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my mother had moved here her class from somerset when the building opened in 1965. as i look back the other day i realized that there has been a liver good at southwood elementary for the past 56 years i was fortunate enough to teach in the same building with mom during her last year at southwood in a way the southwood staff has been an extension of my family i have thoroughly enjoyed many years of being part of msd family as a student and then as an educator it was my pleasure to be part of the staff at sharp creek as a paraprofessional and mentored north as a beginning teacher before finally moving home to southwood thank you for giving me an opportunity to serve the children of this community even though i'm leaving the classroom i look forward to finding a new way to help the children in this community learn and grow and i will preface it too that she actually wanted to go a little bit longer too but some other health issues that prevented that and so this was addressed actually to myself mr boone and the board members so uh just just good history and the relationships that's happened um this is actually from joy edding which we talked uh accepted her retirement last time um spanish teacher she wrote a letter to um all of northfield which actually i get also i thought it's very good and fitting to read it says i've worked in several different school systems as our family moved from city to city yet nowhere did i find a level of dedication to students that i found here nowhere did i find the acceptance of one another by staff and willingness to work together for the good of all nowhere did i find administrators willing to jump in and help at every turn nowhere did i find a community that was so humble and hard-working that was instilling into their children these same values it was a pleasure working here and i thank you for welcoming me as one of you and god bless each one of you our children in this place i thought that was excellent and then i'll read another one here uh chris hickman um who just put in his uh retirement uh this is just mr mcdaniel but he said it's been an honor and a pleasure to work with you and thank god for the opportunity he has provided by placing you in my life you have a love for kids a passion for learning students staff and yours leading by example as well as making the tough decisions you've been willing to listen to me encourage me to give me perspective find solutions and help me be the best i can be you have cultivated a safe environment where teachers staff and students have a sense of community i've enjoyed our talks and your what can we do to make this work spirit you and joe lacy put students first you make them a priority and they know it you are a great team i continue to pray for you both as you shape the lives of our students it was not an easy decision but i officially announced some retirement from teaching the end of the 2020 2020-2021 school year i pray god's blessing on you your family and southwood so just a sampling of the relationships that have been built with our staff members okay on the report unfortunately i was in the field during the last schedule so fortunately that's how you make money okay just a couple of things here first of all um you probably have seen on facebook and everything as far as our teachers of the year and our staff of the year this year and i might have even mentioned it before but i want to say a couple other things so for metro north elementary it was jennifer cox at sharp creek pam campbell northfield shelly myers southwood elementary natalie unger south of high school cynthia bell and white's high school wendy gray and then for the staff of the year metro north was kat halpert at southwood or sharp creek connie wolf northfield tammy olbermann salvador elementary theresa baker itself in high school beth weissel and white's high school nick perlick and what will happen now just today i ended up getting all the information to find out who the district staff of the year would be and also the teacher of the year and they actually write some things that i've asked them to write different questions and then i submit that to an outside person to judge those and then finalize those and i will say this year we're going to do something different we're going to follow what the indiana department of education has allowed us to do to actually pick an elementary and a high school and so hopefully once that is those people are chosen then we can go ahead and not we but they can go ahead and actually apply for the indiana state teacher of the year so really congratulations to them a lot of interesting things when they write the narratives that i ask them to write it's just really interesting to see what they have to say and we have a lot of great people and i just want to share that and hopefully you've seen some of that if you're on facebook if you're not on facebook you probably haven't seen it so anyway that's that i also would like to say um you know we didn't have any recognitions as far as what the principals sent out but you know a lot of success has happened and i just i'll bring up some of the ones maybe you don't know about first of all our clay target league what we call the northfield clay busters and southwest clay busters they actually went to state they did not go on to nationals but they actually improved from two years ago because of course last year they did not were not able to compete of course you know about our baseball team at southwood that won the sectional got beat the first round of the regional but that's the first team in south of history that actually won um the football sectional the basketball sectional and then also the baseball sectional so congratulations to them and of course we have the softball norfolk softball team who this is the first year they won the sectional first year they won the regional and first year they won the semi-state and of course they played friday night at 5 30 p.m if you're interested afterwards see me because i'll send you the link because the only way you can get tickets is uh through the link so we can give and then it goes to the public after that so if you're interested i can send you that link and then finally we did have five of those students from southwood that sang in the indiana state honors choir on friday and that was the first time ever that like susan kieffer that the five that actually auditioned for that also made that so we have a lot of good things i'm probably missing some things also but a lot of good things that are going on i told these two gentlemen here that you know we do shameless jokes and shameless plugs at kiwanis great thing great organization but at quan is there it's costing a lot of money because i have to give a dollar every time i say these things so here it's free which is nice but there's a dollar each time but it's great to be able to charge you when he plugs kiwanis actually we had a fundraiser one time in the rotary that was there one month so anyway so that's that and the final thing i have is as you know and as of now um the governor has uh declared as of now that indiana will no longer be under a public health emergency as declared by him on july starting july 1.
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you're going to want to kick your feet up when i get to that financial summary dr kuhn i just gave you the cash flows for education operation uh you won't see much different than what we've kind of already went over uh and talked about in the past everything is up to date when you look at those cash flows reflection of february edm counts we're still waiting on some final things with a budget to get a better estimation on july numbers but we do know that we will be receiving more money per atm per student so there'll be some adjustments based off of what we estimated which i believe i went back to try to look at it but it was already removed and i believe i estimated about 2 000 students for our estimated account which that would take effect in july payments and then that would be reconciled once we find out what our september payments so nothing really different than what we discussed you'll notice in june and typically in december we're closing out the end of the fiscal year in june we're closing out the end of the calendar year in december a lot of money goes out because we have a lot of payments that are due at that time of year but we also get a lot of money coming in uh mainly because of the tax revenues that are turned in and so forth so you see some some big differences there in cash flow terms just as far as money coming in coming out but nothing that is surprising at this point in time any questions we'll move on to the personnel under employment we have clay herring summer custodian for all the schools mike harrelwood custodian at northfield high school melissa cardwell cook at metro north elementary will be starting in the fall kenneth working summer custodian for all schools jennifer merkel summer custodian for all schools resignation mary beth harrell cook northfield effective at the end of this school year and under retirement as we said earlier with the passing of mr berry did submit his retirement before that actually happened so we're going to have his retirement on this list becky mass paraprofessional and sharp food transfer suzanne bechtel transferring from southwood high school as cook to southwood elementary school as the food service manager effective the 2021-2022 school year jody chenoweth transferring from a one-to-one paraprofessional to an ld paraprofessional southwood effective the 2021-2022 school year and maxine warford transferring from ld professional to at-risk paraprofessional to at southwood effective next school year under summer school employment transportation susie lewis teresa sears carla gaines and juanita lemon also we have jeanette moore elementary director tommy boone secondary director adam phelps at itmentum kathy gilman edmentum patty ross and cam patty steele and cami ross m.i.a janelle ekman lisa dieter elizabeth rajok all primary reading uh lisa alyssa deiter and janelle heckman primary reading teachers elizabeth rayak primary reading aid also mary dye primary reading aid angie herring jennifer cox heather amos mary jo nguyen patti steele allison montz and hacker all summer school teachers as well as natalie hunger jeremy elsie angie driscoll becky elsie shelby drake deb mitchell holly robbins mitch michelle dupont and krista hoover all summer school paraprofessionals and finally nicole knox summer school title 1 teacher cory blocker summer school teacher and megan wright summer school teacher and that is [Music] oh somebody as tired as an edmonton yes yes read all in favor say hi um that's not here so we don't have a heart on the career center report superintendent's reporters key paper yes and i'm going to show you one thing real quickly someone can get out of this if i can all right i want to put this to rest actually we talked about this so mr drake starting in about november 30th would run a cue list and we didn't know if we ever had to use a cue list but things were changed as far as attendance and so every day he would run a cue list and then i would put it in just this a real quick graph and so i kind of just want to put it to rest because we hope not to ever use this again the cue list was for quarantine list and we know that the quarantine list would be based on because they were close contact in schools whether they were actually a they had coven or there was a close contact and quarantined because of a family situation all right and so as you can see the numbers there i thought we were going to get down to zero on the last day which was the day and we had we still had one but that had nothing to do with the school that was more just because of the family situation so again just kudos to all the staff to work through this whole year people were betting on going to school about two weeks and then shutting down in august and it was got a little rough there when you saw those numbers and how many kids were quarantined this is over the district um and not whites was not included in students were not included in this graph but with all the help and work and of everyone we got it down and there was only one in the last day of school and that really had nothing to do with with the school itself so i didn't just want to point that out um i appreciate all the work that um everyone has to do with just putting that list together um and of course mr drake uh creating that given to me and distorting it in this graph so we just wanted to put it to rest basically that's what we're doing and i just want to mention uh i appreciate the the school board allowing me go to epic epic it was the butler university of indiana association public school superintendents leadership academy just got a nice little plaque for completion of that the only thing is it was a 12-month program that took our group our cohort 18 months so we were a little slower than most groups but obviously that was based on cove but not because of the the participants in the program itself but it was very good things that i will continue to use and and a lot of it is those connections the networking that um you uh and the relationships you built with those other superintendents in that group so i just appreciate to allow me to go to that so that's all i have okay mr craig curriculum and instruction yeah i just want to say we know that uh it's all about the people that we have like the chicky favorite set earlier and i just want to say something about tonya tanya's put together a graduation ceremony someday that would have rivaled any hallmark movie channel that that you guys would watch there were tears and hugs and there were people there that don't want to go to school and the families don't feel comfortable there but they they knew how important this was and it was incredible i got the chance to talk to a couple of families i talked to one lady who said i said so what's your story you're here to watch somebody graduate and she said yeah he's not my child it was somebody down the street or whatever and ended up with her and i said well do you think he'd make it and she goes there were times i thought he was going to go to jail and uh and she was just so thankful for the car program so if you if you guys as board members have a chance to go i would highly encourage you know i know todd had a chance to go this time it is just you just listen to those people on the stories is it was amazing and so kudos to her that was excellent and then scott asked earlier about summer school i think the board should we've got a summer school program that is rivaling the state we always talk about the summer learning loss i know most of us come from families where the summer isn't something where our kids experience learning loss right but there are a lot of families when they those kids leave school it's a safe place it's a place for friends and so we've always wanted to do more of our summer school we just had the funding and so we've actually tapped into lots of funding to try to put this together and so what you call the summer scholars program and so mrs moore has reached into she's working with ynca she's worked with the same life that dr who started like she has so many programs going on and so many kids but you just look at all those those teachers there that is an extra 30 days or so four or five weeks that those kids are going to be with a meaningful adult having great conversations and so i couldn't be prouder of how that's turned out and it has been an incredible amount of time for this is more of emails and communicating between southwood elementary metroward and including transportation and now the ymca and then we have this grant and that grant i mean it has been and she's done an amazing job bringing all those things together and so um i i know you see the listing like holy cow that's a lot just know that that is it's going to be an amazing experience for about 200 kids for about 200 kids and that is at southwood elementary and that measurement worth multiple grades and then some kids are leaving there and going to the ymca for spark and some kids are going with this m.i.a thing so then with teachers in the afternoon like to try to describe it isn't it's impossible but um hopefully we've tapped enough grants that maybe we might be able to pull something off this year even though mrs moore will get like 10 more gray hairs probably so i just wanted you as board members to uh just to be fully aware of how amazing and again like i said at the beginning it's the people not the programs um and so just kind of amazing people uh yeah so i just wanted to emphasize that let me right here before we move on i just want to piggyback off that and say kudos to mrs boone um again you were right that was probably one of the most emotional graduation ceremonies i've ever seen with the possible exception of watching my daughter graduate from manchester university before but there were so many tears and so many hugs of we made it we didn't think that this day would ever get here and you know you just see those kids and and how pride you know how full of pride they were that they made it to that point and the parents how how proud they were of their kids for making it to that point so good job new business we're going to move on to the recommendation to approve the 2021 2022 curricular material and course fees so i gave you a couple documents one document represents the elementary course fees or curriculum they don't call it textbook rental anymore it's curricular materials um and then the other document lays out the uh course costs for the two junior senior high schools at northfield southwood elementary is pretty cut and dry the cost of the fees have not changed since even when i was a principal in the corporation we try to keep them as low as possible and those remain at 190 so no changes were made from previous from last year's rental fees and then the high schools are kind of all over the place just depending on what courses that student signs up for you're looking at that am i going too fast yeah i just uh yeah no one had any recommendations for any type of changes um we still feel comfortable that the price is right when it comes to what we set for the ipad feed for the four year use we've explored using some of the grant funds to help supplement the curriculum and so that might be a conversation down the road about when those grant dollars are gone maybe introducing some kind of conversation about lowering that device to try to help with the curriculum and find another we do yes how much does that cover so we put in the full amount but we don't always get the full amount because there is a cap as far as how much the state will spend in that and so usually when every school corporation asks goes above that cap so it gets reduced it usually gets reduced about 85 to 85 so it's reached about 15 sorry um so we recover about 85 of that uh from there and then along with that though we also have the ability to any difference that isn't made up is to take that out as part of our debt service to make up for any of that loss i've always thought with the devices and obviously it takes a lot of thinking about but is it would it be cheaper somehow for a family to purchase one than to rent it you know 110 you know you add that up over you know 13 years or 12 years um that'd be something i'd like you know sure if we could you know could be a way to look at that now aaron could probably explain this a little bit more some of the issues we run into is us being able to filter yeah and control what happens with that device which could lead to a lot of other issues down the road um and so plus keeping up with the technology and then be able to push out stuff because a lot of our information apps and things like that are pushed out to the devices that the teachers use and so forth so we would have a lot less control and accessibility when it comes to having somebody use their own device with that i just you know obviously maybe not i don't know if you own it or you pay a certain amount and you're you're speaking more like still using the school device it's just from your probably personal experience of multiple children right you you start adding that up i mean you spent a thousand thirteen fourteen hundred dollars per kid just on a device that you could have probably you know sure so i'm just thinking about you know if there would be other options for family that are you know paying that amount you know it's not a lot but it would be if you added it up for the years that they're in there so i just i and when we did have textbooks so i think it was the same thing too because a textbook would cost 60 70 80 and they would rent those and so um i understand your point is the comparison would be the textbooks too like we used to do so textbook so just ask a recommendation to approve fees for next year uh i'll motion for the recommendation to approve the textbook second motion second to approve the textbook the course curriculum material course fees for next year recommendation to approve the 2021-2022 board of education meetings so you look at that this basically mirrors what we made a few changes for this year and so in october one meeting in december 1 meeting and then also in june one meeting every other time though there's there are two meetings so it's what we voted on last time when we changed a couple of those typically we'd only have one in december october sometimes we'd have one sometimes two and early the only other change was the june one so pretty standard of course we have all kinds of meetings in january when we reorganize mr downs gets to take care of all that so i just asked that you approve those dates for next year or for this fiscal year i moved to approve the calendar from four meetings so much on the second so i approve the board of education meetings calendar all in favor say aye all right first reading and review of the 2021 high school handbook i'll introduce mr joe lacey assistant principal at southport junior senior high school i will tell you he spent a lot of time a lot of work on making these revisions although there aren't a bunch of them there's a lot of people that he has to talk with and not everybody is very quick on their feet as far as replying back to him and so i really appreciate his patience and his detailed work on making sure everything works so mr lacey thank you man and i did not uh put i mean all those pages otherwise i'd get carpal tunnel doing this the whole time so i just have the revisions up there for everyone sure no problem thank you good evening guys thanks for having me uh like mr key favorite said there's not a ton of revisions this year and the ones that we have are not real uh major uh so one thing we did update this year through laura was making uh the document ada qualifying on our website so that screwed up some of the page numbering i apologize but once we get these approved and i take the deletions out and add in the additions i promise i will fix that uh and that'll be good in in on paper format in the uh on the school websites uh handbook approval is of course uh hopefully this first reading so we would ask that you would approve at the next meeting the board members were updated of course uh since our last inbook academic awards this actually was implemented this year for mr drake in our for the msc academic awards for seniors and juniors there was a there used to be a attendance component to that and of course that needed to be changed with all the cobia restrictions this year so at that time then we took advantage of that to go ahead and change that to the senior and junior academic awards student work permits are actually starting july 1 are no longer going to go through the schools in indiana any longer so our secretary is very pleased probably with that but i have some language there just stating that that's going to be taken out that is not going to be up to employers and families uh and it's moved out of the education like i said in the state and moved over to the bureau of labor uh to take care of uh we i we want to keep language there however though that we can still revoke those if needed if the attendance for a student gets terrible or the grades take a deep dive after they get a job and so that is included we have a updated disciplined matrix that you'll find on page 28 hasn't been touched for a number of years honestly so we just cleaned up some language uh main part here really is the technology we added to the bottom of the document as far as if there was intentional damage to a device things like that excuse me old uh matrixes still said laptop and that's the one thing we did was update that to include the correct uh verbiage and we're just going to use the word the generic word device from now on instead of uh specific naming but the fees obviously had to change and that and i worked with the our our tech department with mr hyde mr miller to get those things uh included and so that's really the main change there for the discipline matrix the daily discipline that let's say myself and mr ellsworth that northfield would do there's really no changes there one thing we did look at though we would like to start next year is including in if there is a vape or tobacco offense in the school that we would have our sros also involved in that we had a meeting early this year with the assistant principals from around the four schools in the county and the sros everybody pretty much seemed to be on board with that i know that wabash city's moving forward with that we would like to move forward with that uh and so on the first offense uh that obviously does usually result in suspension and things like that from school but we're also going to have the sro write it basically a warning ticket could be a possibility at that point uh second offense in the school year an actual citation a ticket written uh from nesro the one thing i'll say mr lacey too we are working with um court services because core services would have to be a part of that um and what court that would go into so there's been some discussion with that and i'm actually on that board also so been in some of those meetings to talk about that but they have to agree with some of this so the language in it um allows us um it's a may instead of a show because we don't have all of that worked out with them yeah and we want to make sure that we could continue on to have this first reading and continue on with it so appreciate mr lacey continue with that and work with the other superintendents or other assistant principals yeah i would reiterate that the language is pretty vague for this school round so you know it would say you know this may include possible a court fine or a court fee maybe possibly if we work with court services or maybe some maybe like a temporary probation period or some community service those are all things that are being explored right now so with the language way it's in there right now it will kind of open that up so that we can do any of those things if need be next item down is just again working with the tech department and updated rup responsible user policy um and again the main change there was everything on the old one was geared towards laptops and so they just again changed that to use that kind of generic term of device uh and that to cover whether it's the ipad's computer whatever it may be so that is inserted pages 56 and 66 has the same change but ones in the northfield athletic handbook ones in the southwood athletic handbook regarding athletic participation and so that's mainly geared towards the elementaries and so just letting you know what that says right now any 5th or 6th grade elementary student for the north or south with great eligibility requirements can participate on the 7th grade teams in cross country wrestling and track and field there was a caveat there where it did say sixth grade only for track and field we're going to remove that to where the fifth and sixth grade can participate um there is a note there however the rrc is a middle school conference and so they do not allow fifth grade participation in their championship events and also the athletic directors that agree in years past that fifth graders will not participate in wabash county championship events for what i understand that's only in cross country and track are the only wabash county championship events that are held so the fifth graders will be able to participate throughout the season just not in those championship events there we're also adding something here uh i'll just kind of read it kind of verbatim to you as far as uh kids playing up i guess that's what it would be referring to uh in age so uh in the sports a student may turn participate on an athletic team above their current grade level only if the need arises due to the number of athletes on the team in the upper grade level for example a sixth grader may play on a seventh grade team if there are not enough seventh grade participants to viably field that team the same will apply with seventh graders participating on eighth grade teams again as needed if this situation arises the participating athletes will be chosen by the coaches additionally if a student is needed and chosen to play on an upper grade level team it cannot also be then included on the roster of the team at their current grade level we don't want it like a sixth grade kid playing up on the seventh grade team and then so also being on the sixth grade team um and so he's going to play on seventh grade king's 107th great team um so no student will be allowed however to play down uh you know no student will be able to play lower than the great level if they're in uh that will be like i said both uh both uh participating students out there all right and books and the only other change is way back to the very back and that's our school account it will always be to include the 2021-2022 calendar those are the revisions and for scott and christian this is really just the first reading so obviously you have questions but if there are questions we would like to know pretty quickly though before the next meeting because then it would be voted on on the next meeting so and i won't ask um uh joe or jeanette who actually are talking about to come next time so i can just feel those questions if they're anything else but hopefully i hope there are no other questions but earlier than that before we vote on those so because we'd have to make changes if we did that thank you very much uh thank you all right first reading and review of the 2021-2022 elementary handbook all right well thank you and i appreciate i did not realize the amount of work they went into revising the handbook because mr snyder always took care of it thank you mr snyder i'm forever invented just the page number yeah that's a trick trick [Laughter] we just updated the award adoption date um to reflect hopefully when it's adopted in the next one meeting and then updated the school year on page iii we updated the notes to reflect july 2021 as well as our school website and where to access work policy on our new msdwc.org website on page one we updated mr martin to reflect the new principal at sharp creek updated mr three flat rocket um and then also included mr rosine and mr hopper as our new school board members on page 15 we added in the middle of the paragraph about the use of cellular phones and electronic devices the part about taking recording and or displaying or distributing video pictures to digital or otherwise or audio recordings without the consent of a student or the staff member in a situation not related to a school purpose or an ethical educational function is prohibited we added that in two spots in the elementary handbook and this was one of those we also on page 18 that's where we added it again in our responsible use guidelines we added that same text as an i will not with um their sculpt issue device on the page 19 similarly to the high school we added information about the elementary device matrix to look at incidents of intentional damage ours are a little bit different because we don't have friday school um and there was something else that you mentioned in yours that we don't have the elementary level but i can't remember what it was now besides friday school day reporting oh yes probably um so those two pieces were added to page 19.
