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camera action i know it's pretty sad when you excited to come to a board meeting good evening we would like to convene the board business meeting for tuesday december 14 there is a need for an executive session and we will entertain a motion for an executive session pursuant to ars 38-4 a and 1 to discuss potential appointment of melinda murphy as director professional develop growth and development uh is there a motion i'll make a motion to go into the executive session pursuant to a sr ars 38-431.03 thank you mr parker is there a second second thank you miss eugetti it's been moved in second is there any discussion seeing that there is no discussion we will vote all those in favor of moving to executive session please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries 4-0 we will recess to executive session well thank you this is tuesday december 14th we apologize for our tardiness we were involved in an interview but we will call the meeting to order we will begin with item 2.01 move to 2.02 of the moment of silence and then we'll go to 2.03 with the pledge of allegiance led by mr parker please join us in a moment of silence thank you enjoy the questions of america thanks to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all move to item 2.04 which is roll call and mrs wilson if you would please do the honors dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood miss wood is not present michela eugetti here miss jill humphreys here mr bill parker here mr president you have a quorum thank you mrs wilson move to item three which is approval of this evening's agenda 3.01 is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphries is there a second welcome thank you mr parker any discussion it's been moved and seconded that we approve tonight's agenda as printed all those in favor please signify by saying aye hi those opposed the same motion carries four zero item four is the superintendence recognition award awards 4.01 and i'll defer to dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members if you join me in front of the diocese this evening we'll uh hand out dr mccord may i say something yes please i just wanted to congratulate all the students i'm having some health issues so i have to be very careful so i'm going to remain up here but it has nothing to do with anything other that i'm very proud of all of you thank you oops sorry didn't mean to cut you off good evening everyone how are you how are you oh good good this is the time where we can laugh and have fun first of all i'd like to recognize a couple people that are in our superintendent senate and that is hayley prus he's they stand up and ellison tobler is that right they're both from campo verde please give them a hand for coming by [Applause] next we're gonna recognize a couple marching bands tonight that's all we have this evening we do have a football team to recognize but we'll do that in january and i'll talk about that in a little bit uh first up is um campo verde high marching band where are you guys come on up real quick matt anders oh yeah how are you matt come on over yeah this way he thought you're just gonna sit there and smile didn't you how are you this evening dwight good matt's our guard instructor is that correct and stacy norton where's stacy come on up stace stacy is one of well she's the booster parent is that about right yeah the only one showing up tonight that's okay um our band director was not able to make it tonight he's out of town he's in chicago as i take it right big big dunes going on in chicago for the next couple days well we're recognizing campo for a reason they are the 2021 3a state champions please give them a hand [Applause] matt i'm going to put you on the spot you want to introduce these oh man i know it's it's not a test oh okay because it would be a test okay okay you're going to help okay she can can she help me okay trust me i teach color guard yeah we have samuel norton colin farr peter hilbert julia payne spencer johnson leo para and mary there you go thank you [Applause] just a quick question for you guys in an average week how much time do these young men and women put into the marching band oh gosh at least yeah at least 10 to 15 hours that's on top of what you do which we call school homework and stuff like that right well we're very proud of you we're very proud of your accomplishment we we thank you for coming tonight to represent camp overdean again congratulations on your accomplishment one more time you guys would shake hands with the board and then we'll take a picture at the end you're like i was like stay here guys we're gonna line you up and smile and kind of double up a little bit maybe the less vertically challenged in the back like you and there you go hold on wait mr gennadis ladies and gentlemen dr jinnitus ap over campo give him a hand school photographer one more time for campo thank you [Applause] next we have desert ridge high marching band can you guys come up do we have the adult representing are you stephanie no she's gone sorry i didn't know that was a joke so just you are introduce yourself to everyone madeline patusik i'm the assistant marching band director ah thank you madeline do you wanna um well you're gonna introduce these folks in a second good luck um first i want to say congratulations because desert ridge high marching band was a 2021 2azmba championship winners congratulations stephanie campbell the director was uh she won best band director and also the band won third place in the arizona state marching band championship division two as well so please give them a hand [Applause] malin do you wanna introduce these sure we have jessie rachel suzy brianna and nick nick what do you play um i play clarinet and i'm one of the drummers all right how about just go down the line tell me color guard nice and i'm the superintendents that's all trust me your skills are much better than mine um again to all of you we know how much time you put in how much effort and if anybody has not experienced a marching band in terms of their practice in order for them to perform it is amazing the time and effort we talk a lot about sports and what they take up after school the marching band equals that and sometimes more so congratulations to you young men and women and thank you for what you do [Applause] come on over and shake hands with the board here's the picture time let's get up there so we can see congratulations [Applause] and mr lance smith ap from desert ridge high is here thank you for being here lance uh dr santa cruz governing board that is my recognitions for this evening thank you bye guys bye don't worry about us we'll still be here move to item number five 5.01 superintendents report dr mccord please thank you dr santa cruz governing board members thank you for everyone joining us here in person and on live stream this evening congratulations to the highland high school varsity football team for their victory over chaparral in the 6a state championship game the hawks put their foot on the gas and never let up which led to the school's first ever football state championship but they're not done yet on sunday the hawks were invited to the geico bowl series in las vegas this friday so the hawks will travel to las vegas this week and take on chaminade madonna lions of florida they are the state champions in their division coming out of florida that'll take place 7 30 p.m this friday at bishop gorman high school all expenses for the trip will be paid by the geico bowl and the highland athletic department will receive a donation of twelve thousand five hundred dollars good luck to our hawks and rise and soar [Applause] the principal of highland high is here this evening i'd like to recognize her miss melinda murphy please stand say hi she's here for other reasons tonight too we'll find out in a few minutes but congratulations to you guys i wanted to take a minute and thank everyone for a great first half of the school year this year has been a bit of a challenge to this point but i'm amazed and thankful for the effort of every single employee of gps you've shown up each and every day to ensure students have the very best education and i sincerely appreciate your dedication to our students and families thank you thank you for choosing gps and thank you for helping to make our district one of the very best in the state i hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable winter break and a happy new year we look forward to seeing all of you on tuesday january 4th dr santa cruz that concludes my report this for this evening thank you dr mccord and congratulations to the highland hawks football team wish them well as they travel to nevada and certainly to our representatives from desert ridge and campo in the band program we're now at item 6 request to speak to the governing board could we please play the recorded message the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy ke keb and ked are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert public schools website we have one request to speak amber mcafee [Music] welcome ms mcafee you have three minutes nice to be here and seeing so many positive things my kids are highland hawks and we're really happy with the football um the football team i'm here to talk about something that's not quite so positive i wrote i've sent you all emails and i haven't received anything back so i would just like to bring this back up again this is regarding the national school board association and their letter sent to president joe biden asking him to classify parents speaking at school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists committing hate crimes such as people such as myself and dr sheila harrison williams she's the executive director of asba the arizona school board association she was asked if she would leave nasba she refused to do so the arizona parents bill of rights states as stakeholders all parental rights are reserved to a parent of any minor child without obstruction or interference from the state any political subdivision of the state any governmental entity or any other institution this is codified law in arizona the national school board association requested the president broke arizona statute 1-6-0-2 in gps's district strategic operating plan of 2020-2024 the first core belief states our commitment is to build trust with families and to create regular opportunities for parents in the community community to engage in conversations and provide feedback to this district parents and anyone who lives within gps boundaries have an unalienable right to be part of the political process and to petition for a redress of grievances there is no way that can be interpreted as domestic terrorism parents are the ultimate stakeholders in their children's education gilbert public schools have a long tradition of tradition of community and parental involvement and needs these positive relationships to continue in order to further enrich educational opportunities of all students continuing your alliance with naspa and asba undermines the faith and trust of the public that you claim to value continuing to pay fees to these anti-parent and anti-child associations which fees come directly from the taxpayers is an act of bad faith by the board i request that the gilbert public school board and their relationship with both the national school board association and the arizona school board association immediately due to conflicts in state law and that said policy and public comments of both violate multiple gps district policies core principles values and educational direction i really ask you to please think this over and discuss it's very important to the future of our kids thank you thank take a you and just address that criticism that was given um i am on the board of directors for the arizona school board association so i did participate in some of the discussion because we had our own board meeting i did not attend the particular meeting where this was discussed but the arizona school board association is a member directed organization and it's it is a democratic organization where we elect people to positions and then they govern and the same is true for the national school board association so if we're not happy with some of the things that are happening at the arizona school board association or the national school board association to me it is our obligation to make our voices heard and that's one reason i serve on the board of directors and have chosen to run for secretary of the arizona school board association if we have a seat at the table we can discuss and we can work collaboratively with other people to address concerns but i will say that this letter was very unfortunate community engagement is one of my goals it's really really important that we have parents and community members participating here and giving their feedback i liken it to we have our professionals our teachers our administration their professionals and i liking it to going to the doctor you go to the doctor you get a diagnosis but as things go along you can say well doctor this isn't working my child isn't getting better it's the same with school we work in tandem together and try to provide the best education possible for that child but parents need to to have their voices heard when they're talking about concerns with their students learning or challenges in school or even the fact that maybe they're not being challenged as much as they need to be and so again because these are member directed organizations and are through elected positions that's why i think it's important to maintain our membership so that we can help guide those discussions and of course you know these these are many many people across the state we have 1100 board members so we we can make our voices heard but we have to be willing to work with others and find compromise so um i just wanted to address that i it's definitely concerned i don't want anyone to ever feel that coming to speak at a board meeting you would have to be concerned about retaliation or be concerned about your kids in schools and i know that because i came and spoke to the board and i remember i was shaking in my boots that was about 13 years ago so it's really really important that we provide and bring in that discussion with parents again with professionals with our educational professionals working hand in hand to get the best education for our kids and speaking as a voice at those two organizations to make sure that that is how people feel and again i i believe that because it is a member driven a member guided organization that we need to stay and have our voice heard but thank you for bringing it up i had intended to answer your email and it's just been extremely busy christmas and everything else so thank you thank you miss mcafee thank you ms humphries we'll move to item seven reports item 7.01 is a monthly budget report year to date november 30th 2021 dr mccord i will turn it over to mrs bonnie betts good evening dr santa cruz dr mccord governing board members this is our monthly financial report and the the information presented to you today is as of november 30th of 2021.
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we're ready to go don we're good okay uh call this meeting to order uh roll call please okay brown is here mrs galbraith here dr hall here mr wallace here mrs walters here vice president rupert here president albert here please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and ms would you please recite the mission statement sure it's to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future okay next up public comment we do have a couple uh the first in person is james young and the topic is transparency in the community part three thank you president alfred thank you president albert members of the board dr congolese and staff good evening okay i'm here tonight to simply make inquiry as to what are we going to do are we going to continue to be on the seesaw of opposition or are we going to come together and have a meeting of the minds we can hear you in regards to oh my god yeah are we going to come together and have a meeting of the minds as intelligent people can do and resolve our differences so i'm simply reaching out to you and actually what do you want what can we do to resolve our differences it's our understanding that you do not want the challenge of the petition to sell the bonds we don't want to do that either however we don't want to see our money wastefully spent either okay since the last time i was here there was a letter from crete monet school district circulated in warrior nation thank you because this is exactly why we take the stand that we take this makes absolutely no sense at all not at all it's unacceptable you know that we can do better the second point is that we need some direction from the board you are the taxing body that we have to present our grievances to so we need information and clarification as to the final deadline date we only had 30 days to challenge the bonds so we need to know from you what is the actual date does thanksgiving count that's national holiday does the day after thanksgiving count so we need that we need to know so i would hope that someone from the board would email me and give me the exact date that ends the 30-day period also we want to know who's going to be present and where and the times that they're going to be present on that last day so we don't miss that person when that person doesn't miss us when we file the challenge petitions if the person is the secretary of the board that's mr brown where is he going to be what office what times we will call ahead of time and let you know when we're coming the third point i'd like to make is that it was echoed several times in the past month the board members seem to think that a successful challenge of those selling of the bonds is going to have a negative impact on air conditioning going into some of our buildings we tend to differ with you are you familiar with organization known as associated press you do know that is a agency or an organization that's full of journalists reporters and newscasters they do a lot of writing in various various occupations they wrote an article it's online i had to fact check to make sure it was accurate about covert relief funds it's very interesting to take a look at it because our school district was very fortunate according to them considering the amount of money that they said we received only 20 percent of it has to be used towards learning setbacks the other 80 percent is to be used for whatever school officials deem reasonable and necessary there's a lot of flexibility in using that so we tend to differ with you a successful challenge period will not have a negative impact on whether or not these schools get air conditioned we believe they deserve air conditioning in the newer facilities not in the old ones that's a waste of money we deserve better we've said that from day one we continue to say that families do have disagreements but they're able to come together and resolve them we deserve more thank you and merry christmas each and every one of you thank you thank you merry christmas to you as well merry christmas king and then we have one other public comment came in via email this is from michael anthony the topic is school board objection and it's simply the people already objected to the 65 million dollar bond proposal by referendum now the board plans to skirt the issue by raising 53 million for repairs and that's it any other public commentary no sir okay next up is board updates mean you know i i would like to just briefly kind of memory the from the conference that we went to a couple weeks ago already very informative i thought that a couple classes i went to i went to the general session on sunday the last session held doing a conference and memory serves me right there talking about unconscious bias and i found myself at times when a lot of the categories was presented to us that i found myself been in that category of unconsciously being biased towards certain things so you know i could share more with the board i'm not going to get into all the details but that was a good general session even the presenter i don't know if any of you went even a presenter when she showed a picture of herself in high school she had black lipstick gone and you know that impression when i looked at her i said oh she was she's not going to turn out to be any good and she was actually the presenter and that kind of gave me a second look at how i perceive people to be what they ought to be perceived as another course i went to was canada i learned a little bit more about