's like the man will walk on the moon one day type of thing so some of that type of thing is is taken out of circulation because of the relevance there also is on that sheet i noticed it's a little bit misleading because some of the it says 20 to 20 2002 i think for a lot of the books that's actually when we started the archiving system and i believe we updated our escape or whatever it is to keep them but i was assured today uh actually mrs spoor the principal was saying the books will be replaced and updated and they are always looking to keep more and more books in there awesome thank you i appreciate that clarification you know this access to literature and access to knowledge is is so crucial for our students absolutely absolutely and i appreciate you asking those questions i think that's very um astute okay so now is there any more discussion on this item do we have a motion to approve may i make a friendly amendment to the motion um that that it's clarified that we aren't recycling any of our books um that we're that we are going to uh discard them and not recycle them repurpose them might be a better word the recycling only was for the ones that were so torn up and damaged that they would put them in the recycling versus the garbage i think that's where that wording is but yeah i i we certainly would uh i know that to be a fact so that suggestion is not uh out of inappropriate by any means okay so the friendly amendment is that we will repurpose as many of the books as possible is that acceptable and we have a motion to approve i'll approve admiration and nelson thank you thank you mrs hoping mrs anderson and roll call vote dr lee aye mrs anderson and this is help ms bruno all right and the channel thank you so much all right moving on to the business items first item is business item a director facilities job description maintenance operations supervisor job description and district organizational charge with increasing responsibilities due to upcoming increasing school construction within the district we feel it is necessary to change the assistant superintendent of operations and facilities to a director position focusing on school construction and adding the maintenance and operations supervisor positions to oversee the day-to-day operations in the maintenance groundskeeping warehouse and custodial departments the organizational chart has been revised and the change of the assistant superintendent of operations facilities position to a director of facilities with a maintenance and operation supervisor has been added also some departments have been moved to other directors uh just just a a comment um well only the comment being that i i just want to acknowledge and thank dr lee for her uh she caught something at the bottom of two of the job descriptions it was some old language so i appreciate dr lee that you brought that up we were able to get that updated i had to do with the physical attributes required for the job so that that was a great catch on her part so thank you for for doing that um and then furthermore we've been talking about this for for quite a while uh mr diesen has been in this work and has done the work but now as we move to a new chapter with more building and stuff we find that it would be very important to separate out the work have someone that would be more over the supervision of the custodial the day-to-day grounds and maintenance and allowing new director facilities to work on individual to keep the facilities up and to par well it only makes sense with all the new schools and the uh renovations coming down the pipe it just it's too much for one person even super human mr d said it's too much [Music] this is kind of back to where we were before we had to slice to the bone and combine a bunch of positions correct this is something very similar to this yes director and then yeah yeah just all of you did a fantastic job and totally appreciate the fact that you took on positions that you really didn't have to do it wasn't under your job description to do 12 jobs at the same time but all of you did at that time and we combined positions and made it work for the money that we had so thank you for doing that and it's nice to be able to take some of that responsibility off the shoulders of people they have done it for a long time well if you compare to districts similar size you'll see that so good job um hi mr bruno yeah we'll call vote dr lee aye mrs pope aye mrs anderson aye mr bruno hi and the chairman's eye sorry i was just gonna give you a chance to drink we have than 8 15 a.m by the 2022-23 school year based on all conditions and variables we are proposing the new start times for the 2021-22 school year do we have a motion to approve uh [Music] work that one out okay um discussion you know i'll start first if that's okay and then just kind of share i just want to say one of the things with this is we we knew the 2020 22-23 school year was was going to be upon us we knew this new regulation was out there one of the things we thought is the last year's been so disruptive to go back to the regular time frames and then go again to 22 23 and switch again we thought this would be an appropriate time to do that um so that was the first hurdle the second hurdle was you would think that oh you can just go ahead and pick times and and have those times for um the schools to start it is a much more complicated puzzle than that and um transportation is something that drives a lot of the the the start times and end times for our schools um we recognize i was on a call today with uh parents and we all kind of we're chucklings like what we like earlier we like later um but at the end of the day what a lot of the parents were saying is it's a change and i didn't like the current one but i like what it will be um and so i think based on all of those variables that we went through with transportation talking with schools uh trying to make as many accommodations we we did do that high school schedule one of the thing we talked with uh center and mcclellan it's i know that's right at the time when the regulation calls for um but one of the things that the high school library center height [Music] yeah it keeps saying that your wi-fi signal is poor and then i'm just i cannot hear anything coming from from that area okay sorry about that um eugene we are wired so i don't know why it's same wi-fi um so basically what i was getting at was the variables we went back to center high school and talked to them and they came back saying that this is the 8 30 time was the one that they really wanted because of the athletics and different activities after school that it would start pulling kids out of their academics more frequently because of the travel and stuff associated with that and i'm just going to kind of take a side side route here and just let everyone know that we are missing our very very talented um i.t technician tonight and so um scott has graciously stepped up into that role and of course it's not very well it's not his um expertise area of expertise but he's doing a fantastic job so i apologize to all of you out there um if we are freezing um we're we're trying not to we're trying to keep it going so just keep keep texting us if there's a problem thank you on the start times i have a question as far as the teachers go and their input on it is this a union issue so in in our contract they don't believe we have start time in there we just work a seven and a quarter hour day determined by the district uh so we set the time and then i was just curious how they were accepting it yeah well the school who starts at 9-ish 30-ish is not the happiest which is by one of my schools but um but i mean we work at the pleasure of the boards right in the other pieces we tried to get those later times earlier and we did most of our tools currently are 850 and later and so we do have the two that went beyond that so you have um oak hill and dudley 920 and 925 and so that does post something so one of the things we would work with with those it's about 10 minutes later than they normally are so a couple things like deadly did as a strategy is we always have a breakfast program so kids can come eat breakfast but i noticed mr jackson his schedule when i was confirming their times for last year they had um a walking club so they got out early and had the kids walking so we do have a lot of strategies to accommodate and then also families and one of the things is if it's a real struggle talk with the principal and usually we can kind of try to arrange things we can't have you know 500 kids there you know for two hours before school um but if there's certain accommodations our folks are pretty good about working with families to help them the best they can and give them some solutions if the parent had a huge issue like work schedules and stuff like that and they wanted to switch to another site because of the hours would that be allowed if there was a room there's an process and if there's room that it could be entertained yes i just i just have a feedback to provide about these proposed schedules um just going back to the whole purpose of sb 328 which was all around starting schools later for middle school and high school students my concern with our proposed schedules is that we seem to be applying that guidance to our elementary schools instead of to our high schools and middle schools which is where it's needed um sb 328 came about uh based on the research about um the disruption of circadian rhythms for adolescent students with the early start times the fact that later start times are shown to reduce depression suicide obesity sleep deprivation and to also lead to higher student learning outcomes at the middle and high school levels so i think we're we're doing good to you know um just meet the baseline of 8 30 but i i would like for us to see to do a little better if we can for our uh high school and middle school start times uh it looks like riles is the only one that's you know around 8 45 right now my concern is for those is for the high schools um and that's who this law and this you know this uh innovation was supposed to help out um and so it seems like we're inching a little but i i wonder if we can do just a little bit more um i'm concerned about a period or electives period you know and students still having to be there quite early uh to be able to participate equitably in in those um so i just wanted to voice that um you know to my fellow colleagues um and you know a little bit of context around where did that where did this even all come from thank you dr lee one thing i did in a conversation you and i had i wanted to double check on that zero period uh we do offer at center high school zero period but it's not the 90 minute it's 45 minutes every day which is still earlier but um and it's very limited in scope um of course while i was talking they were talking about adding one more possible because it continually conflicts with some kids schedules um but otherwise um there's not a lot of zero period that starts before 8 30.
