And and uh so after after we talked and talked and talked and I appreciated some feedback from you guys, um I said, let's just let's just hold off again. Let's let's make a smart decision here. Um in in that I had Havstick Designs acoustical firm um Fairchild Communications who was um the installer of the sound system. Um and then KR and the architecture firm. They were kind of all in that together in conversation. So um and then Hearn Construction, >> they were here at the same time, right? >> Hstick and Fairchild were. Yeah. >> Which is the acoustic and the sound. >> Correct. Yep. Yep. And so they they talked about the sound system. Yeah. and and you know I said is there any concern I was asking um that Havstick guys and I you know it was a firm that was just recommended to us you know I've never done acoustical testing or things like that but um I said hey before they get here is there any is there any concerns or issues with the sound system and they're like no you have all JBL speakers it's crown amps it's you know this and this was like okay and um so then you know they did their acoustical they're like yeah it's really bad acoustics in here I can tell you that before we even start, you know, whatever.
But when we're having discussions as a school committee member, it's very clear to me and I have the experience to be able to have those kinds of thought process and conversations outside of my own personal views. >> Okay. Okay. >> Please briefly discuss how one of your specific previous work or volunteer experiences could be beneficial to serving on a school committee. >> Question. >> Um, I guess if I think about, you know, If I think about spending time as the treasurer um on PTO, obviously that has given me an insight into sort of public finance versus being in the private sector, right? I'm very aware that um transparency is extremely important because we're dealing with taxpayers money. Um, I think having that experience of um, fundraising money that came straight from parents, um, we want to be very mindful of where we're spending that money and we want to be very transparent about where we're spending that money.
Um, we're exploring integrated safety and accountability software um to enhance our real-time tracking of student and visitor movement. Um, we're also prioritizing redundancy and communication. Uh, this means ensuring that our every instructional space has physical hard copy protocols to supplement our digital emergency systems. Um, the goal is to move from a response mindset to a preventative and accountability mindset. So as you can see um we have our internal progress and timeline. Um as soon as we returned we moved from learning to implementation. When we returned we presented to the leadership team about our learning. Following our leadership debrief in November. We convened our crisis planning team on January 12th to review our emergency response manual. We're currently refining the roles of our incident command team versus our smaller crisis response teams to ensure zero confusions confusion during events. And our department heads are now reviewing specific safety plans for CTE shops and campus grounds to ensure a 360 degree safety perimeter.
So it's important that we share our story in the first aspects of our budget book which you'll get in a few minutes. We share our story with the highlights of what's going on in the Canton Public Schools. district enrollment. When I arrived in Canton three and a half years ago, it was told that district enrollment is going to rise. I've never once said in my four years that district three and a half years that district enrollment is rising. Our enrollment is actually going down. That in by 31 fiscal year 2031, our district enrollment is projected to decrease by 48 students. The projected PK prek through 12 district enrollment of 1391 in fiscal year 27 is a decrease of 14 students overall from 26. So if you look at our chart down below in 20 uh 526 we have 1405 and next year we anticipate that we will have 1,391.
Um again it's amazing to see the growth in uh you know going from one team to two teams uh to seeing students taking uh initiative and and and leads in their interests and their desires as as their leadership grows. Uh so just want to thank uh thank Isuza High School, thank the ED services team uh who has done an amazing job. Um the teacher there in Montesa kind of dropped a hint that there might be another NAF Academy coming soon to a theater near us. And so again, just uh what what what you know amazing things uh to be able to uh to be able to to talk about Isuza High School uh in that in that manner. And then for our athletes who are shining um on the court uh and on the field um kudos to them. I do want to double down and plug uh we do have a CIF home game.
So, we're looking at redoing all of that as well. Um, this is another picture of just missing mechanical systems and uh some ceiling tile work. And I'm going to jump right to the end. So, this is your elementary school and as you guys all know, you guys have some sort of foundational issue that is going on. You can see this is a a camera angle on the floor. You can see this door. That's as far as it can open. And there's the other side of it here. Luckily, this is a mechanical space. This is not a or a storage space. This is not a classroom space. Um, but this needs to be addressed in some manner. And so, we do have money in there. And I'm gonna I'm gonna pause there and I'm going to jump, if you don't mind, to that spreadsheet, whoever's controlling.