the essa funds the karazak and one of your colleagues from murfree borough's business manager mercy barrel school district presented really well and they actually using some essa plans on air conditioning sure new system so sure you know i know we don't have enough money to gain on that how much really did we pretty much get from yes of funds well about 10 million somewhere around there yeah there there's three separate uh srx that came into play uh i'm thinking off the top of my head the first one i the first one was i believe around 900 000 that you can see uh and those are understand those are reimbursable funds so we were allocated nine hundred thousand dollars we did receive nine hundred thousand we put some expenses into that uh in technology and a whole bunch of other things then the second round i believe was about four million dollars that we were allocated we have not uh used all of those funds because you have until i believe it's september of 23 to utilize those funds so we are using some of those funds slowly um through some of our expenses in that and then the last round was the third one which is american rescue plan and i believe that's around nine million dollars that we have allocated those funds can be used until 2024 and then so again we haven't used all of those and those are being spaced out let's face it yeah okay make good use of those funds yep all right and they had a round table they had a lot of round tables in this one room and it wasn't too conducive to social distancing so i i did sit at one table where it was only myself but you know they talked about a couple different things for student learning and achievement and how students i forget the topic off and but how students can learn different ways and just being a little patient with them so i'll bring that topic the next time around but overall i thought the conference was really well one other one of the last bit naperville school district who do not get a lot of money i think it's naperville school district 203 who do not get a lot of funds from taxes other than property taxes similar to us they have a similar demographics like us as far as their tax base i was surprised because i thought they got a lot of taxes from from businesses and things of that nature but for somehow and some reason i don't know how they did it they didn't abate taxes back they actually reimbursed reimburse naperville 203 and it was 40 taxpayers that they reimburse i know we're not in a position to that but we're kind of going in the right direction especially how you presented the other day with the abatement definitely continue to look at ways like that but naperville did do it they reimbursed up to 40 000 taxpayers about on average 600 that they were able to get off their tax bill so i felt that was pretty good and they had like 2 000 i mean maybe a little more two or three thousand people that still haven't came to get the reimbursement check right i said maybe we need to go over there and get it from him but overall the conference was good i apologize for not being able to make it to the dinner and join you guys and i do have records to show you that i got a 9-1-1 from my trusted nine-to-five job not too long before i was getting ready to head down with you guys but next time okay okay thank you thanks for that update any other updates i think i have a question because um and maybe it's for another time you can let me know i listened to mr young come and i even reached out to him to ask him but i hadn't gotten a response yet what is it that they want i i don't know if you can answer that now if that's for later i'm not sure i know that it's something about the the funds and they don't believe that maybe it's going to be allocated the way that it's and i'm i'm maybe i'm misinterpreting what he's asking but i see him and i'm really asking like like what do is there a plan do they have a plan are they asking to sit down to review their plan versus the board's plan or what is it that they want that's what i'm trying to figure out so i so i could have understand i know what i desire and i think i know what i think that the board and i think that overall we all have our own little things that we want but it appears that we're all in agreement overall you know but i'm just trying to understand because he was talking about coming together i'm trying to what do they want a disagreement in the sense that you know he doesn't want to be wasteful is what i'm getting from him and um putting good money into old buildings and i think the majority of us agreed with that and that's why we did present the referendum but it was voted down so we have to move forward with something so that we can make improvements and you know look out for the best interest of our students our staff and air conditioning was a big issue air conditioning um was a big issue this summer you know that's why we're moving forward we did put it out to the community for the referendum and it didn't pass so now we're doing this and i that's what i'm hearing that they don't feel that they're being heard that we shouldn't be wasteful and put money into the old buildings but we're kind of you know we did the referendum because we felt the same way but now we need to move forward so the other stuff i don't know about this plan and this conspiracy of what he thinks is happening with a uh school being built in crete that i don't know where that's coming from but that's what i'm getting from it i don't know you know why he thinks the letter is not i mean we've been very transparent we've had several meetings ken has done many presentations on our short-term plan here and even the long-term plan and i so i'm confused myself but that's what i'm getting out of it yeah dr hall i mean i i would suggest you ask mr young that question directly but the conversation i had with him kind of similar to what sandy said is since i got from he doesn't want to put good money after bad into the existing build the older buildings and wants new schools and we've been down that road we tried and the referendum didn't pass and this is our backup plan so i think we're we're moving the right direction and but i would encourage you to reach out to him directly yeah if i if i must add to that i think all of us got a email from one of the young ladies that leads a zoom community call to participate in some type of conversation with them and i haven't replied back to her i knew her very well and i don't think we can do that as a board because it becomes a board meeting right we can't do that as a whole so i don't know who replied back if all if all possible i plan on joining that call and sharing with them whatever they need and whatever i could as a board member i saw dr coghlanis reply again i don't know if any one of you replied back and since i've been in this this district over almost 30 years now and there's no surprise of all the things that university park has been through as a community and nobody's pointing a finger and i mentioned last meeting that if we can even communicate that much more and i think mostly they want is a listening ear okay yeah we have done some great things and we're looking to embark and doing things and showing the level of equity and equality on how we go down the road to fix up these schools so i think they need to hear and i think the more board members and either as an individual reach out to them and say hey you know whatever i can do what is it personally ask them what is it what is it that we see when things as a board we see things one way they may see it the other way so you need to come together put things on the table and talk about it you know they they want they want equality they want equity it's always been that for that community as far as i know we know again we don't want to stir up bad wounds but we know that they have not been treated right in the past as a result of lawsuits and so on and so forth yes we got to get past that i want to move forward i think this board wants to move forward too but that still doesn't take away from questions that they have and i think the less we shy away from them the more they may be seeing things as may not be true or maybe true i don't know but i know on a personal level if no one is talking to me even in my personal relationship with the wife she can believe that i you know we just see things different sometimes and unless we get and sit down there's a whole phrase with all with all that getting get an understanding and i think the more we talk to them and sit down don't shy away from them i think the better things would be so so if you don't mind i'm going to ask you just to rewind back to the beginning of the year if you remember right to the beginning of the year yes if you remember in march miss roop miss walters made a suggestion with you and miss mitchell and they had reached out and talked to people in the community and you guys were offended that they were doing that and that why didn't they come to you and ask you this is our opportunity here from the very beginning that we started the referendum and you push for it and miss root push for it and i push for it we were sitting when we were sitting over there and we talked about going with a referendum and in the february meetings and in the march meetings you were very adamant to repeat yourself to everybody in the public that said if the referendum doesn't pass we're gonna have to put money into old schools right i haven't read that right so we've been clear on our plan from february from march from april from may and now it's december and that letter was very specific on this board is not misleading anybody we're going in the exact direction if we even look back to january to move forward but i think in this opportunity anybody with that that's that's representing up are the ones that should be out speaking first before us because it was clear you guys were upset that that had taken place that why didn't you guys come to you first so i think the idea is that if any one of the of us should whoever's not representing up should come to you guys first to ask that question because that was an argument that was on that happened in one of our meetings the letter the email went out to all of us and i think it just lends itself for all of us in some ways shape or form to either but again i don't know how any of us reply i know i have not replied back but i plan to reply and say i will join whatever i can it's just not you know i think that might be a little different situation you say sandy and miss roof and and cheryl went out and get went out to the community and asked questions about it or not and say you don't come to me i think this is a little different bill i think the community you said well we definitely heard a gap there you're saying you're seeing it this way the letter all of our names is on it and you have mr young sees a different way i think he's a pillar in the community i think he's you see he's up here all the time fighting for the community i'm not saying he's right or wrong and you see i haven't been i've been on this side of the fence doing this whole petition and all of that but i agree with him on a lot of things some of the things you know we differ on it and we are friends that's not that's no hidden uh story about the relationship and about him that i have we're friends we're good friends but again when i i had no idea what he was going to say tonight i had no idea what he said the previous what he was going to say the previous night but at the end of the day he's uh he's a smart intelligent man and he speaks for a lot of people and it just lends itself for us to sit down and have a conversation with him not just me or or dr hall if you couldn't 101 it don't hurt i would do the same if it was money if they want to talk they'd reach out and say maurice i'm going to talk to you i'll be the first to say come on i might you know i might not feel up to it because of maybe some barriers there but i will say what can let's talk let's talk full disclosure i actually replied and said i was i would be willing to be on it but then i was going to see if anybody was going to because i realized we can't have more than two people they know that i don't know because i don't think dr kaglin so were you planning to be so what um i did not respond as of yet i planned i thought about after the board meeting and after talking to some people to see which direction we were going so i can have a better understanding because i want to get on there and attempt to answer questions that i don't have an answer to um so i did want to get on um now i would say in my opinion just to go back to what bill was saying but for me i think that if somebody in and i think we all represent i would like to say even before i got on i would tell people my goal is for us to represent the district and not just our area so but that being said but because of how we are broken up if somebody came from your area to say hey would you talk with us i would reach out to you and say this is what they're asking i would either say do you mind if i do it or do you want to come along like that and i think maybe that's i don't know i hadn't talked to either one of them about that maybe that's what we're looking at that we're looking at um saying hey this is what we would like to do what do you think because it's the area um i don't know i i don't think it's that big of a deal right now but i think that it's it's kind of a courtesy thing for i wouldn't just go to your area so that being said i was interested in getting on um i know somebody reached out to me through next door and i had i hadn't been on next door in so long in fact i had to try to figure out how to sign in i saw it i just hadn't responded um about getting on so i would what i would like and i'll know if miss how mr brown feels about it because it is both of our areas my thought also was to have one of us and somebody from a different area um a crete or money area get on the call versus um he and i or me myself or him himself and so and i don't again i'm asking i'm just asking the boy what do you think of that well may i interject this you know another thought is um you know i think we've heard before about community forums where people want to engage with the board you know would that be something that we consider moving forward so it's just not up but maybe some other you know people can participate you know scheduling something you know early spring earlier than that maybe community forum open something like that i definitely think the community forum is good because they reached out to us i definitely think that they deserve a response so i don't know but a community forum to me is a good idea tomorrow night i don't know um how you want to do it hey you could do it and with mr because mr brown said that he was going to be on it i mean i could always get on another meeting because i know they have them every wednesday and exactly you would just need the two more i don't know that i could answer any like i think you could what they're looking for i could answer the broader questions i mean it's all been said already so yeah and so to me yes i think it's good for me to get on especially being but i think that building that trust that mr brown is talking about it would be good to have a different voice from the board um other than just us two um because it could show a sign of unity it could show a sign of transparency um it so that that's what i was thinking i don't know that's why i said i would defer to you all defer to mr brown because he's um dealt with the up area from this side of the fence a little more so that's why i'm asking that i mean i'm hoping either way well i mean i think cheryl you've shown some interest mr brown you expressed some interest so if you two decide you want to call in at least there won't be more than two of us so but i'll leave it up i guess when i look at that then there's some people from the leadership side of the board as well so i think that's a strong look okay and it's not about the optics only but it's about i mean it is about being transparent and giving them but you know that's the true essence and i think it'd be good i mean i have taken the opportunity to have conversations with mr young mr piepenbrink one-on-one and so this is another opportunity for us to have a voice okay well i commit then to be on it i'm sorry go on sandy no that's okay i'm just not sure where um the ideas that mr young has is coming from um i know he's attended meetings i know he watches the meetings i feel there's been transparency i think the plan has been put out there and i don't know that he's reached out individually we represent the whole district but we each have our sub districts and i don't understand how i mean has he had conversations with you where that could have been cleared up for him or i don't know why it's gotten this far gone where we're building bill i mean there's just it's not true and i don't want that's causing just more division and it's causing stuff that doesn't it's unnecessary that's how i'm looking at all this it's unnecessary chaos of i'm gonna call it misinformation in a sense because again i feel like ken has done a great job presenting it i think us as the board has been very transparent um as far as the dome that was talked about way before i even got up you know so those questions could have been answered sooner or i don't know where this is all coming from that's my confusion on all of it i know he comes every week he seems very adamant upset about it but i think this board has proven to be very fair very and so i don't i don't know where this is coming from but like i said before if we're a board that can't trust the kids suffer that's who suffers at the end is the kids and i'm hoping we can move past that but we seem to keep reverting back to the past and we will never move forward we will never be an effective board until we can have trust and one of the classes that i attended was on that having hard discussions is the best way to lead and so if we have to have those hard discussions and that's what it's going to take but that is to me just causing more divisiveness and shining a bad light on this board and i think we've done nothing but try to be as transparent and honest and so again i don't know where it's coming from um say this to you um the one thing that i encourage you to when you look at this i wouldn't even look at it like a bad light this is a group of people's opinion everybody has their opinion everybody has their thoughts um and whether they agree with us or not it's like i've always said it it could come down to sometimes and not nothing negative toward them sometimes you just have to do it and show because as mr brown said there's yeah we we can say we want to get past the history but there is history and there people feel a certain way based off the history so basically for this for us we have to for maybe for a lack of a better term by our time and just show that we are being honest and we are being transplanted and and during this process we're going to have people say stuff we're going to have people be frustrated and question and they have a right to so i don't i don't take it as um a negative light and i don't know that you were saying that but i just say that we just look at it we hear them like mr brown said um and continue the process and if something comes of it where we change then we change and you just let people know hey we changed because of this reason but a lot of times people won't believe you till you show them because they've been they've seen different in the past yes we can say well we don't want to live in the past we're not the past boards the two things that i i hope that we do is one not 10 years from now still be talking about tearing down the dome like past boards two ten years from now not be talking about um the hurts of the past because we've shown to be different we've shown that hey we um this is what we see it this is what we're doing and we're and we're doing it because i think at the end of the day regardless of if somebody believes you if you tell them what you're going to do you do it and you're honest with what you're doing and why you're doing it and they see you do it it's not much they can say they can't say oh you're you're lying and i think that that's being huge with people are you lying to me versus okay i didn't like this i would have done it differently but this turned out nice you know so that that's what i think so we we have to just bear it granted and show ourselves um our so what we hope that they would assume good intention we just have to assume good good intention that's my thought on it and i just encourage not to look at it like you know maybe they're