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and so mscwc will be working on an announcement as far as the return to school practices and basically what we have to do and part of even what we have with esser is to have that return to in-person plan of course we had that last year and i believe that has not been decided but when the board looks at some different recommendations that our standard operation procedures that we've had pre-coded would probably exist so in other words we'd be following our handbooks following all of our policies and not really making any any changes to what pre-code would be but we don't know that yet but just want to make sure that everyone knows that we will be making that announcement then as a in july is it july 8th or whatever july 13th i don't know why it's not august 8th july 13th and so more than likely uh what will happen is that we will return to school um and it will be very traditional to what we have pre-code um i think most of us agree to that the positivity rate and things in wabash county have been good for many many weeks now we had great graduations with very few restrictions that went well and that is our hope and i believe the board will agree to that but we'll have to wait um to make those final decisions later in july okay and i would like to publicly congratulate and thank southwood boys baseball team for being pioneer because i have a co-worker who is a board member there and every time pioneer beats msd i have to hear the trash talk so thanks guys is that the end of the superintendent's report yes okay we'll move on to curriculum but instruction nothing to share nothing for sure okay moving on to new business second reading and vote of the 2022 high school handbook and as i mentioned to you the only change that we had and i didn't have any questions from you but the only change that we had was uh based on the um whatever it's called now they used to call it was not the worker permits they had worked for meds starting july 1 that is no longer a system we still had in the handbook that we would uh take away their driving permission or driving permits um working permission let's slow down here um yes work permits but we are not allowed to do any of that so we just took that out of there so i would recommend that we approve the second reading of the high school handbook for 2021 2022.
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page 25-27 those where i think just some formatting pieces um harassment is now added as a full topic not as a bulleted piece as well as use of an object as a weapon and we also need bullying a topic not just a bullet within another area and those were our revisions sit on the treatment book thank you all right and finally the first reading review of the 2021-2020 bridge handbook this is benny thank you mr daisy were you going to start with anything well i was just going to say how i'm pretty sad about this situation but i agreed to it so the car program is not going to be called the bridge no more a vehicle to success um just being sarcastic that's okay so the person that came up with that was gifted yeah that's right so no anyway this is they've done a lot of work and looked at branding and different things like that so i won't take any more of your thunder on that um so you can go ahead and go talk to us about the bridge we are going to shift um we're in the process of shifting laura's helping with that we're working with an outside party that is just covered under our sig grant um who's also helping us with that but we were we're struggling with families being able to understand car they have no idea what car stands for and we have probation officers calling it cars or harp and at least the other one wasn't said yet don't say that right now so it's just we're trying to move away from any disney movie child movie um connotation or nasty fish um conversation so we are moving to the bridge and we felt like with the bridge you can it very much identifies we can very much identify with what we're doing with our kids which is bridging gaps and filling gaps for our kids so with that i'm looking at mr lacey's handbook and mine is like um not even a third of the size you don't have athletes and in health it makes a difference also our families would not make it past the first two pages so um the highlights that i'd like to bring to this i did add several new things this year strictly because we continually are attempting to improve the validity and just just who we are and what we're doing and make sure that we are meeting a letter of the law and the first thing that i'll bring your attention is enrollment and onboarding that's probably something that is in a traditional handbook and it's critical to an online environment so we have to have a very specific enrollment and onboarding process that if for any reason we would be audited um to show that we are making every attempt right out of the gate to engage students and get families on board and along with that our attendance and student engagement this is pretty much reflective of what last year's look looked like however i just tried to be more specific and identify the exact procedures we're going to follow and what attendance and engagement are defined as for our families so that when we get to those situations where we're looking at 10 days of absences or we're having to look at truancy that we have followed all the protocol and we have what we need to justify whatever action we need to take as a school i did spell out the indiana code for truancy just for reference purposes for our families and so that we have that in a black and white as we move forward and what that would mean for our bridge students and families what that's going to look like we do work very closely with most probation departments around the state and some are much more supportive and engaged than others so it makes they we have several counties who are with us right at that front that first step that we need to take and they're knocking on doors and getting people's attention before we have to take that step so hopefully as we continue to improve our oversight of the program that those fluency referrals will go down and our dropout rate will continue to decrease as well on page seven we did add a parent guardian as key team members in a in the online world well as you all know it doesn't matter what world of education we're living in family members are key to our students success and so i wanted to put this in there in writing so that families number one understood that they're a critical piece to their child's education that we value their input and their support and they have a responsibility it's not just sign them up for an online program and get them in front of a computer and let them go that's not how this works there's communication support accountability involved so just lay that out for our families we have our student code of content conduct that i adjusted to include netiquette as far as online etiquette with among our students how they should be addressing and their their teachers and other students when we have classroom time um in appropriate manners a lot of times texts and emails those kind of things have become pretty informal and sometimes rude and disrespectful so we're going to try and shore up some of those things and help our students gain medicaid that will actually help them as they look at entering the workforce and appropriate ways to interact with people whether it's face-to-face or online we did make an adjustment from last school year to our grading scale so that that is aligned with msd's grading scale so that is reflective now of what's happening at southwood in northfield with our greeting scale on page nine we added state mandated assessment and attendance requirements this is a struggle this is a huge challenge when we're trying to collect students from all over the state number one they avoid school like it's the play number two they avoid testing even more so and so trying to gather kids in get them to travel get their families to commit we felt like this was a critical piece that they understood this wasn't an option if the state says you've got a test you're making a commitment by signing your student up in our program that you're going to do whatever it takes to get them to that test site we do travel so we do our best to find locations where are somewhat central to our family so that it does eliminate as much hardship on them as possible with travel and finances and those things but there is sometimes travel but you're talking once or twice a year um but i just wanted to outline that so that they have that and we can refer back to that is as far as the indiana law and assessment policy and the next we did make an adjustment like mr lacey did to the um to the work permits no longer being issued by the schools and specified that because that is that can get cumbersome at times we liked the control that we had over that when students weren't engaging but at the same time it's definitely going to take a um take an irritation off of our secretaries at times um on like mrs moore said i we updated the links as well so that it matched our new website and our calendar our msd calendar and we also for our family's sake we included all the graduation requirements so 440 general diploma all the pathways requirements just so they had that as a reference piece because that especially with our older kids most of our families don't have a clue and don't understand that so they at least have it in black and white while we're talking to them about about those those things those were the main changes to our handbook this time and i guess i'll say one more thing since mr mcdevitt mrs booner here they've been working very diligently to create what we called and i think i've given that information to locally created pathways a pathway because uh they're a certain um group of students that will not fit into the buckets um that was intended when they created these pathways as far as the new graduation requirements and so they have created that actually mr daisy and i are going to have a signing party tomorrow about 12 o'clock i believe with on uh to be able to send that off so a lot of work uh prior to that to get to the point where we can send that off to the state of indiana they are required if they don't approve which we we obviously hope that they will approve it but if they don't they do have to tell us why and we will continue to work on it because we want to do the best that we can for the students that we serve and be able to get them to graduation so there's a lot more i can say about a lot more they can say about it but just appreciate their time with that and appreciate mr daisy coming in tomorrow for our little signing party here so all right so if you have any questions about those for any of those handbooks make sure you get those in quickly and just send to me and then i will pass them along and ask questions so we have no unfinished business no board policy public comment for anything any item not necessarily on the agenda and let that facebook feed catch up all right any items from board members okay
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motion and second to approve the high school handbook for the next school year on fair sale second reading and vote of the 2021 2022 elementary hitbook uh no changes there but going back to what dr kuhn just said we can take away their driving permits to the school though i think but we're not going to do that for elementary though so but i really didn't mean to work permits though so i do recommend that we approve the second reading of the elementary handbook the 2021-2022 to approve the 2021 2022 elementary handbook on february second reading and vote of the 2021-2022 bridgehead book i'm sure you have like 10 15 questions mrs boone's here to answer any questions uh from the bridge handbook but i do recommend no changes from the last time we spoke recommend this also for your vote so sorry motion second to approve the bridge handbook for 2021 2022 all in favor say aye aye recommendation to approve an extended field trip for the northfield key club to cedar point in sandusky ohio playing for later this month or early july 2021 we're doing so no unfinished business no board policy probably comment on anything give another 10 seconds or so any items from board members okay
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and then that's it you know you really don't have to do anything because it doesn't disconnect like the ipad would okay and then see how it goes see it's red right here now and see how it's ticking like like the recorder and then when you're
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b [Applause] welcome and i will call the meeting to order and this is a special meeting the purpose of the meeting is um oh i'm sorry though you're talking to me um the pup this is a public hearing on dysart's remote instruction plan for 2021 through 2022 and finance related items and adoption of the fiscal year 21 budget dr kellis thank you madam president if we could start with the pledge of allegiance thank you i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and let the record reflect that all board members are present we'll begin with item b2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet according to state statute it is required that the governing board have a public hearing to discuss this matter and mr hicks will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members thank you very much for the opportunity to present the proposed budget as presented to the governing board on june 16th and fyi this presentation is extremely similar to the one on june 19th because from our proposed budget to the adopted you cannot change it we can go down but we can't make wholesale changes because this is what's presented to the community for them to review and come to make comments and so there's no bait and switch kind of thing allowed to happen so as also um just to build off of dr kelly's requirements in the ares arizona revised statutes it also is required that we propose the budget by july 5th which we did in june and then also must adopt a budget by july 15th each year and all bubble budget adoptions and revisions require public hearings so we happen this again in december and we have this again in may as we have those budget revisions so um not uh so first i'd like to again i know i said this back in june but just appreciate all the hard work that uh miss maridell spidel and her team put together to put all this together as we talk and go through the process and i know you guys have heard this about five times as we've talked about benefits and compensation but they do actually have to put all the work together of what we talk about and then put it into the budget and then move it on to the budget form so i just appreciate all of their all the staff's efforts on that so i'm going to try to go a little bit quick just because this is multiple times we've seen this but you could see 176 million budget one of the things that when we approved the proposed budget on june 16th we made some assumptions because the legislature had not passed a budget at that time and so the biggest assumptions were the increase in inflation as required by statute we disclosed there was a slight increase in our student projections for the coming year the full restoration of our district additional assistance and then the new um part that those were all hard coded in statute previously but one thing that was common amongst all the budgets that were being presented at the time was an increase in special ed funding we included that in the budget the final budgets that were approved did include all of those measures so the one risk we had was if the legislature approved a budget that it was different than what we made all those assumptions would we need to come back and make changes after we adopt this budget we would then have to come and do a quick revision next month in that sense none of those situations occur so similar to nothing has changed from our proposed budget and that we have a 166 million dollar maintenance and operation budget our capital fund is we said the district additional assistance was restored and those are those allocations the classroom site fund so this is one formerly known as prop 301 and i say formally known because that was approved by the voters in november 2001 it had a 20-year sunset it was renewed not by voters but by the legislative so when the legislature approved it it's no longer prop there were one it's now voter the legislature approved it they moved it over and you can see the one big difference um so what they changed instead of having the three areas the base salary performance pay and other menu items when the legislature approved it they collapsed all the buckets and said you only need one fund and so it did not require a certain amount in the performance pay we are still operating as if we were under the old rules because working with dea and our teachers everything we did not know what was going to happen and we didn't want to work really hard and maybe make a mistake at the end keep everything as is we'll relook at it as this year goes by and make recommendations to the governing board but i did want to visually show there's only one bucket now and you can see that's a dramatic increase the 8 million dollars is a 40 increase and so that is a huge increase going to our certified staff then under special projects just to highlight a little bit here on the federal grants i know we talked about this also on in june about the federal grants um specifically uh some of the esser um we have sr1 sr2 and sr3 carry forward and fy 2021 is just carry forward so that's all not all brand new dollars some of it in fy2021 we're not going to spend 41 million but we budget the full amount re-budget the full amount in the new year so this year we're budgeting the 60 million the primary source of that is sr3 sr3 was the new the new esser funds related to covert relief funds that was approved in march and that had a new component on it and that new component required soliciting feedback from various stakeholders and so i don't know if you have noticed or did not notice last week we pushed out on facebook a survey with some tentative schedule of how we would use some of the the how we would use the full 36 million dollars in sr3 funding we've also pushed it on our website and i have emailed it out to all of our administrators for review and for their feedback i believe as of this morning we've received over 160 comments already on it it's going to stay open for another three weeks so that we can collect as many feed much feedback as possible from all the various stakeholders and then we will make revisions to the plan and then make sure it's presented and approved and then submitted to ade in those recommendations but that is new that was not fully known on june 16th when we made this presentation so and then always we do try to put all of our financial reports on our website i try to encourage and push as many people to look at the historical all of our information um and so i just try to like to highlight the transparency that we have um and before uh well we could take questions on the presentation i have a few more just points to hit if we want to hit that so the next would be at the proposed budget i did not have the rainbow report ready so i have attached the rainbow report and i don't want to go through it too much but just to reiterate i love the rainbow report because it provides context of pulling away instead of looking at the 200 plus million dollars of funds and all the different funds because so many of the funds are so restricted national school lunch program esser what those requirements are some of the state funds some of the state grants the perkins or cte grants the state basic grant knowing with all those restrictions let's peel away all those very specific funds we get with all very specific rules and just look at the essence and so this is looking at our mno fund our classroom site fund and then our district additional and where we're spending it in what category and so it provides contextual of how much is going into the classroom how much is going into administration we just try to i use this report and so i try to provide it to the governing board for any of their contextual review if you just like to see how it's moving and in the bottom half i do produce the percentages from the auditor general report of what in those categories either in classrooms support services or administration what their calculations are using all of our funds and so we don't have to go through all of it but i wanted to specifically identify that and then finally what i'd like to also do is this year as well as last year we produced a truth and taxation notice and so a truth and taxation we publish it as required by arizona revised statute this year is larger than last year so last year was about fifteen thousand dollars this year it's a seven hundred and eighty thousand dollar uh request this is for the adjacent waste fund and this is specifically for the west point safe crossing project this is required whenever we're using the json ways and it's greater than fifty thousand dollars we're required to submit it to the arizona school facilities board for them to review to make sure that it's legal and appropriate uh for their approval and that was done last week and so the cost to an average homeowner so um the notice that we put in the paper we're not allowed to touch it or change it because i've had a few people within our district say why don't you add this why don't you add that that is very specified in statute of what we have to put in the newspaper and what has to be in the newspaper so we use the templates and we plug in where we're allowed to and we leave it alone from there and we are required after this budget after this board meeting to submit this to the property tax oversight commission all of our documentations as well as to the maricopa county department for their calculations and to ade as well as and just to ade the average homeowner so this put in the notice it was a hundred thousand dollars just there so i don't have the tax rolls that were sent to me but i guess in our average home is around 160 thousand dollars this request is about 7.70 per year of the average home or about 64 cents per month for the average homeowner to put in and this puts in just to remind you i know we've had agenda item i think it was in may over some of our safe crossings and our kids are getting to school this is the west point at greenway this is aligning our entrance to the neighborhood across the street to allow the city to put in a street light so that we could have a crosswalk a lighted crosswalk for the students to cross right now right now once that's done right now the students have to either walk a quarter mile either way to cross and then a quarter mile back to the school we do run a bus to keep it safe and so we do have a couple buses that go in there for two routes that go into that neighborhood to provide the safe crossing but that does not eliminate students running across the street in a very busy section and so this is the project to create a safe crossing for those for the west point elementary school i do so this is a little unusual it looks like we have a few people that would like to make a public comment just on top of that i know you received an email from one of our citizens but we also received a letter also in opposition of that so i believe the email that was to all the governing board was in opposition to this we also re received a letter from a citizen that is also in opposition of this uh they did indicate in the letter to me not the email to you that it was unconstitutional it is not unconstitutional this is done that's why we send it to the arizona school facilities board to follow the process they basically said 15 19 15 905.1 is in itself unconstitutional throwing out the whole statute that is not the case and so this is a legal and appropriate way to move forward on this but so i'll answer any questions on the budget before we allow the public to make any comments we don't ask questions during the public hearing we wait until oh to the agenda item right um thank you thank you very much so we will listen to public comment now thank you very much do we have anyone in the audience that would like to make a public comment go ahead sir good evening everyone i'm here because i am opposed to any kind of tax increase of any kind we're just emerging from this terrible china wuhan virus and i think we are pretty well spent if you will and i think it's uh actually i thought when i saw this in the paper i thought it was some sort of peculiar joke i said really you're kidding right i mean aren't the teachers the ones who said that they didn't want to go to class they didn't want to go well what what's so important now about raising taxes uh it's just terrible i mean i i plucked out two articles yesterday dated yesterday and one of them's um the american retirement insider and they basically say this says education systems are failing all over the country they're failing because teachers aren't teaching they're failing because they want to suffocate kids with masks they even failing because they'd rather teach race theory than u.s history that's just the beginning of it but there there's others another article that i found that it says public school enrollment drops three percent across the nation um and i don't think we're unique here that we're increasing maricopa county i doubt it very seriously but um i i just have real problems with this this this whole concept of taxation i don't think it's fair um i have put well about 40 years now i have put a lot of children through the public school system i think i've done enough and i just think the whole tax system is ridiculous and it needs to be redone there needs to be tears or something created for older people who are retired we're not working anymore and this is crazy we're having to pay the same taxes of the guy across the street who's working full time and and usually making pretty good money but this is what i'm saying this is some of the reasons that i i object to this i mean the curriculum i think needs to be looked at i don't believe that critical this whole crt concept is a good idea i don't get it i don't want the kids to hate each other i want them to like each other okay and so i would appreciate it if you would consider my thoughts on this because i feel very strongly about this and [Music] most people don't are not willing to take the time to come down and share this with you but i think it's important not just for me but other people that follow me there there's we're all we talk about social justice a lot around here throughout the community well social justice should include justice for those of us who are well into our waning years we would like a little justice too anyway i appreciate your attention god bless all of you thank you thank you can we ask your first name sir can we have your name please no that's okay i am dr wendell fountain uh you want my address no that's not necessarily usually they asked me the dress thank you thank you dr fountain do we have any other comments go ahead and state your name for us please thank you mr teacher out of illinois and indiana thank you sir i've supported the nea and the aft most of my life but right now they're doing things that we don't want i saw on newsmax today they said that they're going to support any teacher that gets in trouble for teaching critical race theory okay i'm against that totally i'm against them teaching anything that's divisive now on the tax issue we had well i have a couple grandchildren they happen to reside in their own mirage they also happen to go to a a little school that isn't connected uh anyway they had class most of the time they did take a little time off and then figured out that they could get by without doing it online and so as soon as they could they went back that wasn't the experience that i saw with the dysart schools and the local ones they wanted to stay off for the whole year and then have a super good plan to get back in well the good plan is that according to everything i have read the kids have a much lower susceptibility to the covet thing and so they should have not had to stay out masks on kids that's ridiculous the kids don't need it and on the the tax issue you say well it's only a hundred sixty thousand well a lot of people have houses have gone up a little bit in value i