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3.7 is there a second second thank you uh motion by Dr Kaiser second by Mr tennis is there any further board discussion hearing none those in favor I I thank you and yes Liz my gosh thank you thank you thank you for all your years of bringing additional dollars into the district on behalf of our kiddos thank you board member requests to agendize items hearing none we're going to move to um items from the floor we have no items from the floor we have no items from the floor do I have a motion to adjourn all those in favor
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we are finally here and i'm so glad that we can all share this experience together in person i'm very grateful for this opportunity to speak with you all it is my hope that from my comments we'll leave here with a feeling of motivation and excitement for the future i think we can all agree that this year has been one of the most unique school years any of us have ever had and probably will ever have hopefully one of the most prominent takeaways from this hectic senior year is how accurate the statement the only constant in life is change truly is starting with an abrupt end to our junior year coven 19 has changed the lives of each one of us here lives weren't changed only at ironwood ridge but across the globe this virus affected people in many different ways there has been lots of jobs travel restrictions supply shortages new social customs and many more changes now rather than spend my time reflecting with you on the many changes that were forced on us i would like to discuss changes we do have control over a change within ourselves to become a better person and to change the world to be a safer kinder happier place you all have shown strength and perseverance by overcoming the many obstacles that the coronavirus has brought to the school year and to our lives including switching from online learning to hybrid to in-person having to social distance and wear masks and coping with the stress and fear that a worldwide epidemic causes i know that each one of us graduates have unique talents and abilities and these past four years especially our senior year has demonstrated that imagine all the good that can come if we use our various talents strengths and abilities to serve others and to change the world for the better i'm sure some of you wonder what it really means when people say we can change the world you may feel small or insignificant and wonder what effect if any you have on such a massive and diverse world well although changing the world is a global goal it is an individual process and each one of us can make a difference changing the world happens one person at a time beginning with ourselves as a desire each day for improvement to be just a little better a little more kind and understanding once that change happens within we can look for those to join our cause to change the world abraham lincoln stated if you would win a man to your cause first convince him that you are his sincere friend what better way to show you are a sincere friend to someone than to serve them although i lack experience and i'm a high school graduate who's just beginning my years of learning one piece of wisdom that has never failed me is that service brings joy and light not only to those who are served but perhaps even more so to the person who is selflessly giving their time and effort to help someone in need this will make a change in their lives this will make a change in the world sometimes service may not seem very glamorous or exciting and it often seems too hard life may feel too busy to have time for helping others that is why the change within ourselves must come prior to the change we seek through the in the world through service as we change ourselves and improve our character helping others will come naturally we will have a desire within us to serve others and to return the service will give us happiness and a fulfillment in life a wonderful story comes to mind as i think of the impact service can have on changing others and changing the world during world war ii a pilot named gail halverson flew under the command of the royal air force in the years following world war ii a time known as the berlin airlift halvorson was assigned to fly supplies into west berlin during the block berlin blockade when the soviet union blocked the flow of supplies into the allied control areas of the city one day after landing his c-54 cargo plane in west berlin with supplies halverson noticed a group of about 30 children near the templehof airport fence and he spoke briefly to them as he turned to leave he felt prompted to give the children two small sticks of gum he had in his pocket seeing how they valued his little gift halverson felt he should start dropping candy rations using little parachutes as a way to help the children when his commanding officer found out halverson thought he would be reprimanded instead he was encouraged to keep going word spread and donations poured in his effort changed many lives and endeared him to people around the world two sticks of gum in july 1948 turned into 23 tons of chocolate and goods that were dropped before the airlift was over simple acts of service can lead to significant changes in the world i am blessed with a mission call to argentina where i will serve the people there for the next two years of my life i know that for me to be the best person i can be and to change the lives of those in need i must change myself each day and strive to be better for them whatever path we choose to take after tonight let us as nighthawk alumni be beacons of light and happiness in the lives of those around us don't be afraid to act on the thoughts or promptings you feel to go help or serve that person or give that gift or show your gratitude for someone serve the weak lift up the hands which hang down and strengthen the feeble knees high school is a very memorable experience full of valuable lessons and friendships but i have to say as i'm sure many of you will along with me that i am glad it is finally over look back on all that you have accomplished and the many challenges you have overcome for strength to succeed in the times ahead i'm so grateful to have come to know many of you during my time at ironwood ridge and i'm excited to see the many wonderful things in store for our future coven 19 has been a long dark tunnel however there is light at the end the future is bright and each one of us can change ourselves and the world around us to make it even brighter be good and do good nighthawks the world needs us now some of you especially my mom may be expecting a backflip or something cool at the end of my speech but there isn't quite enough room up here and i played basketball too a little too hard last night and jammed a couple fingers and hurt my hip so i hope a push-up will suffice [Applause] now i'd like to introduce our class salutatorian pari patel [Applause] hello sorry i'm just making sure i'm not on mute that's already happened too many times this year good evening administration principal munger our amazing teachers and faculty families friends and most importantly to the class of 2021 i know many of you never saw me in any actual classes this year between online hybrid and finally to in-person school so i would just like to start off by introducing myself hello i'm pari patel from cohort 2 and i'm your senior class salutatorian we already had four years to get to know each other so i'm just going to move on now we learned a lot in high school just nod and go along with it in english class we were taught to do research before starting writing assignments so that's exactly what i did i looked up funny good graduation speech hundreds of videos popped up telling me to speak about prom or senior pep assemblies or other events that you know never happened since i obviously can't speak about any of that and i never learned what to do when the internet doesn't give me the answers i was stumped i stared at my computer for a couple minutes and then realized that i only had a couple minutes until the speech was actually due so i did what any normal person would do i picked up my phone and scrolled on tick tock then i went back to my speech and this is what i came up with most things in life don't go as expected many of us expected this to be like high school musical others expected to make the best memories of their life on this campus instead we were met with 12 page papers about the golden ratio or bug projects in biology class and let's not forget about the pandemic not only did this pandemic take away our last year and half of high school it also took away the bottom half of our faces and kovitt continues to take so much more for so many people so yes it is a privilege to be seated here today one last time as a class while the world is facing this tragedy but each and every one of us made the hard choice to push through and succeed this year we weren't supposed to play in varsity sports with no audience cheering us on we weren't supposed to perform our last musicals with masks on our faces and we certainly weren't supposed to meet our teachers via zoom none of this was supposed to happen and yet we are still here today we can all agree that we've been counting down the days to this moment some of us since freshman year but now we sit here and look to the person next to us and we think to ourselves is that the girl from my freshman year math class i'm not even kidding we might not even recognize the people around us but even if we don't know every single person on this field each of us has someone here who we've developed an unbreakable friendship with through all the ups and the downs breakups and makeups from football games to non-existent proms we've been there for one another even when we were separated by a phone screen and of course we've had some fallouts along the way but maybe we can use tonight to make some amends that way the snapchat memories are a little less awkward to all those people who have helped our class make it to this point thank you thank you to our teachers who stuck with us through the silent and awkward zoom classes this year especially one of mine who continued teaching for a single 11 person class during the most unpredictable year thank you to our parents and families who have stood by us through thick and thin we wouldn't be anywhere if it wasn't for your tireless effort and to my parents thank you so thank you so much i know only two of you and our plus fours understood that but the rest of you can google translate it later we're all professionals at that by now i would just like to end by saying congratulations to the class of 2021.