upset they could be but we just our job is to prove to them that we are who we say we are yeah and i don't think it's a matter of assumption i think it's a matter of fact it's a matter of fact on both sides as a matter of fact that we as a board as a whole saying we're doing all the right things and all the right things necessary to show equality and equity for the school district and then you have community members that say i don't think you're doing the right thing and we don't understand why they're like that they don't understand why we're like that so there's a gap there and we are leaders we the buck stopped right here at the board so we need to do everything in our power then reason and it sounds like some of us think we did that already but i think we could still again goes back to communication we cannot over communicate it doesn't hurt like vice president group said you know she had joined the call maybe one of each one of you could have but i saw i saw that it can happen when all of us i said that cannot happen so it doesn't hurt just have a listen in here find out what they want to say we i heard a couple times here i don't know what they want i don't know let's find out let's find out let's talk them maybe you know it could be something that's easy okay hey here's the answer wow i didn't know that we thought the letter would be a go that went out was the problem solved this is the missing piece whatever dealing it wasn't evidently it wasn't but we see it's like what more can we do we could do something we could do more because it seems like some people you know some people maybe you can't you know you can't do whatever some people are like that you know my daughter's one of my daughters is like that no matter what i do okay one of my daughters like that but these are the people that is formulating this call again mr young he's a highly intelligent young man and i'm not saying that and i think many of you probably agree with me but at the same time you're saying he's saying something that so many of us disagree with let's find out it's hard to have a dialogue he's up here presenting public comments and we cannot even engage in the comment a conversation with him because of our format here so it means itself that we have some type of one-on-one and we can get a better understanding okay any other board updates okay uh administrative updates um just one last one we're looking forward to finishing off the week here we're very i think as a collective group very glad to have a winter break come our staff and our students have been working very hard it's been a challenging fall as you all know but everyone has done just an amazing job keeping things going and so forth so we're looking forward to having a little bit of a break but we've got some plans to come back very strong in january lots of ideas and so forth so i just want to miss everyone a happy holiday well thank you same to you and same to the staff and students next up is consent agenda dr kagalanis would you read the items on the consent agenda for tonight i sure will so early here okay um under superintendent item one approved regular meeting minutes of november 16 2021 item two approve regular meeting closed session minutes of november 16 2021 approved committee of the whole meeting minutes of december 7 2021 and item 4 approved committee of the whole closed session meeting minutes of december 7th item b for business number one approved board of education financial report and i think that's it that's it so before i get a motion does any board member want to take one item remove an item from the consent agenda okay if not can i have a motion to approve the consent agenda moved second let's get we got motion then we'll have con we'll have we can have questions yeah yeah any questions or comments i'm sorry okay the financial report i think i tried to cover something i know in the past i'm sorry i know in the past we would you would disseminate to the board the account payables and individual uses usage of credit cards and all of that that seemed to stop what caused that really did i miss it or just you can't report i don't think you have the breakdown and everything i thought it was way down in the bottom like did i miss it yeah it's 64 pages long so it's got to be in there yes all right but that's those logos okay strike that 350 pages [Laughter] okay any other questions or comments on the consent agenda okay roll call please brown is an eye this is galbraith okay two things before i vote mr brown when you're speaking it's impossible to hear you turn your head away from your mind so you hear like every third word so i see what the public is saying just so you know that yeah i found the problem the switch wasn't on can you hear me better i can hear you better but when you're talking and you move your head you don't hear you when you move away from wherever your mind gets sick you can't hear you get it i will be more aware of that and try to i just don't want to lose anything no not at all somebody keeps their mic done and they keep talking and so you're blocking out what the person is saying that's talking just so you know that i think that would be me okay [Laughter] well we can't see what wrong doing you're doing okay and it's a good thing you can't now let's see what the public is talking about when they say how hard it is to hear now it's experiencing math and i'm i'm just letting you guys know what i know okay that was definitely definitely my fault and i take responsibility of it okay dr hall before i vote you see how innovative i am so you can hear me right all right perfectly doctor hall thank you very much okay we're gonna get through this all right mr sowalis hi mrs walters aye vice president rue aye president albrecht aye motion carries next up is action reports uh first up business can i get a motion to approve the 2021 tax levy and resolution moved second any questions or comments on the tax levy okay roll call please brown is an eye dr hall aye mr swanless aye mrs walters aye mrs galbraith vice president rupert aye president albrecht aye motion carries next up uh can i have a motion to approve the resolution authorizing the submission of an application for property tax relief pool fund moved second any questions or comments on this item okay hearing none roll call please mrs walters aye mr swaalis hi dr hall aye brown isn't i mrs galbraith sorry sound like you didn't want to say that bro this is galbraith again president albert aye motion carries uh next item can i get a motion to approve the fiscal year 2021 audit moved second any questions or comments just yay so very good excellent job thank you so um what roll call brown is an eye mrs galbraith hi mr sawalis hi dr hall aye mrs walters aye vice president root aye president albrecht aye motion carries um next item approval resolution authorizing crete money school district 201u to adopt the teachers retirement system of the state of illinois supplement savings plan that's in quotes the supplemental savings plan by entering into an employee employer participation agreement with the teachers retirement system of the state of illinois second so can i just by us by entering into this plan it allows the teachers to make contributions into the plan but it's not the district at this point isn't doing any match or any contribution no no it's not if uh you're exactly right it gives the teachers the option it's an optional program there is no cost to the district the only way there would be if the district decided to match but that would have to be negotiated through the union okay okay thank you any other questions okay roll call brown is an eye mrs galbraith hi mr sewallis aye dr hall aye mrs walters aye vice president rupert aye president albrecht aye motion carries next up under action reports is personnel and culture can i get a motion to approve the personnel report including approval of the certified staff leave of absence return from leave of absence reassignment and resignation and educational support staff employment leave of absence reassignment and resignation moved second are there any questions on the personnel report okay we'll call brown is an eye dr hall aye ms mrs galbraith mrs walters aye mr sawalis hi vice president rupert aye president albrecht aye motion carries um next up is old business any old business uh i do i want to know if you can get me mr hollyfield's contact information email whatever thank you this is this is more of a general question regarding our short-term facility plan guys henry okay as far as some of the fees i did give our business manager hits up that i was going to ask questions in this areas in this area regarding fees that was assessed upon us by our architect and i just needed a little bit more clarity on the fees excuse me while i put on my other pair of headlights here okay over my existing glasses okay so can our architect slash engineer that's the 8.5 yes okay the other fees and services four percent and you might have said this and you know but i got a chance to really digest this over the last several weeks uh the other fees and services what does that consist of sure so let let me first touch on the mayonnaise yes so the school district does have a contract with healy vendor and associates yes that contract uh originally was in 2004 then it was again amended in 2008 and there are certain parts of that contract that charge certain amount of fees depending on the type of facility that is built whether it is a new school whether it is a addition or whether it is just remodeling and there are fees associated with the various costs of that all right when the contract was amended in 2008 the original contract from 2004 admitted to 2008 the amendment was the percentage of fees that are charged was reduced from about 9 to 8.5 for remodeling old buildings everything else stays the same you have three categories but that will change okay so here's what i'm going to tell the board i've got some good news for you also when we started the short-term facility plan when that was started back in august september when i was working on that at the same time i was talking to our architect and i said you know i wouldn't mind trying to renegotiate your fees at the same time i will tell you that healy vendor and i go back about 20 years to be honest with you you know and that i do them from supreme's district so they agreed now to do the work that is going to take place in the summer of 22 the summer 23 december 24 for 7.75 by two percent that includes the engineering fee too because we're talking about so let me explain that so their p that eight point five percent of where it says a and e fees which is architected engineering right is not only for healing vendors also for the engineers millions of engineering that they use when they're debugging all of their plans and that so it's kind of a combination fee where keeley bender hires them as a consultant that pays part of that percentage so the percentage that we're going to be paying on our summer construction is actually going to be it's not going to be 8.5 it's actually going to be 7.95 it's going to save the district overall about somewhere between 300 to 400 000 throughout the life but it's something that i negotiated back in october with them um i didn't want to change them but i'll be real honest with you i just didn't want to change any of these numbers just because then it started changing bond numbers and all that stuff and i didn't want to do anything like that but again that's just money that this is going to save it'll save the bank if we don't spend it at all and so again i think that's good news for our district that we're able to save some money then the other fees and services of four percent those are other things that may be needed within a project uh things like there we may have to do an inspection of something or we may have to do some additional asbestos removal um a lot of times that percentage is not in new construction because new construction is usually a lot easier to to bid and to cost out because everything's new but when it comes to old things and i'll give an example when we started remodeling this facility we found that we needed to spend an additional 50 to 60 thousand dollars in asbestos abatement because they started knocking down laws when we found these fences and so we had to do that now there's money in here for that but again one of the i i am able to use some of the esser funds for that also so it's just dumping into some pods so so that four percent is in there is going to be used i don't know that but it's there if it's not used it stays in the bank okay okay so you're going to monitor that we monitor that all along we have weekly gains we monitor that and utilize you know whatever pot of money you have to utilize if something comes up yes okay hurry then you talk about you have on their contingencies when it comes to design bidding and construction the total totals about 10 yeah construction price now all of these i should go back and say also all of these percentages are paid are are on your construction cost you know so whatever your construction cost is that's how these percentages are are figured that your totals are bigger so design contingencies are used in the designing of something if something was missed when they designed something especially again this number is in there because you're remodeling buildings and you have some buildings that quite honestly are 50 60 70 years old and you don't know what you're going to get on some of these things so there's some things in here that could be missed in the design that may be either the architect or the engineering firm can miss all along so there's about two percent of of your construction cost that is in there from that the bidding contingency is we're estimating the cost and the bids come in a little bit higher we've got some room in there that we can do something so there's some bidding contingencies in there and the last one is your construction contingency which again you get into construction you may have some additional costs to club like a change order in this facility we started doing construction then we noticed that the bathrooms and we honestly didn't catch it we know some bathrooms didn't have drains in the floor so he said all right we're ripping up we're ripping up the bathrooms why don't we just put the drains in right away so that was an additional change order comes out of your construction contingency again if those amounts aren't used they stay in the bank they're not used now i i will tell you that uh 10 that's about 10 contingencies um i think that's going to be tight i honestly do i i'm more comfortable especially on the remodel especially remodel of older buildings that we're looking at somewhere between 15 and 20 but i think we're packaging this whole thing so i think 10 is going to be adequate um and it's just you know just to sharpen our pencil with all of this stuff i think also when we looked at doing the engineering and the design we go into new piping at csk delmar crate we've already done it here so we had some you know we went through some pains here so that we kind of picked that up so it's going to kind of lessen the use of a contingency in that so i'm pretty comfortable with that okay so that kind of gives you an idea so for every project we've added those costs in there brian and i brian our assistant business manager and i have already established accounts for every project so we'll know exactly how much we're spending on certain projects and we did that for last summer too but we split up the cost in different accounts so we know exactly what we spend at talala versus dlc and all of quite a bit uh with this and thank you so much for getting back to me on that now one last question i had and i'm still struggling with this is that we have a description in quite a few of the areas in schools where it has the architect doing the work the architect is building us estimated costs for example and i'm just just i just happened to be on this page crete elementary school for the architectural work of three million five hundred thousand dollars right okay and under all of the description costs you got a total value there these are non-life safety issues and then the fees are assessed on that total value so how it sounds like the architect is double dipping here he's double dipping on his own work so he's performing the work he did he charged a fee of the work he performed so that's why i'm trying to i know there's a reason behind this but i just can't grasp it sure all of the work that he does comes out of that fee there that's the most he's not going to be double dipping on that so those estimates that you'll see in the long list of projects are really the construction cost estimates those are the estimates that they've come up between both the engineer and the architect to determine the project cost or i shouldn't say the project the construction cost and then his fees are separated out down at the bottom so so so just say for example the architect the architectural work is going to be the design he's designing he's getting prints and all of that he does x amount of dollars of work that's under the description so now you got the aggregate of all the numbers with the description come up with come up with a number and now his fees is going to be a percentage of that aggregate aggregate number right no that's not that's not what i'm seeing no his fees are going to be that's what that um i think this one so we got the architect whatever work he does is three million some odd dollars that's totaled up that's total right to that architect work he's doing some work whatever it is he's doing work all of this stuff is working all that all right okay so the architectural drawings or whatever and that comes up to a price well i'm sorry okay yeah my bad so architect architectural work yes actually the construction architectural construction work that is being done in the building so let me give you an example if we're going to put hvac here and that we put a rooftop unit in if we have to put any support up there to support that unit that's under architecture ah okay okay that's that's that was getting okay yeah okay it's not additional fees okay okay so his ass found drawings and all of that that's in the fees that's all included in his ap got it yeah okay that was it that was a missingness that's now 7.95 and hey are we on a roll and um including monitoring the construction process too he does all of that too and that's all included in his feed okay great and we did ask for a separate project manager or whoever gets this we did put out a rfq for another project manager someone to assist keith also yes monitoring i did not get any replies for that so we're reaching out to some other people and seeing if i can use any of my networking to find somebody and to submit some qualifications to see if they can do something got it okay thank you so much i appreciate it no problem all right that's all i have any other old business um i've just got one item actually something for board members now i'm my mic's back on um i have one item and just something for i'll ask board members to think about over the break since we have been meeting consistently in person and we have a quorum we are no longer required to have public comment available to be submitted via email and i'd like to go back to having people in person submit their public comments so anyways think about that and we can bring that back up at the january committee the whole meeting get a consensus on that so uh that's all i have any any other old business how about new business okay and we don't have a need for closed session tonight okay can i get a motion to adjourn so moved sorry second all in favor say aye aye all opposed we are adjourned