bet it's a little higher than that whenever the taxes hit whatever it is though this tax increase will go on forever and then two or three years down the road you'll probably ask for another increase and that gets added on top of this one it keeps getting added on one of the reasons i left the chicago land is because the taxes on real estate for a three hundred thousand dollar house were about seventy five hundred dollars and that was in two thousand four well i've noticed a gradual increase since i've been here we've got to watch that because many of us have retired and if we are retired we have to pay just as much as everyone else that's working does in april we had a inflation rate for just that month i think of 4 it's going to be higher than you think well we don't want to add more taxes that we don't have to dysart has paid people for not working we have we have to support our families help our grandkids where we can and you guys are not making any easier it's a little bit more difficult for people that have retired please keep that in mind i'm against the tax increase and critical race theory is a definite downer it divides b thank you for your comment do we have any other comments okay thank you madam president um if i could just interject that we will offer to reach out to those who have spoken and addressed some of the comments that they and concerns that they've raised about dicer thank you very much okay moving to item b three dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet again based on actually very new legislative action and new statute we are required to have a public hearing on the matter of school scheduling and dr pulling will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board cabinet and community this past school year we did offer parents that the opportunity for online learning and that was under the governor's executive order from last summer that has expired and as dr kells alludes to there was a new law passed that if we want to offer remote learning in the coming school year for our k-8 students then we need to have two public hearings and have the board adopt that and so this is the first of those two public hearings what i'm going to talk about and present tonight was presented to the board in april i believe and then it was presented to parents through a facebook live event soon thereafter and this is that same information and our plan moving forward so the overview for the public hearings a dysart kid online would be an option for parents for them to have live teaching throughout the day they would follow an early school start schedule the dysart teacher would be in the classroom and the students would be at home and depending on the numbers ideally we'd like to have one teacher per grade level but right now our numbers are very low we have about 170 students enrolled in that and so it is very low this past school year we had over 3 000 students enrolled in that which is about 20 percent of our k-8 student population and the rest were in the classroom learning um so depending on the numbers they're trending low so we could have grade bands such as k1 students would excuse me students would take their core classes math science social studies language arts as well as art and pe and florida virtual would be the online curriculum resource as it was this past year sorry to describe the teaching and learning environment enrollment criteria we did see a large number of students struggle in the online learning for k8 this past year and so we created enrollment criteria and that students to enroll in this program had to have passing grades in math and reading at the end of the school year as well as not be on the retention list some students were recommended for retention unless they passed summer school in math and reading and so we want to make sure that those students would need to come back in person learning in terms of students with an iep or a they would need to meet with their school-based teams and the families to look at their needs and or accommodations to see if those could be met through this remote learning and that's a similar process that we followed this past year in terms of attendance attendance will be taken twice per day so not only would we ensure that students are are participating in class but then also we could get the proper adm and funding from the state and ad is still working on our process and we'll be in communication with our finance department mr hicks team on what is the process so that we can get funding for these students a movement we told parents that a deadline of july would be needed for enrollment into this program so that we could properly prepare and make sure the teachers are ready and students are ready for the school year and this past year we had students and families wanting to switch back and forth a lot where they come into the classroom for a few weeks and then go to remote learning and back and forth and that was very difficult in terms of the consistency for student learning and also for for teachers teaching and so we created the process that movement back and forth to remote learning and personal learning could happen quarterly and to remain in the program students who need to be passing their classes in terms of testing the major tests such as dysart benchmarks or azm2 would need to be taken in person and so that students can be properly supported and proctored in those examinations and finally extracurriculars students will have the opportunity to be involved in school extracurriculars before after school but they need to come to the campus to participate in those then finally we have a have had a web page live for quite some time we have been emailing this information out to parents and doing auto dialers um our website is dysart.org kate online and um also if the community has any questions they can certainly email me or call me and so again this is the first of two hearings on our remote learning option for k-8 students for next year madam president as dr pauline just said this one's a little bit different than the finance public hearing and that we are required to have two public hearings so no action is being requested tonight on this item and i will be asking for comments correct yes okay thank you so do we have any um public comment for this item regarding the remote instruction plan go ahead mr templeton okay it's clear once again my grandchild is seven he goes to charter school right now my grandchild had to go through some remote learning now he was fortunate because he had a grandmother and he had me that was able to help when his mom and dad were otherwise occupied what happens whenever a kid can't get online any problem comes up what happens when the kid doesn't understand something what happens with this remote learning is it becomes very easily no learning now i have done remote learning myself college courses that's fine because we are motivated we understand we've got a little more experience but young kids with remote learning i do not think do well further they are losing the interaction with the teacher because the teachers way out there somewhere and may not even be looking his direction even if he waves his hand second they're not having any children with them to work with further my grandson has a little grand daughter and not granddaughter a sister that is four now she is always in the way now somebody's got to watch the kid someone's got to help the other kid someone's got to keep the computer going and like i said it's just difficult for you to do this with kids that may not be totally motivated some of them as you pointed out me on the beyond trouble with the dean may have been suspended had a few other issues they probably are not do a good candidates for this and i think you should be very careful about robbing the kids of the school experience that's traditional and has been successful and substituting something that might easily become little or no learning thank you thank you for your comment are there any other comments okay thank you next we're going to item c1 dr kellis thank you madam president based on the presentations that are given and the public comments this is the opportunity for the board to make a motion and to vote on the one action item thank you and i can open this up for discussion correct yes that is correct thank you um i would like to open up for discussion i just have a few questions ken you mentioned that this was based off of the conversation we had around the school safe ways to school conversation i thought that as part of that we had agreed that i think it was maybe miss lawyer sink bill that uh recommended that we look into the possibility of of making those changes ourselves and not necessarily going out to taxpayers for something supplemental and i think that there were maybe more than once there was maybe more than one school involved in that conversation and when i looked back at the meeting minutes i thought that we were going to have a cost and timeline presented to us at a later date madam president members sorry i didn't know if you were done or not um yes we're still working on that that specifically when we in my mind we were talking about the shadow ridge and can we put in a light there or pay for the light ourselves we would not be able to we don't own the property or the land we'd have to work with them but that would also be an adjacent waste it would also be an adjacent waste project so not a separate so a little bit different because we're talking about multiple things so um i don't remember hearing and so i did not read the minutes of not ever going to taxpayers for this because that is the only legal valuable way is through adjacent ways on that so i might have known that internally and never said that out loud but i've always assumed that yeah for the shadow rich when we're talking about that that's me paraphrasing and what i heard yes so um and so uh specifically when we were talking about that corner and that dangerous corner at shadow i thought that we were discussing more than just shadow i could be wrong no you were not wrong okay madame president members we talked about shadow we talked about the crossing i think it's at reams and also so we had three troya right joya um so we were talking about three different ones in that presentation okay and um madam president um part of it was what is the city doing and we've reached out multiple times to see if they would accelerate putting a light there and they continue to say at the shadow ridge corner of peoria there that they will not accelerate because it does not warrant even though we believe that it does warrant a light there the city we have had an extensive conversations with them putting in a light at west point acro at the 137th crossways and this is putting us in place for the city to put in a light so we will be preparing and getting our entrance in grassy egress aligned with the community across so that they are able to put in the light and the city would then come in and put in the light okay so did i answer all those questions maybe okay so um with the city putting in the light can you maybe paint a picture for us i know that there was an attachment on here um perhaps hold on a second i may have seen that on the school facilities board um where there was a an actual map of where the the light would be moved to or or put madam president members of the board that is not on this agenda okay i think you were at you must have gone to the school because i probably did because we had to submit a lot of documentation and drawings from vendors and quotes for cost to determine to get their approval and so that did have the realignment of the entrance to align with 137th straight across so based on what you were saying that the city is going to take on the cost of the traffic light and then we're just paying for like the egress construction the ingress ingress is realigning the entrance where it is does not align with the community across the street so until it lines they will not put in a light okay and so because it just wouldn't physically work with a light and a crossing walk so we would realign our opening across the street they would put in the line which wouldn't allow us to put a crossing guard and have safe crossing across this across greenway okay um and then you also mentioned that again based on you know 160 000 you said it would be about 700.
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i'm sorry 7.70 per year uh 64 cents per month and is that for one year does that expire after one year or is this a forever tax so madam president members of the board that's a great question that's a great question because we hear that all the time we know it we've talked about it in overrides we've talked about it with other education measures it is so the truth and taxation notice if you notice there was how much was there the previous year it assumes it goes to zero every year it is only a one year this is a one year project it our hope um now construction timelines are getting thrown out where our hope would be this would be done by the end of september for them to get materials i don't know if anybody's doing any construction and seeing everything the timing and everything is pushed out so it could go longer this is once we levy the tax it goes into our bank account from the county treasurer and that is what we have to use for this project and then it is done it goes away the tax goes away for next year automatically the only way it continues is if the board comes back and we have to identify another project or explain a current project that didn't work and then you have to approve that going forward if you don't approve it it doesn't continue i will tell you this is only one year it'll be done our hopes is by end of september i'm not that optimistic about it but i do hope it is done in the first semester so that we are in alignment and get that light up and get a safe crossing as quickly as possible okay i think that was that was all my questions for right now go ahead um just as a follow-up for what densboro was talking about i did want to know if it was for one year is this a separate line item on our tax bill um madam president members of the board it is not a separate line item it's just embedded into the district primary tax okay so if we don't collect enough because construction costs i mean you're guesstimating it's going to be sixty thousand no well um madam president members of the board we have quotes in hand from vendors so we would be able to enact that um there could be a change order but that would have to depend on change of scope of when they're in there something under the ground is not the same i do not believe there be a cost increase but at the end of the year then that goes away 7.70 per year 64 cents per month goes goes away correct okay i think that was all on that particular when we talked about something else then i have other questions okay i do have a couple of questions um maybe this is just my first rodeo so i'm not quite familiar but throughout this whole process of discussion i didn't realize that us approving this project would require raising taxes so i don't know maybe that was discussed and i just missed it but i don't ever remember hearing about us raising taxes um and then did we have a traffic study done i can't remember if we actually had one in front of us madam president members of the board we do a safe school working with maricopa association of governments and also the cities and i think that's done every three years and we have a safe study to help guide it we also met with the city because we we tried other alternatives first on a safe crossing we tried i know we met multiple times with the city asking for hawk lights other provisions to help and they denied and said none of them met their criteria for the safe schools and safe crossings and so they ultimately said the only solution that they would fund or help support would be a light at that point i'm sorry what was your first oh so um let me um so at the last board meeting i and maybe this is just terminology and i apologize for that so at the last board meeting june 16th i did say this is paid for by our property tax payers um so maybe that's not inherent of that so i tried to disclose that and i think i've given some weekly updates to the board about that this is covered by our property taxpayers so not exactly saying this is a tax increase and i could change my verbage going forward okay because i understood it was coming from property taxes but i didn't realize we were going to have to vote to raise taxes in order to cover it and then maybe just a point of clarification when we vote on this budget are we voting for the truth and taxation notice so if we approve this budget does that mean we're approving the truth in taxation notice or is that something separate madam president members of the board the truth and taxation notice is what's required for us to request this to post in the newspaper and online in the various socials approval of this budget we send it to the county and then it goes to the county board of supervisors for their approval to increase to set the tax rates so approval of this board the board has authority to with approval of certain budgets to increase taxes much like if we were a district in central phoenix or down in tucson and a dseg budget when you approve the gseg budget it sets the tax rate for that dseg budget to be funded and so then that that allows the tax rate to be set the county assessor to call to assess it the treasurer to collect it the treasure then to disperse the funds to the district so if we approve this budget tonight then essentially there will be a tax increase madam president members of the board yes and then do we have funds other than doing a tax increase i mean is there a waiver to pay for it without raising taxes um madam president members of the board we've allocated out our capital budget um there could be partial portions of this yes we're taking this entire project and putting it on adjacent ways because it falls completely within adjacent ways there are some capital improvements we could make that could be funded from uh regular capital district additional assistance yes i do believe there's some that couldn't because adjacent ways it's not on our property and it's in the easements and other areas that we're using and improving and that it's not our property so we can't do capital daa out of that so partially yes so you said that the truth of taxation last year was about 15 000.
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so that has dropped then so it's at zero now currently madam president members of the board yes and that's what the notice says is that we start off at zero every year so with the 15 000 can you give us the breakdown of what that was yearly and monthly um i um ish what's the is it like 20 cents or buck uh buck a year 16 cents a month or okay i mean just to try to make this sound a little bit sweeter instead of being 770 a year might be like okay okay yes so just going along your lines if you're going there technically from adjacent ways to adjacent ways it's not a full increase because we already assessed some last year right but we're required we cannot understand i understand that per law we have to say it's a full increase as we just want to look at it from every angle yeah just for clarification though so but there wasn't we did not approve a tax increase last year because it was under a certain amount um madam president members of the board it was a tax increase for the 15 000 we just did not have to submit it to the arizona school facilities board because it was under the 50 000 threshold so that's why this seems this seems fairly new to me as well i don't remember doing having like an official meeting to talk about increasing taxes madam president members of the board probably and when i start hearing more people i want to disclose more so that nobody thinks we're not disclosing so i'm i purposely draw attention to it so that nobody thinks that we're sliding anything under the rug or trying to hide anything i like full disclosure and sure try to be as transparent and accountable as possible i think with that piece of it though too just moving forward and maybe this is a procedural thing that you didn't have control over um but it seems just as far as the optics of it too to have it published saying that this is going to be i don't think the word was in effect but basically going to move forward with this tax increase july 1 yet the board's not meeting on it until july 7th feels a little improper even though it may be totally pro it might be procedurally correct but i'm just saying that part of it was a little just didn't feel quite right um as far as that piece of it and then i think too i was under the same impression when we had that other discussion that we were going to be getting information back to talk about how we could maybe fund these other adjacent waste projects i didn't realize either that this meant i mean as as crystal had said i knew it was being paid through taxes but not necessarily thinking that it was going to be a tax increase um i thought we were waiting to get some of that information back because i remember when mrs sawyer singapore mentioned well can we just cover this i thought i remember thinking then if if the city wasn't going to cover all of it i was worried about it being a slippery slope of we need to either have a study or something to justify you know why we want we don't want to just randomly decide which things we might just cover on our own we need to obviously have the data to support it but i was thinking that okay well let's look and see if there's other ways that we can do it i did not realize it was going to be and if you can help me with this because here's where i'm sitting is that i just feel very uncomfortable raising tax or voting through this budget to raise taxes and put a tax increase on the voters without it going before the voters that's where i'm struggling especially if we can find ways to cover it in ourselves um madam president members of the board so there was a lot of comments that i hope to address all of them if not please restate them so number one after the fact we are following the exact process and timeline tax rates are not set to fund this until the maricopa county board of supervisor approves that at the end of august so and we can't there's timelines of when you could do a proposed budget when you do adopted budget you have to have the adopted budget to submit to the county so that they could submit it to the board of supervisors so i know it feels like oh the year started no taxes have been levied for anything for this year as we're going and so until the board of supervisors actually approves it nothing done so it's all it feels after the fact but it's we're following the exact process and timeline as stated in statute and with the maricopa county um that is provided to us um to and i apologize because i heard it now from another board member um of the timelines and i really thought that was all just about shadow because when we said at the choya there's nothing we could do there and the city said absolutely not we were talking about that very difficult intersection of peoria and getting timelines and can we what is the cost of a light can we do something we can't do anything could we give the city money to do something that's different so i apologize for the terminology and some of that the first rodeo i think i would also like to say we really haven't done adjacent ways really since we were building schools so back in the 2000s when we were building two schools a year we probably were doing about two to three million dollars of adjacent ways every single year and every single year and this is not set up just for adjacent ways like i mentioned the dseg small school adjustment there's probably i think about eight different ways that with the approval of the budget the governing board sets a tax rate that is a requirement in statute based on if it's a primary or secondary secondary tax rates tax rates are covered by the governing board meaning you could reduce the taxes by approving a budget for two dollars we would have to fire everybody get rid of everybody and there'd be lots of lawsuits and do everything but you could reduce the taxes by let's just have a two dollar budget which also then just eliminated the override what governing board's approved budgets at their amounts that do set tax rates and that is historically always been the case and so i apologize for not uh overtly stating it clearer in that way and so i apologize that so there's many mechanisms that control that the quickest easiest way is primary tax rate is covered by normally covered by governing board members secondary tax rate is covered by boaters in that sense so hopefully that also did i cover everything in your comments i think so other than well as far as the the dates go could we have or should we have perhaps had this discussion or hearing prior to july one so it would seem like then okay this is it would have it would have been settled and voted on before that publication went out to say as of july 1st this is going to be so it wouldn't feel so after the fact or it's being done before the governing board even hears it or votes on it is that even possible um madam president members of the board at this point any delay would change everything so your hands are not tied you you're a governing board you could do whatever you want um no i'm talking about this particular situation where it was published saying that july 1st this is this is we're moving forward with this yet the meeting wasn't scheduled until july 7th is that something that theoretically moving into next year or this year we could have done anything about because that's the piece that's not settling well with some community members is that it sounds like it's backwards we should have done this in june and uh madam president members of the board i'm sorry about that i i don't know a single case so let's just say there's probably 200 to jason wayne's projects and about 100 districts across the state right now every single one's done the same way this is done almost the exact same way in every single district i hear that so so that's why you know yeah so that's why uh living in it i don't hear or feel what you're saying i'm just following the timeline the rules could we do anything about it now no um because we have to approve a budget before the 15th we can't go back in time and have a meeting before july 1st to do that the only option would be to wait around till next year which then would change the cost and uh i'm guessing i would not have to resubmit it to the arizona school facilities board i would have to be we'd have to start the process all over again for next year because the governing board with the adoption of the budget is when they set tax rate that is only one time a year so there's one window to do it and then it would roll around to the next fiscal year so the only other thing that you didn't um quite answer yet is that is there a way that the district would be able to cover this without going to increasing taxes to our voters uh so madam president members of the board i think we could partially do it as member chafin asked i do not some of it is where the construction is happening adjacent ways allows us to go outside of our boundaries of our property adjacent to anything next to our property for that construction and going in if we're not using adjacent waves we don't have the legal authority to use a fund to go outside of our property so we could not do all of it we could do some more of it and we'd have to re-look at our capital budget that we've met with all of our departments to go through and all that so that's possible and or could we also continue to lobby the city to help cover it we could always do that yes um i just want to make a note that that last year i happened to look back at the the meeting time frame so last year um our meeting was june 24th and the notice date was july first um so when was when did we have our meeting was in late june or adopted budget was so that would be the case that we could do it sometimes thank you that's done properly and time-wise well um so uh the only uh madam president uh um i wouldn't say done properly in your sense um i know dr kelly properly dr kellis optically yes so um from the after the fact feel proper yes yes because i would not want anybody to think we did it illegally understood yeah thank you totally get it just for that clarification thank you so many president