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and i'll turn it back over to my partner rob paz he's going to go through the spreadsheet okay so we also prepared a spreadsheet to try to put these side by side so so that you know how we did this we took their proposals and and uh kind of broke them out so that you're we're trying to give you the best apple to apple comparison that we can um so i don't know yeah yes there we go okay so uh basically some of the main differences that the trust has kind of one bigger policy if you will uh general liability policy the mahoney group is proposing uh several policies to kind of be you know comparable both are both would ensure the district well you're not choosing between good and bad here tonight you're choosing between you know good and better you would be well insured under either scenario in our view but the trust has when we talk about general liability that's that's their major policy and a lot of things that fit under that uh within that um and so you can see we've tried to show you who what the general what the occurrence and aggregate numbers would be realizing that both vendors are offering you an umbrella policy on top of that and then an excess carrier on top of that a reinsurance basically and that's how you you see this let's say a one million dollar occurrence okay we have a bad event your limit is one million if you have three but if you have aggregate if you have three bad events you know then your your limit is three million then you have on top of that you stack your uh umbrella policy which would be available in under certain circumstances and then your excess uh excess amounts on top of that that's how you would ultimately get to what the mahoney group is proposing is the upward limit of 18 million dollars and the trust is proposing an upper limit of 50 million dollars in coverage and so we've set out the deductible which is something of concern as well and who the carrier would be and so if you i won't go through each page on that jennifer's pretty much covered that but i would like to just touch on uh some of the what we perceive as the benefits the pros and cons of each of each proposal one thing that to board member taylor's concern insurance you want predictability reliability uh certainty and the bit of a moving target is a concern to me i will say that that is at odds with what you are typically looking for when you're purchasing insurance so some of the pros and cons one you have a lower premium total with the mahoney group um you have higher coverage limits with the trust and that's that's an insurance determination that consumers make all the time you know how much how much is enough uh and what do you want to do on that the higher coverage limits are something that we think is a pro for the trust because if there was a catastrophic loss you know it seems odd to sit here thinking you could get past 18 million dollars but you think about a full school bus where your driver is at fault and there are serious in a number of serious injuries and you know there that is an issue for you to decide is the trade-off between the somewhat lower premium and the higher coverage limit the prepaid legal plan is also something that you should think about in our view prepaid legal means day-to-day stuff essentially as opposed to a claim when somebody gets hurt at work that's a claim it'll be handled by insurance the prepaid legal is a plan that that's available to you if you want it where it's uh the day-to-day issues that are handled you're pre-paying for that as opposed to using it as you go which is what you've been doing now as you using it as you go year to date for you so far is 50 000 that's not that's not reflected in the mahoney group proposal and so the some of the advantages of the prepaid legal plan are it adds certainty of cost to you you know what you will be paying for your day-to-day legal expenses over the course of the year and it gives your business people a an easier budget to deal with because legal expenses aren't always like a car payment they they you know they're not the same amount every month they go up and down whereas prepaid legal plan offers a kind of a flat monthly fee mr haas can i interrupt again absolutely i'm so sorry don't we we're here to answer your okay as we're talking about the cost of legal i'd like to hear as you offered us dr foley can you maybe speak to the actual process that we have had with using the mahoney for a legal situation i was able to read in your status some situations with our special education shauna miller provided for us but is there i i see a dollar amount but i want to know what we got in that dollar amount and what was the experience for that dollar amount does that make sense uh president reece board member kaler i'd be happy to speak to that so i think one of the things that your your cabinet administration has shared with you on multiple occasions that one of the most important things is that we have the resource have the resources that we need when we need it um the legal is an important important component to that um there's also when we're talking about claims and then we're also talking about day-to-day things when it comes to legal firms in education there are two as i've shared earlier udall shumway and gustin rosenfeld i will tell you that every educational conference things you go to they always have the education attorneys when laws change and we're getting ready to get some that impact curriculum or that impact policies we work with them for crafting our policies we work with them for answering issues questions concerns this sharon covid they became our they were our um go-to um to be honest with you as we were previewing and creating resources because being that we weren't in in a trust that created that created resources for districts we were offering often borrowing what had been created creating our own and running it through a legal legal legal our legal counselor guidance so we use them on we use them often and for various things and they're kind of important a phone call to to to guston rosenfeld or to udol shemway is an important part of verifying and checking and us doing our work your cabinet team would not feel comfortable or be okay if you made any decision that allowed us not to have access to these two firms whether we are holding aside money to use them for they today um or claims or otherwise so so so know that that to us is important and we want to have access to those same resources um we were informed on friday there was an in and rob has kind of referenced this this came at five o'clock on friday that they had just confirmed that if with that uh munich re that new carrier would allow us to use gus and rosenfeld and udall shem way if there were claims activity so in other words if you're going to be sued right that would be who you're you could use but they had um direct contact with jackson lewis law firm in phoenix for day-to-day legal questions surrounding employment matters for no cost one of the things that would be a problem for for your admin team would be to use a law firm in which none of us know the names of the lawyers who they work with on a daily basis i am sure we pulled it up in cabinet looked at the law firm looked at the lawyers i'm sure they're wonderful reputable people but they're nobody that the hundreds of years of experience around the table have had to work with or would use it's important for us to be able to when we have a sped issue or a situation be able to call the attorney follow up on the attorney you read in status an example of for the first time we have a case that is getting ready to go to potentially litigation we claim that as the district we've done nothing wrong i mean we could be sued because a student moves into a district and is claiming you saw two districts are being listed in that obviously this is the first time we've gone to claim so we could be working there are and again with no no offense to our current attorneys in the room you have you have you have experts in each area you have spent might use on a day-to-day basis a lawyer with an expertise in sped mom may use um jennifer mcclellan for a um employment issue so you have we may start with an issue with an attorney who has some background and has some knowledge with this and if you change attorneys you start all over again so if we were to work with day-to-day counsel with someone who didn't know the schools or didn't know the students it could be a real challenge so you saw that for the first time we needed to go to um needed to potentially go to litigation so knowing that the preferred the preferred law firm for that would be gustin rosenfeld so we had to you know again and she explained her experience with having to um you know again it was far different than just referring it and being done um and it was much more involved and mom in a little bit would speak to our experiences with similar kind of things when you're going um litigation resource resources and such so if you'll go back to your question what was different um is is that it's a little bit more involved in cumbersome to utilize the resource that doesn't mean it's not there it's important for us again your your team doesn't doesn't really worry about we need insurance we're not worried about the name of the brand we want to make sure that we as a team have access to the very same resources when we need them and the legal is a big thing so whether they are and and the right resource when you need them um and again you don't know if you need them for more than just day stay today or if you need him for a claim again as you'll notice we work with our attorneys quite frequently and this is the first time in two years we've had a claim and so it's been a very different experience than it had been previously when we had had a claim and she had shared her experience so again um the resources matter um and and and we utilize them daily uh dr foley thank you for answering that um i know that in the past in previous board members didn't know but we had an in-house attorney i call it a house yeah that's gonna you're all gonna make fun of me forever and that's fine it's on the tape um in-house attorney so that some of the day-to-day would be referred to her but now that linda good mrs good retired the day-to-day is not in-house and so we've had to look for some of those and and questions presidents board member taylor i think one of the things your admin team would say is while we loved having an in-house attorney the in-house attorney would have to rely on outsourcing uh this on it because these are such niche situations case by case quite honestly the example is we've been working with the lawsuit that we recently had we'd be working with an attorney would have to switch to another attorney but the attorney who's representing the other district also represented this family in the ninth circuit court so again every time you change i can't imagine changing to an attorney that wasn't an arizona special ed law attorney they may be great litigation attorneys they may be great day-to-day but they're not um we would prefer to work with those who are expertise in the area and field and guide us and we utilize their guidance office often several i can count on my hand multiple times this week where we would pick up