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i pledge allegiance to supply 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 all right i'd like to thank you folks for attending future board meetings uh january 11th 2022 and that will also be our reorganizational meeting before the finance meeting and uh regular meeting and organizational uh january 25th at uh six o'clock here and february 8th at uh six o'clock here the only division to the agenda we have is under the hr report and so we'll move on to public recognition a recommendation to approve a 135 504 donation from brighter futures indiana build learn growth stabilization grant for metro north elementary total north preschool i also have a recommendation to approve a 51 847 donation from brighter futures indiana build grow learn build learn to grow stabilization grant for southwood elementary little knights preschool and a recommendation to approve a 100 donation for southwood elementary robotics club from jake and donna and i believe that is the donations i don't think i have to check with this more on this so i'll make sure to approve it also i'm going to show the second to approve the uh donations all in favor say all right all right so we'll move on to school recognition we'll do the other schools and then i'll turn it over to mrs moore and then after she does hers for metro north we will go ahead and go to our main event which is a spotlight tonight so i'll start out though with uh south floyd junior senior high school uh this is from mr mcdaniel the southwest junior senior high community would like to recognize jason of priestic and cole weiner for making the indiana football coaches association class 1a junior all-star team way to go guys also from miss knee uh band inquired uh director at southwood great job this weekend to ethan lockhart and dakota wilson at the ball state honor band performance our two students worked the entire day with high schoolers from all around indiana did a wonderful job at the evening concert thank you to ball state university school of music faculty for hosting this educational event for our students and another one from southwood the southwest community would like to thank mrs goman and the heist the english department for organizing a theatrical experience for our junior high students right in time for the holiday season students were able to view a production of a christmas carol what a great way to get into the holiday spirit and finally from southwood we would like to recognize mrs mccordrick for organizing the deca the door holiday celebration staff members and students decorated doors throughout the building thank you mrs mccordrey staff and students for helping to us to get to the holiday spirit and for northfield i just got one that just came in so it's not on my list here but this is from coach rex reimer from a obviously he's our coach basketball at northfield so it's from looks like an ihs official i just received it so i haven't read it yet so hopefully i can read it just wanted to say thank you for the opportunity to work for both of you and i think that means that was the peru yes that was a prune norfolk game so both of you would be both coaches rex and eric from peru this past saturday evening aaron tyrone and i had a great time both teams showed great sportsmanship and we're very respectful to each other i wish you both a safe and successful season and look forward to working for you again have a merry christmas and that's from justin markle and obviously we know we we hear about a lot of these which is very very good because we know how competitive people are and sometimes our emotions get in the way um and so it's great to see that they were very respectful to each other so we appreciate that so moving on with other ones from northfield thank you to mr johnston and his choir students for putting on an excellent christmas choir concert on friday december 3rd mrs ster johnson has been working hard in his first year at northfield with our choir students and we appreciate his work at sharp creek and norfolk also from northfield congratulations to the following nhs football players eli crowe and jacob steiner eli made first-team junior all-state punter for class 1-8 jacob snyder made first-team linebacker for class 1a so congratulations on a great season also from norfolk thanks to student council and keep club for working together to find activities for students this week so or so before christmas break the two clubs worked great together to create a fun safe and festive environment during the holiday season and this is from northfield ins sharp creek congratulations to the norfolk district students that were the scholars of the quarter for the community foundation walrus county the awards were given for academic skills persistence positive peer leadership citizenship and personal responsibility at school shark creek fourth grader charlotte harrington uh sharp creek fifth grader chase frost northfield seventh grader milly higgins and norfolk eighth grader braden rice will all receive an award certificate small prize as well as a 25 in their early award scholarship funds also uh yes this had a new one just come in that was northfold right so southwood and elementary and also south of elementary congratulations to the southwest district students that were the scholars of the quarter for the community foundation walters county the awards are given for academic skills persistence positive leadership citizenship and personal responsibility at school so south of elementary fourth grader beth holly for how fifth grade greater harley heiner southern elementary sixth grader alex getz southwood high school seventh grade at brooke farr southwood high school eighth grader sophie tumble will all receive an award certificate small prize as well as 25 in the early award scholarship funds so i'm glad we have so many but i talk too fast and i need another drive now so now this is morning [Music] all right um so in november we had nine metro north artists featured at the winter banner reception at the hunting hall along with mrs gray and those artists were liam athens merrick eliza water willow foster brooklyn bernie brogan kendall case isaac davis and macy white men and then we had two banner winners for metro north liam aiken was the kindergarten winner across the county and then brooklyn lutheran was this metro family winner and their banners are hanging down on friday night we had our second robotics league for elementary at south squid elementary and our metro north team is now second graders which is a whole new challenge and exciting they have no fear when it comes to their driving and um it was their first time to participate in the week the first week we went and we just watched because it's very overwhelming and then they got to drive on friday night and one of our teams is ranked first in the league and so we were pretty excited about that we showed up and they drove well and did great and our team members are um brady laner rich mcphillips titus dawes stephen king connor crumb william phillip faye leffert kaitlyn left bernie and olivia and um i also want to mention erica tyson and amy schmidt and i know there are others i'm just not sure who they are that help organize that it's a huge undertaking and they just are completely critical of their own work and reflective and every time it's better and better so they are greatly appreciated um in november we had our metro north family and on which is always a great event we had over 200 students and their families come back on for an evening just fun activities and games and of course we have our book fair open and our theme was all about our favorite books and our favorite characters and the staff dressed up and it's just a lot of fun and great to see our families in our building again having a good time and then lastly before we go to our spotlight i want to recognize our kindergarten team and half of them are here every year it is an annual tradition and they didn't know that i was talking about this so kindergarten ornament day is a huge annual tradition at metro north i know we decorated our christmas tree at moore household preston drags out that shoebox and it is full of ornaments that he made in kindergarten and our gym is 12 ish a dozen yeah um they convert our gym overnight into like a little ornament santa making workshop there is more glue and glitter and paint that you could ever imagine [Music] and parent volunteers and the kids just make their way around the gym making all these ornaments they've got a little check sheet that they wear and it's just exciting to see and it looks seamless and it's because of the work that these ladies put in hours upon hours probably weeks like start planning halloween they were looking at the christmas tree before the meeting to see if there were any ornament ideas that they could borrow for next year so they do an amazing job and it's just a box full of memories that each of our kids gets to take home and i'd just like to piggyback a little bit on the actual robotics um friday night there were 16 teams i know we have older students that go different places too 16 teams it was nice to give me back into person and another thing that i had fun with mrs moore actually had a little bit of practice prior to the friday evening event and i watched them and then they actually let me try it too which is fun but then when we went to south with their very first um competition they did very very well and i didn't see other ones but the very first one was great so mrs moore is actually the coach of that robotics team so that's why they're in first place right now all right well at this time if i could have and mr great you will actually do the picture mrs moore this apparel this is uh i mean this yeah it's just okay yes that is yes i was looking at my this so today we have mrs elsie is going to be our spotlight and i will go ahead and let you mrs moore share with the two people that actually um uh recommended her and they're not gonna get a little bit for you so this is great so why don't you tell a little well it's all is so deserving of the south spotlight she goes above and beyond each and every day recently she stepped outside of the comfort zone and took on a 12-week maternity leave in preschool which is not an easy task by any means and i will add that it was the third or fourth week of school yeah so right after labor day so just getting started um to most people that would be quite daunting but becca not only was willing to take on that new role she excelled at it i'm so grateful to her for taking care of my class and giving me peace of mind even though that meant she had to momentarily step away from her normal position which i know she loves she's not afraid to jump in and help or she is needed becca is nothing but compassionate kind and caring every new challenge she is presented with she gives 110 and never complains about it becca is one of the most kind-hearted friends co-workers and teachers that i know and she deserves all the recognition she can get and that was his friend mrs cassie carroll who was the teacher on maternity leave and then jessica hawley wrote kind compassionate willing to help in any way possible and hardworking these words describe becca elsie becca has a heart that only wants what is best for a child her heart shines not only in our building but outside of our building as well this is evident with all the way she volunteers around our community i feel blessed to work with such an amazing person becca is more than deserving of our staff so i would ask are you ready so everything you do you do at a level that is beyond exceptional and um becca does not like to take credit for her work in fact she likes to do that work and then slowly slip away the spotlight is not good on me but your work is greatly recognized and very appreciative very appreciated and you touch more little lies than you will ever know um and just empower young people and everything that she does she does with great love and in a way that you would want your own children treated by those things this person have to love our kids and um the other thing that i will add talk about stepping outside your comfort zone is that becca has i guess um because of that preschool experience she has decided to pursue finishing her degree in early childhood and starting that in january so a couple more things thank you very much so on the card says congratulations because you have dreamed big and worked hard we figured you might like a soft place to rest thank you for doing what you do so well staff spotlight so you can see what's in there something's wrong so anyway thank you very much and congratulations there we go so i want you to get a picture with us two of them congratulations thank you and you may stay or you may leave so it's up to you thanks for coming guys thank you okay at this point we will move to the public comment period for the items only so but you guys if you have anything you'd like to say about our agenda or facebook live i'm sure they're a little behind but we'll give them a minute or so i can say i'm supportive of new business item number two [Laughter] brilliant facebook all right moving on to consent agenda items uh looking for approval minutes from our last meeting on november 23rd motion and second to approve the minutes of our last meeting november 23rd all in favor say aye all right moving on to financials claims claims are very typical next payroll you should see a increase because we did all the tag dollars that we received from the state we passed those on to our teaching staff so that will increase payroll a little bit on the next december 15th yeah which is tomorrow [Laughter] well he's already addressed payroll you want to say it again um [Music] uh end of the month balances from november that just kind of gives you an idea of where we stand at the end of the month the cash flow then that leads into those gives you also the end of november with the december estimates there so you can kind of see where we're anticipated to end not much is going to be different i don't believe in the month of december that's not already on there one thing that we i will know tomorrow is we will have a reconciliation in our basic grant for our cte and honors dollars that that will go into effect into there so that could be a slight increase or decrease in the basic tuition support we also had our december 1 account for special education i don't think we have solid final numbers on what that will be but that obviously will have an effect on basic grant either positive or negative depending on whether that was an increase or decrease in special ed students that won't take effect until february's pay and basic tuition support so what's up there is a very good estimate of what part end of the year will look like for 2021 and then i'll start working on here shortly operations uh same thing there um again not much has changed that's a pretty status quo uh as we go across there we do pay a lot of bills in december we'll have a lot of our bigger payments with some of our debt service uh payments coming in the end of december uh those type of things so nothing uncommon one thing i wanted to highlight in there mike and this kind of leads into one of our new business topics if you scroll up you can see um at the very bottom there for november a 57 000 revenue into operations that is uncommon for us that is our dollars that were received from our insurance company for the total of the activity bus that happened about a month ago or so and so that money obviously will be used to replace and purchase a activity bus if you vote either always good this time here at least for me to see that growth the cte dollars chris that's going to be increased where the funding was increased a little bit or you said you didn't know the funding is the funding i believe was increased it's it's the dollars i received mainly from students that attend heartland uh even though we do have some cte courses that we offer within our own traditional schools so that student count based off of the program they're taking will generate a certain amount of dollars and dollars per student didn't necessarily go up right now okay so really it's a matter of the number of students and what of course they're going to go through yeah so that could increase or decrease but we will now receive those new dollars for the new year based off of those enrollments but that's all tied into our basic grant it's still all based on first semester also yeah so any new students that come next we don't get in college which there is they are doing a second count in the second semester but it will not be tied to anything financially at this point in time kind of like special ed especially it also does account in the spring as well but it's not tied to anything financial um at this point historically do we gain or lose it for which one yeah enrollment for a special and that's just based off of our traditional that's just based off of our basic grant dollars any other questions all right thank you we'll move on to personnel under resignation we have carrie haytrap athletic secretary southwood high school and chad weiger custodian at montgomery high school under employment of katie harwood cook at southwood elementary patsy r with cook at southwood high school madeline daisy paraprofessional at metro north elementary tonya boone head track coach of southwood high school steve swenson head baseball coach at southwood high school kyle aderman ninth grade boys basketball at northfield high school heather hayden head track coach at northland high school and kyle france head softball coach at norfolk high school and then employee number 131 is under our leave from and you see the dates there through the end of the year all right heartland career center report we'll have a meeting tomorrow i'll be able to give you a better update okay superintendent supporters yeah i just want to say it's really kind of unbelievable that we are to this point already and finishing up this semester and actually being about 20 21 months into a pandemic and so again just want to thank all of our staff for the additional tasks and challenges that they have um and we continue to have and um wish everybody a merry christmas as we uh take a little little break um not for all staff members some staff members continue to work over the break but a lot of our educational staff will have a couple weeks to regenerate and be ready for uh january 3rd i believe 2022 so thanks to all them curriculum report mr greg well let me tell you we have wrapped up our istep testing and for those you keeping track this senior class is the last class that needs to take istep to graduate so i think as a district we tested maybe 20 seniors who hadn't passed yet we needed it to graduate we have another window come up in february which is good because as we're recognizing staff if you guys don't know the name shirley haynes you need to put her on your christmas tree that lady is amazing she collects all of our data and submits it to the state and so that helps with the enrollment and all the things that dr finn was talking about but it also helps with my testing and the department of education is uh full of bureaucracy uh multiple steps to get to one little location and they are trying to make everything be seamless now and it's an automatic every night pool which sounds really good theoretically but in actuality they are months behind and reports of data and so shirley has done a great job of trying to help us get those kids to be tested because they have to be correct in their system before we can do ours and so um wrapping up istep and we are preparing for our leader tests in the spring that's what we give our el students which right now is district we're at about nine pl students across the district that's including the whites and bridge students so that is for uh you know students that are mostly spanish-speaking from you know other countries that kind of i do have sap data and psat data they just released dennis on compiling that and i hope to get that to you guys here shortly um we tested all of the seniors that wanted to test in the fall actually mentioned that academic honors grant fund honors diploma is just students that earn when we get monies back as part of our base and so we use some of those funds to help pay for those seniors to take the sat you know who need it for your graduation for college and so we we have their data this year we tested all sophomores of course and some juniors with psat and we even moved it down to the eighth graders and ninth graders and so we tested some groups of our eighth and ninth figures with the psat because the state released a grant to cover those costs and so we did not force all of them to take that because it didn't really fit all of their needs but we didn't encourage something i hope to have that data i'm going to come back probably in late january moving on to new business the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund has our six-month requirement to do a review and recommendation to approve uh our re-entry plan and basically prove that we're not going to make any changes so that re-entry point yes and so really this is just an ester requirement that every six months we'll bring this back and obviously public comment is also something that can happen um but it's already in our agenda so we don't have to worry about that but that's part of the requirement that there is public uh comment if anyone wishes and that goes along with um number four of our agenda of course and then of course at the very end um number uh actually number 10.