if i could just summarize that to mrs prichard's comment that while procedurally and legally this was done appropriately optically it could have been presented earlier just that while procedurally and legally this has all been done correctly optically it could have done been done a week earlier or in june as it was done last year thank you so to clarify i just want to make sure i'm understanding i know we're kind of going in a circle here so we all understand every year when the board meets to approve a budget and they pick a ti there's a tax rate presented it's a tax increase to the public every year is that correct um madam president members of the word kind of could be definitions but so the assumption so this is kind of the conversation that happens around bonds or overrides is it a tax increase there's a not tax increase if it continues right if you assume it goes no when it goes down people feel it's a tax increase if it's continuing it goes on so some of what is approved by a budget a board on the budget is just a continuation and some of it would go down so maybe it's semantics in in that sense and i understand assessed values i mean we could keep the tax rate the same but if your assessed value goes up you're paying then your tax rate goes up your tax rate does not go up but your taxes go up and even though we didn't increase the tax rate the assessed value did and the tax is based on your assessed value and assessed values are off the charts now anyway um or whatever madam president members of the board just for clarification on tax rates so the tax rates that are used are from about a year and a half ago so everything's in arrears because you have to give time for the taxpayers to appeal their evaluation so it's not a prospective look at what your values are so if you could sell your house today hey that's my value that is not the value that's on the books for the county treasurer full cash values and that's totally different than what you sell your house for i understand that just one but as a follow-up so if hypothetically you say okay we can pay for a portion of this project maybe sort of out of current capital funds could you give an example of a couple of projects that would not happen that need to happen that would to pay for this madam president if i could just interject i think it would be premature to suggest a project that wouldn't happen without having broader conversations um education dysert has um often been told to tighten our belts and to use the money we have to live within our budget i think i i know dysert as evidenced by award-winning financial recognitions has done an extraordinary job of maintaining our budget it is illegal to go in the black or to go in the red we have to stay in the black to go outside of our our our budget we can only do that with permission from the process from the legal process that allows us to to go through these things we have lived within our budget we continue to live within our budget to say that we are going to increase by seven dollars we can increase that to ten dollars a year but as administration has pursued the options on the table it has been the best judgment of administration to make this recommendation that a ten dollar per year per household would be more prudent than and it's not ten dollars it's less than that but is more prudent than cutting seven 700 000 from our our budget and to i have said it before where we've been told to cut the fat i i will stand and say that there is no fat in dysert and we're we're operating very leanly we have awesome schools we were open all year long we did not close our schools all year and pay our teachers to sit at home all year dycert was open this year and the things that we are doing to support our students is what is our charge to do what's best for kids this opportunity to provide a safe crossing is important and our kids need to have that safe crossing to west point elementary the city suggested that they walk a half mile past multiple business drive-ins through the intersection at litchfield and greenway and cross very very unsafe pathways to school so if there's a question about whether this is the right project to do if the money is worth it the safety of our students is important there is a situation in peoria where this discussion happened the city meetings happened and they were denied the crossing and a student was hit and killed now they're paying the eight million dollars it's a lot cheaper to make the safe call now rather than deal with the consequences later so yes we could cut the fat if there was fat to be cut at this point we will be cutting if we don't use the adjacent ways we would be cutting money from existing allocations to other capital projects and that would not be good for for the students i just want to clarify i was not saying cut fat i want to make that video thank you i appreciate it i'm responding to other criticisms that was not my question at all i just wanted an example of capital projects that would be affected and that's not fat that's a safety issue as well if you need an air conditioning unit are we going to say oh no you're not going to get air conditioner that's all i'm saying i bet i i want to make it very clear that my question is and if i could just expound upon that comment about air conditioning and the extraordinary effort that dicert is taking to find additional funds without increasing tax dollars this year alone we have found about two million dollars through the school facilities board which is designated by the state to pay for some of these maintenance projects that schools can't afford to do on their own we have qualified for these because of they will not fund it if it needs to be repaired it has to be in complete failure and because of the complete failure mode of roofs and ac units we have qualified for over two million dollars of of capital funds i think for me it's not a matter at all of whether or not it's worth it of course nobody wants to see a child die or get injured so to me when i speak about this issue it's not about well let's decide whether we want to spend the money if the money is worth it it's a matter of principle and process and i know it's only seven dollars a year very minimal amount of money so it's not about the money it's about the principle of school boards just deciding on their own to raise taxes without it going before the voters is number one my what i struggle with as far as the principle of it the process but the other piece of it too is you know we're partners with a city a surprise and if it were about buying buses or something else that only benefits dysart unified school district even though it impacts our children but still their buses that only we're going to use the city is not going to use our buses i could understand that's our expense and we have to figure out how we're going to pay for those things but those children that are going to be walking to school are surprise residents they are their responsibility as well and and should be just as equally concerned about their welfare as the school district is so i know we used to have meetings in our liaison and we meet with the city and we'd have this collaborative relationship i don't think to my knowledge we've been doing that at least not a board representative being there perhaps those types of discussion and then lobbying from the finance department whoever gets involved in the lobbying to help with that i just feel like if we have some of the money without going to you know approving a tax increase and the city can take some responsibility which i believe they should because again i think it's a shared responsibility um i would rather see what we can do in that regard rather than just be like uh let's just talk to the voters i just i don't like that madam president if i could also respond to that that the city is playing a part in this this is not all on the district um what you're suggesting could be an ongoing conversation but you're asking the city to come on to our campus and redesign our parking lot no i just want them to help pay for a safe way to school for the surprise resident right so we're paying for the renovation to our parking lot to align with the traffic signal that the city is going to pay for so they're taking care of everything on the city property the streets excuse me and we're paying for what is on our property so it is a joint venture with the city they're they're not charging us to go out into the street obviously if we have to put a curb in that's what ken hicks is saying that if we have to do a curb that's on city property that's where the adjacent waze comes in where we can't do that legally using our money we're asking permission to put a curb in because that's city property but we're not i don't think it'd be appropriate to ask the city to remodel our parking lot no but do they have a bigger budget than we do i don't know what the city budget is i can't answer that but the division of responsibility for this project is the city's paying for the city property we're paying for the district property renovations miss pitcher i just can i interject just for a second so i just heard two different things i heard it's not our property and then i heard it is our property so we're talking about doing things with our own parking lot but i thought the whole purpose of adjacent ways is because it wasn't our property so is it our property or isn't it our property madam president oh go ahead madam president uh miss chaffin currently there's an entrance to west point elementary to the parking lot that entrance comes off of greenway road the entrance is misaligned with 137th avenue that comes out of litchfield manor residential area so this misalignment needs to be lined up so that the traffic light can allow a free flow of traffic so we have to change our entrance to the parking lot which is on our property to change the entrance to the parking lot we have to tear up the curbing the sidewalk the ditch there's a culvert that goes along there all of that is city property so the answer is yes and yes it's our property it's the city's property but we can't disrupt the city's property without using the json ways thank you it's wonky it that's a perfect word for it it's wonky the entrance and then litchfield manor so they have to actually align them so is there yeah is there a reason that we just didn't align it in the first place or did we just not see a need for it when the school is built madam president miss chaffin we built there first okay and just to follow up with that um does this have anything to do with any other of our boundary changes that we're implementing this now um madam president members of the board the district made some boundary changes a couple of years ago previously the students who lived across the street from the school went two miles away to then parkview elementary and we bust them the intent was you and ashton maybe or park parkview parkview the intent by doing this was to save some cost to the district so we wouldn't have to be bussing students two miles away when they lived literally across greenway from the elementary okay so currently we would be saving some money because right now we're we're shuttling two bus routes across the street because we don't want them walking safely we would discontinue those two bus routes and they could be used more efficiently for other other needs and that would become a walking zone only so could i ask one more question well maybe not one more another one um so we're talking we're going you know i think it was joe said we're going around in circles we're kind of talking about this whole truth and taxation that we're really just i feel like we're just peeling off layers and trying to understand it so it is possible to propose a budget without increasing the community taxes am i did i understand that correctly um so madam president members of the board if i could restate it are you asking can we not approve an adjacent ways budget budget that has the truth and taxation notice of an increase in taxes no no i'm just saying because there was a discussion of last year um apparently it was under 50 000 so there was really no notice and no hearing it was just added into the budget and i'm understanding from what you're saying and correct me if i'm wrong that this is common practice with all the school districts they're just kind of proposing this budget and every year they propose it there is some sort of tax increase that could or does happen and like i don't even know if you guys knew what was happening last year when you voted on it i don't know i wasn't here but i'm just questioning if that is common practice i mean it is possible to present a budget without having any tax increase is that correct madam president members of the board in general sorry so right now embedded into this budget is we follow statute that there's a funding discrepancy between the district support level and the revenue control limit that difference is picked up by local property taxpayers that's the difference in transportation so the state does not pay fully for transportation but they said you could budget to the higher amount and let the local property taxpayers do it so if you were to pull out that it would be pull out another couple million dollars and that's in the mno budget you'd reduce by two million over two million dollars so it is possible the governing board as i said could adopt a budget of two dollars okay actually i think technically legally you might only need one employee the superintendent because so many things are required by statute for a superintendent so you could just have a budget to employ the superintendent and cut everything else is that the prudent thing does that mean you're not going to get lawsuits in many other ways it's probably not the prudent thing so right now to reduce so it is legally possible to adopt a budget lesser than what was presented you cannot increase um what is presented so it cannot go up anywhere first asked whether or not the question was um to approve the budget less the adjacent ways project was that what was your answer to that so that uh madame president members of the board and i don't know if this is semantics but i hear different things so could you approve a budget without the json as you could we would have to start all over with the sfb so our windows our fiscal year windows to set tax rates and we cannot set one say two weeks later a month later two months later the window is now so if you approve it without the adjacent ways project we'll have to start the process again increase our communication for community and governing board and come back next year at this time for that start the process meaning for that project but not redo the whole budget mana present members are correct correct for the i'm sorry for the adjacent ways project the safe crossing at greenway that would have to be started all over through the sfb through the process because everything would be a year old quotes wouldn't be vendor's not going to hold a price for a year in this environment and stuff like that so with the sfb is can you only propose this then in june or july by july first uh madam president members of the board no uh you could uh if you look at the sfb agendas you'll see adjacent ways throughout the years okay some of them have cash balances so there was a time in other districts where i had a million dollars that wasn't fully allocated you could propose a tax or propose it to the sfb at any time once they approve it anything over 50 dollars you could then engage in and spend and then we would just have that conversation in the truth and taxation communication or publication put out at any time uh madam president i believe that has to be in and around when we propose and adopt a budget so no that notice wouldn't be so we could submit to the sfb say in february they review it it takes them up to 60 days to review it and then we could get the notice back okay and then just hold on everything if that's what you're asking gotcha and i know that you are required by law by the stat by the statute to make this proposal through the s p and get that approval um with that are you only able to do this through a tax that i just want to i know we're it's really circular here but are we only able to do that through an additional tax or could we potentially find the money in our own budget so i think you said maybe a percentage of it correct and i do not know the exact so going back to dr kellis that curb is not our curb per se where it is and technically we have to go out beyond the curb that is definitely not our property that we legally could not use our 610 fund for that what percentage of that i have i we would have to then re-look at that with the vendor vendors know the adjacent ways process and they would be able to identify what is legal on one on the other side and be able to give us a proposal with that more definitive split is what you're requesting okay um because you know like you mentioned uh the in years prior we had much smaller amounts you know um we had conversations around much smaller dollar amounts uh versus the i think 780 000 this year um so i know that that triggers a lot of thoughts and emotions in people with that said i i just think that there should have been additional communication or better communication because when i look at the school facilities board submissions that were happening you know in may and june and then conversations that were happening with the city of surprise and then those same conversations weren't being shared with us um so this is to me was it was quite a surprise um not having an agenda review um it was this was a surprise to me yeah um and obviously to some of our community too um mr president if i could just talk about the communication as mr hicks mentioned this has been uh presented to the board uh several times previously through weekly updates and in a previous budget presentation but not that there was going to be a tax increase like i i will i will agree with miss densmore that i i was surprised that we were coming tonight to vote on increasing taxes to voters without voter without it being on a ballot measure or something i wasn't aware that that that we've ever really been presented with anything like this before so i know mr hicks you had said that in your mind you kind of went with some assumptions or you know the process so maybe it wasn't articulated the right way um and maybe that's what it was but in fairness with you kind of acknowledging that piece of it i think that's what happened is that i certainly was surprised um madam president members of the board for clarification i never use the words tax increase i think i continue just to say um the prop our property tax payers would pay for this so i never use that words that you're saying i never saw that i never um put that in any update well and i think if you if we would have heard the word tax increase we could have had this discussion several months ago and we you know would have been more prepared for this budget meeting and for this rather than feeling like we've been blindsided like oh now all of a sudden we're gonna vote and we could increase property taxes because i also don't feel comfortable you know voting to increase taxes for our whole community you know i just don't feel comfortable making that decision for our community madam president i empathize with your position and i appreciate your sharing that that is a difficult task for a board member to take on that is that is one of the challenges of boardsmanship yeah and i agree it is a challenge and it is our job but i still feel like if we would have actually realized that this was going to be a tax increase for our community we would have had different conversations several months ago and since then and i feel like we would have had more time to discuss further you know avenues like was ms pritchard was talking about maybe working a little bit with more with the city and so i guess those are my thoughts because clearly we didn't realize this was going to lead to a tax increase mr hicks do you happen to know the last time we had an adjacent ways issue um man of present members of the board but you know it's been a while well uh when we were building our two schools a year in the 2000s is that what you're talking about we're talking probably what two thousand from 2004 to 10 okay i think it went all the way through 10 and that was a couple million a year yes at that point i think the the statute would shape was changed in 2015 when it needed to be submitted to the sfb um and so i don't think i don't see any records on sfb of us submitting something since then yeah the madam president members of the board the legislature changed it to require there was a perception out there that there were a lot of legal adjacent ways projects going through and they wanted an agency to verify and vet the programs or the adjacent ways projects prior to governing boards just assessing attacks and so that is now the requirement of the 50 000 threshold so that they didn't just go through every sometimes you have a 500 or 100 adjacent wage project so to limit theirs they just picked a threshold the legislature did and they picked fifty thousand dollars for any project expense and just for my own knowledge they um there was recently something that appeared to be an adjacent ways project if you were to head south on parkview just outside the countryside elementary school looked like there was a crosswalk moved and then an ada compliant sidewalk put in place is that considered adjacent ways and was that something that we funded um madame president members of the board i'm not aware of that project at all the cities and president the city uh my understanding is just as a recently took on four traffic improvement projects on city streets only so the i believe that's one of them there are a couple more over by cimarron springs and canyon ridge along surprise farms loop north and south so these are proactive measures that the city is taking on projects they've taken on themselves okay but they happen to be adjacent to our schools um kind of i mean the one on surprise surprise farms loop north is down the street a couple of blocks but it was to help students get to school safely but it was nothing that had to do with us that we had to the district hasn't expended any funds on those projects i know they added a stop sign right which i mean it's i think it's on cotton and surprise farm loop something because there were two stop signs and then the next one is not a stop sign so it's kind of confusing i always stop because i never mind i think that's what you're talking about um i just have one more thing i'm sorry if this gets approved tonight is this project on track to be ready for this school year no madam president members of the board we will engage and start it as soon as possible but it will not be ready for the start of the school year august 3rd because it will take a while for the construction project it would probably be happening and just uh go dormant for drop off and pick offs pick up so if you see our schools during that time it's very hectic we would do no work around that time and then maybe some nights and weekends to get it done as quickly as possible okay i do have a couple of other budget questions i don't know if you guys want to keep discussing the adjacent waves project my questions are for other areas of the budget i only have two okay i don't know all right go ahead oh okay so it's open you can always go back right um so good at that do we know exactly how much interest we're spending on our debt on our bond that we took out i mean the actual interest not just how much we're spending on debt yeah madam president members of the board in this budget what you'll see is the principal and interest payment if i had to estimate when i last saw the numbers the interest itself might be around two million dollars would be my best guess okay annually uh this year just this year it adjusts each year depending on what repayment schedule has been approved when the bonds were sold and that's just the interest that's not the whole yeah because i think the principal reduction is probably close to 13 million dollars and then this particular budget i know in the past principals have started to they've needed to start doing their staffing in january so with this particular budget for this fiscal year are they still going to have to figure out all their staffing needs in january or are they going to i mean how does that work so we approved this fiscal year for this year to that year so when principals start doing their staffing in january is that for the fiscal year 20 to 23 23 200.
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madam president members of the board we start in about october working for the next year's budget and so in january is when it comes to the principles to work for the july meeting so they have already put in all the work and got their staffing and then is there any way that we could give them a little bit more time to figure out their staffing and then another question is is why do our contracts always come out so early especially when the state budget is improved for a couple of months afterwards um i'm just kind of curious why everything has to be done super early adam president i'd be happy to answer that question it's kind of been creeping earlier and earlier and there's multiple reasons for that dysert competes with all the other charters and districts and private schools for the same teachers and one of the challenges when we are out late is teachers have already signed contracts for the following school year and so to make sure that we know who's here and who's leaving and to be able to get out there and and find the teachers that we need to fill the gaps there was a time when we were hiring over 300 teachers a year because of the the turnover um this year i think we're down to oh just over about so we cut that in half so the that's one reason is to be able to to land our employees in seats in in classrooms there's a lot of planning that has to take place as we're looking forward to the following school year so it helps with with the planning one of the things that we have done to help teachers because we know that once you sign if you sign a contract in february life happens and so at least in dicer and this is not common to other other school entities in dicer we have extended the the opportunity for teachers to get out of their contract until may 1st so without any penalty so we want to just get a commitment so we can know and start planning but we don't want to make it difficult for for teachers who they signed in february but are stuck and that was one of the concerns that teachers had is but what if i'm not ready to commit in february for the following august so we extended that to may it used to be april 15th and so they actually have more time now than they used to i know it just that that makes total sense it's just kind of difficult to uh it's difficult to give an accurate representation of their salaries if the state budget hasn't come out yet so even if they have until may 1st and we don't give them a commitment of their salaries until like what june 1st that's still kind of a you know what's my salary really going to be so when they sign on they're signing on for x amount 100 for sure with the possibility you might get a cost of living increase or something of that sort and that happens all over the state thank you madam president members of board you also ask about starting the process earlier so we do work with our mr kevin shipman planning and our demographics to try to get projections rolling over the data to try to get as soon as possible we start it in december and work with hr finalize it all and then work with the principles um i will definitely take the comment back to see if we could start that process a little earlier well i i'm thinking later give the principles more time so the earlier we start the projections and then our staffing ratios to tell gives them more time because once we get to that point they normally have a two-week window to figure out and start talking to their staff and place them like if a if a grade went down and you lost two teachers where are you placing those two teachers they want to know their other staffing to do that so that's why we would have to start the process earlier to provide more time to do that but i definitely hear that comment now too so i appreciate it all right so i'm going to jump in here um my questions uh really just had to do with the other funds they were on page 8.