the phone and say we have an issue with this contract we have an issue and concern with this this teacher we're going to proceed in this way do you have any concerns as our attorney if we were to proceed this way and sometimes they guide us carefully and say nope that will cause you could potentially or you're open you're violent you're putting yourself in a position where you will be vulnerable you could be liable okay how guide me what do i need to do us to have that will save us from having to likely go to litigation so whether you prepay it or whether we set it aside to be able to utilize the preferred guidance it's essential to your team to have that we do not not although we loved linda i don't think that putting a salary for a specific person would be as beneficial as just having the ability to utilize the right person for the right resource because before we were utilizing her to work through them to come back to just work with them directly and not that she wasn't wonderful but again i think we use them for i mean lots of things when we're creating policies when we're creating handbooks and we're creating um issues with teachers that are coming forward or that need to be we need to be thoughtful about how how we word things before we bring an iga to you an imminent memorandum of understanding before we assign and agree to the district we would have someone from a legal council review it to give us guidance you would want us to have that so and again we would want to be able to work with the attorneys we have confidence in who who who provide us the resources this year as i refer kind of referenced earlier we used the resources that our colleagues would share with us that the attorneys who who work with them for the trust which had created we would share it modify it and then send it because again we were it wasn't being created for us um and again we were able to get the resource um we borrowed it and modified it and then had our legal counsel review it but again just a different a different way of getting the information dr foley thank you what was the name of the day-to-day attorney was the jackson lewis law firm and again our cabinet pulled it up not that we are saying that they are not um wonderful we've we don't recognize any of them and it's a larger group a larger group that has practices and all across the united states i am sure they're very knowledgeable and very reputable but from a day-to-day thing usually the issues that happen day to day the history that we have with that attorney saves us when it's time to go to litigation starting all over again or getting the question why did you do that we wouldn't have advised you to do that my concern is that when i go to the asb law conference every year it's it's udall shumway it's gus rosenfeld these are the attorneys names and i've seen maybe maybe jackson and jackson has presented at the asba law conference i have no idea but that would be that would be a question for me to know if they are actively involved in the arizona school law and are actively participating even with our asba president reece board member taylor i would never want to profess to use something that will that i would be mislying misspeaking otherwise i am sure they are wonderful reputable attorneys they are not names that all of us who attend state meetings um have worked with learned from or are consulted with on any of our things done on a daily basis are they a school board attorney or are they a school attorney this jackson lewis i think they're a gender i'm sure they have people in their practice who are education but i will tell you that an attorney for another for an education attorney in another state uh is different than arizona we're a little peculiar we just are arizona is a lot different and we have i mean from like i said this is this is more than just litigation things these are day-to-day things like policies new laws we're rolling things out um you know legally we're getting ready to be potentially needing to look at the training we provide our administrators for curriculum and controversial topics and potential litigation fees of up to five thousand dollars if we you know have teachers who break this i mean so these are things that if we you know don't have guidance for on a daily basis it could be problematic dr foley just real quick as we were talking about that um but that's part of our coverage with asba though correct i mean we use them for our policies we make sure they create them they make sure they update them they push them out to us to make sure from a policy standpoint that's what our membership of asba helps cover and and we have access to as far as policies we have access to the asba law team to make sure that we're following the policies they're updating and and we're part of their membership that make sure that we're in compliance yes they do help us with those policies where we get help with with our legal counsels when we need to amend them if you'll recall earlier this year we had our policy our face mass policy that we ended up needing to amend part of the reason we needed to amend was guidance from our legal counsel to prevent litigation so sometimes their help is in refining our policies that guide our practice to help us stay out of um litigation and this was in reference to our face mass policy you'll remember did asba provide our face mass policy and then we amended it we amended it at face the week i remember amending it but did asba provide that policy the original one for us or did we amend it first before we adopted it i believe we did a whole lot of amending on our specific policy um the one that they had was very general very vague and we did not admit to this we did not take it as copyrighted so often time but we did it in consultation with an attorney because we knew we wanted to have something that we were i mean you had an official policy some people adopted it with a copyrighted and hence they didn't have to come back and change it we had to come back and change it because we had our own policy thank you i didn't mean to open up such a big can of worms mr haas but no thank you sorry very good questions um so just to uh circle back and put a bow on the the prepaid legal thing um this year's a good example to look at why you know as you think is this something we want or don't want it's been a weird year let's just say that and it can't end soon enough from everybody's perspective i think but because it's a weird year there's been lots of issues that have come up that are not formulaic you know we've been very busy dealing with all this as you have too and the prepaid legal one of the advantages is certainty of expense to you um and so that's something about even the year before that you think about all the red for ed stuff that was going on and that created a lot of upset and worry about what's going on and so the last two years are you know a good thing to think about is is this a value to the district or not um i will also acknowledge the mahoney group has has something there for you on this too the the the hotline or the access to the jackson lewis firm but but i want to point out to you some of the limitations of that and i'll read from the material that the mahoney group provided to me about that in response to one of our follow-up questions the hotline is available monday to friday from 8 30 a.m to 6 p.m eastern time i know miss martens has my cell phone and i want her to have it i know dr foley has my cell phone i want her to have it i know they have jennifer's cell phones as well what can i use this service for the hotline is for general legal overview it is not intended to provide a determinative answer as to whether a specific adverse personnel action should be taken um it's good for what it does but uh if ms martens calls me after 6 pm eastern time and says they have a hot personnel item and i say well my answer is not intended to provide a determinative answer as to whether a specific adverse personnel action should be taken she's not going to be too happy with that is my guess nor should she be in my view and so again this is a valuable add-on service to you but uh our our task that we've been asked to do is to highlight distinctions for you so you can make make assessments mr haas again another question sorry does president reece have access to that phone number and could she use that service as well as president of the board because i know last year i was president of the school board and there was an issue and i had to seek outside counsel asap is that the same coverage yes you know certainly dealing with us we don't want this to be the case you know and hope it never is but there are instances where the superintendent and the board aren't getting along our client is the district you would have direct access to your lawyer in that instance okay um another issue is the uh the workers compensation piece i know there has been some frustration with the workers with the district's experience with workers compensation some concerns about the level of service and communication and support that they received uh again that carrier will be changing but the alliance does have does underwrite insurance workers compensation insurance for many many school districts you're the proposed carrier from the mahoney group copper point used to be called the state fund they they underwrite many many policies as well but it's more for general business matters and there may be instances where that becomes significant so those are some some of the the pros and cons that we see here for you both i will say both vendors offer some value-added services trainings inspections supports those sorts of things our assessment is the trust is has a little bit of an edge in that area it's all arizona focused it's primarily school focused um and uh you know that's that's a big marketing point for for the trust again you pay for that and it's just up to you whether you whether that's a valuable service to the district or not my final point would be as you look at insurance policies there are a claims made policy there is an occurrence policy and that's important because the policy kicks in if it's an occurrence when the occurrence happened you know even though you may not learn about it for a while when the occurrence happened that that's how the policy is written whereas with the claim if it's a claims-made policy when the claim is made that's when you decide whether there's coverage or not um and i've i've asked uh so there was some cons of course most of most of the policies that were being proposed to you are occurrence-based policies which is in our view as is the preferable approach but we did ask some follow-up questions on that and in two areas in particular educators legal liability which is a lot of personnel stuff and police professional liability the information the mahoney group provided to me indicates that those are claims-made policies and the retroactive date on each meaning how far back the new carrier would look to decide whether there