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[Music] you breathe um tonight um we welcome guests tonight thank you for joining us and so um that's really the centerpiece of this meeting tonight in addition to other reports from leadership leaders and our subcommittees and uh elementary schools um the centerpiece is really talking about the preliminary budget tonight and two questions and those first numbers and as a reminder that budget process is an iterative process over several months this is just the starting point for that budget and then um but there will be changes in the budget refinements and things will get prioritized those numbers will shift as we go uh so let's start with the pledging leadership [Music] for all um [Music] consent agenda which has a number of items in it uh payroll payable warrants school committee meeting uh school committee events and executive sessions november 9th the election subcommittee meeting policy subcommittee meeting hands and do we have a motion to accept the consent agenda one second uh so communications does anyone have any communications to report physical tonight i just want to comment on a few things in our shared drive i put in open meeting law guidance recent guidance from the attorney general's office so this will can be to read and consider there's one parent email which jeff and i are working with like i should be raised um i attended the berlin select board meeting um and that was a useful visit and uh um interesting to get to talk with them selectmen but in particular they offered an invitation for us to join them for their coffee talk coming up in january 20th uh regarding the election the original elections so i've discussed that with the election subcommittee they'll be discussing the ascent to that um and we'll organize that follow-up i'll be in touch back with the selector i attended a cpap meeting on december 6 where karen did a great presentation on around the individual disabilities should always remember have to take the acronym apart individual disabilities you talk about ideas yeah individual disability education connect yeah um she did a great presentation that's worth watching online if you get a check is it online here um the powerpoint is i think uploaded okay i hope so because that was worthwhile you did a great job and um it would be great for other people to get to see that um also the cpap um council was looking for more involvement from berlin parents and boys and parents on that council and then some of their activities so please put the word up your ear to the ground if you can direct anybody over there to get involved with their projects they would welcome that and last i attended the parent math workshop in the morning um how do you say his name yes which was was wonderful i was really glad to see this and a lot of those are going to continue and i would encourage uh parents of the elementary students in particular to take those in as they can cover you know their small nights but they're useful um use eye-opening kinds of reviews of how math instruction has changed since you were in school and it would be helpful for you to work with your children knowing some of the things that he's sharing so that's worthwhile all right so we're going to move right into reports and get on to the presentation [Music] and we're doing some research um any other questions or okay so um i just want to join your attention first to the um um i want to stop by saying don't panic over there on the sidelines um you typically don't do it this way most of the time the public and school committee even they don't see all of these numbers that we have here for us we sort of pair things down before we bring it down and the reason why we've done it this way a couple reasons one um you're a new school committee and so yeah as you know we may have commended to educate you as we go along talk to you about the budget process from the ground up and how it gets developed [Music] so that's the first thing the other thing is that as we as we start working through these i don't know if i want to say close pandemic budgets um you know we think it would be negligent not to show you um in a community that the entire student needs and we realize that a child may not have and then we go from there you know these we get requests from the towns all the time they do their calculations and they figure out to calculate what what the town capacity is and we understand that we try to work within those and within the um the policy of the school committee and i just want to bend loaded up in the drive like policy dvd budget planning excuse me the very first slide says the first priority in the development of the annual budget will be the education of the culture of our children and our schools however the district will attempt to balance the valid interest of the and you know our job as a school district is to make sure that we we procedurally do what the school committee policy is to do if you look at if you look if you look through the packet you'll see that the theme the dean of this budget is an investment in people investing in our personnel so you'll see very little investment in this budget applications concrete things computers things of that sort which usually do appear and we came to this conclusion because we had some time this year to stop looking over the last 18 to 24 months when it's been done and two things really came from one of them is that the district improvement plan which is what we work off and generate a budget from but the school improvement plan come from that's what all of our goals are developed is very fragmented we know partly that because while we saw how valeria you were when we were presenting it because we know that you know as a committee you really didn't have a hand in it you developed it and you didn't vote and i'll talk about that in a second but the other thing was um we found that there's an enhanced need for personnel to work with our students to work on the parking anxiety the depression all of these things that have come to light and being covered enough now that's not to say we didn't have this stuff before but just like coping with a person if you have something in you you have asthma it will it will take advantage of that so all of those things that we saw before in the district have just now been enhanced and so the need for additional personnel to deal with the social emotional need and to continue to expand the program in the district is really critical so um what we plan to do for the future going forward here this year is on starting in march we will develop a new district between a three-year sort of transitional different improvement plan we usually start the process around march so it'll be you know around the time we're figuring out this budget and then you know we'll finish it up in the summer and and bring it to this school community for both so that you can have some ownership of them you know you don't you didn't believe you really had ownership of the plan we were working on and they get very fragmented see how many callers are on it i have been made and even we have some trouble following that so we'll have a new plan um many of the budget items or the budget items that don't make it through on this budget the ones here they're still important but you'll see them again in the new the three-year district they'll appear some place there and they'll be prioritized so you'll get to actually see them again and ask questions about it again [Music] um so tonight though we're going to present the budget as it's written here your consideration and your discussion [Music] um we'll take questions tonight and we've provided brief explanations of each of the items which we usually don't do so we'll expand on that a little bit more and obviously the principles together the directors together they can they can answer questions we decide to present it like we do the district improvement plan because we really are trying to tie all of this together the budget with the district approving plan and for it to reflect the needs of our students you know we realize at the end of the day that we'll have to make some cuts that the towns don't have the capacity for for these kind of percentages um but i will tell you we you know in 2019 when i presented the enrollment reports some of the trends of building building building in these towns and um some of the trends in enrollment and birth rate exams the first time in the last 10 years that the average has changed at the birth rate example in blessings has gone up from 35 to 42.
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see this that's a guy you good evening everyone and welcome to the greater lawrence technical district school committee december 14 2021. sue can you give me a roll call miss fitzgerald miss disla miss morata mr lamontagne president miss mamo and mr cirillo president we all rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag and stand stay standing for a moment of silence 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 um before we get started this is angel's official last meeting um i want to thank you for everything you've done for the committee and we would like to present you with this plaque um there's a superintendent would like to read it uh to angebel moretta in appreciation for your outstanding years of service and dedication to greater lawrence regional vocational technical school district committee january from january 2020 to december 2021 angels [Applause] let's go oh wait what do you mean we're not doing a group one yeah come on jerry you're a member the t-shirts of the future i want to i want just to do in the middle of the video angie bell on behalf of all the students being a graduate and reggie yourself it's pretty special to have a graduate on the school committee so it's been an honor to have you and as for in terms of our students our staff myself thank you very much for all that you have done for our students in our school the last two years as a member thank you very much it's been an honor to be here and i've learned a lot so i'm grateful for this experience thank you um next order of business approval of the minutes for of november 23rd 2021 so moved second close silicon call miss fitzgerald yes miss disler miss morata mr lamontagne miss mamo and mr cirillo yes um next sort of business financial reports jerry cash balance report sure cash balance report as of december 7 2021 count balance on november 16 2021 was 1 million 501 514 66.
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um i'll let you all know that uh as is the case on the this first meeting in december we have an election of officers uh that took place prior to closed session and during that time i have the distinct honor of being elected as the president to serve as president of the school board for this next year board member uh tabrina beau was elected as the vice president and board member cruz gonzalez was elected as the board clerk and so with that um i do want to just take a moment and thank you board member ariana for the the just the time and the dedication uh over the course of this past year that you served as president of the zeus university school district board of education this continues to be as as we reflect on just what what these years have been a challenging time and you led us nonetheless through many many conversations and and many items and issues that we needed to address and so i wanted to present this which is a gavel that is presented to you that's presented to gabriela arianis in appreciation for your dedication and service as board president of the azusa unified school board december 15 2020 through november 30th on that note i would like us to move to item 4.1 which is our flag salute and damien garcia from sierra high school uh looks like he's here with us how are you doing damian i'm doing good go ahead go ahead and take it away i can't really see myself so i can't see um if you guys can see the flag in the back oh there it is we can see it all right i would ask if everyone could please stand out and put their right hand over their heart and kindly listen as i recite the pledge of allegiance um 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 so much damian were you able to stay dry today yeah how about warm oh yeah i stayed in my classrooms the heaters were working today okay i love it love to hear well thank you so much damon for leading us in the flax salute have a great night you too thank you for having me okay moving on then to item 4.2 roll call we have uh board member rodriguez pena president board member vice president uh sabrina beau here board member gabriella ariana i am definitely here board member sheila and cruz is uh running a little behind she'll be joining us and i am here moving on to item 4.3 which is approval of the agenda uh we is there a motion to approve the agenda there we are looking to pull the item fourteen point three from the agenda another motion to approve motion to approve 14.3 and pulling 14 i'm sorry 4.3 and pulling 14.3 from the agenda second any discussion okay then we'll go ahead and move to a vote okay so the motion passes four to one abstinent moving on to item 5.0 report action of closed session matters uh we have nothing to report um moving on to 6.0 recognition and awards and 6.1 specifically recognition of student board member uh we'd like to use this opportunity to thank hannah hamilton she's not joining us here this evening i don't see her here do we have hannah online i don't think she's online uh i think she did stipulate that she was gonna be here so we're not maybe she's running late okay so in in her honor uh we want to present her with this certificate she served as the the first sitting student school board member of this year and will be transitioning she's transitioning out of her role as a sitting member a joint that joins us in our school board meetings and we do want to honor her and so i have a certificate here it says azusa unified school district certificate of recognition is proudly presented to hannah hamilton for her service as a 2021 student board representative on the azusa unified school district board of education um and we have uh dated today december 14th 2021.
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knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you i just wanted to comment on that briefly because just a little over a month ago there was a study published online in the journal um science it was co-authored by a professor in seas and it it the analysis shows that um indigenous peoples in the united states have um lost 98.9 of their historical land base since the european settlers first came to the united states and more than 40 percent of tribes um from those historical periods possess no federally recognized land and um in it's rel this is relevant also um in the context of this meeting because a top line finding of the study was that because of systematic land disposition dispossession um enforce migration that indigenous peoples here in the united states um have much higher vulnerabilities due to climate change and i just wanted to mention that um we read the land acknowledgement every meeting but we often don't really stop to recognize what the implications are for the people that have been displaced so um next on our agenda is um the land acknowledgement er excuse me we just did that um the roll call excellent let me just transition over just a reminder please state where you're calling from missy one thing um i just got a text from someone listening and it says the ctn um feed is glitching sounds like a fireworks factory underwater ctn is with us and i think they know okay okay very good yeah apologies for that is nothing i think any of us on this line can do same yes okay uh please uh state where you're calling in from chair mursky calling it john mursky present uh calling from my home in ann arbor commissioner hook um commissioner mccomber uh bridgette makumber calling from my home in ann arbor commissioner clevy let me just check really quick and make sure uh yeah he's not in yet okay he said he was going to try to dial in by phone okay well then i'll check i'll check that i'll need a separate minute to go and see if i see him commissioner sorry uh yes i am participating from my home in ann arbor vice chair colvin garcia uh president um calling in from ann arbor commissioner mccoy present um and i'm in state college pennsylvania thank you commissioner george present from lansing michigan i'm having some uh visual difficulties so i'm gonna see if i can work that out but that's why i'm off camera at this time thank you commissioner kerber president i'm in auburn washington you uh commissioner overpack i am present uh calling in from my home in ann arbor mr juno president arbor thank you commissioner stevenson uh councilmember rodina president here in ann arbor thank you councilmember briggs here in ann arbor okay great and then uh if we want to go on i'll check and see if commissioner cleavy's with us you have a quorum regardless uh just for all the other commissioner's knowledge um commissioner hook um indicated that he was traveling on business at this time and that's why he's not able to join us tonight so we have an agenda that's posted on legistar um and i'm i would appreciate it if we can have a motion to uh accept the agenda as posted and then a second can i get a motion to do so so moved by council member radina a second from someone from commissioner mccoy all those in favor say aye and raise your hand i all those opposed any abstentions passes unanimously um we also um have minutes that were posted from our last meeting those are also on legistar could i similarly have a motion to approve the minutes as posted and a second again moved by uh council member radina and seconded by commissioner mccoy all those in favor say aye bye all those opposed so we now move to public input as mentioned this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn call enter the 888-788-0099-487-853-5247 id 937-6751-6819 this information is also displayed in the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one by indicating the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand 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 when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments caller ending in 660.
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i don't like this yeah but i'll keep you posted on that but at least with this next year that's that's the main one that we're talking about right and once again that's something that'll depend a lot on enrollment how many people are interested but they are planning on advertising that heavily this coming spring are most of our programs or your programs dual enrollment credit the when they come to the college campus they get college credit for every single class so it's somewhere between and 14 community college credits that they earn so if they take some academic classes on the site dual enrollment or during the summer they can easily have their two-year degree but that's not for everybody this is an intense program just to get through the 44 to 48 community college credits that they do with us for two years but your robotics class is one example yes blue ridge yes you have yes you have several that are receiving dual enrollment the last time i checked blue ridge had the most dual enrollment of any high school on the mountain i apologize i don't have any numbers there because that's wordle i'm not privy to the dual enrollment side of that ledger but but i do know that you were leading admin for years i can't imagine you're not still in the top of that list awesome yeah thank you thank you thank you matt if there's no more questions we'll just let you go and look forward to hearing from you next time thank you thanks matt next item on the agenda is uh dr wright i'm gonna let you take care of that one thank you sir thank you judy j and estes donated 616 dollars worth of materials for reading and we're doing this as a procedure she doesn't want the recognition but we we're going to recognize you anyway jane especially for decades of dedicated service within the reading program so think you can stand up judy if you would if you're gonna kill me later but let's there she is thank you and then you're on the agenda later too you're on the agenda later too so don't don't get comfortable sitting [Laughter] thank you jane all right next item on the agenda is donations of mattresses and bed frames for the blue ridge professional housing donated by mountain mattress for the amount of twelve hundred and eighty six dollars dr right now explain what that is and why we got those donations absolutely uh mr webb and his team have been working really hard cody blake in his program getting our first apartment building ready for teacher housing we have two teachers that are coming to us from the philippines and they're making a great sacrifice to be here and one of the things that we promised to do is make sure that they would have housing available so they'll rent that facility once complete and so this is a donation of a twelve hundred dollar mattress to uh outfit this we're taking donations we're not putting an inordinate amount of school funds into this facility but uh it looks like that we've had this just another one of many donations this is a significant one and we're grateful for mr webb and his team and of course for mountain mattress and we send all these folks including jane a letter of thank you for these donations thank you next item our br star award for december dr wright you want to take over again absolutely this this is interesting because i saw i saw some young ladies i haven't seen for like 37 years i think i see a lot of peterson girls out there and they're part of amy hathcock's family she has well her daughter's there one of her sons and her handsome husband our football coach amy is our br star and this is an award that we give monthly and it is amy exemplifies one or more of our core values courage respect commitment and integrity she serves as a counselor at our elementary school and has just done a fantastic job mr grace would you please come up and you can make this presentation absolutely um join us this year and we're very lucky to have her she is as committed as he gets this morning she was out there in the rain and the dark with us on logan kids and i have no doubt that she'll be there tomorrow if it's snowing and she was there in the sun she takes over any duties that we need she talks to kids she's there helping with our characters counts just trying to make sure that our kids know the path to being good people you know she's there to help with that um and she just meets our kids every day with a smile and most of them should only be with us for a semester so it's great to have [Applause] she is well congratulations bye only miss neyman's cool more [Applause] thank you amy here uh excellent excellent example of what can be done and how to do it right thank you so much okay the next the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda which involves the minutes from the previous meeting budget items uh other things board members have viewed as you have reviewed those consent agenda items is there any one or several that we'd like to take out and vote on individually if not we need to vote on the consent agenda itself have a motion to vote on the consent agenda that be motioned from jennifer in a second from chuck all in favor that would be passed okay business section of the meeting the next item would be item 3.1 we have these ladies here yeah that's i was going to ask can you introduce these ladies to us and absolutely let's uh mr grace come on up and mr webb and ingrid please introduce your your new teachers and your new counselor these are employees currently from 2021.