So another thing that we look at when we talk about being one school, one district, if let's say we lost kids to justify losing a teacher and we're one school, one district, and teachers have signed their contracts. We have a similar situation right now with first grade with low numbers with four teachers in a class where we could have operated with three teachers in first grade but teachers already had their contracts and we so if we don't make changes or that's when we talk retire or people leave can we absorb that teacher somewhere else because in larger districts if you have low enrollment and you um you can move a teacher to a school that happens to have more third graders than they expected, but you have a district and you can make that, you know, go by seniority or looking at need, you can move them somewhere else.
I think this is so important, something that we should be excited about, something that we again when you look at the increase um it's incredible when you look at just the number without any reference point. Yeah, we there there's still room for improvement. We need to keep pushing for that. But I I do want to just say to those that say public schools are failing or we just throw more money at public schools and we see no difference. We see no change in results or worsening results. That's not true in Gilbert public schools. So you can stop saying that. So we're seeing change. We're seeing improvement. We're changing lives and and the money is making a difference. And and I will just say that the money in schools in today's dollars is actually less than money that was in in past years um when you change for inflation and when you look across the nation it's one of the smallest amounts.
It's our opinion on the financials. Our opinion was unmodified. It's the technical accounting term. Uh the non-technical accounting term is a clean audit opinion. Uh so meaning the we provided reasonable assurance. The financials are free of material misstatement. So, uh the the uh best opinion you can receive when having an annual audit single audit reporting package. So, again, that's the one that's submitted to the federal government. We look over uh the grant, the federal dollars that flow into the district. This year, we specifically tested the child nutrition cluster, so the federal dollars that fund uh food service operations. I'm pleased to report we had no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses noted in this report. So no findings noted uh which is important. This is what's submitted to the federal government. And then I'll uh end with the uniform system of financial records. So again this is a compliance questionnaire every district has to have their auditors uh perform procedures on and submit.
>> Fair enough. >> Quick question. And that was the only question they were asked, right? Yes. About the >> That's okay. >> Yes. >> Because I think the 60% At first I was a little concerned with only having two days for the survey. But if we had 419 responses out of 700, that's a 60% response rate. So I think that that's a fair amount of a sample size to say the voice of the teachers and the staff was heard. So thank you. >> You're welcome. And we did send out reminders to um you know the please return in your survey if you would like to participate. >> So so far what we have taken the e-learning days and all of that. Right now we are in a position to end the school year as planned. >> Correct. >> Okay. Okay. So, so if we go past for whatever reason we go past these flex holidays which is the last one is that do we have like a good Friday or do we have Palaski day coming up right?
And and um you know, definitely need some sound treatment, you know, whatever. And and and again, we and I talked to them and they kind of did their testing based off of I said, you know, we don't have an auditorium, right? And so it's a gym and it's also a place for our choir and band, you know, to to have concerts. And so, um you know, that changes what their recommendations are, right? Um, you know, if if you talk to um, you know, I know coach Berlin game loves it, you know, he's like, I love it. It's loud, you know, you know, but I'm only the basketball coach, you know, whatever. If you if you talk to Mr. Duke or Mr. Jackson, gosh, it's terrible, you know. Um, so trying to find that sweet spot, you know, of um, you know, where where it's still a gym and it's still you get that environment, right, whatever, but yet you can still use it for these other um these other functions as well.
Um, you know, a lot of times when we ask specific fundraisers, we're very clear in advance this specific fundraiser is going towards this, you know, for a playground for instance, right? And that money would be allotted and set aside to be spent on a playground. Um I also think u my time spent on the strategic planning committee has been great. Uh you get to see lots of different points of view. I think the most interesting one to me was um students feedback. I think as a parent oftentimes you get into some like the best I've experienced and um when I was able to kind of sit there and listen to what those guys feedback was or what their experiences were, it was like wow I did a complete 180. um I was like that's amazing like we could we would not be able to do this without you being here.
Uh our implementation is built on uh four distinct pillars. Um team refinement, environmental security, software evaluation and sustainable growth. Uh we are currently clarifying the specific roles uh as Brendan mentioned of our incident command team and our rapid response crisis teams. Um regarding environmental security um we are conducting a comprehensive review of the campus including shop safety and ground security. Uh and most importantly, every change is being vetted uh by our internal experts to ensure that we have protocols that are sustainable and effective uh for our staff. Uh after the initial roll out, um our process is is a little bit deliberate and data driven. Uh we're not trying to rush in the changes without full internal analysis on their impact. Uh we're currently, as uh Brendan mentioned, in the auditing phase, uh reviewing our response manuals and safety cataloges following our leadership team meeting back in January.