was coverage on this claims-made basis as july 1st 2021 so if you're leaving a current carrier and moving to a new carrier there is a possibility where there's a window of time where you would not have coverage there's and so you have that's you may have heard the term tail coverage before you buy a you buy a another policy to cover that little slice again in these two areas educators legal liability police professional liability the retroactive date on the policy would only go to july 1st 2021 so if you do go with the mahoney group we may want to look into this whether there's a need for some tail coverage in those two particular areas with that um happy to answer any other questions that you have uh and i i don't know if jennifer you want to piggyback off them the only other point i would like to make is just to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples and one point that was raised by the mahoney group which is that the trust coverage is the the 40 million plus the 10 million is for all the school districts they insure so it is a different a pooling approach the mahoney group the coverage is solely for higley so i want to make sure that point is heard as well so thank you very much for your time and we appreciate being recognized as council for the district and and as education council we are here to help and we really appreciate that you all recognize that and receive our information thank you i have a question um curtis on that third slide it's titled historic costs for workers comp so if we pull that up am i understanding this slide to be we had an additional 50 000 in legal fees for workers comp issues madam president if i might answer that question the 50 000 in fees this that number my understanding and that this is from your business services department is that is the cost that the district expended this year without ms good who i have a great deal of respect for so um that is the cost that you all expended for fees that were not covered by any of your liability policies so for instance there's been a discussion of the lawsuit and the pending claim and that has been assigned to our office and and so we are assisting and you are not paying directly for gus rosenfeld fees that 50 000 would be fees that you had to pay to get general questions answered this year okay so that's not directly related to historical workers comp information that yeah that is in general are just additional legal costs outside of legal coverage regarding claims like you said our day-to-day which that and i know you guys at the beginning also said that you estimate that to go up before the end of the year which it has been a crazy year it's hard because we don't have a lot of information prior to craziness because we were you know we were with the trust and then um we also had ms good who provided some guidance and legal advice but our legal costs here too is we've had a really crazy year and a whole lot of legal stuff came up really fast because we were given executive orders that we were expected to follow right away but no one knew um you guys were trying to figure it out just as as we're all calling you guys you're like i know it's there but i gotta find out so um and that legal cost also um references some of our we've had to have super contract superintendent contracts reviewed um some unusual items that we did have to seek outside legal counsel for that we typically would not have so i was just clarifying that because that cost what has been what our legal cost has been is um actually the difference between the cost of the trust and the cost of the mahoney group so like dr foley said bottom line we've determined who our attorneys are going to be whether that's through prepaid or if we go with with a lower cost and premium that that money would be set aside for um for legal cost so i did just notice that it's actually almost almost identical of what we have here versus what the difference in cost of the two policies are if we have the trust policy without the add-on prepaid um i i think it's like literally a hundred and fifteen dollars difference um what we have here versus the difference in cost so so that is still an option that based on what we have paid in legal cost um that we can have that set aside still have our our attorneys of choice for our day-to-day uh as well so thank you for that clarification i was a little concerned if we had that legal cost for workers comp outside of claims because then something's not right so any other questions i think mrs mrs martin's had something to say about the workers comp part of the side of this is there something more you can i i i don't want to just make a decision tonight on cost um i want to make a decision based on the people that have to work every day with these groups whether it's the mahoney group or the trust and i want to make sure that i'm completely informed by you all how is the experience been some of you have obviously been in the trust prior and then now the mahoney group so i'm trying to get a feel of the environment and the day-to-day work because i don't work with them on a day-to-day basis it's not me i have to entrust you all um to do that so i i guess i want to hear more from the experience side so i because we're going to be on the spot tonight i believe making a decision so i just want to be as informed as i possibly can be certainly president reece vice president wilson board member taylor um thank you for the opportunity for me to share my perspective so i joined higley unified school district about four years ago and at the time we were carried by the trust um and i could tell you in terms of themes of what we've discovered when we made the transition and i'll only talk about through our own experiences in the department and dr fowler and i had an opportunity to talk and connect because his department covers and accesses and does the liability in terms of the carrier where our department of human resources does the workers compensation component so amongst the themes that we had had concerns about when we made the transition they were over customer service and support the amount of work and follow-up training and professional development and opportunity so in terms of resources overall so when we first moved over there was a lot of discussion about that the services wouldn't be any different both from the mahoney group as well as previously dr thomason who was our superintendent that just retired so we wanted to make sure that we were very clear that there weren't going to be differences in changes because we were concerned from an aspect of we're a small department so making sure that we have the right resources and accessing the right information for individuals and not putting an overburden on our team so what we discovered initially in terms of that customer service and support was that when we were with the alliance and the trust that support was up here the communication and what we were presented was that they would align however in terms of those first i'd say six seven months of the transition it was not up to par and the mahoney group in liberty mutual in terms of our experiences was under par will i say did they do everything in terms of from a legacy pardon me a legality component in terms of the information from workers comp yes but from the customer service support side of it you know we would use to go to the trust and things would get taken care of and we didn't have to worry about it and they went above and beyond in helping us with accessing resources for our employees if they had to go in terms of a fast med or finding a medical provider because their injury they had something that happened that they didn't have a provider for so they would work with us to get that information and there were hiccups and just like with any transition there's always hiccups so the transition the new platform as well as reporting we weren't getting the right reporting information from the right people and the phone numbers and when you do anything new people don't always call the right places and don't necessarily know they're calling a 1-800 number but doesn't necessarily know who's behind that 1-800 number too right so we had some dynamics of that um that was part of it but certainly from our perspective and we did we talked with mr edwards and we had an opportunity to also talk with the representatives from liberty mutual to say like hey something's not working we don't like this help us get this to work right or help us understand what we're not doing right to where we're having these concerns and these issues and the follow through with this so we actually did have a couple of conference calls and mr edwards um met with some of our employees so that way they could establish those procedures but really what we felt happened was that we just reset our expectations and said this is just how it's going to be we've made it work but from a customer level support area overall we still feel that it doesn't compare to what the customer service and support we got from the trust so the amount of work and follow-up that's the second theme that we had and that really ties into that customer service and support in regards to the fact that we had had examples and we had situations in which when we called the trust again just a stump of a finger they took care of it they had all the information and we would you know wouldn't get anything else until it was completed or notification that everything was completed and they had sent out the individuals needed to do the job where consistently whenever we had to hand anything in from liberty mutual we consistently always got a phone call 24 48 hours later to say hey we need more information but we provided you all the information you have everything so there was always an additional follow-up in which our experience with the trust was that we made the phone call we gave them the information we gave them the same type of information and they were able to handle and produce for us what we needed and then the last item and theme that we had concerns with was training and professional development and opportunity so many individuals may or may not know if we participated in certain conferences or we did certain things or our employees participated in certain trainings we got discounts off of our carrier for the trust as well as the fact that going back to where when you are involved with a large pool of individuals in which they are similar fields to you there's the benefit is that the trust also did an annual conference every year in which we could send our employees to that worked under these areas of workers comp and liability insurance and they would get updated information and we didn't have those same resources we did get emails we were on a list serve with liberty mutual and on a list serve with the mahoney group but there wasn't an opportunity for a conference or actually participating and going i will say that kovid changed everything and there's webinars that were available but sometimes some of the information