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so 13th we're all good all right so let's set that for our time and date uh 5 30 um workshop 6 o'clock meeting um and with that we just need a motion to adjourn i'll move that we had a germ a meeting i'll second that motion and a boy all in favor aye corey burgess i'm in eamon hi charlene diaz hi anna boyd so moved we are adjourned thank you [Music] you
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thank you hey call the republic do we have anyone on the line okay who sampson please you're up uh my name's lou sampson and i just wanted to know that i applaud this board for the transparency and open discussions during board meetings that i don't see at other schools other schools seldom discuss anything the superintendent will make a suggestion and they'll vote on it and they'll always vote with the superintendent so last month i thought that was an interesting discussion with totally different philosophies argued and i'm glad you got this discussion during an open meeting because as citizens we don't often know the inner workings of the state school board and we really depend on you to help educate us i would however caution the board as to the language used relative to the old white guys there are around 15 000 homes in the green valley wreck and that is not all the homes in the green valley area but the majority of those homes have old white guys in them and no children in this school whale creek has 2800 ponies with the majority of old five guys residing in them with no children in this school these homes and properties make continental a donor school for which you might want to show some respect to those citizens that provide more than adequate tax dollars to operate this school and as i thought about the meeting and i kept hearing chairman mcgiven's opinions ringing in my head about the divisiveness on the board and his heartfelt expression of looking at a child in front of him with no regard for the color or economic status he just wanted to listen and help that kid make sure he was getting good education it finally occurred to me that this last meeting was a perfect example of exactly what critical race theory is the oppressed and the oppressor the old white men are the oppressors and the three ethnic groups you're voting on we're the oppressed this is all about judging and rewarding people on their skin color and isn't that just exactly what crt is designed to do it shows how insidious and embedded this is woven throughout the total education system the national school board urged the white house to have okay ma'am two minutes thank you thank you thank you very much appreciate it uh mr bresni two minutes thank you chairman mcgibbon of members of the board community members my name is tom brezny i live at 1062 east lumberjack trail and i am the proud grandparent of two continental cults for those of you that don't know me pima county district court supervisor steve steve christie's record this area he applauds the continental elementary school administration staff and governing board and the efforts they've made to keep continental open for in-person learning our kiddos need that he wishes everyone a joyous season and he loves being your supervisor one of the things my wife and i love to do this time of year is to drive around and look at the wonderful light displays we drove through madeira highlands last year with our grandchildren and i was amazed at what we saw there are a number of opportunities to enjoy this past time in the area there are drive around green valley and quail creek your elder neighbors whose tax money and generous charitable donations helps fund this wonderful school for our children and grandchildren love seeing young families enjoying the displays they put up check out pueblo estates on the other side of i-19 south of the baltimore road they do an exceptional job go down to the historic canoa ranch just south of the santa cruz valley hospital and check out their display that's a county park and you might be able to learn a little of the history of the area at the same time sounds like a pretty cool homework assignment to me and when i looked at these projects that you've done over here i'd love to see a project on the his the canoe land grant and the deonza trail that would be perfect assignment for continental don't forget the town of saurita's celebration is this saturday night the hebrew word shalom basically translates into english as the word peace greeting someone with shalom is to wish for their heaviness good health friendship and general well-being so whether you say merry christmas feliz navidad seasons greetings happy holidays happy hanukkah salam cappy kwanzaa happy winter solstice or nothing at all at this time of year shalom thank you hey christy latham hello so i just wanted to give the board a quick update covet struck our dc trip again um so we have the company that we've been working on with for 15 years go out of business he's had a ton of cancellations on him this year because of cobin and then of course the last two years of covid he could just no longer continue his business so after i got this phone call thursday at 1 45 in the afternoon i wouldn't have my panic cry with greg and deanna saying i can't do this again with these kids these four kids um i got to work started on the computer and got new quotes coming in um greg and i are going to be sitting down thursday looking over i have four different companies who are fighting for our business right now to keep our kids on this trip um they're really working at keeping it the same price or very close to the same price and giving us the same quality of trip that we had already have planned for us um and so we'll be making a decision on who we would like to bring to the board in january so i just wanted to keep you guys apprised of what's going on and knowing that when you see in january another civic strip needs to be approved this is why so we're gonna still keep fighting for dc and going this year and hopefully things will pan out again and we'll be able to go and if not we got a wonderful arizona trip planned so we're going to continue with that if we must so i just wanted to keep you guys updated so we're still trying thank you okay mr davis you're up okay let's go i've never done this before so i'm a little nervous but [Music] all right um we have this uh large project um i'll let them go first that way if we run out of time we'll run out of time on their time go ahead who's gonna start pick up so they can get please christopher i'd like to say something real quick he wrote 24 paragraphs because he didn't like the way it was organized so he reorganized his own so we did a timeline on hunter-gatherers to the columbian exchange here's one together where it's alaska modern day monitoring canada and then we have where they travel so they travel from asia to alaska with a land bridge then we um the paleo indians um they this is the kind of these are the weapons um the fire um weapons of trap racks then then we have um in between everything we have um the four four tribes we have the aztecs omnics incas mayans the aztecs created medicine and chocolate the olmecs have these very stone heads and they've created popcorn um the mayans came at zero and calendars and then the english created um road bridges and roads then we're to columbus from the sailing here's the pinta nina and the santa maria um here's this is the formulation so here was a trade route and then the economy exchange started in um here's a map of that current era um nothing the sixth grade was slightly different um they went from hunter and gatherers all the way to the first city state that seventh graders went from hunter gatherers all the way crossing the landscape populating the american public so we did our product on the other [Music] and at the bottom you have like another timeline of what happens so there's the shelters and the tools that they use and then you go on there's only christopher columbus when he was getting bishops and the druids from queen isabella and king ferdinand and then go on there's loading at spain put on the three ships and there's a sailor san lorenzo europe and asia and then there's merchants traveling off the road and here's all the tradeoffs drugs land and tea and some things that they created okay one of the interesting things that i found out why we're studying this among a lot of things is that you think right away of italy spaghetti sauces they didn't have tomatoes and tell christopher thomas brought him from the indians so that was a pretty interesting thing the kids come up with like things and i've done this several times but these things just stick with me and that was uh one of them that's amazing anything else some of the items that they traded um what european america was bananas and bananas were from europe and africa uh cattle citrus fruits uh diseases grains grapes peaches sugarcane and honeybees and then the items that were treated probably americans to europe where beans cocoa corn potatoes squash sweet potato tobacco tomatoes and then up here this is like a timeline that has so it's from paleo hunting gathers in eastern asia and then it goes to like when they cross the land bridge um from uh the us and everything america and then the online and then this is when this sets sail i would arrive in any time trade so how we made this project our whole class we we all had our own separate uh paragraphs the limit of what our class had was at least you're supposed to have at least 15.
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this is a very quick report we're just going to go through the operating funds as well as just an update on the bond funds so again remember that the budgeted funds all these are budgeted funds and these are our operating funds i'd like to focus your attention on maintenance and operations and unrestricted capital you can see that we have a revised budget number two pending and everything all of the available balance is from that revised budget number two pending but it looks like i definitely have an error there because there's definitely not 286 million dollars left [Laughter] so i don't know what happened there zero encumbrances on everything yeah there's only fourteen thousand dollars encumbered no there's definitely an issue there i apologize for that i wanted to just share that emino is on target to be as we would have expected it to be by this point in time and um the available balance is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million dollars then going into unrestricted capital it looks like i have a similar problem on that particular document as well i think what i'll do is i'll go through the rest and then i will pull up the monthly financial itself the actual report that was actually posted to the governing board meeting so so the budget revision number two again an increase by the 23.6 million dollars if you remember based upon all the work that we've done and the re reporting of the annual financial report which absolutely described our expenditures from last year so that resulted in a greater budget balance carry forward and then we did realize increased average daily membership in the current year recall that we anticipated a 400 student loss we actually have gained 600 students and have gained additional average daily membership due to the transition of some students from global academy into our bricks and mortar and to date our budget capacity it will be eight million dollars increased over adopted which is pretty remarkable and then finally understood the capital budget rev 2 increased by 2.1 million dollars due to that increase in the 2021 budget balance carry forward into 2022.
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so really the recommendation is that we don't make any changes the reinsured plan was developed you know july 13th and of course there were some other changes that was then done you approved on august 10th so the recommendation like you said mr daisy already is to uh there'll be no changes to the current plan and supplements this just kind of refreshes me right so that what our re-entry lessons are ongoing correct i just wonder if they'd ever jump in there and say what you're doing is not good enough and every six months until i have to look back now but through 2023 i believe because that's how our grant goes through and we'll be doing this too so there might be other changes but there are changes we'll look at recommendations for that so we need a motion yes and we will approve it again also motion and second to approve the uh the six the re-entry plan as originally uh i guess uh approved uh two of them there's two of i think the last one was august wasn't it correct yeah as is uh from august uh all in favor say that i don't [Music] the recommendation to approve the resolution uh of the wabash county uh approving action and taken by the city of wabash redevelopment commission to establish a residential housing development program for the residential housing program all in favor say hi all right recommendation to approve the year of end of year resolution that's pretty standard yeah this is something that we typically do all it does is since we don't have um another meeting to the end of the year it just allows us to balance out and close 2021 make the needed adjustments that we would need to make any appropriations to balance that out so that's all it really is i did we did get our 1082 notice just last week for our budget order for 2022.
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um so but that comes those kids are going to go to school someplace at some point and and you know we're going to have to deal with that so these numbers of two percent increase 2.5 percent increase i don't know but those kind of increases will become more just as this town grows tiles around us have seen the same kind of pattern and if we don't do something before then we'll see those 26 27 28 29 in the class you have an elo population it's almost quadrupled from a country that i don't even know how to pronounce um so to think that this is gonna it's really not realistic and yeah many of these many of these things we've seen the social emotional needs of the students they're just increasing um so we're going to go through the presentation and we'll take some we'll take some people take some questions um i do want to point out something else that you might say well why don't you just why don't you just take that stuff off now again we want you to see the cost we also the real quote do we also want you to realize you know we could have taken some things out and you won't have seen them but i was going to talk tonight later on about things like reducing the budget using school choice one that's stuff you may not see so it would reduce the budget you probably won't see it reflected in anything in personnel or program but it will come down you know this is the kind of thing that comes back to point you it's like it's like you're going to build a house and so in the in you know the framing cruises you know it's going to cost destiny like well that's too much it's okay we can get the cost down and they take 20 or 50 studs out of the wall you never see them but there's an impact and there's a payment somewhere down the road at some point payment comes due so we're going to start and the way we're going to do this um we put it all on one sheet for you to see the directors will present we'll talk about your item in addition to what's written and then bob will tell us how we're going to take off line by line so um karen we're going to start off with the level service items and special editions here on top guess bob okay uh just spraying the difference between the top section and the bottom first for people sure so um well so level service budget represents basically our existing resources and programs um and um contractual costs uh so you know teachers union contract other contractuals it also includes our our legal obligations under iba special ed requirements so we might be adding a paraprofessional or out of district tuition we're legally obligated to pay for those it's in addition to the budget but it's part of the level service budget the above level service requests are discretionary decisions we have the ability to make ads we really don't have a discretion on the above-level service requests these are things that are basically required or they're in our court programs and services so that's kind of the difference we're going to start off talking about the level service budget that's right it's old i swear everybody um so the special ed on different tuitions we've had a lot of movement this year we've had three new students move in who were already had some pretty significant out of district placements in place um and so this year we're not paying for those tuitions but next year we will be responsible so those three hit as well as one of our own students who has had to go into an out of district placement we also have some special ed paraprofessionals as we were doing um as we are out through cloven we had a lot of our pretty significant students who couldn't medically come into the building and a lot of those students had one of our professionals for health reasons so the paraprofessionals as new students moved in we were able to use those paraprofessionals for our new students but now these students are coming back into the school from homeschooling so we need to go back and replace those powers that we didn't hire in the first place so that's why we're getting hit with a few for next year um and then contract services was just there's a little bit more ot services especially in loyalty we've needed more um not a significant amount more but um still impacts the budget do you want to talk about the amounts bob yeah so um i'm just uh in total everybody that better so we deviated from our powerpoint format this year we thought there was a lot of information to share i wanted to try to give a picture of the district on one page and uh so this company is a high level so the the special education tuitions karen talked about i think there's actually a fourth that um moved in this year it could be wrong i think so there's four students um in the top line special education tuitions that's also transportation legally transportation from these students to their placements so the combination of those four placements and transportation is 690 000 that also includes inflationary increases that are approved by the state every year the pair professionals is five paraprofessionals there's two at tohonto and um three at boylston for one-to-one student needs they're required in the iep in special education contract services is relatively minor compared to those in total this makes up um four point five percent of the seven point three percent increase our level service budget uh would have been two point eight percent uh we didn't have uh these these costs so that's the impact of um of those additional expenses can i just ask a quick question to clarify that first line out of the almost 700 000 is for four students is that what you said tuition and transportation it's almost 700 000 for four students for tuition and transportation yes one placement can cost up to three hundred thousand dollars um in fact i believe we may have one that is 300 that we're paying half within that number plus transportation um karen how many of those have just moved in there's three i mean bob's question but there's three that have moved in and one that is a student here who has had to go out is that the number you have um four total four yeah okay i know off the top of my head that one program is one baby there might be a little bit more than that with the paraprofessional added to it so if i may ask the question i'm not withdrawing finance this is an ie question can we ever run special education here in the building and not have to transport out and pay externally but bring another special ed teacher in one-on-one is that does that make sense at some point it doesn't for these children so we did that actually and boyles did we created a program for some of our students where it did make sense we had about four i think four originally that we thought might need out of district placements which was plenty to create our own classroom and bring our own teacher in and create the program some of these students need such highly specialized things that it's just not cost effective to do it as expensive as it seems to recreate that kind of program for one child would be much much harder one-to-one nurses things like that so these really are where the students need to be okay thank you um question on special education circuit breaker so um what is the what is the frequency or at what point is the school district reimbursed through special education circuit breaker or other state state aid to reimburse some of these costs how how does that work we get reimbursed the year after we incurred the costs and it's we get reimbursed for uh 65 to 75 of the costs above approximately 65 000 so we absorb um it's actually four times the per prequel expenditure rate which is about 65 000 so that's absorbed by the district first so if you have not had a district placement at 65 000.
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we had deposits from the 17th to december 7th of 3 million 727 277 spot 3-9 less payroll on november 24th of 891 141 and warrant number nine on november 23rd of one million seven forty one three dollars and 82 cents leaves us with a book balance on december 7 2021 of 2596 647 spot 23 the corresponding bank balance on the same day of 280 563 56 and in the mmdt account on november 16th 2021 6 million 308 528 spot 61 and interest uh for the month of 563.86 leaves us with the balance on december 7th 2021 of 6 million 309 0.92 spot 47 and an overall total operating cash balance of 8 million 905 739 spot 70.