I do want to thank the board of education, as I mentioned earlier, for really looking at the class size policy. I want to thank our board of finance for requesting us to look at that last year during our budget process. So, our board of education finance, board of education policy committee, excuse me, did look at that policy and as you know, you did approve at our last meeting our class size guidelines. I do want to remind you that our kindergarten through grade three is 14 through 20, grades 4 through 6 is 17 through 23, and grades 7 through 12 is 10 through 30. This is a slide that we've spoken about, but I do want to get this out there to you. The proposed budget has been developed utilizing the the guidelines that you came up with. And our largest class size in grade K through six is projected to be grade five at 111 students.
Uh we do have some away, but we have a home game uh this week uh that is at 3 pm on Thursday. Uh and that is um girls soccer. Um, and so, um, just want to plug, uh, that game. And then I just want to, uh, give a shout out to, um, the Isuza Management Association, better known as AMA. Uh, they host an oratory contest on a yearly basis, and, uh, this took place at Sierra High School. Uh, we had six students slated, three from Sierra and three from Isuza to compete that evening. Uh unfortunately uh what's the bug that's going around uh got to two students and so four competed. I just want to give a shout out to Dylan Gamas who uh won uh the competition that evening uh from Isuza High School and is now moving on to uh the next level.
Oh, he's back there. And I just want to briefly go over what this is. This was in response to Mr. Rolloloff on what he wanted. We did an analysis on all the different uh buildings and really broke it down in a way that you guys can turn these things on and off. And again, be clear, these are very high level numbers, very high level estimates based on work being done a year or two in the future. So, and it allows you to make your decisions and your choices based on what's important to you and what's not important to you. You can also modify the level of priority here and and so on and so forth. Building two, three, four, five, they have a a restriction. You can only pick either the bottom or the top two. So, either you redo it or you tear them all out.
In our case, you know, if we don't have the numbers when school starts and we're fully staffed, we don't have a place to send teachers when we're underenrolled. And that's why it we're we're blessed and lucky that we have kept our enrollment stable enough to not be in a position where we would really be considered a high-risisk district. And some of the districts that are in receiverhip are because they should have closed schools. They should have downsized and they didn't. like TUSD has schools right now that have 200 kids K5 >> and those schools should have been closing and they should have been absorbing the kids in other neighboring schools. So that's why we hadn't stated a couple years ago that after the July 15th hire, after July 1st, because then after if you're hired after July 1st, you're considered a temporary terminal or uh what do you call that Christina?
So in Gilbert public schools with little money doing amazing things. So really incredible across the board. Um just want to say that first. Um, I'll also just say, um, just as a side note, I do think that the best way to lift up any certain group or to to diversify is not to target a a specific group, but to build a culture of excellence across the board. And I think that's what we're doing. And I think um I think that's the best way not just to lift up the whole district, but to lift up any individual in any district is you create that excellence across the board. You create that expectation of rigor and of excellence and of pushing yourself. And so I I do applaud that and I I think that that's the way to continue and and that's that's the way to help kids at whatever level they're at.
It includes over 170 questions of various areas of district operations. Uh just a few listed here. So just general management procedures, accounting records, cash and revenue procedures, procurement, student attendance processes and procedures, travel, credit, purchasing cards. So just anything that touches business operations even a small amount we're required to uh ensure we can answer the question that's being asked by the Arizona Auditor General. So there were items noted in that questionnaire. Uh but I'm not going to specifically touch on any of them. Uh in all my years of experience and no district has zero comments. Uh it's just due to the nature of uh human error most commonly uh and just the nature we don't audit 100% of all transactions for the district for the whole year. We do sampling uh each year and it sometimes it's just dependent on the sample we may uh derive and the transactions we review.
>> Yes. >> So if if something happened and we are not in position to use a flex holiday which again March somewhere in March then we would have to use an emergency day. >> Yes. So that's for that's for next year or e-learning. We have five e-learning. We have five e-learning, but we're >> and we only use two, right? >> We use three. >> Three. Two left. Okay. >> But we will not be going to any flex holidays. That's that's the recommendation that we keep our holidays as tradition. We will take off. >> Flex holidays. We just will extend. >> We will extend. >> We use all of our e-learning. >> They're going to recommend traditional. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> I call it traditional because that's the way >> that's what we've been doing. Yes. And can you give me a quick criteria for using e-learning days?