that came across i know i reached out to our liberty mutual representative on two occasions because i had gotten their national update like participate in this webinar and when i tried to look more into it i wasn't able to access it so there was a disconnect and i feel and this is from the perspective of human resources and support services and you know i can't speak to other areas but from my own experiences you know my expectation is also that the mahoney group was a broker for liberty mutual who happened to be the carriers for most of them and so as a broker he and mr edwards should also take responsibility in those areas and we would have wished that the accountability was there more often or in working with us as a as a client more often than we saw in terms of the response and the follow-up so i do want to go back to what dr foley mr haas and ms mclennan have mentioned in terms of not only resources with legal but also in terms of yes it has been unusual times and it has been unusual years but i could also speak towards the fact that when i got here and some of you may or may not know but i've been in human resources for over 16 years where i had come from previously we had had a firm on retainer and they were one of the largest educational firms in the state that i had worked with when you develop a relationship and a rapport as both rob has and jennifer mclennan mentioned you then feel comfortable calling them on their cell phones at all times and hoping they'll call you back when you don't have that rapport especially if you have an emergency that happens on a sunday night at nine o'clock you don't feel as though you have the opportunity and what i didn't realize was this 1-800 number had limited components in which you could call that number um and mr haas and miss mclennan as well as the other firm that we have talked about url someway we have such great relationships with them that what was wonderful is all throughout kovid or anything that occurred they would always say we'll get you the resources that we helped put the trust together or we'll get you the resources in which we help put together with another school district so it was always wonderful to know that through our relationship and what we had developed over time they were always willing to give us the information that we needed to be able to do what the follow-up had to be done and then if we had to tweak it and work with them or consult back with them as necessary in the bigger picture um and that's just in my opinion something that you can't put a dollar amount to because of the fact that you want to be able to know that they know me i know them i can i can sometimes anticipate what i think i might hear back from one of them or from even with denise's little brit from mural shamway who i have worked with too and just being able to dialogue in a way that doesn't put any pressure and maybe sometimes you can throw out crazy ideas that make no sense but then work through that or determine what's best for the district as well as what's legal thank you thank you miss martens i just had a quick question too i was on the procurement committee and part of the procurement and went through when a couple years ago when we went through this before um it was my understanding that the mahoney group was going to provide us a direct resource so i'm hearing what you're saying did we not have that supplied resource that was only for us thank you president reese for asking that question so we were under that understanding also when one of the things and i vividly remember this because it was a huge concern in cabinet we asked well how are these going to differ and dr thomas said they weren't going to differ and linda goode at the time said my main concern is the prepaid legal component and so we were told they weren't going to differ shortly after the transition we were told then that we did not have that service available to us in our full day training um both liberty mutual and mr edwards through the mahoney group did tell us that we would have a 1-800 number um to be able to utilize if necessary and then also and i can't tell you the timeline on that but later came back and said you know you could first use anybody you wanted to use but then there was a concern about a conflict of interest that liberty mutual had with udal shamway and so they had said that we would prefer that you not use udal someway when the time comes so the 1 800 number was presented i did not receive that 1 800 number right away and then my concern of that 1 800 number even though in that training that we participated in was that there would be arizona attorneys it wasn't a confirmation but ideally at that time the discussion was that they believe it would be arizona attorneys but we wouldn't necessarily know who and we wouldn't necessarily know that they had expertise in the education area they might have just had general expertise in relation to employee relations other components and i don't even believe miss miller took place in that training i don't think you were offered the opportunity it was just dr fowler's team and the human resources team at the time and so through our conversations and my concerns what dr thomason offered as an alternative was that we would take some of the cost savings that we had had from the mahoney group and the trust and put that money aside to then utilize for day-to-day services as needed and as a result what you've seen we've been able to do that you know mr haas and i had a conversation overall we have not needed to maybe utilize the services of legal as much as others in the past but that has shifted and that has changed and i can tell you from what i have seen in my experience in human resources i think it's going to continue to shift in a direction and from the employee relations side that's going to continue to need legal advice just from the issues and the things that i've had to investigate and work on in the last six seven months the theme will be the themes will be title ix controversial curriculum and in special education will be our will be our hot topic themes without without without doubt so but we didn't have a dedicated person to help us with workers comp claims or things like that because that was my understanding is that we would have a dedicated person that would help hr and everything get through those claims so we did get a dedicated person there were some some concerns and so we actually then got switched to a different person and i can't speak about the back end and why we got switched but some of it did have relation to the fact that we weren't getting information timely president ruiz yes dr foley you can distribute the question how you'd like to for the mahoney group and the trust is there additional coverage for the gap i heard you say that there may be a need for gap coverage um with one or maybe both is there a need for gap coverage with either group do you know what i'm saying thank you i will you know what i'm going to let the two of you respond to that i'm not sure i understand you have a question so gap coverage i heard something was spoken about gap coverage for one or maybe both of these the options and i wanted to know is there do we need gap coverage a because if we need gap coverage that would be important to note right now and how much that would be either either group that we go with tonight she was talking about the workers comp that if there's an injury because either way if we stay with the mahoney group we're going to a new carrier or if we switch over to the trust then that's a new carrier what happens with any claims um did you have mentioned that like they won't even look back and there was a gap in our coverage okay um i'll i'll be happy to feel june to july thank you president reece board member wilson um again one of the one of the things that you should think about is the trust has kind of one it's a one-stop shop if you will for coverage the mahoney group's current proposal involves a number of new carriers for you and so when you're talking about changing carriers you want to make sure there is no gap in coverage which is some of the information we've asked them to to provide us to look into that issue on these two particular policies the educators legal liability policy and the police professional liability policy the the effective date would be july 1st so could you negotiate a date back you know if you went with the mahoney group could you negotiate a date further back than that as as they've apparently done on some of the other policies perhaps if not is there a commercially viable product for that most likely yes i don't know what the cost of that would be but i know that everybody would be interested in making sure that there is full coverage for the district now i'm just speaking to my experience as a business owner if i've had if i've changed workers comp if my policies expired and i've gone with another one if the injury occurred while that workers comp policy was in effect then that's who that employee goes to and if there's an injury that occurs from that date forward then you go to the new policy is typically how how i've learned how you know the bottom line i was covered by a carrier up until this date so if there was an injury that carrier supposed to take care of it now i say supposed to so could you run into some things maybe but um the carrier whoever was your carrier at the time of the injury um is the one who's supposed to cover it absolutely president reese and you know people don't call us to say everything worked out the way they hoped they would uh we usually get the calls that there was a little bit of a glitch and so that's why we're looking into this again could you negotiate a date further back on those two particular policies maybe so uh and but you know how that would work if we chose to go with the trust because at that point we're changing carriers as well so i mean do you have any idea where would we have to look at at providing that do you know is the trust willing to go back or is it assumed that because again either way no matter which way we go tonight um we're changing carriers so i mean the only thing the same is if we if we go with the mahoney group we stay with the company the mahoney group but our actual carrier changes if we choose to go with the trust our actual carrier changes so do we know i mean i know you pointed that out for the mahoney group do we do we know about the trust i would defer to mr cole on that point he could probably answer that better than me with more authority than me and we're not permitted to do that so okay i i'm just it was brought up for the mahoney group as to why i we're still changing carriers if we give the trust so we will make sure that there's full coverage whichever option you choose [Music] mr haas again how many districts are with the trust in the state of arizona i don't know exactly there's about 250 districts and maybe 15 community colleges and i i think uh probably 95 of those if not more are covered by the trust