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and so in hannah's honor i would like to give a round of applause and thank her for her time in service we'll move on then to uh item 6.2 recognition of paramount elementary school uh mr ortega yes thank you um paramount had uh the the honor uh of being named uh to the first ever u.s news and world report uh elementary uh ranking uh as you may know u.s news and world report has been doing this for high schools for uh for quite a while uh and we are very proud that our high schools have been named uh in that as well uh but now they have they are moving on to elementary schools uh and we are extremely proud to let everyone know that paramount was named to that which basically means that paramount ranks in the top 30 percent in the state of california in terms of uh elementary schools and so we're just very proud of not only the staff but the students and the community as well all right and we have mr flores appears to be here good evening board president greer members of the board uh superintendent mr tegan cabinet uh on behalf of my teachers staff students and parents i want to thank mr mark white and the staff at u.s news and world report for this honor this award for our school is not only a great and deserved achievement but also an acknowledgement of the hard work and dedication of everyone involved in our school and community thank you again for this recognition and we look forward to sharing all the great things happening at paramount in january thank you so much mr flores i do also have here a certificate that we'll get over to you all it says azusa unified school district certificate of recognition is proudly presented to paramount elementary school for ranking on the first ever u.s news and world report's best elementary schools list and placing in the top 30 in the state um dated today congratulations thanks for all the hard work thank everyone and one more thing go pumas right moving on to item 6.3 recognition of azusa high school band and choir excuse me band and color guard and i do believe we have miss peregri here yes i am here hello welcome good evening so mr president board members superintendent ortega cabinet members and community it is my pleasure to have this opportunity to introduce to you our director of the azusa high school band and pageantry corps mr doug mckenna his preparation of our musicians and the most rigorous competition schedule this year have brought much pride to the azusa community they've earned several awards due to their hard work and the dedication of the students parents and the staff this certainly has paid off and at this time i'd like to introduce mr mckenna who will then introduce our student leaders mr mckenna welcome mr mckenna hello can you see me yes sir okay um thank you very much for this opportunity to speak um we had a outstanding season um unlike any i've ever experienced in my 22 years of teaching um the student participation was exceptional almost every student was at every rehearsal the kids put so much time and effort and did it all with a super positive attitude that it yielded the best possible result in the competition arena our gold medal with uh 2a csbc was quite an achievement but well deserved i'm going to introduce a couple leaders that are going to speak um william gonzalez our drum major chris pica assistant drum major nicole liddar assistant drum major who will speak um rich derbatun and um gina carlo aguilar are also on two other of the leaders that are here on the call so i'd like to pass it over to william gonzalez hello um well it was a very um exciting season that we had throughout all the years that i've um [Music] seen my family my siblings win gold medals i just wanted to have another year that um so that it can show more of um how do i say it uh just very inspiring for the next years of the aziza high school marching band so i just want to bring home another gold medal for the district for the school um and uh this season was a tough season um throughout having uh covered last year not being able to practice in person but we pushed through pushed through and uh we did it we got a gold medal very proud of everybody uh that participated very thankful for um [Music] my family uh very thankful for mr mckenna and uh thankful for my classmates thank you william mr mckinnon did you say that we had others joining us or other students joining us um i think nicole liddhar a senior assistant drum major may uh want to speak if she's on the call you here with us nicole yeah i'm right here can you see me yes there you are okay um i just wanted to say for the first time in nine years the azusa band has received the gold medal and it couldn't have happened without the determination of the kids and staff that were part of the band from us sweating in the sun to being bundled up in jackets in a cold night this year's marching season was one of the best and gave me the most unforgettable moments in my life so here's a big shout out to mr mckenna the staff the parents and the principals of azusa for being always supportive of the band thank you nicole and william and mr mckenna for for just being some of the some of the reasons why um azusa unified school district shines uh thanks for your dedication and your perseverance through again just wildly challenging times um we we just are grateful for you and and honored to have you in on the ausd family and i have a another certificate of recognition this time presented to the azus unified excuse me azusa high school band and color guard for winning the division 2a california state band championship uh dated for december 14th and we'll also get this over uh to you at azusa high thank you very much thank you okay and then moving on to uh item 6.4 recognition of gladstone high school cross country athlete and mr fernandez there you are good evening board president um superintendent ortega members of cabinet high honor here to be able to out recognize our student athletes after a year and a half of struggling through the the the pandemic seasons of sport that we had last year and just the lack of spring sports in 1920.
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hello uh my name is chris tebbins i'm calling from uh isilani um i'm calling uh in support of ann arbor effort or to look at the process of municipalization of the public uh of the utility um i'm a fan of municipalization i think it gives a better local control to the overall process of the uh of the power utility um it allows the power utility to be run by the local government and uh keeps that money uh invested in the community with the public power utility uh providing more local jobs in addition i don't think that the way that we are going to be getting out of any future climate crisis is going to be driven by dte dte is notoriously a dirty energy provider has a very strong mix of coal in there 59 of their energy coming from burning coal uh moving to municip to municipalization will allow ann arbor to select a cleaner fuel source for themselves relying more heavily on wind and solar and it will provide a driving force in the local area to help combat climate change so thank you very much and i hope that you support the efforts for municipalization thank you for your comments caller ending in 847 color ending in 847.
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correct so at the elementary school we're adding two new or one's a replacement position for a future that's leaving miss jennifer chandra is joining us from snowflake she is a kindergarten teacher so we're able to reduce our class sizes in kindergarten by adding another one replacing a teacher that left she's joining us with 18 years of kindergarten experience which is a crazy high number so we're very very lucky to have her she doesn't look that old and then we have catherine doyle who's joining us also she is coming from the court she's coming from accord um she has experience with younger kids and so she's going to join us as a counselor on our campus to help ms hathcock just you know kind of make sure our kids are moving in the right direction have somebody talk to if they need to and that we're raising good human beings so we're lucky to have both of them then at the high school [Applause] at the high school we have kate bowers joining us she's actually moved to to snowflake taylor swiftly snowflake from utah and found out about a job opening that we had here at blue ridge and so she's going to be joining us next semester filling the class that we have with a long-term sub so she's going to be teaching english taught english classes up in utah for eight years and we'll be working with our some of our students here in several different grade levels and we're excited to have her on board and expect great things she's the teachers are super excited to have her join the english department and we're happy to read what she was able to bring to the previous school and we expect some of those students to come to blue ridge as well so thank you kate and welcome aboard [Applause] right the next item i mean the next portion of this uh motion is to get emotion to have a motion to accept the higher of these three individuals can i have a motion of emotion from chuck and the second from jennifer all in favor it's like they got hired thank you uh we can see excellence joining excellence thank you very much for coming okay item number 3.3 recommendation to approve the retirement or did i miss 2 2 3.2 3.2 recommendation to approve the retirement of the following employees dr wright i'd like you to talk about them yes we have uh carol godwin i i hope is going to continue i think that was what she's planning on doing carol are you going to continue with this good god bless you and we had we talked jane estes into two more years working longer than she wanted to but i don't think i'm going to get a third effort she's done a great job for us and so we wish to well congratulate these ladies for for the careers that they have had and we have uh for you jane well wait until carol is going to be with us 10 more years but when she's done we'll have a plaque for her too jane we hope you are jane come up we have a plaque for you so jane is is one of the stops i make when i do my walk about the campus and she has all in all the classroom all the kids that are progressing each child is noted by a sticker or where they're at and she knows her uh her kids that she's done an outstanding job but she appreciates thank you [Applause] i know she's a institution all right we need a recommendation to approve those two retirements i mean not a recommendation we need a motion to approve those two retirements check the motion second from diane all in favor thank you very much item 3.3 this is a recommendation to review and reapprove the financial report that we just went over right margaret martin never mind [Laughter] brenda don't explain what we're doing then hey chris this is the one oh this is for this year i'm sorry yeah this is just a correcting error on the outside okay re-approve we'll pull it up momentarily yeah yeah very good this is a different one it's this one this is the financial report okay this is this is to correct an error as part of the annual financial report for the 2021 year and this is what it looks like on the second page when i was closing the fiscal year i caught an error with the one of the food service revenues it was a small area was about five thousand dollars of revenues so as you notice up on the the screen that there was some revenues that was accidentally posted to the insurance proceeds account that was supposed to go into food service so the summary um i have it up there it says old and new um food service revenue remember how i told you that we finished in the positive for food service of 67 865 dollars after correcting the revenue the food service revenue is now going to be 73 771 dollars which is still good news because we actually finished out more than what we anticipated it to be and then the insurance proceeds is going to drop down from sixty two thousand three hundred and ninety eight dollars down to fifty six thousand four hundred and ninety one dollars on the second page you'll see that it it affects what we call 1600 which is basically catering revenues goes from 941 up to hundred 28 forty seven dollars so that's where the increase happened in food service revenues and then old this is where the cash balance is how it affects your ending cash balance for food service sixty seven thousand eight hundred and sixty five dollars is what the ending cash balance for food service was and then the last page shows the new cash balance for food service 73 771 dollars so i just need the board to acknowledge the correction to the food service fund and the correction to the insurance proceed fund so i can submit the correction to ade and also let the auditors know that we have a correction to the annual financial report any questions from anyone and then can we have a motion to accept the revisions and uh recommends to revision and reapprove the annual financial report for 2021.
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i wrote 17 paragraphs and so we all wrote uh introduction together the class and then near the end and for the conclusion we had to like come up with a conclusion that mr davis he would just like check it and stuff to make sure like it's perfect but we didn't know some of those work okay just for the conclusion i have one here just to show you how difficult the conclusion was it was a it was like pulling teeth because they didn't quite understand and so they would bring a conclusion and here's one young man i finally gave him this paper because he was tired of erasing his paper was looking bad he was getting frustrated so i gave him a separate page and he's got the date the 27th the 28th and there's a whole nother page that's in his notebook earlier days and it says so now you see how the hunter and gatherers then king hammer robin rules another one ruled all the buildings and then he came up with something that i said that's really good and it's cool to know that we went from sticks and stones to the tools we have today we domesticated animals with shelters farm soon after we built cities eventually the assyrians attacked and conquered the first city state that's how we evolved from hunter and gathers to military today and that turned out in my mind to be a really good conclusion after he worked so hard and they all that none of them wrote their conclusion the first time it took several times and i proofread them it was driving me crazy but they finally ended up getting their own conclusion and they ended up doing a really good job sure she wants to read the introduction we did shared writing to start out together so our philosophy wrote an introduction together like sentences read so this is the destruction there's a long history regarding the polo indians from the time they populated europe asia and the americas during the ice age hundreds and gatherers crossed the land bridge when the paleo indians crossed the land bridge into the americas they went groups of people behind to start new tribes so civilizations were created from the people that were left behind and they created many different tribes such as online incas mayans and aztecs then columbus journey opened ways for trading with these stripes now you know how the paleo indians evolved throughout time and helped the world become what it is today okay thank you now we have the sixth grade group which was slightly different they were hunter and gatherers also but um they stayed in asia and created the first city-state into the assyrians where they uh well that let them tell you what happens i'll [Music] these are our sixth graders this is and then the area right here is um okay so in this area this is an area where the civilizations begin to get more advanced [Music] this is the hanging garden which is just like a big irrigation system that has a bunch of places and over here we have a church and just [Music] um can't see in here their schema oftentimes was hard for them to understand somebody put a hospital in the red cross and of course that didn't come to claire martin so that opened it up to the classroom to have that conversation what kind of medicine did they have because they wanted the hospital to be there so bad and so then we talked about the kind of medicine they had and how that all probably developed and so there was a lot of different conversation based on the schema they had in their head that we got to talk about and work it out so the learning that went on is to be incredible that they retained all that they did and then they were able to write their paragraphs about it and you should all have that there and maybe energy and i just gave you a couple uh we put christopher's in there 24 and all the girls argue with christopher about what he does and how he does it but it's uh he does a great job in our class along with everybody else do you have any folks okay i would like you have any questions for me or those students they could answer just about any question you may have questions i need to read your papers they're on your page i have them and i'm looking forward to reading them thank you you guys okay and is what we did to edit um they wrote it rewrote it they checked each other's papers with their friends and then i had them sit in groups of three they have to trade papers they have to listen to somebody read their paper because our ears are great as a child to listen and hear when things don't sound right they go wait you can hear martial i didn't write down they go look that's exactly what you wrote and so then they got to go back and edit their own paper after they listened to it and we ended up doing that two or three times and so we went through that whole time and then for these students that are here to work on this um they weren't getting it done they were frustrated so i said you know we have thanksgiving break and um if you go home here's what we're going to do when you come back and i gave them the whole lesson that they were going to do when they came back and they came back with it done so i was in the classroom teaching i sat by the door and i got to teach the rest of the classroom they were able to work in the hallway to get it done because they already had their lesson finished and so it gave them more time so that they could come here and present um one of the things that went on is there was a little tip for tap between some of the teachers as far as why i wanted them to write a five paragraph paper and the teachers were concerned that might be too hard too tough and it ended up in one of the meetings with uh miss rico and deanna and one of the kids somebody came back and said well miss rico says why is mr davis stopping at five paragraphs they should write more and i go oh my gosh that's ridiculous wait a minute that's what other teachers are telling me my paragraph's ridiculous so i said you know what let's just see what happens and we created uh the outline and well they created it with the student leader i did not create the outline i put a student up front and they started taking all the kids ideas they came up with their five topics or six topics and then made a graphic organizer and then went all together and figured it out and then i separated them in groups and they organized it and then i put the groups all back together and they made one and that they could follow they didn't have to like chris didn't like some of the outline because he thought he could do it would tweak it just a little bit for him and that was perfectly okay they all could do that how they wanted none of the papers came out the same it was kind of an awesome project and i couldn't be prouder and i'd like to thank miss rico and miss clavis for supporting me and allowing me to spend the extra time that it took and give me the confidence to make it do 24 i think 24 was the most and everybody did 15 to 17 minimum was 15 and the other criteria is they had to have a compound our compound complex sentence in every paragraph so i had to stop and teach that along with talking with the writing teacher that went ahead and i looked at her a few times and she was going over that to get that and most of them were able to do that one young lady said mr davis i did a good job on it she used every connector word in fanboys so that's uh an acronym we use to get all the conjunction words and she goes i used every one of the words in my paper and so i went through it i checked and she did so thank you i'm good information discussion members of the board and members of our community and our students thank you for being here today and boys and girls great job great job mr davis and that's just uh a testament to when we want students to be actively engaged and project-based learning is again around doing projects based on what they're learning and writing about so thank you everyone for listening our theme for the year as you know is focused on the big rocks tis the season to count our blessings organize and set goals for 2022 live love laugh take time to relax and rejuvenate and soak in the self-care time parents students as well as our staff enrollment update you can see we're still um steady and holding where we have been we're up three students from last year on the bottom i have our attendance for today we have one step member out of quarantine 10 students i'm quarantined four students out of isolation our total students upset were 59.