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why uh and this had to do with career and technical education um priory was about 2.3 million and budget year is 1.7 so i'm just curious why um 600 000 difference madam president members of the board what what page are we at six of eight no i'm sorry well it's eight of our slide here yeah page six of eight excuse me sorry i see eight up at the top uh line number 23 other funds oh other phones i'm looking at it right right oh uh i'm sorry madam president members that is a great question um so that is our westmec uh funds our funds that we're getting from westmac and um we uh mr greece haber looking at all his projects and what the greatest needs are he decided this summer to remodel the dysart high school automotive center cost a lot of money he used a lot of his reserves and so this is what's left is it's a huge decrease because he had a huge increase in spending this summer oh so he carried forward for some reserves and he he well that means that he'll have less money to spend next year so the really the difference is is he's sinking uh six seven hundred thousand dollars into the dysart high school automotive remodel okay and last one i just wanted to make sure that um i know you you and i had talked about the compensatory instruction that there's nothing there and dr montano is going to continue doing what she's doing as far as not having anything in our budget so madam president members of the board compensatory instruction is when we've gone to ade mediated and lost and need to provide additional instruction for our special ed program because we ran the summer school all june to cover it and because we were in person for essentially the whole year the whole state had to close down the first two weeks then we put a plan in place to phase back coming in with our special ed students coming in first so we were ahead of the curve of almost the entire state and because we're providing full robust uh special ed program the entire month of june we every hearing that's gone we've won every hearing and i think her statement is fear above vape above fear we provided a fair and appropriate education to every single one and an opportunity if parents choose to kept their students home they cannot use that as an excuse to get additional uh instruction because we had opportunities in person for every single one and what she's done has allowed us not to have anything in there as far as that so um that's that's a huge feather in her cap and we've won every single hearing um madame president members on board i know i repeated that a couple times i did talk to her i think there's only been three or four so it's not like the volume of going to a.d is so huge it's a small number but she has won every single one and it's vape above fear thank you what would happen though if we needed that like where would that money come from is it okay to not have any money in that so some of it is the state might provide additional funding here or we will have to provide it and carve it out of our budget or comes out of a federal fund that we'll have to redirect over to that but we have not in any compensatory situation whether special ed or ell have to do anything sorry no sorry but the public comment time period is over thank you so um i'm going to be looking at two different devices two different screens here but the one i'm on now is the budget okay so back and i'm sorry i don't remember the meeting it was either may or june we had the whole conversation about board members and travel and unused funds they get so much for used funds for two years and then what isn't used goes back into the budget could you please now that we're looking at it show what line item that it would go into um so madam president members of the board so uh on the page one of eight is our m o budget okay in that is embedded a line where board member travel is budgeted and so if you went to general administration which is line four and then went over a few columns to purchase services that's where that's embedded in that is where the superintendent uh who also covers all of our governing board expenses and such is coded to is there and so what our process is is that each year our department meets with every department our my department mary dell and her team meet with each department to look at their budget from last year and justify it's almost a zero-based budget with departments not based on student not bit like schools because that's based on formula students here it's justification what are you doing and how that is for governing board travel the two-year balance that's looked at is automatically put in and put embedded into that budget so it's not taken away and unless it fell off from the previous year but that two years allocated directly to that that the governing board secretary has control over anything excess that was left goes back into the whole budget to be reallocated amongst the whole process okay thank you and then on the budget adoption portion the summary and i know you've talked about this but just as a refresher for me please um because we weren't sure about the legislature and then we were when it says the m o funds and this 40 million includes the extra money we got from the state right correct if we did not get that additional money from the state could you please tell me approximately what that number would look like madam president members of the board between those group b weights that they that i mentioned at the previous and i can't remember them off the top i had what they increased from it it generated about 1.1 million dollars okay thank you and so but so if i could clarify that necessarily doesn't mean that that number would go down we overspend we don't overspend anything um the amount of money that's allocated to us in special ed does not cover the needs of special ed because special ed has so many ieps and statutorily driven we fund and do everything that's appropriate there it might mean somewhere else we'd be cutting a million dollars but this helps and that's what i'm just asking is that's what the name did get an additional million ish to go towards madam president um sorry madam president members of the board and i didn't i don't say a lot of things with emotion or something the legislature provided a lot of additional funding this year so not just inflation funding the full restoration of daa capital the special ed funding there was a lot of areas that benefit school districts greatly in that sense and we benefited in at least one million dollars just on that special ed that all came together at the end thank you i know that miss grant mentioned the board member travel and some of the cost savings that we had associated with that but i would assume that we also had quite an extensive savings with employee travel as well right madam president members of the board that's a great question if i would say savings i would say in our grants yes because we don't allocate and say you have to spend this in a in your mno fund so maybe we give professional development to schools five thousand dollars um that could come in a number of different ways so we had tons of savings from covid the previous years and a lot of restrictions a lot of it was just repurposed and so um so i guess there's layers to that conversation in that sense but a lot of the federal grants very difficult because it was very specific of attend they wrote the grant to say we're going to this conference this conference is no longer available or at a reduced rate for an online version and so yes there was definitely some savings more in federal programs where it was specific and written into the grant but it did impact a lot we just may have repurposed it in the mno for the previous year okay um i guess just from the outside looking in i i think it might be difficult for some people seeing and hearing all of these you know extra funds coming in um cost savings happening whether it be from utility bills you know for certain months you know when we were forced by the governor to go remote um so you see all these savings and you see the the federal and state dollars coming in and then you see something like this and you struggle well you know why quit why can't the district cover that with all those savings and additional funds that they received um and i know that you're saying that those funds were simply repurposed for something different but i just want to give you another perspective on how that might look to somebody that is looking from the outside in so i think that's a great perspective i might frame some of my conversations a little bit different when we give budgets to schools it is not you have five dollars for travel in downtown and if you don't spend it we take it right you're given an allocation school principals are responsible for every single thing that happens on that campus their total discretionary budget might be fifty thousand dollars which is embedded in that is travel to make sure that they're successful and they have all the tools we allow them to make the judgments that are most appropriate to them to purpose to make the decisions of how they would spend their money to make the most success at their schools to address that so even though we have allocation formulas so this is going way down into what we provide our principles they see actually here's how much you get for instructional supplies art supplies nurse supplies front off we show them how we built their budget so that they could see but we do not hold them to say you were given 850 for nursing supplies you only spent 820 we're taking back 30 dollars if they see the greatest need to purchase something else that solves a problem that makes them successful we're going to encourage them to make the best decision possible what i do is i make sure all that's public so everybody in our district through our internet can see every single every summary data of every single other schools and how and where they're spending their money yes there might have been savings through travel and other savings when we weren't in session but that money was spent a man and president members of the board repurpose and that's through every single year and we allow them to roll over a hundred percent of their money so that they're just not forcibly buying something just so they don't lose the money because if it's if we're going to repurpose it and take it back you know how marketplaces adapt and somebody says if you don't go on some travel we'll take it they'll just go on any travel just to put it in to take it just so they don't have to lose it because sometimes some government's not that i started but my wife works for the county if you don't spend it your next year budget's reduced because they think you don't need it and so people have a hunker mentality of which is wasteful i i personally believe i'd rather them do the right decision and not take for them or create an environment that they're going to be wasteful with the exception of grants and federal projects that that doesn't apply to madam president members of the board some of our federal grants are very very detailed of every single thing and every line and yes that does happen so i'm sorry my statement was in general of mno and capital allocations our greatest allocations to our our schools thanks for the clarification working on my communication here hearing uh you know what i mean a little different to and from thank you and this may have already been covered and i apologize if it if it was but so i know that i think maybe it was last year the year before um the legislature had increased the amount that we were able to carry forward as a district in our budget um can you clarify what that looks like uh madam president members of the board uh not last year this might have been i'm guessing too um year before maybe six years ago oh okay i was thinking it was um more recent um everything feels recent when you're old um to me not you sorry sorry i know this is being live stream i apologize that was my own comment i am 50 now uh that was no way intended about that so it was approximately six years ago and we used to have a four percent cap that you would not require you were not allowed to carry forward more than four percent okay they took that away and it was unlimited so there's no cap at this point if we wanted to carry forward going back to my example right a two dollar budget or to spend only two dollars on 176 we can carry forward 175 million 998 dollars if we really wanted to okay so can you um just speak to what the amount is that we're hearing forward um yes madam president members of the board this budget is assumes a carry forward of about 7.5 7.6 million dollars okay actual will be different so when we do our afr in october and we actually approve because in the month of july and august we start paying bills and making sure and a lot of things came in on june 30 so we have to make sure it came in in the right year we have to refuse it if it comes in july because it didn't come in the fiscal year so state law allows us 60 days to clean all that up make all the payments and then put the report together before the board so at that point we'll know the exact amount of our carry for it this budget assumes a 7.6 million m o carry forward thank you you're welcome uh for context madam president i believe last year was uh nine around nine or maybe a little more than nine years so that's a little bit less we're caring for it less so we as we had a reduction in students we had the esg grant yes sir but we did have an increase in cost on some of our ppe or some of our program enhancements and technology driven it ate into some of that and so with the loss of students we absorbed it through our carry forward in this budget is it assuming that we're going in with the same amount of students as we ended with last year or are we assuming like a higher kindergarten enrollment this year what are we looking at statistically um madam president members of the board um it wasn't my june presentation okay remember it off the top of my head if i had to guess right now i'm getting the numbers i'm thank you [Laughter] i think it's about a 300 increase from okay this year okay so it is a growth of students projected for next year great thank you do you need a cane yes okay i'll entertain a motion on this one so just a point of clarification approving this budget is improving the tax increase madam president members board as presented yes as presented okay i moved to the governing board to adopt the proposed budget nope sorry recommend to adopt the proposed budget for the fiscal year through 2022 second where'd my cursor go where'd it go motion passes okay we'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting second something wrong this is just doing it my cursor doesn't work
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welcome to the thursday july 8 2021 electronic meeting of the ann arbor historic district commission this the meeting is being held electronically to pull it to excuse to protect the public health and safety due to the covet 19 virus and to comply with orders issued by the governor the michigan department of health and human services and or the washington county health department we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be by a telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call 877 978-6401-4515 this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 at t channel 99 and online at www.a2.gov or a2gov dot org forward slash watch ctn and on item b roll call commissioners during roll call please remember to state your location when your name is called stature will you please call rome commissioner fortner hear from ann arbor thank you commissioner white here from ann arbor michigan commissioner rocklin dear ann arbor commissioner epperson here ann arbor michigan commissioner ross try again there you are can you hear me now sorry about that here in michigan i saw like cap the commissioner fortner saying no commissioner quijano uh here in ann arbor michigan commissioner beeson have a quorum thank you miss patrick adamc approval of agenda are there any additions deletions or changes to tonight's agenda you're not saying no objection the agenda is approved as presented item d public comment this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about an issue that is not listed as a public hearing on this agenda to comment on such other preservation matters please call 877-853-5247-338-84778 this information is also displayed on the median agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one by using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments person do we have any callers for public comment you have one hand raised oh i think she's here for something else okay um no callers okay well close public comment portion and move on to add me unfinished business which there is none and on to item on to hearings item f1 at 617 west madison ms thatcher will you please give the staff report 617 west madison is a one and a half story craftsman that first appears in the 1927 city directory as the home of emile hoppe an employee of the telephone company and a student features a full with front porch with a large gable dormer above siding on the first floor and shingles on the second and three over one windows the applicant is seeking hcc approval to install a gas meter on a front elevation one foot north of the southwest corner of the house and my slides don't seem to be changing bear with me for a moment there it is um the commission has seen a lot of gas meters recently this one is this this house you can see is on a corner lot uh it's on the corner of madison and fifth street i believe and the meter's proposed to go back here behind this little bump out on this wall which does face the street so it's technically a front elevation you're standing in the driveway you can see that there's a little nook there that it would fit into quite easily back here is a is a slab so they're not able to put the meter on the backpack on the slab and i'm not sure why they can't move it around the corner to over here but i'm also not convinced that that would be a better place to put it there is a paved walkway here right now it seems like trash cans and things are kept there but there is several feet between these lilies and the wall that's paved there's a drawing of where the meter would go it's opposite the existing inside meter location a few more photos you can see the um the meter location side here that's where it would go in the house this is that back area that's on a slab and it would be post mounted therefore not harming any historic materials from the secretary of the interior standards number two says the historic character of a property will be retained and preserved the removal of distinctive materials or alteration of faces features spaces and spatial relationships that characterize a property will be avoided number nine says new additions exterior alterations or related new construction shall not destroy historic materials that characterize the property the new work shall be differentiated from the old and shall be compatible with the massing size scale and architectural features to protect the historic integrity of the property and its environment number 10 says new editions that adjacent or related new construction will be undertaken in such a manner that if removed in the future the essential form and integrity of the historic property will be unimpaired from the secretary of the interior's guidelines for mechanical systems it's recommended to install a new mechanical assist system if required for the new use that it causes the least alteration possible to the building's floor plan exterior elevations and the least damage to the historic building material the ann arbor historic district design guidelines it's appropriate to attach mechanical equipment so if the historic fabric is not damaged or destroyed and to install mechanical equipment and wiring in locations on the roof rear elevations or in alleys they are not visible from the street it's also not appropriate to install new mechanical equipment systems or wiring in locations that change or destroy character defining features and materials this is a very straightforward application by the um applicants stated that the majority of the home sits on a slab limiting potential fuel line tie-in points um [Music] they've maximized the 10 feet of fuel line to reduce visibility the homeowner suggested potentially planting a bush to reduce uh visibility further but that's not really a part of the application that's just mentioned in here um staff requested more information on the extent of the slab and why the meter can't be moved around the corner but um i still haven't heard back from them on that so that's all staff does recommend approval of this application i do think that that's an appropriate place um to put it given that this is slab back here and um this meter is 20 the existing meter is 24 feet away from the opposite wall of the house thank you miss thatcher commissioner rufflin and ross were on the review committee will you please give us your reporting recommendation i could i can start um so i i do agree with staff's um characterization of the situation um the building is located at an intersection so the side elevation where the uh mirror is proposed for installation um it's highly visible however the location and miss after could you bring up the photo of the celebration um yeah yeah oh yeah this one's good this one's good um so the the the kind of location on the the rear elevation near the garbage cans um if you could if everybody can see to the right there's actually like a doorway there so because that elevation is so highly visible it's clear like your eye goes right to really that doorway um and so placing the meter kind of at that kind of rear elevation um in at least in my opinion um would actually be more conspicuous than kind of tucking it towards the back of that bay window um so yeah it it's pretty straightforward um yeah commissioner rocklin if you want to you had any additional insight or thought uh well i just yeah from being on the site i agree that of i suppose even saying broader like all the places that it could be on the front elevation facing madison or the front elevation facing fifth this seems like the best spot that you could put it um to kind of keep it tucked away and at least a little bit hidden um along those entire elevations and then i suppose you got to be 10 feet away from the interior um so if you did want to swing around the corner where that downspout is and and maybe go where that a recycle can is you know you you could but like has been said there's a there's usable space there for the homeowners you know that's a a concrete slab they obviously store things on it there's part part of it's a walkway so um you know this this seems to be um you know once again sort of the the right spot to uh to put it uh and while i have the floor i will just add that whoever took the photo of the meter location from the sidewalk like that i really appreciate it um if it is visible from the sidewalk it's nice to see that meter location photo because then you get like the full context of what's going on so that that photo for me is really helpful so thank you would the applicant please unmute your microphone turn on your video feed if possible and provide your name and address for the record uh devin keys corby energy services 6001 belleville michigan i'm sure you guys are familiar with it by now welcome devin hi devin what's going on looks like we have one other caller one other brian is that you could uh e61010 identify who they are we're not sure who you are i couldn't grab the button there one yes brian ballarance dt energy's gas renewal program um offices in 14270 shaffer highway detroit michigan welcome back do bryan or devin do either of you have anything to add to the staff report or the review committee report no it seems pretty straightforward um it looks like to me devon and in the committee looked at all options and i think that looks um you know like it's best spot for all all parties um looking at the photos and listening to the report commissioners do you have any questions for the applicant i will now open the public hearing for this item this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about this application at 617 west madison public comment may be made by calling 877-853-524-7 or told or two on three three three eight eight four seven seven and entering meeting id bound nine seven eight six four zero one four five one five this information is also displayed on the meaning agenda and video feed and as a reminder in order to electronically raise your hand after dialing into the meeting please press star 9 on your phone kristen do we have any colors no colors um i will now close the public hearing portion of the application is there a commissioner that would like to make a motion commissioner kian i move that the commission issue a certificate of appropriateness for the application at 617 west madison street a contributing property in the old west side historic district to install a gas meter on the front elevation one foot north of the southwest corner of the house as shown in the application as proposed the work is compatible in exterior design arrangement materials and relationship to the building and the surrounding area and meets the city of ann arbor historic district design guidelines for mechanical equipment and the secretary of interior's standards for rehabilitation and guidelines for rehabilitating historic buildings in particular standards 2 9 and 10 and the guidelines for mechanical systems support removed by commissioner quijano seconded by commissioner white is there a discussion on the motion seeing anyone i think this is pretty straightforward you know it's it's a corner a lot but i think it's you know as far back as it possibly can be on the side and i appreciate the comments from the review committee and all everyone's ready for a vote all those in favor of the motion please say yes yes yes yes yes all those opposed please say no okay the motion carries your application has been approved please note that you must apply for any required permits from the city before beginning work on your project thanks guys we're gonna we will now move on to item f2 526th street dispatcher will you please give the staff report 526th street is in the oversight historic district you saw it last week last month rather with a meter application this week they're back to seek several modifications all to non-historic parts of the house uh this house was first listed in the 1894 polk city directory as number 863 the shuttle residence it's on 6th street south of west jefferson and north of west madison the application includes a 20 square foot second floor addition on the back on a modern edition to remove a 20 square foot bump out and add five windows on the north elevation of the modern edition remove a modern chimney and the rear alter many windows on the modern edition replace a non-original pair of casement windows on the historic house with a single one over one window add a new single light person door and add a one over one window in a new opening on the second floor of the modern south edition and on the south edition we place a casement window on the second floor of the modern south edition with a slightly larger double hung egress window so this house has a lot going on it's had a lot of additions to it this is the historic part of the house it used to go straight back uh and there was a one-story element to the side here so imagine if this shed roof just kept going across there and it was sort of a one-story bump on the side of the two-story house so this little bit here that's probably i don't know six or eight feet uh second floor gable was added at some point the chimney is also not original moving around the house this is that gable that was added that i just pointed out to you one of the things that's proposed is for this window to get a little bit larger right now it's a it's a casement egress window that's a fake mullion across the middle they just enlarged the window enough that they can have a real one over one double hung window with and still mean egress requirements then oops wrong way we keep going around the house this is that gable that i just showed you this is a one or one and a half story original part of the house and this dormer is from the period of significance this is a small addition another proposal is to add a window right here on this wall again this is the bit that's not original that was added on the second floor edition going around the back of the house you can see that we've got several additions here's the rear roof ridge of the historic house of the two-story historic house and then in front of that sorry my laptop is not cooperating in front of that this is an original wing as well or at least a period of significance wing this window is a pair of casements they want to take this out and put in a double hung the the opening has been enlarged at some point um so but they wouldn't be enlarging it or changing the size in any way this is also an addition modern edition that just stays right the way it is then when we get to the drawings in a minute you'll see that these windows are going to slide over all of these windows down here are going to change and a 20 square foot addition with a rear-facing gable will go right on top of this bump out here it will be set in six inches from this corner of the historic house to make sure that that corner is preserved and finally this is the bump that's going to be removed to give them the 20 feet to put on top for the second floor up here um i've been told that there are interior layout difficulties with all of these additions and the various parts of the second floor and that this this very small addition would uh drastically improve their lives and usefulness of the house this is the bump that would be removed the reason they're doing this is because they're already over their 50 um footprint and floor area calculations and so to not make it any worse they asked if it would be reasonable to remove some modern floor area and basically move it to the back of the house given that this is a much more visible place this is on the side elevation on the north side um moving it around to the back as long as it didn't harm any historic materials back there it seemed like a very reasonable proposition to me okay we've got some floor plans i'm not going to go over them forever but we can look back at them if we need to reference them here's where that fireplace that bump out is being removed would be replaced with a pair of windows these are the windows on the back that i said are all being changed putting in a person door instead of sliders then on the second floor a pair of windows would be added above the ones below this is in a bedroom and there aren't any windows currently on this elevation this is where the little bump out edition is you can see that it's gonna hold half of a bathroom and this is where a new double home would be added on the new edition and this is where the casement egress window would be slightly enlarged all right now we've got existing and proposed elevations existing on the top no windows and a bump remove the bump add windows above and below on the side here you can see that there's just a tallish window they want something more traditional a double hung there and this is the new square footage going onto the second floor on the back the rear elevation this window is being removed and replaced with a double hung a window is being added right here this is the new work it sits right on top of this rear bump out these windows slide over to make room for it let's see here and then this is a pair of sliders or maybe it's a french door it looks like i'm not sure i thought there were sliders but maybe they're not they're all proposed to be removed again this is all a 1990s edition over here so this is all work that doesn't affect historic materials at all and they just want different kinds of windows back there double home windows and a person door now we move around to the driveway side where we started and the only change on this elevation is that this is the window that gets a little bit larger to accommodate an egress window that's a one over one okay from the secretary of interior standards number one says a property will be used as it was historically or be given a new use that requires minimal change to its distinctive materials features spaces and spatial relationship i've already read number two to you number five says distinctive materials features finishes and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that characterize a property will be preserved and i've read nine to you and i've read 10 to you so from the secretary of interior's guidelines for auditions it's recommended to construct a new edition so there's the least possible loss of historic materials the character defining features are not obscured damaged or destroyed also recommended to locate the attached exterior addition at the rear or on an inconspicuous side of the historic building limiting its size and scale and relationship with the historic building designing new additions in a manner that make clear what's historic and what's new from the ann arbor historic district design guidelines for additions it's appropriate to place a new addition on a non-character defining or inconspicuous elevation and limit the size and scale in relationship to the it's not appropriate to design an addition that overpowers or dramatically alters the original building through size or height oops all right let me go back up here right now the additions are let's see in terms of floor area are 58 of the original um so this would again move that floor area and keep it at 58 percent staff believes that the work does not have a detrimental effect on historic materials features are spacious and the application should be approved thank you thank you miss thatcher commissioners rocklin and ross are on the review committee please give us your report and recommendation okay should i start oh okay i can start um so once again um the supporting staff's characterization of the proposal um so the work is proposed at um kind of masses of the building that are not historic age obviously the scope of the project is is pretty well somewhat extensive um but the work seems appropriate um much of it is located at the rear elevation of the building um and in in my opinion um the window the the fenestration um the new fenestration proposed for installation um is actually more compatible um to this sort of character of the building than the kind of slider um kind of sliding doors that are currently um there so generally speaking um it just seems to be you know work proposed at inca inconspicuous locations um within new construction and appears to be appropriate okay um well yeah i think that it's was explained what's going on here very well just now in the staff report those those photos really uh step through elevation by elevation exactly what's going on and i agree with what has been said so far about i guess just yeah the compatibility and and the meeting of the standards with what's being proposed i think that um you know one of the things that that jumps out of me with this house is like in terms of character defining features it's got um you know very deep freeze boards and uh overhangs and at the overhang the fascia board has a crown mold trim that is like this exaggerated quarter round crown mold it's really big and it's unique i don't know if it's original to the house or not but um one of the unfortunate things is that this detail is mimicked on the newer massings as well so it's a little tricky um you know without having uh jill thatcher there with you to tell you what's what to just do that cursory glance of what's old and what's new you can figure it out mostly through the windows and looking at materials and all that other stuff but um i will be curious to know what sort of detailing is going to be done on the new gable that's being built in the back um because i i would say if there's sort of one thing that we're sort of on the on the edge maybe here with the standards it would be just uh differentiating old from new um but that's the only thing i'm seeing here good point okay with the applicant please unmute your microphone turn on your video if possible and provide your name and address for the record looks like you're actually muted all right can you hear me now yes all right awesome yeah this is luke wrote a horse from 5206 history hi luke do you have anything you'd like to add to the staff report or review committee report no that was that was awesome jill um i think that captured captured everything and it sounds like um commissioner rocklin some more detail about what we do with the gable on the new edition would be would be helpful and making sure that that is different than what would be historic um just so we know that that's new versus what would be historical yeah i mean we can get into that i think we get into that uh later or do we want to get into that uh airperson epperson that's fine yeah the next step is questions for the advocate so if you i think you know i would like to know a little bit more detail what what is actually planned um you can provide that now yeah sure with the with that gable in particular i don't honestly i don't think we've given um a huge huge amount of thought to what exactly it would um it would be i think we could show you um does it is it captured in the drawings jill from that um elevation um i'm not sure if that's that's there or not that westward-facing elevation this isn't a detail we've discussed specifically but we would be open to whatever the yeah there there we have it in the in that drawing there we would be open to whatever the commission recommends we we do to make sure that we're following your your your guidance there just zooming in on it a little bit it looks like it's slightly smaller than the remain the other the freeze boards are slightly smaller and possibly the fascia um if everything is drawn to scale and matching commissioners do you have any other questions for them i'm not seeing any we'd like now like to open the public hearing for this item this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to for up to three minutes about the application at 526th street you can raise your hand by pressing star 9 on your phone christian do we have any callers no callers i'll close the public hearing portion of the application is there a commissioner that would like to make a motion i move that the commission issue a certificate of appropriateness for the application at 526th street a contributing property in the old west side historic district 2.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