mr cole reported 240 earlier 240 districts are with the trust okay um and mr haas how many districts does the mahoney group cover i don't know the answer to that i know the liberty mutual covered higley and we're hopeful of branching out from there but i'm not aware of any any success in that area thank you i just have one more question um if i may i should say charter schools a whole new ball of wax you know i think there would be a variety of private carriers that would ensure the charter schools but traditional public school districts community college districts almost exclusively insured by the trust are there any that you know of that have left the trust for another insurance group and have gone back sorry uh not to i'm not aware of that let's not say it hasn't happened board member schultz i'm just not aware of that thank you and i just so we're looking at a one-year thing so is that correct is that what the proposal is one year so potentially um going with the mahoney group we could be changing carriers again in a year we don't have a multi-year agreement is that what i'm understanding is that a very good question president reece the the premium proposals are for one year it's possible we could do this all again next year yes okay but uh really i think if you were comfortable with it it would be a much more streamlined process next time getting the the premium proposal and going from there well and i just want to clarify too also for our other board members i think for dr foley i think that the process we've used by bringing you guys in and helping compare um this did not come before the board again last month or last year um we had the procurement process mahoney group was chosen and then the next year it did not come before the board again so we were we it came under consent for the approval of the expense but there was no discussion if any changes or coverage or anything like that had happened and then after the fact we were made aware of a large amount of money that was then added on with other coverage that we were not aware of and was not part of the procurement process so um hence we are trying to definitely make sure we are following a process and procedure and that's why dr foley had also referenced that timelines were created and that it will get on the calendar every year so that we know this time of year this is going to be reviewed this will come before the board it will just be discussed now there are some times that there is no change and you know here's like we do with our health insurance you know um premium changed this amount but we're not doing that i understand we're in a very um different scenario this is not very common um to answer mrs kaler's question is not very many districts are not with the trust and so um the fact that we left the trust a couple years ago um and now we're we're back to doing this uh it it has we've made it very clear though that the board needs to be aware of what our coverage is every year and has to be involved in that process and the cost and and know what we're getting um for that so that might clarify a little bit as to why we're doing this in a little bit different format and again we've you guys have made it very clear you represent higley unified school district you don't represent the mahoney group you don't represent the trust now could you be attorneys for you know preferred attorneys for carriers through the mahoney group could you be preferred attorneys through the trust sure but bottom line you we see dollar amounts you are employed through the higley unified school district to represent us to make sure that we we are covered so i appreciate that um but um i hope that i know because we have some newer board members and so we are in a little bit different scenario yes thank you for bringing that up because i've been sitting here spinning trying to figure out why we're here doing this and then i see the history with the trust then when we're honing now we're now trust is back on the board so this is a yearly thing that that's normally brought up through procurement and now it's going to be a board discussion am i understanding this correctly my president reece board member anderson this was a unique uh she was sort of sharing the history with you going back to the theme you've heard an awful lot of was administration processes and procedures actually the way that the governing board initially approved this was actually a voucher it was in the vouchers it actually hadn't come to you as a cassette consent agenda item which is a problem in the fact that anything that over 100 in our own policies anything over a hundred thousand dollars comes to you even if they are um have gone through procurement as a purchase so there was concern from the fact well first of all it didn't come the way it should have come as an annual renewal and it came late but then it was why is this different than it had been before we needed to do an analysis obviously there had been a transition had we realized the costs that we had seen as you know we've been talking about funds processes and procedures and understanding our funds why have we spent things we've had new people in finance looking at this and so we were asked by the governing board the time to bring forward both proposals this year for us to look at thoroughly so that we could make a decision when we were doing the approval process normally what happens is that you go through the procurement process you have you prefer pick a vendor you do the renewal you bring it in it would be a consent typically a consent agenda item um in which you would approve that it's typically not done we've done like a we did like a small procurement um format this time in which we said let's look at both let's understand them there are going to be changes quite honestly even if we even if we had not looked at the trust um there were going to be changes to liberty mutual's coverage and carrier we should thoroughly review it with an attorney here was our policy before here's what we have now what other changes so that we could answer those questions so annually every year this is something we have to do and we would bring to you typically historically in consent but this one came a little different this year because of how historically it had been handled from the processes that as as board members clarified president ruiz clarified perfectly there was an issue in how we had not approved approved it appropriately and so we addressed it and then moved forward for this year so hence this year is a little different and for the history from being at with the trust and then going to mahoney is what are you able to explain why there was the change was that because of the process or did something occur a great question so they're just like uh president reece had said there was an rfp request for proposal and they did a study um to look at different options to see if there was a benefit to moving carriers in which they decided to do um so yeah and that was that was strictly a cost perspective at the time and then i believe um because last year we were not brought back to have the discussion we weren't able to even ask the questions and follow up and say how is the service been so this is why i kind of asked tonight i do want to look at a dollar amount obviously we are in charge of a very large budget but i also want to look at the product and how has it worked for higley and how has it worked for the people that do it every day so those are kind of why i was asking a lot of those questions tonight michelle mrs anderson sorry um if that gives you anything i would tell you that when i um just a little story um i went to the philadelphia national school board association um convention in philadelphia a couple years ago and this was shortly after i believe that we had left the trust and so i'm at an asb a um they do happy hours and they host different events and so i would introduce myself hi i'm from higley oh you're the ones that left the trust that was that was who i was known by at a national convention so if that gives you any idea that leaving the trust was a very big deal and that's how i was known at that convention so mrs anderson also yes i sat on that committee and um and we went through it it wasn't all about cost it was about coverage um and like mr haas has brought up that um you know are we part of and everyone has the access to the same pot or are we part of having our own and insurance is a tricky thing because you try you have insurance to make sure you're covered and you want the appropriate amount of coverage but then it's also likelihoods of things i mean granted the likelihood of us going through a pandemic i i wish i was able to bet on that a while ago and you know i could have really made out but um i mean things do happen but we did go through and and look at the different coverages um they were pretty comparable we looked at cost and so at that time based on what we had received it was a committee of several transportation was on their finance someone from student services there was a variety of people and we i believe we started with three and then it came down to two and we asked for you know their best and final um and then through a lot of conversation through each of us ranking them for different things uh the mahoney group had had the products that we thought would cover the district as well as there was a cost savings and also at the time again a lot keeps coming back to prepaid legal at the time this was three years ago we went through this for two years of coverage ms good was here so um the prepaid legal while it was important it wasn't the end-all be-all either we did have our in-house attorney we still budgeted for our outside legal that we prefer so again the cost savings and that's why i quickly did the math on okay based on what we've paid in legal doesn't make sense and then just at this point we have to also look at what coverage do we need because are we paying for stuff that we don't need i mean we know insurance you know oh you get this and as a bonus you get this and it's like well i don't need that and um and then you look over here and you get what you need so it wasn't cost alone that drove us um to to change from the trust to the mahoney group so um but again full disclosure there was later on additional add-ons with additional coverages that we as a board weren't aware of that came at additional costs and so as a board member that was concerning to me i mean that raised a red flag to me like going what's going on because i sat on that committee and i saw the packages and i compared and i knew what we were getting and i knew what the cost was and then to see additional cost come through that that was concerning to me um and so that hence is why now um we are going to have a process and a timeline for this so um i hope that makes sense but i did it was not all cost driven it it was product driven on what as a school district we need what we need as higly may not be the same thing as phoenix union needs you