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so this is the bond fund 631 i wanted to share with you that we are we are at a remaining balance of about 7.6 million dollars in the bond funds to date and that is the 2015 authority that seven million dollars represents the leftover balance that's slated to take care of the device refresh for the current year end for next year so by the end of next year that entire amount of money is expected to be spent the transportation you can see that that 1.7 million dollars was recently encumbered as they're buying vehicles and that origi that additional 1 million dollars will be preserved for next year to make sure that we have a year separation for refreshes so that we're not replacing all of our buses or vans in the same year this represents the 2019 bond fund bond fund 64 630 this is the 2019 authority note that to date there is 7.7 million dollars available to be spent which is the reason for why we are requesting later this evening for you to approve a resolution to sell an additional 50 million dollars in to get get those bond proceeds back so that we can we can complete the work that that we have been doing every year for the last three years about 15 million dollars has been been spent every year in our facilities reinvestment and so that 50 million dollars will give us an infusion that we will need to be able to complete this summer's projects so you can see the total we have available is 15.3 million dollars please know that that the bond fund 631 is largely spent and of course we will go through later on this evening the expected projects for that 50 million dollars as well as this remaining fund balance in bond fund 630 and again as i've said the this is this is on the agenda for tonight for you to act upon and if you don't have any questions if you'd like i can go back and get the monthly financial report to show you on mno but we're absolutely operating as we would expect right now only not question but a comment you will adjust that before it gets posted on the website i will absolutely adjust it before it gets posted yes i'm very sorry for that thank you yeah any questions at all i i think it would be good if you could bring that up and just show it to our um in our meeting so that people are aware that we're we're in a different place than that showed us so you can see on this report showing the available balance a little bit more than i thought of about 51 million dollars and the amount encumbered to date which includes all the expected salaries out of mno of 235.2 million dollars okay thank you and the same thing with unrestricted capital you can see that the available balance is uh just under 14 million with the amount spent and encumbered to date of about 8.6 million okay okay thank you for that appreciate it okay thank you ms betts moved item 7.02 which is a presentation for fy 2021 annual comprehensive financial report and the fy 2021 single audit report results dr mccord anything nothing to add just back to bonnie back to bonnie so good evening again governing board members so oh sorry okay so i'd like to preface this report by letting you know that for the first time in a very many years we are presenting this financial report to include the single audit report to you in december so in the past this has been presented to you in february in march in april we went out for bid for our audit services last spring and heinfeld meech was again the awarded provider and during our first meeting regarding the fiscal year 2021 audit we asked is there any way that we could expedite and get everything completed in time for the december 31st deadline for all of the financial reporting and so here we are today totally complete and i can't tell you how much effort was required of the finance staff to include ashley miranda pat donahue jackie mattinen not to mention the entire heinfeld meech team to include miss jennifer shields so and it was a very positive result so to begin uh the the report today will include the audit update we will talk quickly about the government-wide financials for versus the governmental financials and then other funds and items to note um so in order to update you on the audit process and the and the results of the audit for fiscal year 2021 i'd like to hand it over to miss jennifer shields from heinfeld meech welcome ms shield thank you so there's only one slide for you jennifer so i'm going to give it to you right now just that that's my side okay good all right dr santa cruz um members of the board dr mccord thank you for allowing me um again to come before you and talk about the audit um over the as ms betts said over the course of the last few years the timing has gotten incredibly more compressed and timely actually so the timing of having both the annual financial statement audit as well as the single audit was certainly a you know no easy feat especially in a year where the district is the recipient of a lot of federal dollars and spending the dollars and then ultimately having us be able to audit those dollars sometimes there are things outside of our control but but fortunately we were able to get all of that work done this year so my hat's off to miss bets and of course jackie and ashley pat everybody here at the district it was it was definitely a team effort so in terms of you know my required communications to the board i have just a few things to point out um clearly there were no difficulties encountered in in performing the audit and that's that's similar to prior years you know i don't consider timing of certain events to be a difficulty but definitely this year there were no difficulties there were also no audit adjustments that had to be made to correct the financial transactions or amounts reported by by finance staff we also had no disagreements with management about accounting practices policies or any of those types of things let's see in terms of actual timing of audit procedures the audit procedures in terms of field work were relatively the same as they have been in prior years the i would attribute the major difference to the expedited timeline now is just a cohesive effort from from all district staff and making sure to wrap up loose ends much more timely which has been positive in terms of the actual audit report let's see the the annual comprehensive financial report it has a slightly modified name from from the past um so we're calling it the act for for short but that's the the financial statement package that has your independent auditors report as well as all of the financial statements and miss bets i believe we'll go over some of the details there but my my three pages of it is the independent auditor's report and that i'm happy to report you had an unmodified opinion so otherwise known as what we call a clean audit opinion meaning there were no material misstatements in the amounts that required adjustment or you know any any kind of um changes that had to occur so a an unmodified opinion is the best opinion that you can do it's now three pages that i get out of the entire report and that's because if you compare to the prior years there were some new audit standards that we had to implement this year which i believe are um they accomplish an objective of making the independent auditor's report more readable for non-audit folks and what it does is it actually spells out the opinion right in the first couple paragraphs and says you know hey in our opinion the financial statements are materially accurate so that's first and foremost and then there's also some more clarifying language within the audit opinion to specify what responsibilities the auditor has with respect to the procedures as well as what responsibilities management has in undergoing the actual audit procedures themselves so some really good language changes there that were promulgated by the audit standards board and then also included in that is some language that as of course as independent auditors we have to maintain our independence and so we met those responsibilities that we have as well as our other other ethical responsibilities that we're required to adhere to in terms of the single audit report as i mentioned this year we were able we didn't have any hold ups in in that that realm sometimes the federal government doesn't issue the the audit guidelines fast enough for us to be able to be here to present before you this this quickly in in particular i have to look to get the number but the district expended just under 50 million dollars in the last fiscal year of federal dollars which is a quite a large sum of money and the two largest programs that you had that were audited by us had to do with the coveted relief programs under the cares act and related subsequent um you know federal acts related to covet 19 so we audited what you guys call your esg account so in the enrollment stability grant which came out of the governor's office that's actually coronavirus relief funds that's the official name at the federal level and then we also audited what you guys commonly refer to as esser which is the education stabilization fund so those were the two programs that were audited and we did not have any deficiencies that were reported on the federal program side of things nor did we have any deficiencies in internal control environment which i think is again a testament to the work that the district has put forth over the last few years in um you know just resolving you know any outstanding deficiencies and always concentrating on getting better there is one piece of the audit that's not yet complete and that's because it's outside of our control and that is the uniform system of um uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire so that piece of the audit will still be forthcoming to you at a later date and with that i'll turn it back to bonnie but i'll be happy to stand for questions in case there are any so jennifer i just have one so you mentioned that you audited the esg the enrollment stabilization grant even though there were no there was no spend in the enrollment stabilization grant in 2021 could you comment on that um i believe there was actually just a little bit there was a total of about 14 million dollars expended the largest chunk of that was actually spent in fiscal year 20 and this is kind of a unique thing in the single audit world where we actually had to audit last year's expenditures in this year's single audit so it's it's a little bit unique in terms of reporting as well as audit procedures so the largest chunk of that esg was in fact yes spent last year it was audited last year with the financial transactions and included in the 2020 audit report but the compliance and internal control over compliance as it relates to the federal awards um promulgated by the federal government that was done during this audit year so kind of a unique situation where we actually had to look back thank you any other questions for jennifer board members any questions well i i just want to thank everyone for the hard work because i know this is this is much faster than previous years and to know that we've done everything and have a really good clean audit and not that we didn't do it before but we worked at it really hard and i feel like our new uh financial system and the new people that we have in place that are working so hard and have the skills to take care of those issues when they arise i just really appreciate it so thank you thank you jennifer thanks okay mr parker uh i would also add to thank you very much and recognize our folks at the district i i think that this is probably one of the best audits they've had if i'm not mistaken so it's definitely a good audit very good thank you miss shields thank you okay to move on go ahead miss pets so the aquifer as we're now calling it i'd rather call it the kaffir but we're required to call it the aquifer so just at a high level i wanted to make sure that there was some understanding of how the the kafir book is at the act for book is actually organized so there are four major sections in the book so it starts out with the financials the required financials which includes our highest level our government government-wide financial statements and then goes into our governmental and that's the first part of the book and then after that it goes into what we consider our notes which gives more details about all the transactions that are reflected in the government-wide and governmental funds and then from there it goes into the fund level statements those are more comparable to what you all are used to seeing with the annual financial report and the budget documents where it actually shows basically the account code and the the expense we generally don't share with you the revenues so you will see the revenues and expense on those fund level statements and then finally at the end of the book is the statistical section which gives the reader information about what is our average daily membership our enrollment our demographic here in the town of gilbert and within our school district along with how we have performed over the last 10 years in many schedules in the statistical section so having said that at the very beginning is the government-wide statements which really is the um the statements that most of our investors we're talking about a bond sale again and we have investors that buy our bonds they are interested to know at a at a high level a government-wide level how is gilbert public schools doing so we always share the net position and we always do a comparative schedule and this is in the management's discussion and analysis which is in the md a which is part of that first main financial section at the beginning of the book you can see by looking at this that our net position ending is 289 million in comparison to 258 million and that represents an improvement of about 31.7 million dollars a very positive result and having the act for completed this early provides us an opportunity to include this information in the offer statement for our bond sale giving us an added bonus as we're reporting a positive and an increase in that position for our investors to have a lot of confidence in our organization as a whole so um note the total revenues and total expenses the other the other thing that i wanted to make sure that you're aware of again this is government-wide all funds it considers all capital assets considers depreciation inventory this is not the general fund results this is all funds so i didn't want you to get concerned about a 363 million dollar revenue amount remember that's all of our funds basically added up together so the very positive news of an increase of 31.7 million dollars are there any questions on this particular schedule so when you say alphonse that probably includes the um student fundraising in those accounts as well the student activity it includes all of the uh auxiliary and tax credit and all that and actually due to a gasby regulation that was put into place a year ago i think for the 2020 audit we are including the student activity funds now at this government-wide level okay anything else board members okay so uh we always share the expenses by function year over year so uh note that this is comparable to what we've shared with you with the dollars in the classroom analysis that the auditor general does every year we always share this on the acfer because it gives us an idea of how we will do in the dollars in the classroom analysis when they are complete with that in the march april time frame so if you note the instruction amount so last year fiscal year 2020 the instruction percentage again this is global government-wide all funds was 59 percent and remember that our results um for the auditor general's report a year ago was over 61 in the classroom now compare that to fiscal year 2021 our instruction percentage actually increased from 59 percent to 60 percent giving us an idea that it's a a very probable that when the auditor general completes the report that our dollars in the classroom will be higher than the 61 over 61 percent that was presented last year okay any other questions on that and we will bring these uh pie graphs back to you uh when we do have the auditor general's report so now we're going to go to the very next level of the of the financial statements within the kafir book and this is the governmental financials so these are more of an aggregate fund level look um at the high level categories of all of our funds here in gilbert public schools again this is more than just our operating or our general fund results or transactions so the governmental funds include the following categories of funds these are obviously not all the funds we must have i don't know over a hundred different funds but it does include the general and remember that the general is very much like the monthly financial operating funds that we present to you every month so it does include indirect and other funds that we would consider operating it includes so the another fund category is other federal pro projects debt service bond building and non-major governmental so governmental fund assets so i'm actually looking at the balance sheet so the balance sheet is a report that says here's your assets here's your liabilities and here is your your net position and then here is your liabilities in that position and it should balance to your total assets so i'm going to go through those by category so this is these are our assets so you can see our cash position has increased substantially by over 30 million dollars contributions to cash remember we did have a bond sale in fiscal year 2021 and we did see the maintenance and operations override as well that we did result that we did did see and all those revenues well most of those revenues were received so those are the types of things that would contribute to cash due from governmental entities you can see the 66 million versus the 55 million remember that every year we are we have a delay in our final revenue imposed upon us from the state of arizona that represents uh nearly 39 million dollars of that in addition much of that is also our federal reimbursements to the spend that we had out of sr1 and sr2 and the remainder of esg so you can see our total asset has increased by nearly 50 million year over year-over-year these are governmental fund liabilities the next section of the balance sheet so you can see the the bond interest and bond interest payable as an example so know that we plan on we plan on the principal and interest payment that's going to occur on the first day of july and we set the tax rate based upon knowing that that july 1st payment is going to occur but we don't actually pay it within the fiscal year we don't pay it by june 30.
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we'll talk more about that at the next board meeting but there were there was one change in our rainy day fund and so it didn't really have any impact on what we did in our budget budget hearings so that was good [Music] recommendation to approve the purchase of a new activity bus [Music] yes so i gave you all of the comparables and the different quotes that we got activity there's not many buses around um and the ones that are being made are taking a long time we actually ran into a little bit of luck because this bus was actually starting to be built by another school corporation that wanted it but then backed out of it and so they do have one that they are still working on which we hopefully will get in the next month or so but uh just making a recommendation to replace the bus that was totaled a month ago we did receive our insurance check from liberty mutual to cover the cost of [Music] that last purchase the only problem is it's purple chris the thing that brought that back in line with i mean because you're relatively close to your insurance so what was the deduct on the seats i'm just going from memory i think it's like a ten thousand dollars oh an insurance no i don't want a new purchase yeah everything is the same uh the extra little extra cost is just the decal stuff that we typically do on our activity buses yeah that's amazing it came in line that closed yeah well it's newer too yeah and they do that we tell them so when they go to see what the actual cost of the bus is they contact them to see what the typical cost of the bus would be so that's how they get so close to their they're comparable with that there's a little replacement cost yeah yeah that's what the insurance covers anything under 10 years of us under 10 years there was full placement calls and that's the tops yes yes that's the bus right with the congress closer yes the most freely affirmative to approve the bus replacement all in favor say hi recommendation to approve an overnight extended out-of-state trip from northfield to 8th grade to washington d.c on march 24th to the 27th and this coming spring second second to approve the trip for the northville 8th graders all in favor say hi all right recommendation to approve an overnight extended out-of-state field trip for southwood wrestling team to danville illinois december 29th and 30th of this year it's the 10th annual new year's challenge tournament okay i'll show you a second to approve the trip for southward wrestling team all in favor say hi okay we have no unfinished business or board policy any public comment on anything there is one okay they wish me happy birthday what was your birthday [Music] they're trying to be supportive since you have to begin i actually encourage them to make other comments that they aren't making so i'll say those sure do we have any items from core members uh the eighth grade trip that we just approved i'm sure no well i'm always concerned about the kid that might not be able to afford that i'm sure there's going to be a financial cost somebody's in the league trying to because it's a wonderful opportunity i'd like to see every yeah i think once they have those concerns then they look at other ways to be able to make that happen so yeah yesterday yeah i don't want to jump and start unwriting it it might get overused but yeah i just like to see it it'll go apart okay we have nothing else for adjourned
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