like to call the regularly scheduled board of education meeting of july the 8th 2021 in order if you all would please rise for the pledge of allegiance followed by a brief moment of silence with liberty and justice mr russi roll call mr abba drabo here mr awad here miss basford here mrs beltran here mr canova mr daley here miss danny here mr casper here mr smith here mr casper can you read the mission statement please the mission of the clifton school district in an open and reciprocal community partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become literate lifelong learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a democratic society in an ever-changing world the open public meetings act the new jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to advance notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the clifton board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office clifton public library administration building senior citizen nutrition center on cable tv and local press on the district's website mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight okay we have a uh first thing will be doing is the nomination uh uh and elections of the vice president of the board of education nominations are now open so we have a nomination and a second and i just have on one clarification for the board before we do the nominations if possible um through you to the board attorney um can we just clarify whether or not because i want to make sure we're not going to from our email earlier today so make sure we're not going to tread into waters that's going to be a little bit muddied if the board president is running the campaign of a fellow board member they are still allowed to vote for let's say fellow board member to be vice president of the board of education if they're running their campaign please there's no i don't know if this is on or not okay i'm holding it there's no conflict of interest for any board member to vote for any other board member for the position of president or vice president if either one of them is a campaign manager for the other because there's no additional interest that they're getting they're not getting anything above and beyond what they normally would get as a board member in fact individual board members can vote for themselves as president or vice president and that in itself is granting a benefit you know as as you vote you're voting for yourself so there's no conflict that i can see in the school ethics act for a board member for mr smith if he were to vote for mr casper or for anybody else or vice versa thank you i just want to clarify for the public you're welcome okay nominations are now open for the office of vice president of the board of education mr smith mr daley yes i nominate frank casper for the uh position of vice president of the clifton board of education for the remainder of the year motion for frank casper mr smith ii second by mr awad any other nominations from the floor nomination for miss beltran for vice president any other nominations from the floor seeing none nominations are now closed okay each board member has a ballot uh piece of paper provided to them from the business administrator if you'd kindly put the name of uh i'm sorry oh yeah sorry put the name of the person that you're voting for plus your name in the bottom corner and then mr oosie will collect those ballots okay all ballots are in everyone wishing to vote okay voting is now closed all right mr lucy if you would read the results please of course mr president um these are in no particular order you saw me grab them um mr smith votes for mr casper mr abhijab over to mr casper for uh mr awad voter mr casper mr beltran votes for herself mr mr canova votes for miss beltran miss bat miss vassard votes for miss beltran mr casper votes for himself miss danny votes for mr casper and mr daley well true mr casper so six to three mr casper has the majority to be elected vice president of the board congratulations mr casper okay we're going to have the adoption of the minutes of june the 10th 2021 regular meeting so moved so moved by mr casper second by miss danny discussion roll call mr abhijava yes mr awad yes i'm having a hard time hearing over here is this just for regular minutes or is it for special uh for the executive session the regular 10th meeting i'm sorry the june 10th meeting is it for both sessions or for one i believe both okay yeah yes it's it's like echoes over here it's hard to hear miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr smith yes next is the adoption of the minutes of the june 28 2021 special board of education meeting so moved so moved by mr casper second by miss dan discussion mr smith yes miss basketball i want to object to these minutes because um everything that i've gotten from the district i've asked for it said that we were speaking about a student matter there is a second item on here that had nothing to do with the student matter as far as i'm concerned and my legal counsel is concerned this should be taken off or or the objection that i made in executive session three times to it being discussed should be noted here in the in the minutes i was very very very very very strong about my objection and i would like that noted in the minutes it was not fair that this was discussed it was a half hour character assassination of myself and if it's going to be in the minutes i want it noted that i was an objection to it and even counsel i want everybody in the room to discuss it as well i'd like it noted in the minutes thank you okay the motion and second order have any objection to making that a amendment to the uh minutes i have no problem no problem okay mr make those uh amendments roll call please mr abby drabo yes mr awad yes mrs bassford yes and i would request a copy be emailed to me tomorrow morning right away thank you miss beltran yes mr canova yes mr daley yes mr yes mr casper yes mr smith yes okay the board will now be meeting in executive session the board will be discussing uh contract matter um personnel matter and the student matter okay action may be taken approximate time about an hour let's hope all right do i have a motion per executive session so move second all right mr daily second by mr casper vice president casper roll call please mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova mr daley mr daley bailey yes miss danny yes mr casper yes mr smith yes do we need our chromebooks does it have air conditioning okay the board met an executive session revealing from executive session roll call please mr abby drabo mr here miss passport here miss beltran here mr canova mr daley here miss danny here mr casper here mr smith here okay at this time i'd like to make a statement from the board a board of education does not have the power to censor reprimand or remove a board of education member only the school ethics commission has the power to do that that is established in case law castriata versus roxbury board of education number 185-11 schools ethic commission and commissioner of education decision additionally under the new jersey administrative code regarding the file of ethics complaints njac 6a colon 28-6-a state specifically that any person may file a complaint on the commission alleging a violation of the act the board of education is not a person under the school's ethics act an individual member of the public and or individual member has the right to file an ethics complaint against a school official which is defined as a board member or as a school administrator on the school ethics commission website this issue is further clarified in their frequently asked questions on who can file a complaint with the school's ethics commission who can file a complaint with the schoolx commission any person may file a complaint with the school x commission when he or she believes that a school official is via the school ethics act a board of education as an entity may not file a complaint although individual members may do so as individuals based upon the above the board of education cannot take any action against a sitting board member regardless of the actions taken by that board member we hope that this clarifies any questions that the public may have had regarding the filing of ethics complaints okay we'll continue on with the uh the meeting okay communication announcements we have none okay first reading of policy we have none presentations we have none board committee reports will start with the uh technology committee mr kanova me many times is 150 plus instructional computers and handful of admin computers district-wide prepared provokes for incoming students the indie preliminary work for district-wide security camera system upgrades the approval supply staff promotes as as soon as the tech team finalizes wi-fi configuration distribution to staff will begin chromebooks will be sent to all schools for new incoming students item four chromebook printing initial tests of staff printing directly from chromebooks were successful the option will be expanded to other staff in the new school year the committee discussed pros and cons of students printing directly from chromebooks for now the tech team will leave this option off but with the but the decision can be reconsidered at any time item five cell service commissioners brought up a concern that cell service is not very strong in some auditoriums and other areas that often serve the public mr mountain will con contact the major carriers to see what options may exist to improve cell service in these areas item six board event meeting technology zoom will no longer be needed as the board of ed meetings are now back in person the tech team will continue to evaluate different video conferencing products and hardware technologies to be prepared to host meetings in an emergency should they ever need to arise again any questions mr president over here um regarding the number six if we are going to institute no more zoom we have to bring policy back uh to reinstate the normal order of business and to do away with the policies that were instituted last year about remote meetings so i'm going to bring that to policy i just want to let you know it spurred it from here okay next we have uh finance uh mr daley thank you mr president um finance committee met on june 29 2021 from 12 p.m to 1 p.m board members present with mr canova miss beltran mr smith and myself administration was dr robert tosi mr yusi and mr eric tom cevich one item was discussed by on sale mr uc presented the district's financial advisor's recommendation after extensive analysis of the differences between a competitive sale and issuing bonds to the passaic county improvement authority the recommendation from bond council the financial advisors and the administration was to sell the bonds through a competitive sale the resolution to sell bonds will be on the july 8th meeting board meeting board meeting to sell as soon as possible and current emit current deadlines anybody has any questions i'd just like to add and mr uc can confirm i believe they're looking at the sale at the end of august or sooner the target dates august 5th at the moment thank you mr daley we now have public recognition this point in the portion of the meeting is open to the residents and non-resident of clifton for the purpose of addressing uh any subject matter pertinent to or directly related to the operation of clifton public school district residents and non-residents are requested if in person to sign the register provided for this purpose all speakers are asked to state their names municipality and subject matter before speaking comments are limited to five minutes per person a person does not use any portion of their five minutes they may not relinquish any remaining time to another speaker comments are issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a responsibly forthcoming if and when appropriate your questions may or may not be answered by the board members board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals who are speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of the state of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will be liable for any comments made by members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments is there anyone that wishes to address the board there we go uh first i have a question uh commissioner beltran was speaking earlier about and getting a legal opinion on the vote for vice president was it just a coincidence that the attorney referenced smith and casper don't worry about i i know it's a rhetorical question i know the answer second i just want to say that i find it extremely rude and inconsiderate that you folks will go right into executive session and leave the public sitting here for two hours that's just terrible but rude and inconsiderate are just two more adjectives to describe this board third and the most important i'm here again to talk about project graduation and the endangering of the children i want to talk about the board's legacy let's talk about where this board what their legacy will be a few years ago we had rich tardillo as a superintendent here and this board had its share of controversy some of you ran for the board four seats on the board because of that controversy but i don't ever recall a board member stealing from project graduation or endangering the welfare of children that will be this board's legacy because you all allowed it none of you spoke out about it the board president just read a nice statement about ethics charges but everybody after after mr abu drabba relinquished his seat as vice president everybody kept quiet matter of fact a few years thanked them that's just bizarre to say the least you should really all be embarrassed you think back to the last election three sitting board members mr abu drabbo mr smith and mr casper or or was it mr what i'm not sure got a mr wine got a free pass they ran unopposed not only did that now they ran unopposed and one of those board members that ran unopposed is at the center of this controversy mr abhidrabo i can assure you this issue will not go away this issue will follow you this will be your legacy on the clifton board of education i will assure you of that thank you mr smith for your comments about the ethics charges they were already filed we also filed a police report with the clinton police department i'm also speaking to the clinton to the passaic county prosecutor's office and i'm also speaking with the attorney general's office i can assure you as i said earlier this issue will not go away this will be your legacy on the board of education and as for the leadership and the rudeness and the inconsiderate action tonight with you folks sitting in the back for two hours probably having dinner last meeting i spoke about a lack of leadership and when i did that mr smith laughed i can assure you mr smith i will have the last laugh bet on it good night anyone else wish to address the board good evening everybody mark bernsiek 20 holly street thank you dr robert tosie thank you president smith vice president president casper for allowing me to speak tonight and i'm here pretty much for what i'm here for every time i come to speak and i'm demanding that this board mandates an option for in-person full day in person learning and if that's not possible i'm asking this board publicly state what other options are available to clifton parents to send them to a school that has the availability for all all-day in-person learning the business administrators the business administrative office has already mentioned the increased funding for the charter schools in this city i don't know if it's because of clifton's share of the funding for these charter schools in this state but if these charter schools have that option maybe that's why it's happening so it's imperative that this board does that and i'd like to know does this board have any data on what percentage of students were left back this year last year relative to the last normal graduation year of 2019 where there was full in-person learning this board created this condition for students to fail and i will refuse to allow this to continue to happen this is absolutely unacceptable and i demand that this board give an option this coming school year parents an option to send their school to send their children for in-person learning for a full school day not one o'clock not 11 30 not off on wednesdays you know you have the school reopening plan and you mentioned the cdc the cdc guidelines again the cdc guidelines already in may said that kids had an opportunity to go to in-person learning so we send communications to education committee and what do they do they say no oh in lieu of graduation ceremonies this and that we're still going to keep in person you know we're still going to have remote learning for wednesdays it doesn't make any sense and it's very frustrating for a lot of the parents in this city and we will never forget that thank you for your time and god bless america anyone else wish to address the board i'm gonna take my time because i just spent two and a half hours sitting here hi first of all most of your mics aren't working that's what people are texting me from home joe no one heard a word i knew only word people heard was chromebooks i have 20 text messages going what did joe say just so you know your mic doesn't work judy your mic isn't working either strange coincidence question i have five minutes is it the same five minutes as when mr uchi came out and said we'll be out in five minutes and then you stayed in there another hour and five minutes we showed up as citizens and there were a lot of people here who wanted to talk and i know that because while you were back there in your room being guarded by the vice principals of the high school who are not guards they are educators it's not their job to guard your door i went around and talked to every single person who was here and a lot of them wanted to speak about curriculum and how you were handling lunch and gym and school and hours and they all went home because the one hour executive session turned into two hours and 42 minutes last monday some of them were also here and that executive session ran into two and a half hours if we had known on the agenda you were going immediately into executive session most of us would have shown up around nine that was rude that was inconsiderate and this is two meetings in a row what you needed to handle amongst yourselves could have been done after you allowed the people who were here to speak you have people here who work for you who have worked hard for you who you have decided to give new positions to and they had people such as their wives and their husbands and their families who are here to hear their name announced and listen to their loved one give a speech but you know what most of us have jobs in the morning we can't sit here all right waiting for you to come out of executive session while mr uchi comes out and tells us ten more minutes five more minutes just a half hour two hours and 42 minutes that was rude that was inconsiderate you were elected to serve the people the people were here to tell you what they want to see in september you chose not to listen to them you could have easily held this session before you all ran off i came here to speak on another issue tonight something positive for our community this is the second meaning i've sat in these thank god they're refurbished chairs but they're still uncomfortable after two and a half hours you could at least get us donuts how about setting up a coffee pot because last week we went out and got our own donuts and passed them out amongst the crowd five minutes your job is to come up with a plan for september you asked to do this all of you on the board of vet are not being paid maybe it's prestigious maybe that's why i don't know but i just know that when citizens come out and this is the backbone of our democracy is citizens coming out and then you doing what the citizens want and when you keep a sit in here for two and a half hours i'm sorry two hours and 42 minutes and then come back and i get text messages how your microphones still aren't working that's insulting to us because this is is it your five minutes or is it my five minutes because your five minutes is an hour and four minutes long that was totally inconsiderate and in all honesty you should be ashamed of yourselves robert pop which 57 down the road i'll give my my time to donna oh i am i'm done i'm taking into positive stuff i can't do the positive stuff after i just yelled well mr president thornton waiter yeah i mean you've read the statement of the open public meetings um and i've brought this up in the past we've we've passed on it there's no provisions for in other words a person can come up and yield the five minutes to somebody and somebody can be up there an hour you have five minutes and i think that's are you familiar according to rob excuse me i'm speaking thank you ma'am one time we we try to run these meetings in an oily manner i think mr smith does a very nice job but the fact of the matter you have five minutes if you wish to contact us for any reason we have emails and things like you can always contact the superintendent you can come back to another meeting but each citizen has five minutes to speak what they want to speak at a board meeting and to for somebody to yield that leads to other problems where somebody can come up and continually yield their five minutes to one individual and be up there an hour that's not what this purpose of the public hearing is didn't think it was the purpose for us to sit here for two and a half hours looking at an empty stage either point of information pointing to robert's rules of order there is a provision in that that somebody can yield to the speaker and give their time so i think that we need to look that into that and make sure that we're not violating roberts over the order yeah i have i'll submit a written uh answer from school boards that gave me an answer on that so each board member will be supplied with that that it is not a violation of robber rules i'm sorry that it is not a violation of robert's rules but if somebody if somebody yields their time you have to give the permission or not give the permission no i think that's i think that's what mr daley just stated yeah she should have been allowed to finish should we did allow her to finish i didn't cut her off but mr pop which yielded his time he should have asked your permission and you should have said yay or nay well mr daley made a statement to it anyone else wish to address the board hello my name is annelise giagastino i'm a resident of total new jersey and i'm here because i have friends and family who live and go to the schools in clifton and i'm here because i became aware of the negligence regarding project graduation and i was incredibly concerned angry frustrated and absolutely appalled and disgusted and what i expected today was more of a note a statement a presentation a bit more than regarding ethics and of one's submitting ethics claims i thought that there'd be more to that because from what i see from my perspective my passion is education and children and i expect that every board member a passion for education and children should be the absolute minimum requirement and keeping children safe should be the utmost priority of every single board member and that safety failed because mr adradabo would you be sitting up there if something happened to those students that night would you be sitting there because what i see the example that has been set from that experience and let's be mindful each one of the board each and every member sets an example for the future the children are watching you and you know what example you set the example you set is that cheating and negligence and irresponsibility you can still maintain power and that there will be no real repercussions that it can be swept under the rug that cheating is okay and do you think that's a really good example to set for young people especially 17 18 year olds that are embarking on this new chapter of their lives i don't know how you can sit there and think that is a good example to set that you can cheat and you can endanger children's lives and think that that is okay to be a member of this board when children's safety is at the foremost of your mission because if you're not supporting children's safety why are you here there is no reason for you to be here if that decision was made out of ignorance that is terrifying if that decision was made of irresponsibility that is also terrifying and should be terrifying to every single parent every single educator and every single faculty member because i sat here for two and a half hours i'm not even in this district because i was absolutely appalled and i hope this doesn't happen in any district i'm sure it does but at least you can catch it when it happens to make sure it never happens again and i don't know how you can sit there and be okay with maintaining power after yielding it in a reckless and irresponsible way that was absolutely disgusting thank you anyone else to address the board hello my name is barry mahmoud uh 2 1 2 d my um i like to reiterate what a couple people already said uh i kind of wish i wasn't here for two and a half hours too but i went to 7-eleven and i got some taquitos so i wasn't hungry the whole time and i liked the donuts idea of miss potholish that's good um i'm here as a graduate i just graduated two years ago two weeks ago felt like two years ago already but i mean if if i can speak from a student's perspective as to what happened um regarding project graduation and you know where everyone's head's been at for the past two weeks it's is that i don't i don't really think any any of this is worth our time because there's a lot more pressing matters at hand and i i feel that a lot more should go to blame for not just what obviously it was a big mistake and no one is uh defending what mr abu drabba did because it was pretty bad but i don't i don't believe that it's as drastic as it's been made out to be because from my perspective it was just i feel that he was trying to do the right thing but it didn't come out that way and i'm not just saying this because i've been in this school district my entire life and i i'm i have personal relationships with most of the people on the board and i know everyone personally and everybody knows me and i i just i just see this as something that's kind of been over exaggerated and i think we can use our time and our five hours of executive sessions and are public speaking for for a lot more pressing things and even even i'm sure that other students can attest to what i'm saying and i've spoken to other students and they do attest to what i'm saying so you know going going forward i think we should really focus on what really matters in public at least and leave leave all the other stuff to the meeting rooms and you know litigations and all that other stuff because if if we do this for every every single thing then there there will be no real work done there will never be any real progress made in our school district that's all i gotta say keith basswood mountain view drive clifton i didn't think i was gonna have to be up with this mic ever again it's over probably a year and a half i've been coming to these meetings way over 15 years speaking i was listening to the gentleman that was just up here right now he's right there's other things more important i really didn't want to get involved with this thing and say anything with mr haberdrabo because my wife's on the board well whatever way you look at it mr aberdrabbel committed a crime committed a theft he set a bad example for other students in a school system outside the school system so i don't know anybody can say this is not that important as mr whittle said back onto the police sign complaint prosecutor's office or everything it's all legal and all can be done you know i was surprised also with people's reactions up here with what mr alba drabo did i've been involved with project graduation for many years too we had incidents with children trying to sneak in different things never a board member you know i've been watching people's faces who thinks it's funny smirk and everything one thing i got to tell you if mr bedrabble does get charged he goes to court and they find him guilty i guess you're going to have to fist pump him outside because he's not going to be able to sit up here anymore this people from the county and the state are not laughing at this i know they're not laughing at this and they have questions for other people on this board too how things are handled in that stuff as mrs pablo said we elected you people to put you in some people didn't get elected they got a free pass the only reason why you got a free password because no one decided to run and that you may think people don't see what goes on here or watch things we watch especially me i see been through a lot of boards a lot of stuff here different superintendents but you guys really have become one group with a lot of years that you think you're the you're the group that's going to run this board and do what you want you think i don't hear on the outside already how many people you want to get to run on this board to get my wife off ahead they did in 2011.