know so um so there was a lot of discussion about that and as you brought up higley a year ago is not possibly going to need different higley this year or future years so thank you for thank you for all of you bringing that together because i just sat there spinning for a while like why are we doing this so we will next year we will have another discussion is that what i'm understanding and will it go up for a whole new group are we just discussing like are we going to be having to choose again we we should not be this is not something we should be doing every year um we should there i mean if we need to do this because this was a weird year we would normally go through the rfp process and there would be procurement a whole different process as board members we would not be sitting here we would be asking questions for sure but we would not be solely getting this information it would be based on a recommendation from a committee who went through an rfc process correct president reese just for background then what you're saying is in the additional policies and editions were hidden in a sense they came after right so but when they were approved then the board approved them they were hidden in vouchers or hidden in different languages it did not come as a consent agenda item like separate um it did come in vouchers and then as we were going through vouchers is where it came to our attention so we were not as a board aware that there was different changes um and things like that for an overall cost okay and then the pretty package that you were given and based on from the mahoney group then wasn't executed according to miss mum's correct i mean ms martin i'm so sorry that's okay i've got a unique name so i kind of used to do it but president reece board member schultz correct from my perspective in my opinion from what we were dialogued and shared with not being part of the rfp committee was different than the result that in which we got and as i said really those major themes in the areas that mattered to us customer service support amount of work and follow-up and training professional development resources thank you yeah i was not aware of that again in the rfp process we were advised that higley would have a dedicated resource to help us through all that because that was part of the conversation with the rfp process is the ease of the access through the trust and if we were going through a different carrier um that we we were supposed to have our own dedicated person i was not aware um because we had like mrs kaler said we made a huge change and we weren't able to come back and circle back around to find out how it went and and everything so we weren't aware of their experience in that aspect and just really fast this is kind of a fast thing for us tonight to be able to vote on this and getting an email at 3 that changes things if we have to do this next year or something like this is this something okay um yes mrs schultz i i was i'll be very honest i was shocked to get an email this afternoon at 3 15 at the ninth hour i think it's completely unprofessional in my opinion and that sent a lot of red flags for me tonight alone just asking these questions because i just don't think that would was appropriate to send board members directly even a last minute email and no offense to you whatsoever personally i just think as a professional it was not professional and that scares me when i hear than the other stories of having troubles along the way i'm i i believe that there's some issues here that we didn't address sooner do you guys have any other questions for mr haws or do you have anything else to add with your presentation as we've just sat here no happy to answer any further questions i have nothing further to add thank you okay if we don't have any further discussion then we can move on to our action item we can still have discussion here too um if anyone wants to make a motion or a recommendation based on the information they've heard i'll make a motion i move that the governing board award um our district property casualty and workers compensation for the 2021-2022 fiscal year to the trust did i say that correctly mr boss i second that motion okay so here we have a motion to award our property liability workers comp insurance to the trust we do have a second you sit next to me and i still had to look at you [Music] um is there any further discussion i know we've had a lot of discussion um all right go ahead i'm i'm not an insurance expert but hearing from ms martin's and um the cabinet and our legal team then then it just i feel better going with the trust overall than going with the mahoney group on this and so that's why i seconded the motion anyone any other questions comments all right all those in favor aye thank you michelle okay all those opposed and i am going to abstain all right so that motion carries four zero one all right then we will go on to 8.2 thank you so much for your time and all the effort and everything that you've put into this we appreciate it i know obviously it's no small task and our pleasure since you are paying us by the hour we'll leave and let you not get built thank you all right so we will go on to 8.2 which is the political agenda so we can see what the what we had was our top five for the asba political agenda um there we go all right so um we've the top five five priorities submitted for higley revised school revised the school board finance forum revive rise of school i don't think that's supposed to be school board is it i'm reading on our packet the finance formula fully fund full day kindergarten and include kindergarteners in the override calculation accelerate full the full restoration of the daw funding fully restore 9th grade cte and jted funding and establish financial and academic transparency for all institutions that accept public funds so um we're not i'm purposely not making a motion yet because yeah we're gonna what we'll do is we will um well i'll move that we discuss and then determine our political agenda second top five for political agenda for asba i'll second that all right so does anyone have any other i mean there's a lot of information here um this is the political agenda that aspa puts out we submit our information on what's important to us obviously all of these issues they're all public education issues are important the ones i read were our and so we have to figure out our 2022 what our top five priorities are mrs wilson president reese um i really enjoyed reading through these um the three that i kind of starred as i was going through was the managing the impact of kovid i felt like is that just one or do they want the miners under it they would like managing the impact of covet on public schools right that would be so i think it includes everything yes that's what i thought so that's what yes that one i feel like we need to maybe keep on there and then since um 2021 political agenda we also mentioned um taxpayer accountability uh i think that that could be a very good one for us as well require and i'll read it it's the red bullet point sorry curtis redder maroon requires public accountability for taxpayer dollars spent on education i think both of those those two lower ones were important to me as i was reading through it these are what the 2021 we can [Music] what is what's important to us we don't have to use these if there's other um topics that we want to submit this is what we can submit to the asba this is just a review of what the 2021 is um i agree kobud's not i mean the impact of it's gonna covet has not been cheap on our district and i think the impact of kiddos moving out of district into either homeschool environments charter schools or private schools definitely plays an impact on us and um requiring uh the funding accountability for those institutions especially our charter school friends i think that's a big deal we should all be accountable to the same just let us see your budget so you're about the public accountability yes both are important to me can you put the slide up a little bit please mr but i'm open for any debate in any conversation um there that's good thank you thank you curtis uh preserve and strengthen local control i think um i i kind of hate that one right now and i kind of love it too so i think that um that's probably not something that would have been first on my list for um in some areas i think that one came back to itas in the you know what so um i just don't think that's my priority for the coming year i i think that um definitely the funding full funding returning um district assistance all you know all of that is they continue to fight for us in that area and i appreciate the asb on that one so very much again also managing cobit i think that's a huge deal and moving forward how that looks and always making an equal equal paying field equal playing field when it comes to taxpayer dollars in education in the state of arizona i agree mrs taylor with the local control i believe sometimes we are fighting i felt like it was more like we were fighting other districts sometimes this year felt like we were fighting for students fighting for what was going on so i tend to agree with you on it kind of bit us in the bottom that's well it's a double-edged sword but um i like control in some ways but it is a double-edged sword i think is it is and i mean what we had to deal with this past year is different because our control was taken away from us and then it was given back to us after decisions were made but nonetheless what this particular political agenda item is talking about funding because there are restrictions on how we can use certain funds and so they continue to fight to loosen those restrictions because again just like the example i used earlier what our needs are for our budget and our funding what we get what our needs are can be different than other school districts and for the state to tell us how we have to spend some of that funding um is what's difficult and so that's that's what a big part of that one is but um i mean it really it was like red for ed and then kovid and kovitz said here hold my beer and you know like it was it was really uh traumatic over the last couple years in um that particular area so i'm not sure if i want it to be our top five president reese i understand what you're saying though um i've heard of other other states having five buckets of money and i believe in arizona we have 65 buckets of money that we i i believe and you guys can correct me mr gatt if you'd like but i believe it's the difference is very big there um so i understand where your point is president rooney and we're the lowest of course of course that's without said um so i get what you're saying president reese on that as well but i would rather focus if i had a vote which i think i do um on the other two mrs anderson what are your thoughts here i mean it's not it's not anything that necessarily these are the top these were the five that were a focus of 2021.
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