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[Music] i called to order this workshop for bullhead city elementary school board on thursday july 8th 20 21 5 pm roll call corey burgess here amanda amen here charlene diaz here item 3.1 policy cacm dr stewart uh mr president and board members you're going to be excited to know that this is an entire section of the of the policy book um the seas and um so we can look at them individually if you uh want any changes i didn't make any recommendations it struck me that these all were probably just fine but if you want changes i'll make notes and then we'll uh you know we'll work on that prior to rather than pulling each one next meeting um i would oh he's getting the monitor on rather than pulling up pulling each individual one most of these i think almost all of them were attorney vetted all of them were yes so these have all been gone over the legal wording is there anything specific that anyone saw any problems with any of these policies because we had the superintendent role the duties and responsibilities um okay i will tell you that as i went through them i'm trying to find the one there's the one where you delegate authority to the superintendent for relative to the law relative to notifying employees certified employees of intention to not renew or those kinds of things i thought it was a kind of interesting that i could not find a policy that had anything to do with delegation of similar authority relative to classified employees so i don't know if that's really an issue or not but i thought i'd bring it up so that you all were aware of it that there's there does not seem to be any delegation of authority for dealing with uh non-certified it is very different legal it is rules for employment of them because an annual contract compared to yes at will so that's probably why that's in there that way and i wasn't concerned about the piece for the certified because you know that that's law that i i was familiar with so anyway but i just thought i'd mention that um in case anybody ever asked or you know said something about it so that you would know the only other thing that i i thought i would mention to you i don't know if you're interested in it or not excuse me my understanding is that the state either the asa or maybe the arizona department of ed one or the other has been working on a new evaluation system for superintendents and so you know at some point i may bring that to you just not as a policy necessarily but for your consideration for the future if you'd want to consider some different kind of evaluation instrument it's a new tool it's a new tool okay yeah it's a different tool uh it is a it's a in here it's an exhibit or it's an exhibit so you know it's not the kind of thing that you would have to do two meetings or whatever and you don't have to do anything but i thought when it comes about i will share it with you all right any other questions about these policies all right these ones are easy well you guys made it easy in two minutes and mr president board members the other item is the employee handbook and it is on the agenda it was on the agenda last month and was tabled which is fine but i thought maybe you might want it on this agenda so you would have some opportunity to talk about any changes you want might want made before it's before you take action in the meeting i don't remember why we tabled i don't remember either i think it was because jeannie had not had an opportunity to go through it and and that's okay and i know you had a couple of things you wanted to discuss and make changes and i i have the word version in front of me so i can make the changes as you as you say them and and that won't be the one that appears in the current agenda but it can be the one that would appear in the uh in the minutes if you wanted and then we could get it published because obviously we want this published for our employees you know in the next couple weeks yeah yeah genie was just working late she will be joining us for the meet yes she just was running a little bit late so couldn't make the workshop so we can find out where her issues mine were simple on that it was just the what they could use in the classroom what they couldn't specifics the way we were wording that was my only concern well let's talk about those specifically i know you also have in front of me right now it should be up on your screen okay can we go to the table of contents you were concerned about i know you indicated to me you were concerned about the entire district being not free yes and i wanted to talk about that that was one of them then the other one was the in class okay items and we can uh you may want to talk about any of the things that i've highlighted in gray because those are the changes and you know you can talk about them we have so just a little background on the nut free we have students in our district this past year at sunrise and of course they're going to be at some point moving up to the middle school and whatever but we have some students who have literally life-threatening nut allergies and so they had made good accommodations at sunrise for those students who have been there most recently when i discussed this with the leadership team a month or so ago before they all went on break they simply said you know can we just be in that free district and so that's why i put it in of course it's your decision how we handle that but we we do have to really consider uh uh procedures and things at a site where any of those students are in you know where they attend school because literally for those students it's life-threatening and we've had we've had those students in the past this isn't a new thing we've had right several i mean for decades we've had this situation and each site has done fabulous of taking care of of their site my concern is to just come out with a blanket statement of okay no we're not free um i think it's overkill um sites know parents when they register their kid if their kid has a no doubt allergy they're talking about that they say hey my kid is allergic to this what are we doing and we've always made the accommodations yes and we've always made the accommodations and as long as we continue that policy that's what i would like to do rather than take a stance and say hey we're nut free because it's just extreme in my opinion it's just going a little too far on something that i don't think we need to do i have already and i'm and i agree with you corey maybe you know taking that kind of a stand is probably pretty strict i have already talked with chartwells and they have in fact removed any peanut products from their menu for this coming year that was the least we could do to make it safe everywhere and you know and it doesn't really change the menu that much there are alternatives to peanut butter that then will make it safer in our cafeterias so but if we you know if we don't want to say it this way that's fine the concern i have and and corey it's kind of long the lines that you're talking about is if if today it's the nuts and tomorrow it's you know some other whatever berries or something you know i mean to there there's a point where we can't say okay this is the district is now nut fish that that's my whole i mean there's lots of allergies and i know the peanut allergy is one of those more severe ones um but you're right and we will accommodate those kids absolutely without a problem done a really nice job of accommodating those children and whatever i would i would um i may be somewhere in in the instead of saying that we're a nut-free district can we can we say some sites are not free or you just want to leave it alone i would just leave it on i just want to leave it on something that we address when it comes up because this isn't going to blindside us well i hope it doesn't a parent that has a child who has a life-threatening allergy will usually come and tell us you know our kid has this problem and and we need to address it i know in my classroom i've had students that have had other health issues and i knew it before the school year started and then we knew where we were and what we had to do and that's really rather than taking a a stance saying we're not gonna okay i just think that's extreme yeah yeah i have to agree with this i think we just okay okay i've already taken it out okay the next uh page is the non-discrimination statement this is the wording of the the new wording that was associated with title ix it's not much different than the statement before but i wanted to make sure that it matched all of the things the federal law is requiring right now and um so i just wanted you to know that i had made a change in those you know in the in the wording to match the federal wording so we are up to date as far as absolutely okay absolutely any problems there okay uh on page four uh our statement about cloth face coverings um uh it is still accurate the first part the change of shall to may however there is we need to take out the last sentence that's highlighted because i shared with you today we cannot require it that we cannot require it and that and that that that bill was attached to the state budget so okay so i'm removing that one at this point okay there's nothing in that bill that says that we can't allow people to wear masks it's just that we can't require them okay uh then on page where am i going here they're all highlighted you think it'd be easy to find them on page 10.
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yes thank you carlos perfect thank you so much uh maribel can you help us with roll call please today is a regular board meeting of july 8th to 2021 at 5 30 p.m members of the board in attendance president corinna president vice president andres quintero clerk ernesto vergerano here member linda chavez president member mempham president members of administration superintendent dr bauer president and we know many well that uh andres quintero is on his way so he did um board vice president did let us know that he was he should be here shortly so okay we can make note of that um okay if you can all join me in the pledge of allegiance you can stand join me otherwise from your seat i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it is thank you and today i'd like to open up the meeting in honor of all the children um all the native children that have been found some of you may or may not know but many native indigenous children unfortunately have been found in graves and also we know that a lot of native indigenous children suffered especially a lot of our elders stories that i hear and stories that i read when they were taken from their homes at a young age and um sent to boarding schools um so i just want to open up in honor of all of those children that somehow are struggling have struggled through something um i continue to be an advocate you know for children all children um those in need of adults to be uh safe adults around them uh and i believe lord lord vice president is there i'll let me go nice thank you mr fam we'll continue uh and i just want to continue to um invite my colleagues i know that all of us are here um thinking of our children at the alumni community school district so ensuring that they have everything they need to go to school to learn uh to be safe um physically emotionally spiritually and i just wanna make sure that um i publicly hear you know mention that i continue to to be that adult and um continue to look forward to being a part of um a movement a movement to ensure that all of our children feel that way especially in our community so with that thank you for allowing me that time we'll go ahead and continue um 102 any modifications of tonight's agenda anybody has any changes they want to make madame president item number four all seven we were not able to get enough data on that and if the board has any question regarding that rogelio is on standby i believe i don't see him but he oh there he is if there is i just want to request that because um i was not able to get the data from the state that will allow us that would allow the board to have that discussion but um if there are any questions rogelio is on standby so that he can explain things okay so my understanding is that we're going to table at this time is that correct okay yeah go ahead and table that actually can we um i'm wondering if we can keep it on just to get i know we don't have the specifics about the the data that we need to make a decision but i wonder if we could leave it just for a brief explanation um from council just as to the workings of it and and that's it just like i said a brief explanation acknowledging that we don't have the data to make a decision on it so i would make that request that's fine yeah i'm okay with that um any other changes can i assume can i say something um is it in regards to changes to the agenda uh it's it's regarding 407 since dr bauer brought it up no we're gonna go ahead and leave it actually linda um we're gonna go ahead and leave it on the agenda so at that time you can speak on that item so we're leaving it on the agenda thank you any other changes to the agenda okay seeing then we'll go ahead and move on and bear with me i don't have my usual two uh screens here are you doing my phone okay um so we'll go ahead and move on to um we welcome the audience just a reminder everybody will have an opportunity to speak on the items on our agenda tonight you will have two minutes um unless the board decides otherwise but typically we've had two minutes per person based on the agenda uh item you will have an opportunity to speak um just raise your hand and we will make sure to call on you at the time of the public comment on that item uh so at this time i'm gonna go ahead and open it up to public members who wish to address a board on any item that is not on the agenda tonight um and josef you can please help me out with that mr chavez um if we have anybody in the audience who's wishing to address the board on any items that are not on the agenda tonight yes uh good evening uh madam president we have one speaker um miss karen martinez miss miss martinez you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening board of trustees my name is karen martinez and i'm a former trustee on the allen rock school board i wanted to advise the board that i have actually sent you all an email with correspondence with regards to the overpayment for benefits that i have received and want to work to pay back and i have made an attempt uh an intent to pay back that is being returned to me um and i had not heard back on my original intent to pay back amount and so if if we could work to have someone contact me back including potentially counsel would be helpful because at the end of the day i want to work to pay back what is due to our students within the alum rock community and i just want to go on the record to state that i have no problem to work towards paying back what is owed um but i want to remind the trustees and the district that this was an error made by the district just as had been made in the past to our retired uh teachers that also had to pay back uh benefits uh that was out of their control so thank you all of you for your time i hope you will take a few moments uh when you're able to read the two separate emails that i've sent you and i am available at any time to work to come to an agreement uh regarding this matter of an overpayment by the district to myself for benefits thank you so much for your time and i hope you have a good evening and everyone stay safe was that a whole sec yes at this time we have no more speakers thank you so much okay um before i call you mr vacarano um i just uh want to remind the public that we'll also have time for um any comments on items in closed session so um we will have time for public comment at that time joseph yes just a quick request to staff that i did not receive the emails that were referenced so if you could forward those to me um i would appreciate it that's it thank you that's trusty pam yes i also wanted to to uh state that i i too uh like trusty bay hirano did not receive those emails so i would also request the administration to forward me a copy as soon as practicable okay um i don't see any other hands um trusty chavez district can forward that information to all of us please thank you yeah i agree i haven't seen that either in my emails i'm sure they will forward whatever they have thank you um okay see none we'll go ahead and move on um two item [Music] 302 madame president 301.
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motion to move 5.1 so we have a first by board member sabrina beau we have a second by board member rodriguez pena and i will go ahead and call for the boat board member chris gonzalez yeah board member rodriguez pena yes board member beau yes board member career yes and board member arianes yes 5-0 it passes we move on to 5.2 consideration and approval of amended employment agreement for assistant superintendent of human resources and we now come to this item on the agenda prior to taking final action on an employment agreement the brian act requires the governing board to orally report a summary of recommendation for the salaries salary schedules or compensation paid in the form of french benefits for local agency executives the assistant superintendent of human resources is a local agency executive in a proposed amended contract and this is before us this morning the amendment contracts extends the assistance superintendent's contract by three years from july 12 2021 to june 30th 2024 the assistant superintendent's annual base salary will be 175 and 771 dollars and eight cents and he is able to receive longevity agreements as established by the board the assistant superintendent will continue to receive the assistant superintendent will continue to receive 30 days of paid vacation each year the same health and welfare benefits provided to other certificated management employees a term life insurance policy of 50 000 during the term of his employment and reimbursement for all actual unnecessary business related expenses paid by the assistant superintendent in the contract of his duties can i please get a motion to move 5.2 i make a motion to approve 1.2 we have a first by board member rodriguez pena second we have a second by board member beau and we can go ahead and have hands uh vote we have board member beau yes we have board member rodriguez pena board member greer yes and board member chris gonzalez yeah and board member ariana's i say yes it is a 5-0 and we are moving on to 5.3 consideration approval of mended employment agreement for assistant superintendent of business services and the amended contract extends the assistance superintendent's contract by three years i'm sorry let me start again um we now come to the item on the agenda prior to taking final action unemployment agreement the brown act requires the governing board to orally report a summary of recommendation for their salary salary schedule or compensation paid in the form of french benefits for local agency executives the assistant superintendent of business services is a local agency executive and a proposed amend uh amended contract is before us this morning the amendment contract extends the assistance superintendent's current contract by three years from july 12 2021 to june 30th 2024 the assistant superintendent's annual base salary would be one 175 um 771 and eight cents and she is eligible to receive longevity and cream increments as established by the board the assistant superintendent will continue to receive 30 days of paid vacation each year the same health and welfare benefits provided to other certificated management employees a term life insurance policy of 50 000 during the term of fur employment and reimbursement for all actual and necessary business related expenses paid by the assistant superintendent in the congress of her duties is there a motion to move 5.3 make a motion to approve 5.3 we have a first buy board member beau yeah that was part of his boat i'm sorry board member rodriguez pena second second by board member beau can i please get uh uh hands of her vote whatever yes and i say yes and it passes 5-0 we move on to 5.4 consideration and approval of amended employment agreement for assistant superintendent of education services we now come to this item the agenda prior to taking final action on employment agreement the brand act requires the governing board to orderly report a summary of a recommendation for the salary salary schedules or compensation paid in the form of french benefits for local agency executives the assistant superintendent of educational services is a local agency executive and a proposed amended contract is before us this morning the amended contract extends the assistant superintendent's current contract by three years from july 12 2021 to june 30th 2024.
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construct a 20 square foot rear second floor addition on a modern edition remove a 20 square foot bump out on the north elevation alter and add windows on the modern editions remove a modern chimney and replace a non-original pair of casement windows on the historic portion of the house with a single one over one window in the same opening as proposed the work is compatible in exterior design arrangement materials relationship to the buildings and the surrounding area and meets the city of ann arbor historic district design guidelines for rehabilitating historic buildings in particular oops sorry for additions and the secretary of the interior standards for rehabilitation and guidelines for rehabilitating historic buildings in particular standards one two five nine and ten and the guidelines for additions and building site support moved by commissioner fortner second-hand vet commissioner white is there a discussion on the motion commissioner rockford i think i had a question actually that i didn't ask um and maybe it's maybe it's on the drawings what what are the materials that are being uh the exterior materials specifically trim and um and siding for the uh for that gable or i guess there's two areas at least i think we're gonna go with um wood siding um and then for the windows i think we listed like marvin um i think we listed those details there is that am i answering your question yes thank you okay yeah and i guess i would pose to commissioner rocklin and i guess the rest of the commission um but is this enough the the trim kind of being thinner is that enough kind of detailing to to distinguish this wing as an addition or this piece is an addition let me show this this should should the siding be a composite versus wood i mean is there not that designing on the fly is a good idea but yeah i've been wondering the same thing i mean you know a substantial portion of this rear elevation is addition right i mean um and as i'm assuming the existing siding that's remaining it's just looking at the photos it looks very similar in profile and sizing as the little bit of historic sighting that that is visible on the side as well like how how much blurring of life lines are there it was a really good addition it was just it was kind of like we did a lot of without i mean the form of the house you know obviously there were a lot of additions and you can kind of tell but um without having this backer there kind of walk us through it's kind of like oh okay so yeah and then not having to you know reside everything right you want to be able to focus on the areas of work that are being proposed and would it be an issue if if we did say hey you know side the the new gable piece with hardy instead of wood would that be in it i mean would that pose an issue with the fitness of you know like bumping it up with wood siding i i don't know that's just a general question i i mean i'm fine with the proposal as is but just bringing up that question around the fact that it does read as like really similar to the original portion of the house do we have us i know we wouldn't see much because it's only 20 square feet that's being added but does this i'm looking for the new elevation that might show the side of that compound so like it doesn't look like there's like a corner board on the inside corner but would that be weird to then kind of separate it from the main wall siding that might look weird because it looks like there's a vertical trim you know on the rear elevation right i was just trying to look i i do think that you know i'm i'm okay with a wood siding or in addition a lot of times though we'll we'll look for like a differentiation in size of the lap or the the actual you know for it if it's a four-inch original maybe it's a six-inch on the new or something that that's a little bit of a variation so it's trying to you know just look back through the drawings to see what it and you know especially in the proposed little new edition would it be feasible to make that siding a different size um where it's being replaced and would that you know help commissioner rocklin oh were you done yeah go ahead okay um i guess to answer your question directly keeping on the same little spot there um i think that there is um i think that this is differentiated uh enough even if it is wood even if it is the same lap and i i think i'm coming to that conclusion for me uh maybe for two reasons one is that it's it's almost all of it is touching an existing edition so it's like an addition on an existing edition though um and then the other thing is just there are so many little editions already there like if this was the first addition to this house it would be critical that this be differentiated obviously right we look for that first in the standards but when you're standing back there it really is a bit of a hodgepodge of different volumes and um it just doesn't it would seem maybe even silly to have one of those volumes now sticking out more than the others for the sake of over differentiation maybe when it's sort of like that ship has sailed and you've kind of got mimicking happening already and um you know i don't know i don't know if differentiating this one volume on a new on and a you know an already new edition is is something that's so important to me i guess after thinking it through so that's that's where i'm standing right and it's not detracting from or damaging the existing historic fabric i think like you said it's an addition on a non-historic edition yeah and compatible maybe more compatible than we'd like but for this case it it works i i agree with those comments and i do think it having the freeze board and the fascia be thinner profiles is actually helping maybe more than you know it's differentiating another on the roof edge roof profile so that that helps distinguish it from the original that it's immediately adjacent to more so then as you stated mr uh commissioner rocklin that it would be just one portion of an of and addition that's sticking out from the rest of the edition at least there is some differentiation involved let's vote are there any other comments from commissioners communities so if we're ready to move to a vote um all those in favor of the motion please say yes yes yes all of those opposed please say no the motion carries your application has been approved please note that you must apply for any required permits from the city before beginning work on your project thank you good all night we'll now move on to item f3 110 east washington dispatcher actually this application is incomplete and will be included on next month's agenda if requested information is received in time by staff there's no staff report since the item was advertised as part of the agenda we need to hold the public hearing i'd now like to open the public hearing for this item this is an opportunity to speak up for up to three minutes about this application at 110 east washington a comment may be made by calling 877-853-5247 reminder to callers to please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand do we have any callers no callers i will now close the public hearing and we can move on to item f4 324 south state street this thatcher will you please give the staff okay 322 and 324 south state street are in the state street historic district 322 is the white one on the right this little guy um it's the southernmost of four storefronts that make up the university block which was built in 1886 its second story retains the decorative press tin facade elaborate cornice coins and narrow windows 324 south state was the first brick commercial building on the block it was built in the 1870s as mrs west's dining hall which also contained a skating rink it's a three-story brick italianate with pilasters the cornice and elaborate stone window hoods are unfortunately gone you can see those here in the picture the most recent tenant of these buildings was for many years espresso royale this is a photo from the 1870s this building was replaced at some point but this building is still there in in the same form the same mass lots of details are no longer there but it looks like you went up to go into the dining hall and if you went down here a couple steps down you got to go into the skating rink which is very cool here's what the building looked when it had been modernized a little bit in 1928 or 30.
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they didn't succeed they do they do it it's no big deal so what she leaves the board you still think you get a free pass see this mic here still could use it you think people don't listen what gets uh to talk about on this mic let me tell you something you're wrong you're wrong and i could prove it to you you know this board needs leadership and i seen this happen years ago when there was no leadership everybody was a gang they all played games together you know what happened when they ran for election people didn't vote for them they got they're gone they had smirks on their face like some of the other people up here i challenged them too last person that did that to me i challenged them and i told them you will not be back on this board again i was right because people out there watch they watch closely thank you anyone else was to address the board seeing none motion to close so move my mr daily second second mr betravo yes unfinished business none okay under b education administration we have ea one through ea 10.
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we had some situations this year where we had employees who just didn't show up they didn't call in they didn't send emails and so principals asked me to please add this one to the handbook i agree wholeheartedly okay that employee would be shocked that they would be terminated but yeah so um yes that's uh i support that one on page 13 um there's a little history to this as i've been in the district now over 30 years and uh and always teachers who gave up their duty-free lunch to do lunch duty in the cafeteria were allowed to eat a lunch and um it never even occurred to me all those years who paid for it you know didn't it i didn't know it just happened right well uh our new food service director uh brought to me uh oh probably february or so she started working for us in december and she brought some information to me in february or march and she said this is in violation of the federal regulations for because the federal food program is for students and she said i recognize that you've been doing it for a long time and you know what probably every other every other district in the country has been doing it but it is in direct violation and so she said what do you want me to do about it and i said well i'm going to make sure my employees get to eat if they give up their duty free lunch so we set up a payment system so they bill us and uh and we pay it we pay it out of mno and it strikes me that that's you know that's just a benefit that we're we're providing for our folks who are giving up giving up their duty-free lunch so uh we put it in here so that people so do employees would know so what are walk around um they have to they yeah they have to you know make sure the kids are doing what they're supposed to be doing and no food fights and uh and they're they're you know yeah yeah and cut cut the ketchup and mustard things if they're in packets because especially the little guys the little ones i mean sometimes i can't tear those things right even when i work in south central phoenix are the same thing yeah yeah yeah i've worked during lunch but um i do know that some of the complaints or some of the things is like we need to make sure that they're actually working not sitting no in another area no a lot of teachers like to eat lunch with kids oh sure and that's great and we're not going to feed those teachers but we're going to feed the ones who are actually supervising kids and and that's been going on for you classified as well as certified uh yeah anybody who does anybody who does the lunch duty absolutely sometimes it depends on the site and who can get that done but yeah whoever's actually on duty now we have some classified people we have some paris who do lunch duty but they also get a 30-minute lunch so if they get a 30-minute break we're not going to pay for their meal okay so it's only for somebody who has actually given up their 30 minutes their duty-free lunch time um and um uh so yeah and to me this is a good investment in you know a good investment for our folks and and i was certainly wasn't going to stop doing it right i wasn't going to stop doing it [Laughter] um okay and then on page 14 uh and corey had asked me about this one we added the electric room fresheners are prohibited they are fire hazards and uh so you know we don't need the ones that plug in the wall we don't need the the essential oil ones that you know that play any of those that plug in are fire hazards so my problem is them i know junior high i get it man hang the little treats [Laughter] yeah but i mean it's a fire hazard and we we don't need to be promoting fire right yeah [Laughter] that's right i suspect section six is where you had questions we've added this section um uh for a couple of reasons so if you have questions about it or if you want me just to explain why we've added this this is on page 15 this is the one about instruction that you maybe had questions about and to clarify the last sentence in the first paragraph use of other curricular programs or materials is prohibited that doesn't mean that there can't be a cutesy little worksheet or there can't be you know a little one page something or other we're talking about things that really supplement the program or change the direction or present something in a different way than than is in the standards because we've had some folks who've and this started with beyond textbooks when frankly everybody had to find all their own materials and then there became a situation where there was really no control over consistency from classroom to classroom and uh so we're not talking about little things we're talking about you know the kinds of things that yeah and the changes changes you know changes the focus from the standards and that kind of thing this keeps it focused on teaching the standards as provided with the curriculum we provide yes but if you have continual stuff that builds on that that wouldn't fall into this no and and and it would be a good idea to share that with the principal and make sure that you know make sure you haven't gone way beyond kind of thing but yeah if you've got you know some of that kind of thing but we had some issues and as i say i understand how it started with beyond textbooks because people had to look for their own things but then we've had some problems and some issues with people not wanting to give up some things that actually conflicted conflict with uh the materials that we're providing so do our site administrators have the the power to say yes that's okay i think they should have that's what i'm getting yeah i think they should have we don't really need to look at all of that that's right right yeah we just we really yeah it's perfect okay okay and then the second one the application for outside funding we certainly don't want to discourage our folks from looking for some outside funding but we want them to ask us first do we have some money for this you know can the district pay for it and and not ask for outside funding for things that we can already fund so for instance this past year we had some employees who applied for ipads or or chromebooks from gofundme or one of those other you know funding things which was silly because we had the money to purchase those things so they could have used that opportunity for items that we could you know that we maybe couldn't provide the other thing is if it's technology we want to make sure it's can operate within our systems and that we have our techs can support um you know repair and all of those kinds of things so it's just a matter of communication but if we don't tell them up front that we expect them to do that communication it's not going to happen it also helps so you don't have multiple people hitting the same people up yes donations exactly you know the the community loves and they support our schools they're wonderfully yes but if you get six different teachers coming and asking for the same thing that can be a little tasking or it could be done on from the site principle or one situation so yeah yeah running it through the site principles uh that's a good one yeah and and we all get it that you know for so long and it will happen again when we don't have a whole lot of funding available you know when we don't have a lot of extra dollars laying around but but that doesn't mean that we don't have dollars it just means that we prioritize how we use them and we don't if we don't know what teachers need we don't know to put that in the priority list so it's just a matter of communication can i go back to the first program sure would it be worth or a while in that first paragraph to put in there somewhere that um any um activity you know page that a teacher wants to use should be approved by the principal first i mean better wording but you know what i'm saying right should we put that in there that they should prove it well get it approved by their principal the only reason i would i would say no to that is unless they're using a lot unless it's coming back to the principal and they feel like they have to step in otherwise we're taking more away from the teacher's ability to have a little bit of an extra resource or okay i taught it this way because that's where the way the curriculum tells me to teach it but they didn't quite get it oh i found this awesome worksheet that says another way and i use that like just for that one go or whatnot but it allows them a little bit of freedom to help pick and choose and the principals and they would be sitting there every day looking through a stack of coffees trying to figure out yes yes no no yes they got our principles are going to be slammed back to school so i think we just for at least for the year let's just see how it goes and we just definitely don't want anybody getting something that is not standard approved and is not right that was the only thing i was thinking of and i i would hope that there wouldn't be that much um i was thinking more than just one page i was thinking if there's yeah if they're saying oh i'm going to do a week's worth of this to add on to something and that's i didn't think it covered it well enough that's really what that last sentence is about because that that goes over into the realm of supplemental materials as opposed to an item or two that you know or or a newspaper article that fits whatever it is we're talking about this week you know that would be okay you know you put the newspaper maybe along that line since that says use of other curriculum programs or materials is prohibited unless approved by administration so if they do have a packet that they want to take in then if they want to reach out and be like okay this is more than like a couple sheets more than just a little extra depth um hey does this look okay and um they have leads don't they i mean they have you know chairs or or um what do you call apartment heads yeah team lead there you go then just run it by the team lead instead of going to the principal or if the team lead had a question maybe then it's approved by the principal does the team leads get a little stipend for those types they do i'm just afraid to inundate the principles with sure but i think if we say it this way where it's we know it's a bigger thing yeah that's not going to inundate them i think that's good so i just added to that sentence i just it reads use use of other curricula programs or materials is prohibited unless approved by the principal yeah that'll work does that work and if they feel they're getting inundated they just say hey right with what you got you can't keep bringing me every single worksheet you've given the stuff to teach the stuff you're giving listen i've already approved a worksheet that looks exactly like that you know you know that yes you don't use that once every two weeks i'm just thinking addition of coins yes use it trying to nip something in the bud before it gets out of control yes and i will tell you that part of the reason for this is uh jen and i had multiple requests this past year for approval of or purchase of some supplemental materials or supplemental programs from teachers who had not even tried to use the the supplemental materials that came with our approved textbooks and programs and she and i got pretty good at saying not until we see you using these things and then showing us hi genie showing us that those don't do the job you know we at least have to give all of uh our approved materials the opportunity to do what we need them to do so i mean that was part of the reason for this we're just going over the employee handbook so jeannie did you have any items from the handbook that you were concerned about so we can because i'm trying to make the changes as we go in this workshop so that when you all consider it in the uh meeting uh we will have made the changes already you can get your thoughts and then just let us know before we yeah yeah yeah catch your breath catch your breath uh no i i think that's it with like the general dress code and recommendation or requirements um like i know that some of them and i know it's kind of a small thing but um the genes except committed by the employee supervisor is there reasoning behind that there is um uh first of all it's in the policy it's stated specifically but the other thing is that when this was developed and there was a pretty good-sized committee developed in this several years ago that doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be reviewed we know we have some employees who would like us to review it okay we need to do that but until there's a change it applies um we had some folks who were abusing and not and even and when they wore genes they weren't appropriate genes and uh part so part of it was just professionalism having people look professional and then most principals uh uh attached it kind of became a okay a payday friday when we were five day week right but a little donation or something that went into a kitty that then the school decided how they wanted to do it so that it was you know so it wasn't just uh oh it's whatever day and i don't feel like dressing professionally and i will tell you this past year well not so much this past year because we weren't in classrooms but the first year that i was on board here and there was some pretty sloppy well you know stuff the sloppy few shouldn't dictate the all that's the only thing that you know we constantly look at and right we need to address those that are right not following policy or not right because i'll tell you there's people at our school that wear black jeans white jeans sure jeans and they look so good oh this is only blue jeans this is only blue jeans yes this is only blue jeans some dark blue jeans there's some you know like sure there are some ones and they look so nice like they they put on a nice top and they just look i mean they look professional and and and i don't have an issue with that i mean i think i think this whole dress policy dress code policy needs a you know a group of employees to go through it and whatever yes it's been a while but until that happens and the policy changes i think be it is the policy to give a chance to take a little bit control over that because there's a few things in there that i'm like okay those that's really old yeah that's an older type of thing and then let's have them put together a committee and say hey what changes do you want to see made and we can take that input and make a decision yeah but i'm good with that that way um they have a voice we can make the changes to the policies and we make the changes to the handbook right and if it's not this year that's fine i mean it's not big we make it through and next year's the deal um but that way they at least they have a chance to make some of those changes or any changes in the handbook for that matter if they they feel um later on that hey can we tweak this or what not but get the ground running with the updates especially some of those things that need to be updated right you know and and um and you notice that for almost every one of these items i've referenced the policy so that employees know because other than the employees at each of the school sites our other classified employees had never had as far as i can tell and find out from anybody had never had a handbook so they didn't know what was expected of them they didn't know what you know they didn't know many of these things and it's i find it really unfortunate and unfair to discipline somebody for a behavior that they didn't know was expected you know or for violation of some policy that they didn't know about but i also wanted them to know that it's based in policy and so what you know they can't just come say to me hey stuart can we change blah blah blah that there's a process we need to go through and and that kind of thing so um uh yeah and then you know and they can ask us about they can ask about any of the other policies we can run it by you guys but some of them as you know some of these policies we don't have much choice it's the law and um so we can talk about it all we want but we can't make many changes so um but yeah i there are other things in here that i think need to be discussed as well so i've made no we'll we will certainly make sure we have that committee all right any other okay we already did change some things genie just so you know from those uh the gray highlighted areas uh for instance in the section on uh cloth face coverings uh i took out the whole last sentence that that is was in there as a recommendation based on the um the law that just passed that schools and cities and counties and any government agency in arizona cannot mandate face masks so we took out that last sentence what else did we take oh we took out the whole we took out the whole statement at the beginning of the table of contents about being a nut-free district and leave it to each site to to you know to manage those situations did we take out anything else or change anything else principles for the curriculum oh for the curriculum on the last page so i just had one other thing um and of course we haven't hit this as a revision or a policy that we've looked over yet that was the gcr and ger the non-school employment by staff members because i know we hit some bumps in the road and being that you know working at the high school district in my position as an athletic director so i mean full disclosure that we've had some coaches that coach for elementary but they've had some um it's hard for them to get away it's where it's hard for them because of our policies which i agree are are this district should take presidents over anything else um but is there anything about for those that do coach outside of our area but coach for the high school district i mean do we do we work with them do we um i mean do we ask the high school district to reimburse for their days that they're gone do how do we when they because i i've heard a couple different things i'm not really sure how it works but i do know like i have some coaches that work here and they do they take their pto i'm not sure how it works when i first came back and when i first came into this position uh one of the things i was told was um uh that they that if they had to be gone that was always considered uh business leave and so it didn't count against their pto or anything so then i took a look at some of the numbers of days and we had we had one employee this was the most extreme one there were a couple that were pretty close to this extreme we had one employee who missed half of the days in a quarter of the school year being gone to coach for high school high school things and and i thought and it was all charged off to school business and i thought okay that's not really fair to the kids in that teacher's classroom that meant that those kids had a substitute 50 of the time for and it was at testing time it was like it wasn't it didn't exactly match a quarter but it amounted to a quarter of time so it was like you know march march april and half of may um 50 of the time that's a little extreme um and so we suggested that okay half of those could be business leave and half of those especially when after i investigated the person frequently took the full day and really was only gone half the day um so is there something we could work out with the high school absolutely um if they are going to be gone for coaching and i know that a lot of them like to go to the high school district because of course it is more pay well it's also a higher level level of competition of course opportunity for states of course um and they also like to kind of follow the kids up if they're you know coaching could we ask about some reimbursement could we ask about those things and see if that's something we could work out i i don't i personally as you know superintendent of this district i don't really care about getting sub reimbursement that's not really the issue to me the issue is you know what's in the best interest of our kids you know what's what's in the best interest of that teacher's students for some of them yeah so you know use their ptos for something that they're doing for another you know right they are need to follow the gcr which means they're this comes first so i see where that becomes um that kind of issue right um but i don't want that if they are doing something like that that they aren't allowed to or they feel like they can't or they feel restricted or um so i know that was a concern that had been brought to me sure with some because of course like i said disclosure i'm the ad there so of course comments um so my coaches are pretty readily um you know hey this is going on whatever um i just wanted i just wanted them to be thoughtful about requesting pt you know either school business because it's pretty easy to just go oh you know i need to leave at noon anyway maybe i'll just take the whole day when it's when i don't have any accountability whereas if it's coming off if some of it is coming off my pto time i'm going to be a little more thoughtful about that but the other part for me is uh is it's the main part for me is the kids so you know if my child happens to be in the afternoon class of course you know in corey's afternoon class not thursday just tuesday well and you know i'm not picking on corey necessarily because you know he's at the high school but you know what i'm saying if my if my child's regular teacher is gone two days a week for six weeks i'm sorry you know i don't care how good the sub is and you and i know it's nice no it doesn't matter if it's the best sub we can find anywhere it's not the same and uh and so you know i i wanted us to find a balance and they're also happening on part two they know that schedule long before i mean i'm already putting together our schedule that isn't you know for i got six more months and my schedule's almost complete um so we know a long time before and i i literally plan out my entire lesson plan around how that's going to be done you know so it that might be a work day that that i don't have to be actually giving direct instruction right um so i work that around that and as long as that's being done i i i like to encourage to pull the best coaches we can of course and because it truly makes a difference in these kids lives and working together with the high school i want to continue to do that because it's these these teachers here know the kids when they come to the high school and that connection when it's already built is a world of a difference and we don't want to undo that yes the kid the students who are at the high school are still our students you know i don't want that connection to go away and and we all recognize how how significant it is when students have a relationship with some adult and and for some students that's what keeps them in school i understand that and it might be sports it might be music it might be drama it doesn't matter what it is whatever that relationship is if we can carry that over that's benefits everybody in the community i just want some i just wanted some balance and some thoughtfulness about it and so this wasn't you know this is not intended to say okay you can't work you know you can't coach for the high school it's just on the other hand if we've got somebody who oh i'll give you an example we have we have at least one employee who is a licensed realtor okay okay that's fine with me but recognize that if you sign a contract with us this is your first job you know this is your day job and and uh yeah so uh you know so it's that kind of thing but in terms of the coaching thing we want to balance there yeah and i'm not in i'm all for that i just i had heard some things from some people that they were you know they had to use their pto when they had to travel or things like that and i didn't want them to feel like coaching was a negative thing no and i would hate to see them adversely affected no we want them thoughtful stepping into a role right um that means a lot yes yes and but i do they should definitely not be abusing and if they are i can take a whole day when i actually i know i know i think you can understand where this issue came from right but i'm glad you brought it up because it's it because it's worth the conversation so that the public knows that um we're not intentionally the elementary district is not intentionally trying to you know trying to undo that relationship because that's not what it's about uh it's about having some reasoning to hear it that you know that's what we want we want those we want everyone to work and be supportive right you know yeah definitely classroom too okay any other questions on the handbook nope okay well with that okay i think i have the changes you wanted all right with that we need uh 1.5 a motion to adjourn our workshop during the workshop i second the motion all in favor aye corey burgess aye jimmy borland i'm anna aymond aye charlene dies so i moved we are adjourned all right we have a little over 20 minutes before our no we have to have the hearing at six at four at 5 45.
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301. 301 i'm sorry and you guys can help me out here because i literally i'm working off of a very little screen here so yes thank you so much trusty pam 301 alum administrators association anybody here from a-r-a-a tonight jose if you can help me find them in the audience if they're here or if you see anybody raising their hand from alum rock administrators association tonight yes uh we have ms basu hi this is kasturi basu i'm representing from ara good evening and good evening we can hear you thank you it's an honor thank you so much do you have a report for us by any chance or anything you want to let us actually i'm just being coming here representing ara oh great thank you welcome to our meeting tonight uh and thank you for being here thank you well you're gonna go ahead and move on to uh 302 teamsters anybody here from teamsters this evening madam president i i don't i don't see anyone raising their hand okay all right we'll go ahead and move on to ellen rock educators association i'm sorry i'm sorry thank you trusty fam i can count on you to help me out tonight um thank you so yes so we have uh 303 california school employees association before we go to area thank you csea anyone and president we have miss sharon great thank you thank you jose good evening superintendent board president board members um it's been such a great last couple weeks i don't have a lot to report except for i did want to congratulate dr almazan in her new position i know she's going to do great in it i worked with her for many years and and she's a great asset for sure and other than that um we have finalized our contract yay and um signed off on it and i did get the word today from our cse headquarters that everything is in order so that means that we will as our chapter will be able to ratify it and then as we're finished then the board hopefully will ratify it also when they when it comes to their next maybe not next but soon board meeting um and it's a contract kind of cleanup language so hopefully everything will be in order when um you review it and we can move forward for the 21 22 school year um and i do want to say i hope everything is going well for the summer school programs i know there was a lot of them and they looked and sounded great and i hope a lot of kids took advantage of them because it can only get them ahead for the new year coming since they did miss that in-person learning for a year um and with that um i'll say have a good evening and a good weekend that's coming up and everybody stay safe and enjoy your time for the summer thank you sharon uh next we have uh 304.
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